Coronavirus: Unity of purpose still requires tough questions – Richard Leonard

As a society we are being tested like never before. Where there are weaknesses they are being exposed; where there are strengths they are being drawn on and put to work.

At the end of all this we will have an opportunity to look back and learn lessons. At a practical level this will be necessary because there may be future pandemics, but at a more fundamental level it should illuminate and guide us in the kind of society that we want to live in and how we should live in it. I hope that it will lead to a better future, but right now we have to deal with the urgent present. The only priority here and now for all of us is to save lives.

There is a unity of determination across political parties to set aside differences and work in the national interest – the people’s interest. The primary role of Parliament steadfastly remains one of holding government to account. Government up to and including the First Minister are rightly heavily reliant on the best scientific advice. But the job of Members of the Scottish Parliament is to bring into sharp focus what is really going on out in the real world.

Duty of care

So, if Scotland’s frontline health and social care staff don’t have the Personal Protective Equipment they need, and were promised, that has to be exposed. We all have a duty of care to them. They have families too.

If critical wholesale and distribution workers are not considered to be key workers, but retail workers are, then there is a failure to properly understand how this supply chain works and why a whole system approach is required.

And if the scientific evidence and advice is at variance with itself, we do need to wrestle with our consciences about what we should do. We are rightly taking a precautionary approach, so on balance I do think that the World Health Organisations stance on a comprehensive and routine testing regime makes more sense than the Government’s claim that it would represent a wasteful use of finite resources.

The stark truth is that decisions elected representatives take now will determine how many lives are saved, and the shape of our society and economy once the immediate danger has passed. Everyone I have spoken to and worked with, across parties, on Covid-19 is acting in good faith, but we all have to recognise that no-one has a monopoly of wisdom.

Gig economy

One of the fault lines of weakness exposed by this public health emergency is the emergence of the gig economy and precarious contracts of work. The Scottish TUC estimated a couple of years ago that over a quarter of a million workers, or ten per cent of the workforce, in Scotland are on zero-hours contracts, work through agencies or umbrella companies, or other forms of unstable hours working. They did not include in their calculation the bogus self-employed workers prevalent in construction and delivery businesses.

This is not strictly speaking a new model of labour: piece-work has been around for as long as work itself. Heavy industrial workplaces such as docks operated on the basis of casual workers turning up – and being turned away – at the dock gates. That all changed with the growth of trade union organisation and labour market regulation – implemented by Labour governments pressed by workers campaigning for collective rights.

We need to legislate now so gig economy workers get statutory employment rights during this crisis, but we should never again allow a large proportion of our workforce to be waiting on a text message from their boss each day to know whether they have the right to work.

Even those who thought that they had employment rights and stability of employment find like those easyJet staff forced on to involuntary absence without pay for three months or those Stena Line ferry workers faced with the immediate withdrawal of all company sick pay, that employers can unilaterally impose change. This should be outlawed.

And if, statutory sick pay of £94.25 a week is insufficient to live on during this crisis, why should we accept that it is sufficient afterwards? Last week in Parliament I called on SNP ministers to uplift statutory sick pay during the Covid-19 pandemic. Once it is over we must explore legislating to bring Scotland and indeed the whole UK into line with other European countries, where workers are entitled to far greater financial support when they fall ill.

We know too that the self-employed are not covered by the Coronavirus Retention Scheme at all. Even those employers who are covered may not be paid until next month. Many are on their knees already and for them it will be too late.

Last week we launched an online petition calling on the Government to ban all evictions due to coronavirus and to give tenants the same assurance that Rishi Sunak and mortgage lenders have given to owner occupiers, through underwriting rent holidays for both social and private landlords.

Of course permanent changes would put us in a better position in the event of a similar emergency in the future. If we followed the French lead and already had a ban on winter evictions, as I have been campaigning for over a number of years, we would simply be extending this eviction ban for a few more months.

The early days of the pandemic have also highlighted a couple of other real changes we need to get on with. One is the need to properly value and reward all those frontline care workers who are the bedrock of communities across Scotland looking after the vulnerable and the elderly every day and night of the year. We need a revolution in how we value their work.

The other is just how important it is for government to work with trade unions and employers at a sectoral level to plan the economy. If we can do this work at a time of immediate crisis why can’t we do it as a matter of future routine.

We simply cannot afford to leave things as they are.