THE UK Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, delivered a statement on Wednesday that was big on rhetoric but fell far short of what is needed to tackle the fall-out from the coronavirus crisis.

He claimed he wouldn’t accept unemployment and would do all he could to prevent it. Yet unlike other European countries which have launched major stimulus packages, including extended support for people’s incomes, he recommitted to the October cliff-edge for the furlough scheme.

The newly announced job retention bonus does have some positive potential but it’s no replacement for the furlough scheme. The result will inevitably be a wave of job losses on a devastating scale.

The bonus itself sounds very much like past job creation schemes which have regularly under-delivered. And there appear to be no requirements for fair employment practices, such as ruling out zero-hours contacts.

The job retention bonus, the kick-start scheme and the emphasis on apprenticeships could all have a hugely positive role in raising employment standards if the will was there, but in the absence of clear fair work criteria, the Tories are letting all three schemes create another huge problem of poverty wages.

Apprenticeships in particular have a minimum wage of just £4.15 per hour, well below half of the Living Wage. The VAT cut for hospitality will help, and the £4 billion scale of this benefit is significant. The discount for eating out will have a feel-good factor, but not much value beyond that. Both of these policies could end up as economic deadweight, simply pushing a bit of subsidy toward economic activity that would be happening anyway, when what’s needed is stimulus for a sustainable future.

And both are also further missed opportunities to attach conditions for high-quality employment and a real Living Wage in a sector with chronic problems of poverty pay. It seems likely to give more benefit to the owners of business than to the people who actually do the work.

Sunak also announced investment in energy efficiency and greener homes in England. Relatively speaking, the investment announced was pitiful. But we know this is an area where investment can create thousands of jobs. By improving our housing stock, we could create thousands of jobs for builders, roofers, plumbers, heating engineers and a host of other trades.

However, the UK programme is to be delivered by a voucher scheme – a very traditional right-wing individualistic approach. This isn’t what’s needed across swathes of Scotland where tenements and flats are the norm and buildings need to be treated holistically. Community-scale solutions, not individual vouchers, are the way to go.

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Scottish Greens secured millions in the Budget earlier this year for energy efficiency work just like this and we’ve already won new commitments from the First Minister to go further. We’ll be working hard to ensure those words are turned into action.

This week also saw Michael Gove’s latest plans to overturn the devolution settlement.

Plans to enshrine a UK “internal market” in law as a direct result of the calamitous Brexit project would mean that the Scottish Parliament would have to seek permission before it could legislate on clearly devolved areas such as agriculture, public health or the environment.

The proposals are nothing more than a blatant attempt to undemocratically strip Scotland of powers it has used successfully for 21 years.

Rather typically of the Tories, no consideration has been given to the interest and wishes of the people of Scotland who, let’s not forget, emphatically rejected Brexit in 2016 and have rejected it time and again at the ballot box ever since.

BOTH of these issues – the lack of control over our own finances and the Tories’ contempt for devolution – show the importance of electing a strong pro-independence majority at next year’s Scottish Parliament election.

Scottish Greens are one of the ever-present parties of devolution and, particularly in the last few years, we’ve shown how, working constructively, we can push the Scottish Government beyond its comfort zone to deliver more for the people of Scotland.

A Panelbase poll published on Sunday showed that the majority in favour of independence is not only holding steady but it is in fact increasing. The poll also showed that the Scottish Greens are the only opposition party who are set to increase both our share of the vote and our number of seats, pushing the pro-independence block in Parliament to almost two-thirds of MSPs.

Now we’ll take nothing for granted, and we’ll work hard to earn every single vote. But the exciting prospect of electing a clear majority of independence-supporting MSPs, including a big group of Scottish Greens MSPs, gives me some hope that building the fairer, greener Scotland that I believe most of us want is within our reach.

We really can make this happen, and the Scottish Greens have a vital role to play.