The Scottish Socialist Party is campaigning for immediate action against on the cost of living crisis in Scotland.
Working-class communities that have carried the brunt of the COVID crisis are now facing an alarming rise in the cost of living in 2022. Bills, rent, Council Tax, public transport, and retail costs are pushing people further and further into poverty.
With the latest figures from Citizens Advice Bureau showing that as many as one in three households in Scotland struggle to pay energy bills, and with energy bills set for another hike in April 2022, we have an emergency.
No one should have to choose between a warm meal and a warm home. We need immediate action to end fuel poverty in Scotland.
The SSP calls for public funding to retrofit and insulate every home in Scotland up to the highest possible standard, without cost to residents.
The 2019 Housing Conditions and Standards Report revealed that 68% of Scottish homes suffer from disrepair and, shockingly, half of Scotland’s dwellings have disrepair to critical elements – including roof coverings, windows, and exterior doors.
Retrofitting 2.62 million dwellings and 20,000 public buildings with insulation, draught-proofing, replacing old boilers with eco-friendly ones, and installing high-speed broadband nationwide will cut fuel poverty and emissions, improve living standards and health outcomes, and deliver a bounty of new, skilled jobs and apprenticeships.
The STUC has found that over 100,000 jobs can be created in a 20-year plan to decarbonise and retrofit every home in Scotland.
The SSP demands that local and national authorities implement clear, high standards on cleanliness, central heating, double-glazing, insulation, environmental sustainability, energy efficiency, and safe lighting – and real enforcement against rogue landlords.
The SSP campaigns to build 100,000 new, environmentally sustainable, council homes for social rent, and for restoring an adequate surplus of safe, suitable, and affordable social housing in all regions.
The STUC has concluded that, in just two years, 35,000 new jobs could be created to build eco-friendly social housing, with a further 36,000 jobs up to 2030.
The SSP is the only political party in 2022 demanding democratic public ownership of energy production and infrastructure in Scotland, including renewables, through a National Energy Company.
Energy is a human necessity, and no society can thrive without it. But private energy tycoons currently control where our energy comes from and how much it costs us. While private energy profiteers, working-class people have gotten poorer, and our planet has gotten warmer.
Public money heavily subsidises oil barons and fossil fuel billionaires. Instead of soaring bills to fund private profit, we can produce energy that is greener and sustainable; we can bring essential manufacturing back and create green jobs in Scotland while investing in local and municipal energy production, and we can provide energy that is cheaper and end fuel poverty in Scotland.
Scotland has 40% of Europe’s potential for onshore and offshore renewable energy.
This can power jobs, prosperity, and a rapid transformation of Scotland’s economy. Scotland’s renewable energy potential can power homes, public buildings, critical infrastructure, and workplaces – cutting individual costs, creating jobs, and supercharging economic recovery.
The Scottish Socialist Party supports the democratic public ownership of energy – oil, gas, electricity, and renewables – through a public National Energy Company. Gas, electricity, oil, and renewable energy sources must be taken into democratic public ownership to tackle the crises of climate chaos, fuel poverty, and job losses.
Bring shipyards, turbine manufacturers, and marine technology production into public ownership – creating 70,000 well-paid, secure, unionised jobs in Scotland in the next 20 years. Provide retraining for fossil fuel workers without prohibitive cost or loss of income.
The SSP supports creating a publicly owned National Construction Company to build environmentally sustainable social housing and renew Scotland’s infrastructure without relying on rip-off PFI contracts. That includes creating thousands of new jobs and apprenticeships in construction and related trades – fully unionised, with good pay and good conditions.
Scrap the regressive Council Tax; demand a No Cuts Budget
Nicola Sturgeon and Patrick Harvie both promised to scrap Council Tax years ago, and replace it with a fairer system of local funding. But under the SNP/Green coalition, Council Tax could soar in 2022 – at a time when living costs are rising and incomes are falling.
The SNP/Green coalition wants local authorities to fill funding gaps by hiking Council Tax, adding to the cost of living crisis in Scotland.
The SSP has always been clear that it will scrap the regressive Council Tax and replace it with the Scottish Service Tax – a progressive income tax, with payment scaled to the ability to pay.
This will tie local tax to household income, not outdated property values. Under these proposals, the majority will be substantially better off, the wealthiest will pay their fair share, and local funding will be greatly increased.
The Scottish Socialist Party calls for No Cuts Budgets across Scotland – whether at local government, Holyrood, or Westminster – and an end to the discredited austerity agenda.
Instead of making working-class communities pay the COVID-19 bill, we need to end PFI robbery and tax pandemic profiteers.
Audit Scotland has confirmed that Scotland is being robbed by PFI. They found that “the Scottish public sector will make payments worth over four times the capital value of the assets built (over £40 billion) with £27 billion still to be paid between now and 2047/48”.
That cost is coming out of your pocket in the form of higher Council Tax and budget cuts that increase your cost of living.
This is robbery started by Labour and the Liberal Democrats, carried on by the SNP/Green coalition government. Instead, we must renegotiate rip-off PFI contracts to free up billions of pounds for jobs, services, care, and the NHS.
Demand Free Public Transport
The SSP pioneered the campaign for free public transport in Scotland and is calling for free public transport now to bring down living costs – starting with municipal buses in local authority areas, fully integrated with other forms of public transport, with restored regulation to ensure good services, and expanding services to meet the needs of every community.
COP26 delegates were given the benefit of free public transport, while the public were left with rip-off fares and unreliable services. If free public transport is good enough for COP26, it’s good enough for all of us.
Free public transport, with expanded publicly-owned services, brings the cost of living down for working-class communities. It means easier access to jobs, to social security appointments, to medical appointments, to those requiring care, and to retail, shopping, and other economic activities.
End poverty pay in Scotland.
Most people in Scotland who are in poverty are in employed households.
Workers on low incomes simply cannot afford to save for a rainy day when every penny that comes into the household must go straight out again. Millions of workers are living in precarious, hand-to-mouth conditions with little to no savings. Even before the pandemic, 38% of people in Scotland had savings below £2,500 – 21% had no savings at all.
The SSP campaigns for a statutory minimum wage set at two-thirds of the male median earnings, rising with inflation, for all workers over 16.
Zero-hour and other low-hour contracts leave workers without the guarantee of paying work, and without the same rights and protections afforded to workers with secure contracts. The SSP is fighting to abolish zero-hour contracts, and instead guarantee contracts with a 16-hour minimum working week for every worker who wants one.
We need food security in Scotland.
Food prices are climbing in the UK, and working-class communities are going hungry because of it.
Starchy carbohydrates, fruit, vegetables, and meat have all sharply increased in price. The average family shopping bill increased by £15 in the month before Christmas 2021.
2 million children in the UK went hungry in 2020. The number of people receiving emergency food parcels in the UK has already climbed from 26,000 in 2009 to 2.5 million in 2021. It will climb again when rising Council Tax and energy bills take effect.
The Scottish Socialist Party is calling for free school meals to be provided to EVERY school pupil in Scotland, without means testing.
Scotland currently imports half of its food – greatly increasing both the unnecessary carbon footprint and personal cost of our diet, and leaving our food supply dangerously vulnerable to disruptions in global trade.
Instead, we can significantly increase the production of nutritious food for consumption here in Scotland – creating jobs, reducing food poverty, ensuring continued food security in the 21st century, improving public health, and reducing greenhouse emissions.
That’s why the SSP will bring landed estates and corporate farms into democratic public ownership – to produce for local and national needs. Our plans include increasing the number of community gardens and allotments in Scotland (and protection of existing allotments), with grants to enable small farmers and other food producers to establish local farming co-operatives.
The SSP supports establishing community-run supermarkets specialising in healthy local produce at the cheapest possible retail prices, making nationally grown fruit and vegetables available for those who need it, starting with areas of high deprivation.
Rent Controls NOW.
The average private rent for a two-bedroom property increased by 25.1% between 2010 and 2021 – but working-class incomes certainly did not.
Rent is rocketing across Scotland, but incomes are stagnant – or falling. But the SNP/Green coalition government has pushed rent controls back to at least 2025 – plenty of time for rents to climb and climb, and to water-down plans in favour of landlords.
We’ve had enough broken promises. We need to cut and cap rent at affordable levels through emergency intervention in the housing crisis – and we need to act NOW.
As well as restoring public housing stock across Scotland by building 100,000 new council homes, the SSP demands immediate legislation to cut and cap rents at affordable levels in Scotland.