Marion Fellows
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(4 months ago)
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David Linden
Absolutely. The hon. Gentleman is spot on. Of course, he previously served in the devolved Parliament in Scotland, where there is responsibility for health policy. One thing that he and I would share a concern about is that, as a result of some of those decisions around poverty, we find that there is a knock-on effect for many of our constituents. If someone is living in fuel poverty, that has an impact on their health, which in turn has an impact on other aspects such as employment; all of these decisions are linked up. That is a pressure that our colleagues in Scotland face.
Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP)
My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. Does he feel, as I do, that the Tory Government here in Westminster have absolutely forgotten disabled people? They announced a social energy tariff consultation, which has not happened. Many people across these isles, and especially those with disabilities, cannot afford to heat their homes.
David Linden
Absolutely. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, who I know does a power of work on this issue and is an active member of the Lanarkshire forum on poverty. She is right. We know that there is evidence suggesting that people with a disability experience £950 a month more living costs, not to mention the fact that the UK Government so cruelly overlooked the 2.5 million legacy benefit claimants during the pandemic, who did not get their £20 uplift.
I know that my hon. Friend did not see my speech in advance, but she touched on a point that I want to come to next, which is about the impact on physical and mental health. That is an issue that impacts people across all of these islands. Indeed, the Mental Health Foundation found that almost one third of Scottish adults reported feeling anxious about their financial situation in the last month, with one in 10 feeling hopeless about it. I guess that that goes back to the point made by the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross: in one of the richest economies in the world, people feeling hopeless due to financial precarity is simply unacceptable.
These statistics are only reinforced by the findings of the charity Pregnant Then Screwed, who revealed in their recent survey that over half of parents reported experiencing high levels of anxiety relating to money. That is in addition to the almost two thirds of mothers with a child under 12 months who reported that they either have cut short or will cut short their maternity leave due to cost of living pressures. From the Scottish Women’s Budget Group, we know that women are the shock absorbers of poverty; during a cost of living crisis, I am afraid that that problem is only exacerbated.
If we take a look at the impact across demographics in Scotland, we also know, from Age Scotland, that 43% of over-50s identified as living in fuel poverty, with 9% of over-50s skipping meals. The very fact that so many people are living in fuel poverty and that that has an impact on many constituents in the Easterhouse area of my constituency is, I know, a huge area of concern for my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin), who I think was seeking to catch my eye to make an intervention on this point.