Poverty: Glasgow North East

Kirsteen Sullivan Excerpts

Tuesday 6th May 2025 Westminster Hall

[John Grady (Glasgow East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Butler. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East (Maureen Burke), who is my neighbour, for securing this important debate. Glasgow has disgraceful levels of absolute poverty, with families who cannot afford the essentials to live: food, heat, school uniforms and clothes.

We do not help those in desperate poverty by making unaffordable promises. But despite the constrained public finances, our Government have taken action. Our last Budget raised billions in extra taxes to fight poverty. In Scotland, that means an extra £4.9 billion for the Scottish Government, so that they can tackle record NHS waiting lists and arrest the alarming decline of Scottish education. Our Employment Rights Bill tackles the evil of in-work poverty, with the biggest upgrade to workers’ rights in a generation. Our Government have increased the living wage well above inflation.

Our Government have been in power for 10 months; the Tories were in power for 10 years and the SNP have been in power for 18 years—at the helm of an incredibly powerful devolved Administration blessed with significant powers. The SNP have run Glasgow city council for eight years.

[Kirsteen Sullivan (Bathgate and Linlithgow) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that many of the essential services that families rely on are delivered by local authorities, and that local authorities have had their budgets slashed year on year by the Scottish Government, which impacts their ability to protect and support the most vulnerable people in our societies?

[John Grady]

I agree. Local government has been emasculated by the Tory Governments in England and Wales and the SNP Government in Scotland. I must say that they are pretty non-discriminatory in their emasculation, because they have failed to properly fund the SNP council in Glasgow for years.

In Scotland, one cause of poverty is the shocking state of the NHS. Record waiting lists do not just delay people getting back to work; the delays mean that their conditions deteriorate to a point where they cannot return to work, and we should be incredibly angry about that. In 2007, the Scottish Government promised to establish a ministerial taskforce on health inequalities, yet Scotland continues to have the worst health inequalities in western and central Europe. On disability health checks, following a successful pilot in 2019-20, the Scottish Government committed to carry out annual health checks for people with learning disabilities in 2022. It was to be completed by 2023, but as of 2023-24, only 6.9% of eligible people had been offered a health check. The SNP’s record in Holyrood on health is absolutely shameful.

Education is an essential pathway out of poverty. However, the attainment gap in Scotland is widening, which means that kids in my constituency and others with large working-class populations have fewer life chances, and they are getting worse—it is an absolute scandal. College education is in crisis. Again, this should be a source of anger.

Glasgow city council has an opportunity to help some of the most vulnerable in Glasgow. Homeless Project Scotland has a food and night shelter in the Merchant City in Glasgow. It serves free hot meals and provides an immaculately clean shelter for homeless people. However, it has had its planning permission refused. The shelter is at serious risk of closing, but I am heartened to hear that Glasgow city council has said:

“We are available to engage...and do whatever we can to help them secure suitable property”.

I hope that the council does that. It has two golden keys to a resolution. It has an extensive property portfolio and it is the planning authority. I cannot think of an organisation better placed to help.

I helped at the shelter on Sunday night. That night, it served over 100 men and women, but because children are also homeless in Glasgow, it serves them too. On Sunday night, there was a boy—just like my boy—with his dad, a teenage boy with his mum, and a girl perhaps the same age as my daughter. If the shelter is closed, where will those children and their mums and dads get a hot meal? Where will the most vulnerable in my city get a safe bed for the night? I hope that Glasgow city council delivers on its promise.