For the last six months none of our lives have been normal.
We’ve all had to adapt to new ways of living, working, shopping, socialising, and that has not been easy.
Those most impacted of course have been those directly affected by COVID 19. Whether those who have been infected, those who have lost loved ones to this disease and of course those on the frontline who have cared for those most in need. We owe them a great debt of gratitude. The impact of COVID has been particularly hard on those living in care homes, many of whom have hardly seen their families, compounding their loneliness and impacting on their mental health.
The economic impact has been severe and as, yet we haven’t seen the full impact yet to come. There are huge concerns that this will impact disproportionately on young people leaving behind a whole generation to the scourge of unemployment. We cannot allow this to happen. The Scottish Government £60m job guarantee programme, is an important response to help keep young people in work, encourage employers to recruit more young people and ensure our education system supports young people into work.
Like many others, my local office here in Dundee has moved online, my dedicated staff have been working with mobile phones and e mails to try to support the hundreds of constituents getting in touch with a wide variety of problems, some COVID related and some not.
As we emerge from the fallout of the pandemic, we need to learn lessons and do things better. Simply returning to old ways, often bad old ways cannot be an option.
There are things we can do.
Whether its properly recognising the value of our care staff and reforming our social care system through consideration of a National Care Service; or sustaining new ways of flexible working enabling more people to work from home more often which employers have found to be very effective for productivity and staff have benefitted from more flexibility; or whether its protecting our environment by reducing commuting to work in our towns and cities while also reducing demand for air travel by making better use of our digital communication systems while also promoting staycations and boosting our local tourism industry is an opportunity not to be missed; or whether its addressing the disproportionate impact of COVID on the poorest in our society through consideration of a universal citizens income providing a much needed safety net to those most in need. All these measures have merit and should be actively considered.
I urge the Scottish Government to do all it can, however I also recognise that they have very limited opportunities to raise the finance for many of these policies with ridiculously limited borrowing powers compared to other countries, even ones that are devolved. The furlough scheme is a good example of this with the UK Government funding the scheme entirely through borrowing, an option not open to the Scottish Government. So if the UK Government refuses to extend the scheme then we are not a position to be able to afford to have our own scheme. Many of my constituents here in Dundee are currently reliant on the furlough scheme and many will end up unemployed if it is not extended.
This is simply not a sustainable position as we move forward to an uncertain future. We need to have a full set of economic tools in our tool box and we need that urgently.