Official Report 816KB pdf
The next item of business is a statement by John Swinney on the programme for government 2026-2031. The First Minister’s statement will be followed by a debate, so there should be no interventions or interruptions during it.
15:06
The Scottish Government that I have the privilege to lead is optimistic and hopeful for Scotland. We are inspired by the potential for our country to be ever more successful. That view is the foundation of the first programme for government in the seventh session of the Scottish Parliament. We are here to improve the lives of the people of Scotland and to create new opportunities for all to succeed.
This Government is ambitious for Scotland. We will act to eradicate child poverty, make Scotland the best place to do business, tackle the climate and nature crises and improve Scotland’s public services. As we build on the enormous strengths of our country, we will confront the difficult challenges that people in Scotland face and the malevolent forces that seek to divide our country. We will address the cost of living crisis and we will work to create community cohesion. I will give the personal leadership that is required to tackle the epidemic of male violence against women and girls in our society. We will give the leadership for Scotland to decide her own future and set out our case that Scotland will be better off with independence.
To succeed, we will need to embrace change. We will undertake radical and widespread public service reform, putting the individual at the heart of the changes that we make. We will require all public services to make a decisive shift to prevention and early intervention. We will simplify government, remove barriers to progress and ensure that every pound of investment is focused on front-line service delivery.
In pursuing this programme, we recognise that, if we are to make progress, we will need to reach agreement with other parties in the Parliament and partners across the country. I commit my Government to working to create common ground, and I invite those who share the values that underpin our country to work with me to achieve those aims.
I believe that there is agreement across the Parliament that we need to change the way that government works in Scotland. It needs to be more joined up, simpler and citizen centred. It needs to be focused on the realities that people face in their everyday lives and better able to target resources in a way that maximises impact on individuals. That is what this programme for government will deliver.
The vision that I set out today will mean more modern, flexible and person-centred public services delivered by a Scottish state that is rewired and reimagined. We will build on what is already the most generous cost of living package anywhere in the United Kingdom.
We will deliver more, and more flexible, childcare, which will be available from nine months until the end of primary school. We will ensure that, by the end of 2031, nobody in Scotland is waiting more than 26 weeks for national health service treatment. We will deliver more new homes for families, more help for growing businesses, a stronger economy and a fairer society, and meaningful support to help people boost their incomes and get back into work. We will also protect our beautiful natural environment, alongside taking climate actions that create jobs and reduce costs. That is the promise of this programme for government.
So many of the most immediate challenges that we face as a country are rooted in levels of economic growth that have been too low for too long. That is, in part, the consequence of Scotland being tied too closely to the stagnating economy of the United Kingdom—an economy that is designed to serve the few while leaving the many short-changed. It is an economy ravaged by the disastrous pursuit of austerity and by the folly of Brexit. We see it in the cost of living crisis, which, in turn, has fed discontent with politics and a loss of hope and trust among too many of our citizens. People are angry, but that anger must be a call to action, not a reason for despair.
Economic inequality exacerbates inequality throughout society. It undermines cohesion. It runs the risk of spreading disillusion among too many young Scots. It is one factor that fuels growing violence against women and girls in our society. Those challenges are all different, but they are also interconnected. We must drive the change needed in attitudes and behaviours, confronting the sexism and misogyny that continue to harm women and girls, and tackling head-on the racism and prejudice that too many people in our society face.
I will provide the personal leadership to tackle violence against women and girls. However, I am clear that the actions that we take are not the responsibility of any one minister; they cut right across the work of Government. Although the Government has a vital role to play, lasting change requires all of society to play its part, which is why campaigns such as The Sunday Post’s “It’s Time” campaign are so vital.
Through legislation, we will seek to make early progress on the serious issue of violence against women and girls through a misogyny bill. We will end the postcode lottery of service provision to ensure that every woman and girl, regardless of where she lives, has access to safe and sustainable services. That includes developing a new multiyear fund for specialist third sector organisations, responding to what organisations need to sustain vital services and deliver critical preventative work. We will enhance protections for women by recognising pregnancy as an aggravating factor in domestic abuse cases, and we will provide support for those leaving abusive partners through our fund to leave. We will also invest in targeted interventions, including a multiyear public health campaign to challenge and change problematic, misogynistic attitudes in boys and young men, so that they understand harmful influences and behaviour before it escalates and women and girls are harmed.
The increasing frequency of intimidating protests, alongside experiences of discrimination, prejudice and hate, has caused faith, minority and migrant communities, in particular, to feel less safe and more fearful. There has been extensive engagement with communities across the summer, both proactively and to provide immediate reassurance in response to events that have left communities concerned for their safety. I have welcomed the opportunity to engage with communities directly, but I believe that we must do more.
This programme for government sets out a range of actions towards building strong, inclusive and safe communities, including addressing the root causes of hate crime, strengthening reporting and support for victims, and addressing racism in education through the anti-racism in education programme. We will increase investment in the community cohesion fund to £500,000 to support grassroots community initiatives. We will also bring forward a human rights bill, aiming for introduction in year 2 of this session of Parliament.
This programme for government represents my priorities and the mandate that I secured from the public in May. More than that, however, it reflects the experience that I have gained and the lessons that I have learned from almost 20 years in government. There is much to be proud of and much that we do well. We are blessed with public servants who go above and beyond to deliver for people day in and day out. Those things that we do well, we must do more of. However, those things that are not delivering as we need them to—and as people rightly expect them to—must change.
As a starting point, and at the heart of our plans, is the very clear expectation that the public sector in Scotland will fundamentally shift its focus, asking first and foremost what the needs of our citizens are, rather than the needs of the existing structures and systems.
That will mean, over the next five years, the most radical reshaping of public services since the establishment of the Scottish Parliament. It will mean the more effective use of technology. Staff who work on the front line should be encouraged and enabled to break through silos between organisations in order to respond to the real-life needs and experiences of the people that they serve. Our communities should be empowered in new and effective ways. Services should be delivered at the most appropriate level to meet the needs of the public. Those aspirations—which, I believe, are widely shared across Scotland—must be turned into reality, and the Government will lead that process.
I will start with local government. Scotland is fortunate. Because of our size, some priorities are best delivered at a national level; because of our diversity, others are best delivered at a regional or more local level. Getting the balance right between national, regional and local is essential in enabling us to deliver more responsive and more effective government that meets the needs of our people and our communities.
In Scotland today, we are faced with the reality that some of our councils are too small to be strategic and some are too big to be local. The Government believes that that should change. We propose a rebalancing of power within Scotland, with our regions strengthened and our communities empowered to bring new life and new opportunities into the places that they love. Today begins a three-month period of intense engagement with our local government partners and with other parties—in this chamber and beyond—on a new structure for local government in Scotland.
Although I enter those discussions with an open mind and do not wish to be overprescriptive at this stage, I also have a very clear sense of what is needed. There is not a blank sheet but, equally, our ideas are not delivered today as though they were on tablets of stone.
A starting point is that changes must not create another layer of administration or a new group of politicians. As an end point, reform must mean stronger and more strategic regions with the powers, permission and flexibility that they need to drive economic growth and investment in all parts of Scotland—so that we can, in turn, improve people’s lives in all parts of Scotland. I am open to devolving powers over a broad range of economic levers to those stronger, more strategic regions, including, where relevant, new powers that are devolved to Scotland from the United Kingdom.
Emphatically, however, within those regions, local communities must be empowered. Reform must deliver councils that are big enough to be strategic but that contain localities that are small enough and strong enough to enable genuine local decision making. That process must involve the freeing of resources that are currently caught up in a cluttered and complex landscape, to be spent on improving the lives of our citizens.
Within any programme of reform and renewal, the needs of our island communities must be distinctively recognised, including through our ongoing commitment to advancing the single authority model where that is desired.
Our actions are about improving public services. At the heart of that approach is the need for simpler and more coherent decision-making structures. Right now, the arrangements that we have in place to manage social care in Scotland are overcomplex, with competing lines of accountability. No one understands that more than those on the front line of delivering those services. Decisions on social care at a council level impact on the health service and the NHS’s ability to deal with problems such as delayed discharge. That means that money is being spent in ways that do not deliver the best results for citizens. That, too, must change.
Reform to social care will therefore also be a part of our engagement over the next three months with partners in local government, trade unions, the third sector and our communities, and with parties in the Parliament. Again, I do not seek to be prescriptive, but I cannot see us resolving the fundamental challenges that social care faces without a single line of decision making, accountability and funding—with the NHS taking the lead.
For the NHS itself, in order to ensure more joined-up delivery, improve access to care and reduce inequality for some patients due to health board boundaries, we will replace the current 14 territorial health boards with two strategic health boards. That will be the most significant structural reform of the NHS in the era of devolution. Alongside targeted investment and our national flow plan, it will enable us to deliver the additional capacity to ensure that, by the end of 2031, no one will wait more than 26 weeks for the treatment that they need. That is change for a very clear purpose and change that will improve quality of life for thousands of Scots each and every year.
Work is already well under way to deliver a “tell us once” approach so that citizens’ engagement with a range of government services becomes simpler, easier and more joined up. As the programme for government details, action will be taken to rationalise and simplify how we make payments, collect revenues, undertake inspections, share services, manage inquiries and share data.
More broadly, during the current session of Parliament, we will also substantially reduce the number of public bodies. That will include, among other steps, bringing Transport Scotland into the core Government, bringing our environment bodies into a single national environmental body to make our interventions more impactful, and exploring the establishment of a single ferries body for the Clyde and Western Isles routes.
As a result of those actions, at the end of the five years, people in Scotland will notice clear improvements in their lives and in their experience of public services delivered by the Scottish Government and our partners. Change will be structural, but also cultural. We will be more open and flexible, acting as an enabler of positive change, with an attitude rooted more in, “Yes, if”, rather than in, “No, because”. We will have citizen-centred delivery, a prevention-first approach, public service reform and a decluttered public sector landscape. This ambitious programme of public service reform is designed to transform Scotland. It will make our nation a better place in which to live, work and bring up a family, and it will deliver strong, sustainable and effective public services for the future.
We are changing the way that we do government because we are determined also to change Scotland and to deliver tangible improvements that will directly impact on people’s lives. It is our ambition and intention to put more money in families’ pockets, building on what is already the most generous cost-of-living support package anywhere in the United Kingdom.
The national roll-out of our £2 bus cap has already begun. It is in place right now in the Highlands and Islands. We promised to extend it, first to Glasgow and the west of Scotland, and we will keep that promise. I confirm today that bus fares in the west of Scotland—be that Glasgow, Renfrewshire, Ayrshire, Dunbartonshire, Lanarkshire or Inverclyde—will be capped at £2 and that the £2 bus fare will start this coming Monday morning.
Today, we have also begun formal consultation on the legislation that will introduce a legal price ceiling on a basket of essential food items, giving families greater peace of mind at a time of rising prices. We will continue to deliver support on energy costs, with 100,000 people over the next five years saving an average of £450 a year on energy bills, and we will deliver financial support for energy costs for people with life-saving equipment in their homes and those who are terminally ill. We can lower energy costs for some with the powers of devolution, but we can lower energy costs for all only with the full powers of independence, with Scotland’s vast energy resources finally in Scotland’s hands.
Our ambition and our intention is that more people in Scotland get a home that they can afford. That includes investment to deliver 111,000 affordable homes by 2032, with at least 70 per cent available for social rent. Our first homes fund has been launched and it will continue throughout the current session of Parliament. It will give much-needed help worth up to £10,000 to thousands of first-time buyers.
We will ensure fair access to safe housing, including through the roll-out of our new £50 million homelessness prevention fund, with the first awards made this year. We will support innovation activity to tackle homelessness and we will work with partners such as Social Bite, providing £2 million to expand its village project, and support their efforts to address homelessness and provide wraparound support for some of the most vulnerable in our society. We will end the use of unsafe and harmful temporary accommodation for children.
This programme for government will get more people into good, secure work. We will expand apprenticeships by funding at least 150,000 apprenticeships and we will grow the opportunities provided by graduate apprenticeships. We will develop a new apprenticeship accelerator grant that focuses on supporting businesses.
We will make it easier for parents to find work or increase their hours, with a generational expansion of childcare support. That means breakfast clubs in all primary schools by the start of the next school year, and after-school and holiday provision available for all primary children by August 2029. That will ease the pressure on family budgets for thousands of young parents across Scotland, as well as creating new opportunities for work and a boost to productivity and growth.
Underpinning that investment in a stronger and fairer society is our commitment to supporting Scotland’s wealth and job creators as we work to dramatically improve Scotland’s economic performance. Our ambition and intention is to pursue, enable, promote and secure both home-grown and international investment. Put simply, we will take the steps that are necessary to make Scotland the best place to do business. To assist in that effort, we will create a major projects office, which will accelerate progress on nationally and strategically significant investment and private capital projects. The major projects office will unlock barriers and investment, with a particular focus on strategic sectors, including housing and energy.
That is a central part of the enabling Government that I seek—a Government that is active in finding solutions, that will remove barriers and obstacles to speed up economic decision making, and that is laser focused on attracting high-quality projects that can deliver well-paid, high-quality jobs. For the same purpose, we will establish a Scottish high-growth unit, which will work with senior industry leaders to identify and accelerate delivery of the right support for high-potential businesses so that they can grow to scale in Scotland and—just as important—stay here, in Scotland.
Scotland is rich in resources and rich in innovators. I am determined to see the many advantages that we enjoy deliver real benefits to our economy and to our people. Our ambition and our intention, guided by the expertise of my national council for economic growth, is growth that is generated and felt the length and breadth of Scotland. That also means investment in our nation’s infrastructure, improving digital connectivity, support for local regeneration, including town centre regeneration, and projects to build community wealth and resilience. It means ongoing investment in our transport network, including delivering on our commitments to dual the A9 and the A96, find solutions for the A83 Rest and Be Thankful and support progress on the Clyde metro.
Because a flourishing rural economy is a fundamental part of a flourishing Scotland, we will start work on a rural renewal bill that is designed to support rural businesses, from farms to food producers, and the rural way of life.
Scotland’s culture sector is at the beating heart of our national identity, but it is also close to our economy. I want to make sure that it goes from strength to strength. We will deliver an extra £100 million annually for culture by 2028-29. By the end of this Parliament, we will add a further £50 million to our annual culture investment while expanding opportunities for cultural participation, such as a youth culture pass.
We are working with the sector to design and deliver a national performing company for traditional music, ensuring that traditional music has the same status as our other highly respected performing companies. We will also pilot a Scottish artists minimum income.
As the MSP for large swathes of rural Perthshire, I know how important the local pub or shop can be, which is why we will establish a last-provider fund to support the sustainability of the last-remaining shops and pubs in our rural and island communities.
The programme for government will ensure that our economy, climate and communities all benefit from the green industrial transition and are resilient to the impacts of climate change. We will introduce a heat in buildings bill, enable the scale-up of heat networks and support clean heating and energy efficiency measures, with the aim of lowering emissions and costs for 100,000 properties. We will support the expansion of community renewables schemes, which will provide some communities with vital assets and a source of income, and others with lower energy and heating costs, making community buildings and other local projects more resilient and more viable.
We will continue to invest in workers and businesses in Moray and the north-east through our £500 million just transition fund, and we will continue to call on the UK Government to match our investment. A clear commitment was made to the people of the north-east. They were told that, as opportunities in the oil and gas sector declined, those would be replaced by opportunities in green energy, whether in offshore wind, hydrogen or carbon capture and storage. However, UK Government policies have seen the decline in the oil and gas sector accelerated and green energy projects hampered or held back. That is a shocking failure of the UK Government.
If we are to keep the promise made to the north-east, getting control of energy policy for this Parliament is vital. That promise is why we will press the case for the energy profits levy to be replaced and continue to invest in the green industrial opportunities that are so important to our nation’s economic future and success. The Scottish Government, using the powers that we have, will play our part for Scotland’s energy.
It is with a stronger economy that Scotland will enjoy the highest-quality public services. Our ambition, and our intention, is to deliver shorter waiting times for treatment in the NHS. Over the past year, we have been able to increase capacity and activity in our NHS and, as a result, bring down long waits. Building on that progress, we will ensure that, by the end of 2031, no one waits more than 26 weeks for treatment. There will be at least £10 billion of capital spending over the next decade, which will fund, among other things, new community health and care hubs across Scotland, starting in Fife, West Lothian and Inverclyde, and a new university hospital Monklands, with the aim of construction starting in 2028. We will continue to expand the network of general practitioner walk-in centres—a service that is built around the realities of family and work life—which will make it easier for thousands of Scots to access a GP at a time that works for them.
Our ambition and intention is to deliver a sustained reduction in delayed discharge from our hospitals. We will create one connected system with one simple route to care, ensuring that people receive the care that they need as quickly as possible and in the right setting. That includes more care in the community, with the hospital at home service expanding so that, over the winter, 10,000 people can receive hospital-level care in their own home. In recognition of the campaigning efforts of the family of the late Anthony Bundy, we will deliver 24/7 thrombectomy cover, regardless of geography.
We will treat drug use as a public health emergency. An additional investment of £250 million through our national mission on drugs will mean more residential rehabilitation beds. Recognising the complex interplay of issues that can lead to drug abuse and addiction, we will provide additional mental health support, including new walk-in mental health hubs and expanded 24/7 support with the roll-out of mental health triage cars to every region in Scotland.
We are ambitious for the next generation of Scots and will create positive futures for children and young people. We want our children and young people to get the most out of their school experience, learning so that they can achieve academic and vocational excellence. That means reform of our school curriculum; further work with local government partners to empower headteachers; ongoing investment of up to £200 million to reduce the poverty-related attainment gap; and legislation on a mobile phone ban in Scotland’s classrooms.
We will expand the bookbug programme to reach an additional 20,000 families, expand the opportunity for young people to learn a new language, including Gaelic and Scots, and ensure that every child with additional support needs has access to appropriate—including specialist—support. We will also continue our work to keep the Promise by 2030.
In our criminal justice system, we will be strong on punishment and effective on prevention and rehabilitation. I want communities in Scotland to be safe and, just as important, to feel safe.
Of particular concern is the fact that Scotland has seen several high-profile and heart-breaking examples of youth violence, including deaths from knife crime, which have a profound impact on families and communities. We will continue to work with partners to tackle and prevent youth violence, particularly knife crime, through education programmes on the danger and the unacceptability of carrying a knife and taking part in violence. We will do this by supporting organisations and initiatives such as no knives, better lives; the youth navigators project; and the mentors in violence prevention programme.
In recognition of the inspirational campaigning of Lisa Petrie, whose son John died in September last year, we will roll out bleed kits to community settings across Scotland.
We will also build on our landmark victims and witnesses legislation, to ensure victims are heard, supported, protected and treated with compassion—including through the appointment of Scotland’s first victims and witnesses commissioner and the establishment of a trauma-informed sexual offences court.
This is a Scottish Government that works for Scotland and wants the very best for Scotland. That means giving our citizens a greater sense of control over their lives and demonstrating that, once again, they can, by studying, training or working hard, make their lives better.
It is about empowering our communities and our regions, but also about empowering Scotland as a whole. It is about demonstrating to people that we, the politicians, get it and that we are acting to make their lives better. That requires a new way of doing government and also a new way of doing politics in this place. In my heart, I believe in self-government for Scotland. Self-government has been good for our nation, and we need more of it.
The Prime Minister has opened the door to new powers for this Parliament, and I will work constructively—with people inside this chamber and partners outside it—to identify the new powers that can be quickly devolved if we are to maximise economic growth, reduce inequality and do even more to put money in people’s pockets.
Ultimately, Scotland’s constitutional future should be a matter only for the people of Scotland. That is why I will continue to make the case for Scotland’s right to decide on a fresh start with independence—the change that will make the biggest positive difference.
This is a Government that believes in Scotland and in our people. We see a nation brimming with potential but held back because, too often, decisions taken elsewhere get in the way. We have deep-seated challenges but we have the wealth, resources and ingenuity to overcome them. I have no doubt that the more powers we have and the more policy levers we control in Scotland, the more we can achieve.
My commitment to the people of Scotland is clear: you come first. Government works for you and will always be alive to the realities of your day-to-day experience. That is the starting point for this programme for government, which will deliver more money in people’s pockets; shorter waiting lists; more new homes; easier access to GPs; action on the climate; public services fit for the future; and decisive action on violence against women and girls.
Those are the aims of a Government that is ambitious for Scotland. The people of Scotland have put their trust in this Government, and we will deliver what we have promised.