The Daily Record have continued to run Kezia Dugdale’s weekly column despite her resignation as Scottish Labour branch office manager (North British division), and this week we were interested to note her assessment of the devolution years, which could be summarised neatly as “Labour devolution good, SNP devolution bad”.

We raised an especially quizzical eyebrow at the claim that the 1999-2007 Labour/Lib Dem administrations had apparently ended homelessness. So we thought we’d do that thing we do when Kezia Dugdale claims something.

It didn’t take very long.

When Scottish Labour took charge of the Executive in 1999, there were around 33,000 applications assessed as homeless. When they left office in 2007 after a decade-long economic boom and ever-growing budgets supplied by a friendly Labour government in London, that number had shot up to around 41,000 – an increase of roughly 25%.

Since the SNP came to power, despite a global economic crash and years of austerity and cuts from Westminster – which have negatively impacted both individuals and the Scottish government’s finances – the number has nevertheless fallen steadily in all but one year and now sits at around 28,000. That’s a remarkable reduction of 32%, and the lowest level of homelessness in Scotland for 25 years.

Leader or not, we’ll always be here to check Kezia Dugdale’s facts, readers. Because it doesn’t look they’re going to get any less false any time soon.

.Y

Previous Kezia Dugdale Fact Checks:

[1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14]