Official Report 816KB pdf
The next item of business is a debate without motion on the programme for government 2026-31. Members who wish to speak should press their request-to-speak buttons now.
I call Malcolm Offord to speak for seven minutes. Before you speak, Malcolm, I am pleased to see you hale and hearty and back in the chamber. [Applause.]
15:39
Thank you, Presiding Officer, for those kind words. It is good to be back in Holyrood.
This is where the rubber hits the road. The Scottish National Party has had its first 100 days in government and today is when the Scottish people ask when its fine words will turn into meaningful improvement to their lives. We, in the chamber, should remind ourselves that 2 million Scots did not vote in the May election—yes, 47 per cent of the electorate did not vote, because they have given up on the idea of politicians turning words into action. The question is, can John Swinney change the habit of a lifetime?
We just heard the First Minister set out his ambitions to improve our economy, help with the cost of living, improve our national health service, reform public services and, of course, deliver independence for Scotland. Welcome back to groundhog day—the same old empty promises, just rebranded, but still a medley of sticking plasters and gimmicks instead of practical, long-term solutions for the benefit of the Scottish people. It is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
What is new? General practitioner walk-in centres, he cries—an idea that was developed in England by Tony Blair 25 years ago. It is a clever idea except that it diverts GPs away from their regular practices and undermines the very concept that we, the patients, should develop a long-term relationship with our local GP, locally. Why not just make all our local GPs more accessible to us, the patients?
Food price caps, he cries—an idea that failed spectacularly in Hungary three years ago. It is a clever idea except that 23 industry trade associations, including the Scottish Retail Consortium, the Food and Drink Federation Scotland and the Scottish Bakers, said yesterday that a price cap would be
“unnecessary, ineffective, and likely to deliver significant adverse consequences”
for retailers, store staff and suppliers. They pointed out that food prices in Scotland are already among the lowest in Europe.
What about a new school bag for every child in primary 1—foreign made, of course? That is ignoring the sad fact that one in four Scottish schoolchildren leaving primary school in 2025 failed to achieve the level of literacy that is required for high school.
Is it any wonder that 2 million Scots have given up on Holyrood? Those are gimmicks and sticking plasters, and the Scots are not fooled. That is why 385,000 Scots voted for Reform UK. The clue is in the name: we want reform, not gimmicks.
Last week, I was back in Inverclyde to talk about depopulation and deprivation. I set out a positive message of hope that we can turn around the fortunes of Inverclyde because people there are so talented, innovative and kind. I said that Inverclyde is a microcosm of Scotland, such that, if we fix Inverclyde, we can fix Scotland. The key to that turnaround is encapsulated in one simple word: jobs—a word that was mentioned only three times by the First Minister in his 30-minute speech. Gone are the days of mass employment in Scotland—just like in Inverclyde, where 16,000 jobs in shipbuilding were replaced by 8,000 jobs in electronics, which were replaced by 2,000 jobs in call centres, in ever-decreasing circles.
We need to rebuild Inverclyde and Scotland one job at a time and one small or medium-sized enterprise at a time. Why SMEs? They employ more than half of private sector workers in Scotland, they are local and they care about their communities. What message of hope did the First Minister just give to our 380,000 SMEs, which are struggling with rising energy costs, employment costs, rent, business rates and taxes? Where was the urgency in his voice, recognising that one third of the top 500 SMEs in Scotland reported that, in the past year, their revenues went down? Where was his package of measures to reduce their costs of employing people while increasing the skills in our workforce, as was called for by the Scottish Chambers of Commerce?
That is why our country needs Reform UK: to get a joined-up approach across Westminster, Holyrood and councils, with one common goal to increase employment and get our own folk back to work. With work comes better health, family prosperity, less child poverty and the best way to afford the rising costs of living. Work remains the best route out of poverty, and the best form of welfare that we can give any friend is a good job.
That is why a Reform Government at Westminster would maximise our own North Sea gas, to give us cheap domestic energy, which would allow Scotland to reindustrialise—more jobs. We would make employment affordable again by reducing employer national insurance and diluting the flawed workers’ rights bill—more jobs. We would rebalance the benefits system to make sure that work always pays more than welfare—more jobs.
A Reform Government at Holyrood would stop wasting time and money on ideological projects such as net zero, anti-nuclear policies, transgender culture wars, virtue signalling on Gaza and prioritising asylum seekers, not to mention the neverendum. Instead, we would focus on helping our own inactive Scottish adults back to work by repositioning welfare Scotland to give a hand-up, not a hand-out, and providing social housing as a reward for local workers—more jobs.
We would abolish the cumbersome six-band income tax regime, which has been proved to reduce productivity and collect less tax. That would result in more jobs.
Reform-led councils would be laser focused on their local SMEs by providing suitable business premises and blasting through planning delays in order to get businesses operational and expanding rapidly, which would provide more jobs.
We would get innovative in relation to the redevelopment of brownfield sites in our town centres to allow housing and health solutions, business premises and transport to be rapid, local and pro-SME, which would provide more jobs.
Councils would crack the code on helping adults back to work with local solutions, backed by the Department for Work and Pensions and welfare Scotland, which would mean more jobs.
That is what a real programme for government would look like, not the thin gruel that the First Minister served up today.
“Auld Scotland wants nae skinking wareThat jaups in luggies”.
Let me finish where I started. I remind members that 2 million Scots did not vote in the May election—double the 1 million Scots who voted for the Scottish National Party. They are fed up with performative politics. Instead, they want good government. The days of fine words are over. Scots want delivery. Scots want Reform.
15:46
I thank the First Minister for his statement. John Swinney and I are long-standing members of this Parliament, so, in the spirit of co-operation, I wish him and his Government well in the implementation of his agenda. We will support his Government when it gets it right, but, as he would expect, we will hold the Government to account every step of the way in calling out failure, challenging error and insisting on changes for the good of the people of Scotland. We will engage in good faith, but we will also challenge when we think that the Government can do more.
Let us be honest: this is not really a new Government. We are now in our 19th year of SNP government at Holyrood, and that was, by my count, the 20th SNP programme for government. John Swinney has been at the heart of all of this—he was the education secretary, the Deputy First Minister, the finance secretary and the Covid recovery minister, and now he is the First Minister. After almost 20 years, there is no one else to blame for the state of public services today. It is the result of this SNP Government, and it is this Parliament’s duty to hold it to account.
Let me turn to the statement that we have just heard from the First Minister. I welcome lots of the policies and initiatives in the statement—on tackling poverty, on providing help for people who are struggling, on protecting women and reducing violent crime, and on introducing measures to improve our NHS. The cap on bus fares is welcome, too—of course, it was Andy Burnham who first delivered a price cap on buses—but we need buses in the first place, and many constituencies do not have them.
There were warm words for issues that the majority of members care about, but warm words are no substitute for action, and I have heard lots of the promises before. We need delivery, not just debates, and the Government’s rhetoric must be matched by reform. That is the real test for any Government.
What I must say about some of the First Minister’s statement is this: if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I consider myself flattered. Let me say to members that it is worth being patient. If you wait long enough, things that you said more than a decade ago will suddenly be in vogue, because the Government does not have many good ideas of its own.
For years, John Swinney and a succession of SNP health ministers told us that the NHS did not need any reform. They said that everything was fine, that waiting lists could grow and that delayed discharge could get worse—all while chief executive pay soared. They said that there was no need to restructure the service and no need to put patients and front-line staff first. They said that everything was okay and there was no need for change, but—lo and behold—now the SNP agrees that the NHS needs reform.
Seriously, the change of heart is welcome, but I am concerned that good ideas from Scottish Labour rarely survive contact with the SNP. We should remember that the SNP adopted the idea of a national care service but bungled the legislation, with years wasted, millions of pounds lost and not a single extra hour of care delivered.
The message was that local care was important, but the SNP appears to want another go at centralising responsibility and removing it from councils altogether.
I am not sure that having only two mainland health boards will be adequate. Scottish Labour’s proposals were for three, with one specifically to cover the Highlands and the north-east, and I urge ministers to consider that again in the interests of patient care. That reorganisation of health boards must be accompanied by a shift in the balance of care so that we prioritise primary and preventive care, which also means prioritising and resourcing social care to the level that is needed.
I will reserve judgment on the SNP’s new plans until we see the full extent of the detail of what the Government intends to do, but I make a genuine offer to work with them to ensure that we get that detail right, support our NHS staff to deliver and improve services for patients.
I welcome what Jackie Baillie has just said, because the manner in which I have set out the arguments on public service reform today recognises the fact that I do not command a majority in this Parliament and that there is a need for us to reach agreement with others. There are some factors that we cannot escape in reforming public services and that will require that engagement, so I give Jackie Baillie a commitment that the Government is willing to engage in dialogue, and, on the basis of what she has said, I look forward to Labour participating in that dialogue.
I look forward to having that dialogue with the First Minister and his ministers. I hope that it will take a form that has not hitherto been seen and that it will not ignore the issues that we have brought forward. I look forward to that change.
That is not the only big idea that the SNP has U-turned on. From scrapping peak rail fares to banning phones from school classrooms, there is plenty in the statement has been lifted straight out of Scottish Labour’s plans.
I welcome that, but the SNP’s record is not so welcome. History is always instructive. Our NHS remains in deep disarray, with waiting lists rising again and almost 700,000 people waiting for an NHS appointment while thousands have waited months or years. Delayed discharge continues costing the Scottish taxpayer millions of pounds every year and patients are stuck in hospital when they should be at home. This summer, waiting times in accident and emergency were the worst on record.
Most depressing and cynical of all, the long-promised flagship Monklands hospital was, in effect, shelved, but today I see an exciting new announcement, with John Swinney pretending that everything is fine and there is nothing to see here. Constituency member, and then health secretary, Neil Gray made the delivery of the new Monklands hospital a central part of his election pitch. He and John Swinney posed for photographs at the site, all while knowing before the election that Government plans would dramatically change. He deliberately misled the people of Scotland—and his own constituents—by promising a hospital that he knew would not be delivered as planned.
That is shameful, but it is symbolic of the SNP’s approach to our NHS. They promise the world but deliver nothing but more failure. Their big idea is to have more walk-in GP clinics, which is a plan that has been robustly criticised by health professionals as a gimmick that does nothing to fix the fundamental issues in primary care. Today we have a shiny new waiting times target, which is a pitiful ambition that, given the Government’s track record, it may never even meet. Scotland’s patients deserve so much better and I will make no apology for fighting for their cause in Parliament at every opportunity.
The failure to get to grips with the crisis in Scotland’s NHS may be one of the most serious examples of Government failure, but it is far from unique. On the issue of crime, the latest statistics show that crime is on the rise across Scotland, with violent crime up by 7 per cent in a single year, sexual crime up by 9 per cent, domestic abuse by 19 per cent and fewer police officers on our streets. The programme for government’s commitments to tackling crime and keeping women and children safe are, of course, welcome, but people want and need action, not warm words.
A misogyny bill is absolutely welcome, but that was promised previously. In fact, this is the third session of Parliament since it was first proposed and it has still not been delivered. Also, we know that the SNP’s track record on crime is weak.
Our schools are in desperate need of support. It has been a decade since John Swinney himself was tasked with closing the poverty-related attainment gap. The gap is even wider now and is holding back thousands of young Scots. If he failed at that, how can we trust him to succeed as First Minister a decade later?
I waited with bated breath to hear John Swinney’s new plan to fix education in Scotland, to close the attainment gap, to fund our universities and to support our colleges. What is the plan? It is to provide a free school bag for every primary 1 pupil who wants one. If a free school bag was the answer, what on earth was the question? It will take more than a school bag to fix the mess that the SNP has made of our education system.
One of the fundamental duties of the Scottish Government is to make life easier for Scots. With many struggling to make ends meet, it is incumbent on the Government to do what it can to help with the urgency that is needed. John Swinney has already outlined his flagship idea to ease the squeeze on family budgets, price caps on food and essential items. He talked a lot about that during the election, but there was very little reference to it in his programme for government speech today.
However, I welcome the consultation launch. We need to do all that we can to help people who are struggling. There are, however, reservations about whether the measure will work in practice. Industry is not convinced. More important to me, a constituent who relies on low-cost items told me that she was worried that the measure would have the reverse effect and push up prices even higher. We will hold off on making a judgment for now until we see the detail, but we need a policy that is workable and does not wait for a lengthy legislative process that might be open to legal challenges.
Over the coming week, other Labour members will raise our ambitions to tackle child poverty, to grow the economy, to boost jobs, to build homes for people, to end rough sleeping and to invest in infrastructure.
As consideration turns to the budget, we must absolutely talk about the mismatch between the programme for government’s ambitions and the £5 billion black hole in the finances coming down the track. The stakes are too high for old, broken SNP promises. We need to work better together, and Scottish Labour is committed to doing just that. At the same time, we will hold the Government to account.
I remind all members who wish to speak in the debate to press their request-to-speak button, please.
15:57
The Scottish Greens fought the recent election on policies that would deliver for people and for planet, tackling both the climate crisis and the cost of living emergencies. Our record results show that people are ready for those radical ideas that make lives better for current and future generations.
The SNP used to share that vision. This time, five years ago, we were working with it on a progressive plan for Scotland whereby we worked collectively to use every power of this Parliament to create positive change.
I try very hard to be collaborative and to work with the Government where and when I can, as does my party, and we will continue to do that this session. However, there are a huge number of disappointments in this programme for government.
The proposal to cap bus fares at £2 has been kicked into the long grass for most of Scotland. There is no plan to implement rent controls. The promised ban on conversion practices has been shelved. There is nothing on how to implement the boycott, divestment and sanction of Israel that this Parliament voted for a year ago. The only proposal for hyperscale data centres is to produce a plan to attract more.
That is not a programme for government that Nicola Sturgeon would have signed off. Five years ago, the Scottish Greens delivered free bus travel for under-22s, saving thousands of young people money and making work and studying opportunities more accessible. We believe that free bus travel should be expanded to everyone, which would cut emissions while saving people money at a time when the cost of living crisis seems to be ever deepening.
Last year, Green MSPs secured the £2 bus cap pilot in the Highlands and Islands as a step towards the final goal of having universally free bus travel. John Swinney promised to roll that out to more areas of the country, but this programme for government kicks the fare cap into the long grass across most of Scotland.
The £2 cap has been a game changer for thousands of people across the Highlands and Islands, helping families and regular travellers to cut the cost of getting around, reducing emissions and keeping more money in people’s pockets. It has shown what is possible when we put affordable, accessible public transport at the heart of our policies. We welcome the roll-out across the Strathclyde Partnership for Transport area from Monday morning, but the programme for government also says that it will take five years to roll the cap out to the rest of the country. A five-year wait, when there is already a national cap in England that will be reduced to £2 in January, lets down Scottish bus users. Why should people in the rest of the country have to wait five more years? The cost of living crisis is not waiting five years.
The programme for government says that the Scottish Government will continue to work with the United Kingdom Government to end conversion therapy, which involves trying to “cure” people of their sexuality and pushing them to stop being trans. In the programme for government, it says:
“Should the UK Government fail to deliver we will not hesitate to bring forward Scottish legislation.”
Has the First Minister not seen that the UK Government has published its plan but that it applies only to England and Wales? What more information does the First Minister need? This Government needs to get off the fence, stop hesitating and decide whether it stands with LGBT people or not. Protecting LGBTQ Scots from abuse is the Scottish Government’s job, and we need to see it act.
We are a year on from the Parliament’s historic vote to boycott the apartheid state of Israel and the companies that are complicit in its occupation of Palestine, but the Scottish Government has failed to turn words into action. In most respects, it has done the bare minimum and offered little evidence of meaningful change. We welcome the Government’s commitment to explore a scholarship for students from Gaza, but that does not do anything to end the occupation or prevent companies from profiting from it. If a company is profiting from apartheid and genocide, the Scottish Government must use every power that it has to ensure that that company does not also profit from public money here, in Scotland. That requires more than statements of concern or gestures that change nothing; it requires real, measurable action. We hoped that this programme for government would be the moment that that changes, but it does not seem to be coming.
Action means reviewing existing contracts, ending relationships with companies that are identified as complicit in illegal settlement activity and giving councils the powers that they need to make ethical procurement decisions. The Scottish Government has shown that it can act when it chooses to. When ministers issued guidance to Scottish businesses following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, they made it clear that the private sector had a responsibility to respond. Palestinians deserve no less.
The programme for government should have been the moment that everything changed. It should have set out a clear timetable, concrete measures and a mechanism for accountability so that the Parliament’s vote is finally translated into action. We cannot have a boycott in name only. The Parliament did not vote for empty gestures, and it is hugely disappointing that the Scottish Government has not used this opportunity to set out how it will support the people of Palestine.
One of the most genuinely baffling parts of the document is that the Government is looking to attract “responsible green data” centres. Given that the Government cannot define a “green data centre”, a responsible green data centre seems even more ridiculous. Such proposals, such as the one at Larbert in my region, have caused huge concern for local communities. Noise, diesel generators and light pollution are concerning not only for Larbert residents but for local businesses and the care home that is next door to the development. The care home is concerned that it will be unable to use its garden and provide the end-of-life care that it currently can.
We need a moratorium on such applications while guidance is developed, otherwise councils will have already made decisions by the time that guidance appears. Some local authorities have said that they do not have the expertise to take a decision on the applications. They also do not have the ability to look at them at a national level and assess what they mean for our national energy needs. The Scottish Government needs to take the issue seriously and support communities rather than private profit.
Families across Scotland are feeling the strain on their budgets and have been promised free childcare when their little ones turn three. We welcome movement on any form of free childcare in the programme for government but are disappointed that there is no movement on supporting local authorities to truly deliver free at three, which would make hundreds of pounds of difference to families’ budgets. We have also seen issues with cross-boundary placements. Constituents of mine in Falkirk have had to move their children twice at short notice due to the removal of funding, all because they live in one local authority and their children go to a childcare setting in another local authority.
This funding is part of a national scheme, so parents cannot understand why they are being excluded because of their postcode. I hope that, as part of the childcare review, the Government will look at this issue and work with local authorities to solve it. This is a programme for government that will be a huge disappointment to those who need cheaper bus travel, those who need a watertight ban on conversion practices and those who care about the environment. It is clear that the Scottish Greens are now the only party that will speak up for current and future generations who care about equality for all, economic justice and a habitable planet. We will spend the next five years speaking up for those people.
16:05
I am very pleased to see Malcolm Offord back here, fighting fit—although maybe not in that particular seat, of course.
We have just heard John Swinney’s five-year plan for Scotland. Two words sum up this programme for government—“meddling” and “gimmicks”. John Swinney went into the election saying that he would give a free school bag to every primary 1 pupil, but his manifesto gimmick does not even appear in his programme for government. I wonder whether he is too embarrassed to include it or whether it has just gone the same way as the SNP’s broken promises on free bikes and laptops.
What is in the programme for government is John Swinney’s Soviet-style supermarket price-fixing plan. Business groups warn that it is unnecessary and will be ineffective—a “potty gimmick”, says the Scottish Retail Consortium. John Swinney does not listen to experts, but maybe he will listen when his own Government lawyers repeatedly say to him that this is a non-starter.
Then there is John Swinney’s independence bill, which is nearly identical to Nicola Sturgeon’s independence bill—zombie legislation back from the dead. However, this is no joke, because the “Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland” figures published over recess confirm what we all know—that if the SNP ever gets its way, the people of Scotland will suffer tax rises and public spending cuts on a scale never seen before. As we heard from John Swinney today, he continues to be a fiscal flat-earther.
This is all a dangerous distraction when Parliament should be focusing on what really matters—cutting taxes, reducing the SNP’s benefits bill, backing vital new oil and gas, fixing broken business rates, ensuring that criminals do their time, upgrading lifeline roads, building ferries and, of course, tackling NHS waiting lists.
The SNP is entirely responsible for plunging Scotland’s NHS into a near-permanent state of crisis. Hundreds of thousands of Scots are waiting for treatment, yet the SNP now reckons that it is able to fix the problem of its own making. It will apparently do that by cutting the number of NHS boards from 14 to two. We welcome any serious effort to improve patient care and to curb the SNP’s bloated state and we will carefully consider John Swinney’s plan, but we will not allow him to destroy critical local services, which are already being cut. Our NHS must serve all communities equally across all of Scotland, and people will be understandably suspicious, because they have heard it all before. Look at the pre-election gimmick of walk-in GP clinics, which were not about delivering appointments but about delivering a cheap headline for John Swinney.
The SNP’s record of large-scale public sector meddling is dire. Look at the mess that it made of Police Scotland, which lurches from one crisis to another. With fewer officers on our streets, some crimes are not even being investigated, while violent and sexual crimes surge.
Then there is the millions squandered on the SNP’s abandoned national care service—big ideas but abysmal delivery.
All of that is a distraction—a giant distraction—from the SNP’s £5 billion black hole in Scotland’s public finances, which has been caused by two decades of reckless spending, serial incompetence and scandalous waste, epitomised by two ferries costing almost half a billion pounds. John Swinney has bowed to every single inflation-busting public service pay deal and he has allowed a work-from-home culture in the civil service that kills productivity and fails the paying public. Throughout that time, the SNP has kept turning the thumbscrews on Scotland’s hard-working taxpayers.
I am delighted that John Swinney finally agrees with the Scottish Conservatives that, under his party, the public sector has become bloated and inefficient and that cuts are necessary—that is common sense. However, I have very little faith in his ability to deliver. John Swinney assures us that Ivan McKee will tackle waste and cut costs. Ivan McKee has even been called the axeman. The problem is that John Swinney expects Ivan McKee to fell a forest while handing him a pair of garden pruners.
The SNP will not demand true value for taxpayers or cut taxes, it will not order public sector workers back to the office, it will not cull its bloated quangos and it refuses to even accept that its state benefits are out of control. We will have a lot more to say about John Swinney’s programme for government, but we know from the SNP’s record of meddling and gimmicks, and from John Swinney’s record, that there is a massive gulf between their rhetoric and their delivery.
I remind members that I cannot call them to speak if they do not press their request-to-speak button. So, if you intend to speak in the debate, please press the button.
16:11
Occasions such as this are usually characterised by speeches of disagreement and rancour, as we have just heard, but let me begin with a moment of profound consensus on the eradication of male violence against women and girls. In July, this country saw three women murdered by partners or former partners. They will not be defined by the manner of their death or the people who took them from us, but I think that their passing measures out the challenge that exists for our generation of parliamentarians in that eradication. That is one challenge on which Liberal Democrats will proudly join the Government.
In the previous session of Parliament, Liberal Democrats demonstrated that we are here to get things done. On such issues, we are prepared to hunt for agreement wherever we can find it, and we were rewarded at the ballot box for so doing.
Our newly expanded group of parliamentarians has not rested over the summer. When it emerged that some GP walk-in centres had seen just three or four patients in a day, Adam Harley rightly asked why, on that evidence, the Government thinks that it is right to now open 20 more.
Morven-May MacCallum argued that the law should automatically prevent convicted rapists from keeping their taxi operator licence, which is surely something that we should all agree on.
We have just learned that, last year, the Scottish Government’s water company dumped sewage into our rivers, lochs and beaches more than 100,000 times, which is why Sanna Dykstra-Downie is rightly asking why bosses took home hundreds of thousands of pounds in bonuses and why Parliament is not modernising our laws on that.
When wildfires devastated the Cairngorms, Andrew Baxter was there asking, “Where are the helicopters? Where are the extra resources for the fire service? Why did it take nine days for ministers to meet in the Scottish Government’s resilience room, by which time the blaze had consumed hundreds of square miles of the Cairngorms?” The Government’s inertia is frustrating and it is symptomatic of its approach to many things. Although we will always hunt for agreement, we will always call out the shortcomings as well.
The backdrop to my remarks is sobering. It is a reminder of the failure of the party of government to grow our economy. As such, this will be a difficult session for the Administration. Everyone knows the trouble that public services and public finances are in, because none of us is insulated from it. Everybody feels the impact in some shape or form—they might be patients marooned in hospital waiting for a care package, islanders waiting for ferries or pupils with additional support needs missing out on support.
The SNP Government is now, with a black hole in the public finances to the tune of £5 billion, facing the business end of its failure to grow our economy. That is not inevitable; it took decades of political choices. If members flick through years of reports from the likes of the Scottish Fiscal Commission, they will read about how decisions routinely got deferred or dodged, how spending has consistently been preferred to reform and how fiscal drag and record funding from the United Kingdom Government have been used to paper over the cracks. The result is a £5 billion chasm at a time when the NHS is still on its knees and people are desperate for more help with the cost of living.
We recognise that the need for reform is abundant, but the measures that were outlined in this statement speak to the political instincts of the SNP in relation to centralisation rather than any empirically led path to change that can empower communities to take matters into their own hands.
The statement hinted at the effective reintroduction of the national care service, which was so derided by our nation’s stakeholders. It also referenced moving away from 14 territorial health boards to just two. However, that will not deliver improvements to patient experience. It will not free up social care to receive the 2,000 patients who are stuck in our hospitals, nor will it push down neurodiversity waiting times. It will not allow ambulances to discharge their patients into hospitals and it will not even save a great deal of money.
When we cautioned against the merger of Police Scotland, we did so because we knew that it would asset-strip control from local communities.
We are not a one-size-fits-all country. Can we really expect the needs of Portree hospital on Skye to receive particular attention from a health board that is based in the central belt? As liberals, we fundamentally believe that power works better when it is devolved closer to the communities that it serves.
I wonder whether Mr Cole-Hamilton and his colleagues would consider the fact that they have often, very rightly and valiantly, raised the issue of how services that are delivered in, for example, rural Scotland—such as in Wick and Caithness—have been inconsistent in comparison to elsewhere in the country. Does he not think that public service reform is an opportunity to ensure that decision making and service delivery sit at a level that is best placed to understand and improve people’s lives? Does he agree that we should work together to determine what is local, regional and national?
I agree with that point, but that is not the Government’s policy; the Government’s policy is to strip power away from decision making in our local communities.
Two health boards would be much more centralised than 14. Local control matters—that is what Liberals will always stand for. As we move into this parliamentary session, we will hunt for agreement where we can, but we will also offer fierce opposition to the centralising instincts of this SNP Administration.
We move to speeches in the open debate.
16:18
I thank the First Minister for setting out his programme for government and for its ambitious vision for Scotland. Despite current constitutional limitations, I am delighted that the First Minister is continuing to drive Scotland forward by delivering for the people of Scotland.
During the election, the SNP vowed to do even more to tackle the cost of living. Today, we have heard a range of measures that will have a real impact on people’s lives. Those include boosting people’s incomes, helping people back into work—which is the best route out of poverty—and a strong focus on economic growth, which will build Scotland’s wealth in an inclusive way in order to tackle poverty.
I am particularly pleased to hear about the proposals regarding local authorities, which is especially important for Ayrshire. I have long supported the merger of Ayrshire’s councils. That proposal has the backing not only of Ayrshire’s three chief executives and the SNP—after speaking to Alan Gemmell MP only 10 days ago, I know that it also has the backing of all four Labour MPs in Ayrshire. Such a merger would save millions of pounds by slimming down bureaucracy and freeing up resources to sustain and boost front-line public services.
I would have liked the Scottish Government to go even further by incorporating local health boards into the new democratic structure. For example, in NHS Ayrshire and Arran, that would obviate the need for three integration joint boards and ensure better and more effective decision making, which would allow the board to share resource and provide more local control as opposed to greater centralisation. However, I am very interested in hearing more details about what the First Minister proposes as the debate progresses, including around the logic and the implications for front-line services and building capacity.
A stronger, one-Ayrshire council would also would also boost economic development and investment with Scottish Enterprise, Ayrshire College and local businesses interacting with only one local authority. I trust that the First Minister and the Cabinet Secretary for Public Service Reform, Ivan McKee, will work to deliver that new one-Ayrshire council by completing a consultation on such changes by the end of this year. Three months of engagement, as outlined by the First Minister, demonstrate that clear ambition to implement the necessary reforms by 1 April 2028. That is a realistic timetable if it is pursued with determination and vigour and differentiates between vested interests and the imperative to deliver better public services to those we serve.
I declare an interest as chair of North Ayrshire Women’s Aid. I welcome the First Minister’s renewed commitment to tackling violence against women and girls. However, fundamental to that is the need to ensure that victims of violence and domestic abuse are not repeatedly re-traumatised. The First Minister will be aware that, too often, the reality is that those who are convicted of serious sexual violence and domestic abuse are released on bail and go on to break bail conditions and non-harassment orders. They hunt down their original victims and, once again, victims feel that the system does not properly listen to or protect them.
As a result, sometimes, women pay for that with their lives. Recently, we have seen high-profile cases of that, but the tragedy is that those cases are all too common. Prevention is really important, but if women are to be protected from sexual violence and domestic abuse, the foundation of that protection is in how robustly the criminal justice system deals with offenders.
Statistics tell us that, every year, eight women in Scotland are murdered by their partners or former partners. However, the real number is undoubtedly much higher, given the hidden homicides and suicides to be factored in. I urge the First Minister to consider some of the groundbreaking work that is going on in France and I also urge him to meet Professor Jane Monckton-Smith, an expert in the field, in order to better inform progress and work in that area.
Today, we see the ambitious, radical and innovative outlook of this new Scottish Government. I continue to urge the First Minister to push at the boundaries of the constraints of the devolved settlement, which limits our powers but which cannot, and will not ever, limit the SNP’s vision of what we know is Scotland’s boundless potential. I know that the First Minister’s ambition for Scotland knows no limits, and I hope that he will continue to be radical and innovative to drive forward the ambitions that we all have for a healthier, fairer, more prosperous and, importantly, more confident Scotland.
16:23
In May this year, we all stood for election on our party manifesto and ambitions for Scotland. The SNP won an overwhelming victory, with a record margin over the second-place parties. The SNP has a mandate to progress the manifesto that I and other colleagues stood on.
We all have a part to play in delivering change, whether in government or not. We all have a responsibility to ensure that reform delivers for those we serve.
I will touch on a few points that were raised in the First Minister’s speech. He set out main themes that we can all agree on: 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. All of those issues impact my constituents in East Lothian Coast and Lammermuirs.
The First Minister talked about the need for public sector reform. I remember the Christie commission. Collectively, did Scotland do enough to progress that agenda? I do not think so. The First Minister stated that we must undertake radical and widespread public service reform, putting the individual at the heart of the changes we make. That is what we are all here for—to serve our constituents. Of course, the First Minister was correct—we can all agree that all public services need to make a decisive shift towards prevention and early intervention. We all talk about that, but now is the time for action.
It is about removing barriers to progress and making sure that every pound of investment is focused on front-line delivery. It is about achieving consensus—in the chamber, as we have heard today, and with our trade unions, other stakeholders and, of course, our constituents. We all have a role to engage with our constituents on the programme for government. It must be about focusing on the needs of our citizens rather than those of the existing structures and systems. The First Minister stated that he is open to discussing that across parties.
He also stated that 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. East Lothian is the fastest-growing area in Scotland, with our population due to increase by a third in around 10 to 15 years. Opportunities for economic growth need to be supported by the Scottish Government. I will continue to ensure that we maximise those opportunities in East Lothian. Our regions need to be strengthened and empowered to maximise growth opportunities, so I look forward to taking part in those discussions.
The First Minister stated that we will begin a three-month period of intense engagement with our local government partners about a new structure for local government. Many members have local government experience. I will engage thoroughly with my local council on the issue.
The First Minister also stated that the starting point is that changes must not create another layer of administration or a new group of politicians, and that reform must mean stronger and more strategic regions with the powers, the permission and the flexibility—that is key—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 and all our constituencies.
Giving strong economic levers to regions, where relevant, must be at the forefront of our thoughts, alongside new powers possibly being devolved to Scotland by the UK Government, which is part of the debate that we need to have.
Reforms to social care must also be part of the engagement over the next three months with partners in local government, trade unions, the third sector and our communities. I pledge to constituents and stakeholders in East Lothian that I will do that.
For the NHS itself, as the First Minister stated, it is key to have more joined-up delivery, improve patient access to care and reduce the inequality for some patients that is due to health board boundaries. I am a member of the Health, Care and Sport Committee, and I look forward to engaging with that committee and others on the issue. Currently, there are 14 territorial boards, which will now move to being two strategic health boards. The devil will be in the detail, but it is up to us to engage with local health boards and constituents on how we deliver those changes. That will enable us to deliver the additional capacity to ensure that, by the end of 2031, no one waits more than 26 weeks for the treatment that they need. That is a key pledge by the First Minister. I pledge that I will work very closely with NHS Lothian colleagues over the next three months.
This is a radical programme for government. We all have our part to play in ensuring public sector reform and in having mature and responsible debate.
I welcome the announcements on how we tackle violence against women. That issue requires action, as well as a cultural change involving all men in Scotland.
I also welcome the announcements about the major projects office, encouraging investment with a focus on housing and energy, alongside a Scottish high-growth unit, working with business, that can accelerate the delivery of the right support for high-potential businesses, so that they can grow to scale in Scotland, and—just as importantly—stay in Scotland.
This is a radical change. We all have a part to play in engaging with our communities.
16:28
Just a few short months on from the election, in which a record number of pro-independence MSPs were elected, I want to say how pleased I am that we now have a referendum bill out for consultation. People had their voices heard at that election and gave the Parliament a clear 73-to-56-seat mandate to hold a referendum.
Perhaps the new Prime Minister could have heard that himself from folk up here if he had bothered to take his listening tour to Scotland. Instead, he is sitting hundreds of miles away in 10 Downing Street, denying folk in Scotland a say on their own futures, or possibly he is sitting hundreds of miles away in Number 10 North, denying people in Scotland a say on their own futures.
Until we get our independence, though, we still need to do all that we can to make Scotland the best possible place for the folk who live here. That means using the powers that we have, which, far too often, means mitigating decisions that are taken in Westminster and do not work for Scotland. It means working to improve people’s lives, eradicate child poverty, create jobs and bring in investment. It means driving up living standards and putting more money into families’ pockets.
When times are tough, I am proud to support a Scottish Government that is listening, helping folk and showing leadership.
I want to focus on a particular aspect of the programme for government. Over the last wee while, we have heard a lot about protecting women and girls, but, more often than not, we have heard about that from men, far too many of whom do not actually listen to women. They have just decided that we need protecting from something that they do not like, and some of those with the loudest voices, who seem to use them to shout at hotels, have some pretty horrendous backgrounds when it comes to their own treatment of women.
I therefore commend the First Minister for showing what protecting women and girls actually looks like. He started by actually listening to women, including women who have suffered domestic abuse. It is not just the First Minister who has done that but his whole Government. Simita Kumar, our Minister for Equalities and International Development, met Grampian Women’s Aid in my constituency during the recess. I told the Parliament last year that Grampian Women’s Aid is a fantastic organisation, and I will say it again. Grampian Women’s Aid is amazing, and I encourage all my fellow north-east MSPs to visit it and listen to it. As we never know who is watching our debates, I will repeat something that I said last year: if you are a woman in the north-east who needs help, Grampian Women’s Aid will help you, so please do not be afraid to reach out.
Right now, Scotland has a problem with violence against women and girls, and I am thankful that we have a First Minister who not only recognises that but has set out today steps to tackle it.
Every party agrees about the importance of tackling violence against women and girls, but I wonder whether the member regrets the passing of the legislation three years ago that made it even more difficult to remand in custody men who harm women.
We are talking about the here and now. I am not going to listen to another speech that could have been read out last year. I am going to concentrate on the programme for government for the next five years.
I am thankful that MSPs from across the chamber have signed up to back the Sunday Post’s “It’s Time” campaign—a campaign that has now been reflected in the programme for government.
Today, we have heard plans for a misogyny bill, which will outlaw misogyny in Scotland; plans to ban not just the creation but the possession of deepfake intimate images; and plans to make pregnancy an aggravating factor in domestic abuse cases. There is more to do and more to fix, but a lot of that does not need legislation but funding and leadership, including from all of us. It needs men to start listening to women rather than just proclaiming themselves our defenders; once they have listened and understood, it needs them to play their part in standing up to unacceptable behaviour, including from those that they consider friends, which I know is sometimes the hardest thing to do. It also needs us to change attitudes across the country.
However, on what we can make better with legislation, what we have heard today is a very good start, not just for women and girls but across the board. I trust this programme for government to make people’s lives better.
Presiding Officer, the words
“Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation”
are carved into the walls of this very building, and are at the foundations of this Government and its plans for Scotland’s future.
16:33
Although I welcome the fact that Malcolm Offord’s health is a lot better and he is back in the chamber, I want to touch on two brief points. First, I remind Mr Offord that it was his former party that demolished the shipbuilding industry in the west of Scotland, particularly in Inverclyde, which he referenced earlier. Secondly, it was his former party’s emphasis on the free market economy that ensured that the electronics industry also left Inverclyde to go to cheaper countries.
Today’s programme for government sets the scene for the new session of Parliament. This SNP Government is focused on delivering progress on its priorities within the first 100 days. That includes commencing the roll-out of the expanded 10-year £50 million homelessness prevention fund; the opening of the first round of applications for the first homes fund, which will provide first-time buyers with a £10,000 contribution towards the deposit on their first home; opening GP walk-in centres, with 24 more areas in Scotland set to benefit, including Inverclyde; and reopening the adult social care displaced worker scheme to new applications to help to expand the number of care workers in Scotland. Those are just some of the things that have happened over the past 100 days, but I believe that we need to consolidate that work, so I welcome the First Minister’s comments about reforming our public services.
The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted the need to do things differently and better, so I agree that restructuring the way that we deliver services is crucial. It is important that we focus on prevention, drive public sector reform where it is needed and ensure that investment is directed towards front-line services to improve outcomes for people and communities. As the First Minister touched on earlier, we are here for the people. We are not here for ourselves; we are here to deliver a better Scotland for the people.
The First Minister touched on the importance of health services being delivered closer to home. I know that that will be welcomed by my constituents in Inverclyde who have had to travel elsewhere for routine health services.
The first programme for government of any party for any new session of Parliament must set out all its different stalls for the next five years. The document from the SNP Scottish Government is brimming with the SNP’s ambitious plans to deliver for the people of Scotland. For parents, there is a massive expansion in childcare. For students, there is a guarantee that the SNP will always protect free higher education. For commuters, there is a guarantee that the SNP will not bring back peak rail fares, and the new £2 bus fare cap will be introduced across Scotland, with the cap in Inverclyde starting on Monday, which is great news for people there. For anyone struggling to afford nutritious food, there is a price cap on a basket of essential food items. For our health service, there are plans to protect, renew and invest so that we can drive down waiting times.
I again welcome the First Minister’s comments on the community healthcare hub in Port Glasgow and on the GP walk-in centres for Inverclyde. In my Inverclyde constituency, house building is urgently required. Too many families live in overcrowded conditions, and many older people live in homes that require significant repair and are too costly for them to heat. Registered social landlords that acquire larger, older properties can assist, but we need new, high-quality housing stock. I therefore welcome the £4.9 billion of investment that is earmarked for building thousands more affordable homes. That will go some way to helping to get people back into work, training and education related to the construction sector.
The £2 bus fare cap will help more people to travel around Inverclyde and will get more people out of their cars and using public transport.
As the convener of the Climate Action Committee this session, I am even more aware of the challenges that we face in ensuring that Scotland is resilient to more extreme weather events. The £15 million funding for flood support for communities across Scotland is really important. That will certainly help many more communities across the country. I know that from my constituency, where flooding has put people out of their homes. However, with a team approach to making improvements, those houses are back in use, which is great. I welcome the engagement of Scottish Water and Inverclyde Council in that regard.
As colleagues have mentioned, the acute need to address violence against women and girls in Scotland remains. It is not a new issue. We are not immune to those challenges in Scotland, but we can show the leadership and willingness to do more. I welcome the plans to introduce a misogyny bill, which was touched on earlier.
Those are all things that we have done, are doing and want to do even more, and that is within the constraints of devolution. However, with the full powers of independence and without Westminster’s mismanagement—which we have seen in terms of Brexit, which we did not vote for, the austerity measures that have been put in place, the failed Truss-Kwarteng budget and the failed Keir Starmer Labour Government—we can do much more. That is why I absolutely welcome the draft referendum bill that was published by the Scottish Government last week, and I know that it will be supported by many people in my constituency.
We now move on to the winding-up speeches.
16:39
I start by thanking the First Minister, as he took the time over the summer, following the tragic death of Stacy Hunter, to meet with Ann, her mother, and their family. Stacy was originally from Falkland in my constituency, and I know that the community there has been utterly devastated by what happened to her. I attended the funeral and there were people in tears all around me.
I know that, following Stacy’s death, campaigners are keen to see changes to ensure that we fully utilise available tagging technology and new global positioning system technologies for tracking. It is clear from Stacy’s death that, even though her estranged husband was ordered to stay away from her, that was not sufficient to protect her. I hope that we can work together to try to make progress and better understand what more we can do, not only with technology but perhaps through changes in regulation and law, to ensure that Stacy did not die in vain and is remembered forever.
I am grateful to Mr Rennie for giving way, and I give him an assurance that I am happy to engage on these questions to identify what further steps we can take. I very much appreciated the dialogue that I had with Stacy Hunter’s mum, and I give Mr Rennie a commitment to follow up the issues that were raised in that dialogue and to identify the further steps that we can take to maximise the use of technology to support some of the decisions that are taken in relation to bail and other matters.
I appreciate the First Minister’s remarks. As always, we will work together where we can to ensure that we make a difference, because the proposed Stacy’s law that campaigners are calling for needs to be thoroughly investigated.
That goes back to the central point of my contribution, which is that we must deliver. As I have rehearsed previously in other contributions, there is a great degree of anger and frustration, and a belief that this place does not work for people: that it talks a lot but does not deliver any changes. We are talking about people who have endured perhaps 20 years of stagnant wages and cold homes, so we must deliver, and it is therefore incumbent on us all—as Alex Cole-Hamilton set out—to hunt for agreement.
That is why I liked the First Minister’s emphasis, in his statement, on a number of different areas. All of it—the emphasis on work, business and growth; on the use of technology for public sector workers; on breaking down silos between different parts of the public sector; on the introduction of the high-growth unit, following his discussion with the business community; on funding for more homes, which I know has been announced previously; and on the major projects office—is a good indication that there is a focus on delivery. Sometimes a focus on delivery can be incredibly tedious and boring, but that work can be some of the most fruitful, because it is about meaningful change.
What we need in public sector reform is behavioural change and leadership by those who are responsible for different parts of the public sector, not only between but inside bodies, because sometimes the barriers exist within. That is why I am rather nervous about the rest of the First Minister’s speech, in which he talked about the big changes to the NHS and the care service, and looking at local government reform. I am not against reform of bodies, but I am not absolutely sure what will be resolved by changing the structures and the boundaries of those organisations. As the First Minister knows, the Scottish Liberal Democrats were strong critics of the establishment of a national police service. I think that we were right to be critical, certainly in the early years, because the pace of reform risked people’s lives—in fact, with the introduction of central control centres, people did lose their lives as a result of the rushed reform.
We are nervous about those things. Instinctively, we are in favour of local power and communities being in charge, and I hear that from the First Minister. However, we are rushing towards structural reform when I believe we need behavioural change and real leadership to drive and force that collaboration between different parts of the public sector. For instance, we can look at care. The relationships between care and housing and care and education are just as important as its relationship to the NHS, but we are not proposing to create one big national public service. We will still require leaders to collaborate between the different parts of the public sector, so I urge the First Minister to act with caution as he progresses those changes, because I do not believe that big upheaval that lasts years—and potentially distracts people, who will be looking over their shoulders and worrying about whether they will keep their jobs—is necessarily the answer to doing the sometimes boring, detailed work that delivers the change that this country deserves.
I had much more to contribute, but I will conclude on that point.
16:45
Today’s programme for government sets out what this Government hopes to achieve over the next five years, but, sadly, because Scots have heard it all before, it looks less like a five-year plan and more like a five-year excuse to dodge scrutiny.
The proposed food price caps, which have been rejected by producers and retailers, would most likely be illegal and would lead to higher prices and, no doubt, a confected constitutional power row.
Local government reform and empowerment are proposed by a Government that has spent years cutting council budgets, centralising services and ring fencing its own budgets.
There will be more GP walk-in centres, despite the dismal attendance numbers at those that have launched already and the mounting criticism from front-line clinicians.
Instead, this programme for government could have been about growing our economy, lowering people’s bills and fixing public services, which John Swinney has singularly failed to do. He failed to do so as Scotland’s finance secretary, as Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills, as Cabinet Secretary for Covid Recovery and as Deputy First Minister, and now he is failing to do it as First Minister—for however long he hangs around.
The message from stakeholders across Scotland was clear. For example, the Scottish Chambers of Commerce says that the SNP must reduce the cost of doing business, accelerate infrastructure delivery—something that is particularly poor in this SNP Government—and address skills shortages.
I welcome one of the announcements in the First Minister’s programme for government: that there will be additional support for the last pub or shop in any town or village. How has it come to a position that far too many of our towns and villages are down to their last pub or shop because of the SNP’s repeated failure to pass on the money for rates relief that the UK Government readily provided?
This uninspiring five-year programme for government stems from a manifesto that lacked ambition and that one commentator, Nicola Sturgeon, said had a lack of “vision or big-picture thinking”. From her vantage point in lower-tax London, Nicola Sturgeon described John Swinney’s campaign as being
“detached from the big issues bearing down on people’s lives.”
For the first time—and for the Official Report—I agree whole-heartedly with the former First Minister when she points out that this SNP Government is fundamentally failing to address the real concerns of ordinary Scots, failing to meaningfully support Scotland’s oil and gas sector, failing to ensure that dangerous prisoners serve their sentences in full, and failing to reduce the size of the bloated civil service—something that Ivan McKee will continue to fail to do unless he is willing to face down Scotland’s public sector unions.
Today’s statement proves that this SNP Government is out of step with Scottish people. It contains very little on how this SNP Government, led by John Swinney, will tackle the £5 billion deficit that it has created and appears to be ill prepared to tackle.
It is Scottish taxpayers who, by the end of this decade, will pay a heavy price for John Swinney’s failure. At a time of mounting concerns about the cost of living, businesses and households want to see their bills come down, but the biggest bill that many of them face is their tax bill. As we saw over the course of the summer, and as was confirmed by the Scottish Fiscal Commission, the SNP’s fiscal financial mismanagement has not just made Scotland the highest-taxed part of the UK. Those higher taxes are failing to deliver the revenues that are needed to meet the SNP’s present spending obligations, particularly the soaring bill for social security and, within that, the SNP’s soft-touch approach to the adult disability payment.
I turn to public sector reform. I see that Mr McKee is not sitting in his place. I do not doubt that he will come forward with a plan—the SNP is very good at developing plans. However, it had a plan to get civil servants back into the office and it has failed to do so. It had a plan to reduce the size and head count of the civil service, and it has failed to do so. So, when it introduces yet another plan—for example, to reduce the number of health boards—is that not simply shifting deck chairs on the Titanic?
When it comes to reducing head counts, should we perhaps take advice from the Conservative Party whose numbers were massively reduced as a result of the election?
I seem to recall that Mr Flynn was a member of the House of Commons when the SNP’s numbers there were absolutely slashed. This is a smaller Parliament, and Mr Flynn likes to try to make as much mischief as he can, but he cannot evade the facts: the SNP’s approach is high on tax and low on delivery. It puts benefits over work and criminals over victims. It is gimmick after gimmick from the man whose job Mr Flynn wants.
Last week, we saw the publication of a draft bill on independence. The SNP Government is still obsessed with constitutional politics at the expense of delivering better outcomes for the people of Scotland. It spends more and taxes more but delivers less. It sets ambitious targets but fails miserably to meet them.
In the words of its former leader, this SNP Government is “detached” from the concerns of the people that it says it serves.
It is a sad truth that Scotland simply cannot afford this five-year plan and it cannot afford five more years of John Swinney and the SNP.
16:51
I have said before, in previous PFG debates, that any fair reading of a programme for government is likely to find a mix of the good, the bad and the missing. That is true once again this year.
I want to pick out a couple of the elements that there should be strong agreement on and that we can welcome. Action on the cost of living is a theme that clearly remains important to the Government and the First Minister; it should be important to all of us. On some of the most high-profile measures that the Government wants to take on the cost of living, we will need to see the detail—there are some questions that will need to be answered. However, we should all strongly share that aim.
We should also share the aims that the First Minister set out when he spoke about gender-based violence. We should welcome serious action being taken on that issue; it would stand in stark contrast with those who use that issue cynically, as a pretext to attack minorities in our society. I welcome the First Minister’s emphasis on taking action on it.
I also welcome his willingness to consider meaningful change to local government. The First Minister is correct in his analysis that some councils are too small to be strategic and others are too big to be genuinely locally accountable. However, there is a concern that some obvious options—such as the balance that we used to have between district and regional councils—have been ruled out before the dialogue begins. I am also concerned that in the programme for government there seem to be no serious proposals to reform how we pay for local government. There is no commitment to replace council tax. A bill is coming in year 1 that will be on council tax, but its purpose will be only to tweak the bands. Does the First Minister intend to reinvent the structure of local government but leave councils still dependent on a tax system that, by the end of this parliamentary session, will be 40 years out of date? That would not be good enough.
I will move on to some proposed measures of which I am more directly critical. My colleague Gillian Mackay was right to highlight the issue of data centres. We know that, on their own, the proposals that are already in the pipeline for hyperscale data centres would use far more than Scotland’s existing peak electricity consumption, and 24,000 people who know that have signed the Scottish Greens’ petition to the Scottish Government. Even the SNP’s own national council has called for a moratorium, yet, looking at the scale of the problem as it already stands, the Scottish Government seems to want even more data centres to be attracted to Scotland. A problem that is already too big to handle under current planning rules would become even bigger following the Scottish Government’s aspiration.
As for the bus fare cap, I agree that we should welcome the rapid progress in Glasgow and the west of Scotland, but the truth is that the national roll-out is on a far longer timescale than was implied from any fair reading of the SNP’s commitments during the election campaign. We also need the details on the better buses legislation. That will not come in year 1 of the programme for government, but urgency is needed on the issue, including a quick solution to remove the panel stage in the franchising process so that we can speed up the change that is needed. Scotland is already years behind much of England on the issue, so we need to accelerate.
On the proposal for a heat in buildings bill, I wish that I could have confidence that the bill will end up being a positive element of the programme for government. However, given the decisions that were taken at the end of the previous parliamentary session, it looks far more likely that we will end up with a target, with no delivery mechanism attached, no clean heating standard and no plan to decarbonise heat at the pace that is required. We would miss a massive opportunity to cut not just emissions but our energy bills and to decouple ourselves from overdependence on expensive fossil fuels.
As for the proposed merger of environmental bodies, the challenges and consequences remain entirely unclear. Understandably, ministers might well see them as working under a common portfolio, but, in reality, the bodies perform distinct and important functions that cannot be sacrificed.
I will mention a few more measures that are missing from the programme for government. There is nothing at all to implement and put serious substance behind last year’s vote on a programme to boycott, divest from and sanction the state of Israel and companies that are profiting from the illegal occupation, the genocide and the illegal settlements. The Government knows that if it is going to take seriously the commitment that the Parliament voted for, far more substantive action needs to be taken.
There is also nothing on integrated ticketing. We have heard the Cabinet Secretary for Economy, Tourism and Transport say clearly that he wants to make progress on that issue by the end of this parliamentary session, but it simply will not happen without a plan, and that plan does not seem to be under way.
Finally, on what is missing, we are deeply disappointed that there is no commitment yet to legislate in this Parliament to take action on the horrific practices that are known as conversion practices. The Scottish Government is still using the phrase
“Should the UK Government fail to deliver”.
We already know that the UK Government’s bill will not apply in Scotland, and, even if it did, it is riddled with loopholes—so much so that TransActual described that bill as reading like
“an instruction manual for abuse”.
That is how it described the bill that has been introduced by the UK Government. We cannot merely copy that agenda and follow in lockstep. We need legislation in Scotland.
The First Minister said that he wants a Scottish state that is “rewired and reimagined”. That rhetoric matches Andy Burnham saying that he wants to reverse 40 years of neoliberalism. If we recognise the need for a new economic model and the need to turn that kind of grand rhetoric into a reality, the Scottish Government’s programme for government should have set out how to turn that into a reality by reversing deregulation and expanding public and community ownership in our economy. There are devolved opportunities, with existing powers, to make the progress that is necessary. The Greens will continue to push for that progress and will bring forward substantive proposals that will allow the Scottish Government to make that happen.
16:59
The programme for government must be about seizing our opportunities and facing up to the big challenges that Scotland faces. The clearest example of that is child poverty—the loss of potential in our country and the affront of great need among our young people. That is the First Minister’s declared number 1 priority.
The Parliament set a legal target that fewer than one in 10 children should be living in relative poverty by 2030. However, the latest Scottish Government figures tell us that the figure stands at 21 per cent today. That means that 210,000 children in Scotland are growing up in poverty, and three quarters of those children live in households in which somebody is in work.
There is a significant distance that we must all travel. The Government’s own modelling suggests that, if we keep to the current trajectory, the proportion of children living in relative poverty will still be at around 18 per cent in 2030-31, which is almost twice the number in the statutory target that was unanimously agreed by Parliament. The question for all of us is what we are going to do about that. I believe that the Government should establish a cross-party commission to bring together the evidence and agree on proposals to get us back on track towards meeting the target. I hope that that is something that the First Minister might consider.
In his statement, the First Minister did not address the black hole in the public finances that we all know will dominate the next five years of this session of Parliament. Ministers, including the First Minister, may say that that is a matter for the budget—we will hear plenty more about that from the Deputy First Minister—but it is the policy agenda that has led to that black hole, and only the policy agenda can fix it.
We need honesty from the Government about the state of Scotland’s public finances, because only honesty will do. The issue of the black hole will define, and will either drive or destroy, the programme that the First Minister has set out today. The £5 billion figure is the gap between what the Government plans to spend and the resources that will be available to it by the end of the decade; it is a figure that predates the additional spending commitments that the SNP made during the election. We still have not had clarity about the status of the additional £1.4 billion of spending commitments made in the party’s election manifesto.
Ministers will inevitably seek to blame others, but the evidence simply does not support that argument, because the crisis is one of the SNP’s own making. The Scottish budget has increased by billions of pounds in recent years. Last week, amid a blizzard of panicked independent analysis, the Auditor General set out absolutely clearly how we have arrived here and said that those decisions “are all political choices.”
That is the reality that the Government must confront. For years, ministers have relied on short-term fixes and one-off allocations to balance budgets instead of delivering meaningful reform of our public services, and that is the approach that Audit Scotland has repeatedly warned the Government about. Public service reform is necessary, but it cannot become an exercise in making front-line workers and communities pay the price for the Government’s chronic failure to sustainably manage Scotland’s finances.
Jackie Baillie was absolutely right to say that there is merit in the headlines of some of the proposals that the First Minister set out today, but we will reserve judgment until we have far more detail. I believe that the First Minister and his Government have started big and really serious conversations today.
Regarding NHS boards, it is worrying that the Highlands and Islands and the north-east are not being protected with individual capacity, given the specific circumstances that those communities face because of both geography and need. We must see that being addressed. [Interruption.] The cabinet secretary is saying from her seat that they are being protected, but we have not seen that provision. I know for a fact that two chief executives—one in Glasgow and one in Edinburgh—have been being paid more than those in the rest of Scotland for the past year, which means that there will be extreme worry across the country. We know that there is a question about whether there will be east and west boards; we still do not have that detail. If the cabinet secretary is able to provide that, I would be glad to hear it.
Mr Marra has been a regular advocate for his community and for the north-east being better served. The point that I wish to make to him is that public sector reform is necessary not only for financial sustainability but to ensure that there is equity of access across all of Scotland.
The cabinet secretary makes a fair point, but we need to see the plans and proposals in order to understand how equity will be provided. We are absolutely concerned about democratic oversight and accountability in those plans, because, when those are absent, we end up with scandals such as that at the Queen Elizabeth university hospital or the Eljamel scandal. We must be clear that proper oversight and proper accountability are required in order to ensure that citizens get the protection that they need in their health service. We must see the detail of that; I am sure that there is an awful lot more to come.
On local authorities, we have scant details of what I think it is fair to say is the First Minister’s decade-long attack on local government in this country. Budgets have been decimated under this Government, and a further £0.5 billion of cuts are slated in the Scottish spending review.
We know that the First Minister believes that responsibility for education should be extracted from local authorities. Now we have proposals to extract responsibility for social care as well, alongside the transfer of economic development functions.
There is a very strong case for some of those issues—economic development in particular—being addressed on a regional basis, but, again, we need to see the detail of how that will work and, crucially, what power this Government will give up and hand to local regions to drive economic growth where it is absolutely needed.
These are big discussions, and the question is whether this is about doing government better or about achieving greater efficiency, because there appear to be few up-front savings in the proposals that have been brought forward today. We know that the £5 billion black hole is not just looming but is already present.
All the changes, including those that the Government claims will reduce management costs, will require up-front investment, and it is not obvious where any savings will be realised. We should look carefully at the example of the national care service. In the previous session of Parliament, we were told from the outset that that would be a mission of the then Government and the most fundamental reform of public services that this country had ever seen. However, there was a total and abject failure by the Government either to plan properly or to do the finances properly, to the point where the Finance and Public Administration Committee had to reject the proposals that were before it.
That is a salient lesson for this Government about the challenges. The most important thing is that we have clarity on intent. What is it that the Government intends to achieve? What is driving the plans? If the First Minister can tell us, we will be constructive partners in those discussions, including in the chamber. Greater clarity on that will give us a better chance of success.
17:07
I thank the First Minister for his statement. All of us in the chamber are acutely aware of the financial challenges that we, as a nation, face. We should be focused on facing up to those and on doing our utmost to implement available solutions.
We are presented with an almost unique set of challenges, some of which are within our control and some are not. What are the options for fulfilling this programme of government? We could raise what are already the highest income taxes on the wealthy, although the evidence from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland suggests that the yield from doing so might be lower than a simple calculation suggests, because taxpayers can change how, when and where they receive income, or we could focus on something that might get support across the chamber.
We already have high taxes, but we could use the money from those high taxes on things that raise the economic growth rate, including education, infrastructure projects and innovative business research and development that delivers.
At the same time, we must be up front with the public in the way that past Governments have not been at times. I do not point the finger at the SNP alone. Successive UK Governments have been guilty of hiding the truth and papering over the cracks. We have more going out than is coming in, and the UK has a major debt to service.
Where do we start? It must be with our skills gap. I am presenting not political views but verifiable statistics. We have a skills gap in many sectors, and we do not have enough workers in the profitable sectors that we need to grow. We must promote science, technology, engineering and mathematics programmes in schools so that students have the qualifications that they need to gain entry to our centres of excellence in those crucial fields.
We need schools to be able to inform pupils who are applying for university and college about where jobs are located and what skills are required by the marketplace. We need fewer of our valuable arts graduates to end up in jobs that they are overqualified to do academically, when they are perhaps less qualified in practical terms. They end up on low incomes and are saddled with student debt, which prevents them getting on to the housing ladder. They need more help and practical support with pathways that reinforce their chosen degree.
The number of fee-paying students that we are having to enrol in Scottish universities is increasing, because the funding gap has been rising. Predominantly from the far east, those students are attracted by degree courses in engineering and biochemistry. The data here speaks for itself: on some degree courses, nearly 20 per cent of graduates are taking what they have learned here back to their own countries to grow their economies, and that is definitely not helping us.
I am encouraged by the work that the Scottish Funding Council has done since 2020 on its review of coherent provision and sustainability. The aim has been to align funding of further education with high-paying jobs and pathways to profitable careers. However, not enough has been done by schools to highlight the initiative, and more focus on beneficial options is required.
When the widening access programme is added into the mix, which was developed from the Scottish Government’s blueprint for fairness recommendations, the situation is compounded. Many students who have five As at higher level will not get a place if there is another student from a disadvantaged area with four As and a B who has an otherwise similar application. The result is that someone will end up doing a degree that they do not really want to do, or they will go south, get into debt and, critically, they will not return to Scotland because more opportunities are available down south. I do not want to attack the programme, because I would likely have benefited from it in the 1980s, but Scottish Funding Council data shows that there is a 4 per cent gap in retaining students on the programme into their second year, which is a waste of potential. We also do not have essential long-term data on how the graduates fare when they enter the workplace, and we need that information to make improvements and get the best from the system.
Here is a sample of what some of our foremost institutions have said on the skills gap topic: that Scotland risks producing brilliant ideas that ultimately produce jobs and revenue elsewhere; that education, business, investment and economic policy must work together; and that the right skills may start at an innovative company, but to grow to global level, investment is required. That is all very indicative. It is such a shame, therefore, that the Scottish National Investment Bank has not fared better with start-ups.
Regrettably, it is not only the skills gap that is holding us back. Managers report that some recruits often turn up for work unprepared, and statistics from an employer skills survey in 2024 indicate that that is the position whether the recruit is a university or college graduate or a school leaver. Many have no concept of appropriate respect for their colleagues who lead, support and appraise them, and they often show no adherence to timekeeping as part of a supportive team. Unfortunately, that occurs across all workplace sectors, whether in the private, public or third sector. However, as is often the case, none of that is new when it comes to what we need.
In March 2022, the then Cabinet Secretary for Finance and the Economy launched a national strategy for economic transformation and said that the next 10 years would be a “decisive decade”. Well, how is that faring? We are now almost halfway and I cannot see much transformation. That strategy talked about five key policy programmes, but, by my reckoning, we have not seen much progress. That does not mean that there has been systematic failure, because that is not true, but the scale of the challenge was underestimated. The document stated that Scotland will be regarded as
“a great place to live and work with high living standards.”
Well, that is not the case if you live in Glasgow. Susan Aitken has asked for an urgent meeting with the finance secretary because “community cohesion” in Glasgow is at risk, primarily due to “refugee homelessness”. She will be joining Reform next.
The strategy also said that Scotland will be
“an international benchmark for how an economy can transform itself”,
but we seem to be going backwards. In the last quarter of 2025, we had 0.1 per cent growth.
The strategy said that Scotland will be
“a country where economic power and opportunity are distributed fairly”.
I think that people in many parts of Scotland, such as the Borders and Clackmannanshire, would disagree with that.
Finally, the strategy said that Scotland will be
“an outward-looking nation … exerting meaningful influence”
around the world. If we count selling our excellent education system off to the highest bidder, that claim might be true, but we are going backwards.
Last week, Alex Massie wrote in The Times that we are about to be visited by the
“Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse”.
Well, I can report that the Finance and Public Administration Committee met them yesterday. Perhaps we needed the Scottish high-growth unit at the start of the sixth parliamentary session, and not today, as the First Minister has announced, but I certainly wish the project well.
Although I have the greatest respect for Kate Forbes, her strategy reads like a public relations trailer pitch for a Hollywood movie, as so many such papers do. Today, we have heard much the same with the First Minister’s bold plans. The problem is that we have heard it before.
Whether to centralise or decentralise, we want plans with measurable results of success that make life better for people, not more and more plans to keep civil servants busy, such as the health reform that we have just heard about.
In short, we need to get real here because many people in Scotland have disengaged from politics. They did not bother to vote and, frankly, they expect more. Only when all citizens of Scotland feel that they are getting something from this Parliament will things improve and the vision of a team Scotland—an approach that I support—will be realised, but we must make progress this session.
I call the First Minister to wind up the debate. You have a generous 10 minutes, First Minister.
17:15
Let me begin by saying that I welcome Malcolm Offord’s presence here and I am glad to hear that he is in a stronger position over his health. I wish him well. Let me also say that it is a pleasure to welcome Monica Lennon to Parliament—not for the first time, of course. There is a rather ungallant term that describes members of Parliament who return after a gap as a “retread”. It was used very unforgivingly to describe my dear friend the late Margaret Ewing, which she took, of course, with good grace. I think that Monica Lennon’s very minor gap in attendance does not qualify her for that term, but I wish her well. When I met her at the back of the chamber earlier, she asked whether I had missed her, and of course I have missed her, and I welcome her back to Parliament today.
It would also be remiss of me not to comment on the fact that Monica Lennon takes the place of Anas Sarwar, who has been—I am not sure whether I should use the word “elevated”, but he has certainly joined the House of Lords. Some of us found that a rather unusual strategy to engineer its destruction, which, of course, was the long-term commitment of Anas Sarwar. Just as I am delivering on my commitments to the people of Scotland, I look forward to Anas Sarwar delivering on his commitment to the country to abolish the House of Lords, but I think that there is more chance of me delivering than there is of Anas Sarwar delivering on that question. I will come to that in a moment. However, in all sincerity, l wish Anas Sarwar well. I always enjoyed our encounters here, and I wish him well in the work that he is undertaking on behalf of the United Kingdom Government.
This has been an interesting and helpful debate, with a lot of contributions reflecting on the contents of the Government’s programme. I think that some of the dilemmas that are always faced in a programme of this type were displayed by the comments of my colleague Patricia Gibson, who felt that I was not going far enough on public service reform, and of course there will be those who think that I am going too far on public service reform.
The contribution from Patricia Gibson illustrated some of the tangible and substantial issues that have to be wrestled with. On the comment from Kim Schmulian a second ago about the economy, I am glad that she has recognised the importance that we attach to stimulating economic growth in Scotland and I assure her of our determination to fulfil our commitments on that. Michael Marra reinforced the importance of the agenda that is being pursued on child poverty, which is central to the Government’s programme and is central to everything that I have done since I became First Minister. Michael Marra’s comment about there being space for cross-party dialogue is a welcome comment and it is one that I am going to come back to in relation to how Parliament proceeds in taking forward the Government’s programme.
There are, of course, other measures that I am glad have commanded support around the chamber. For example, Alex Cole-Hamilton, Jackie Dunbar and Patricia Gibson spoke about tackling violence against women and girls. I appreciate that support and the recognition across the chamber of the necessity for the Government to act in that respect and I look forward to calling on the support of Parliament to reinforce the steps that I intend to take.
On the issue of violence against women and girls, I just wonder whether the First Minister now regrets defying Scottish Women’s Aid and Victim Support Scotland and passing the legislation that made remanding men who harm women even more difficult.
Remand involves a judgment that is applied by the courts, and I will certainly not start interfering in decisions about remand that are taken by the courts. The courts have to make judgments in difficult circumstances. In talking about situations where remand is not given and bail is allocated, Willie Rennie said that further constraints could perhaps be applied in relation to bail. All of those issues merit examination and, in my intervention on Mr Rennie, I committed to doing exactly that.
Gillian Mackay and Patrick Harvie talked about conversion practices. The wording on that in the programme for government sets out the Government’s position, but I can provide more detail, and I would be happy to share that with members of Parliament. The Minister for Equalities and International Development, Simita Kumar, has been actively engaged with the United Kingdom Government on the issue of legislative co-operation.
On that issue, we have made it clear that we would like to make headway on a UK-wide basis, and we will endeavour to do that. However, I reiterate the point in the programme for government document that, if we are not satisfied with the progress that can be made, we reserve the right to pursue our own legislation.
I would be grateful to the First Minister for the opportunity to have further dialogue, if he wants to offer that. His Government has seen the UK Government’s draft bill. Does he think that it is a good bill? No one who has been campaigning for action on the issue seems to be praising it. Is it a good bill, or is it flawed?
Obviously, dialogue is going on with the UK Government about the contents of its bill. We have to be satisfied by the contents of the bill, which is why we are engaging. Members would expect us, in good faith, to engage on that question with the UK Government.
Paul McLennan made an important observation, which I think puts a couple of the other contributions into context. Mr McLennan said that, after the election, parties are entitled to come in here and advance their arguments. Having won the election, I certainly feel that I am entitled to come in here and set out the Government’s agenda. It was interesting that Craig Hoy and Russell Findlay both seemed to have missed the fact that there has been an election and that they did really badly in it. It might be an idea to think about changing the contents of their speeches after an election defeat and to think about things in a different fashion.
[Made a request to intervene.]
No doubt we are going to hear more about that, but I mentioned Craig Hoy’s name so, as a generous Parliamentarian, I will give way to him.
If the First Minister will not accept my criticism, what is his comment on Nicola Sturgeon’s criticism of his Government?
The absolute obsession goes on from Mr Hoy. I am delighted to have won the election and to have won it in a commanding fashion—that is all that I am going to say on that.
I am going to mention Mr Hoy again, which tempts fate, but here goes. Mr Hoy complains about the Government not delivering and, when the Government delivers, Mr Hoy complains about the Government delivering. One of my 100 days commitments—by the way, the Government has delivered the 100 days commitments—was to publish an independence referendum bill. Mr Hoy complained about the fact that I have delivered on my solemn commitment to the people of Scotland, but I am very pleased that I have done exactly that.
I think that the important part of the debate has been the question of political co-operation and how we use this parliamentary session. The comments of Jackie Baillie, Willie Rennie and Michael Marra have created some space within the debate for members to, in good faith—I think that Jackie Baillie used those words—hear the contents of the programme for government, and that is how they are offered.
I have learned about some issues and how we handle particular questions. There are substantial issues about public service reform that must be confronted, and I have my views about that, but I have not come in here and said, “This is it—this is what has to be done.” There is space for dialogue and engagement about important questions and how we tackle some of the points of principle that I set out in the programme for government statement earlier. Those are about the level at which it is appropriate for responsibility to rest and whether things can be structured differently to deliver different outcomes.
On a point of clarity, will the First Minister set out the role that making savings towards the £5 billion black hole is contributing to his motivation for public service reform? That was not set out in the statement and I do not think that it is in the documentation. Is public service reform about making a contribution to those savings, is it about outcomes, or is it about both?
It is about both. I have heard Mr Marra speak on this ground a few times over the years; sustainable public services are what I am interested in delivering. We have delivered sustainable services all the way through my long and extended career in Government—all those 19 years that Jackie Baillie thinks about fondly. [Laughter.] Time progresses and I am just about to move into another year. We have always succeeded in balancing our budget. We live within our means and we have run sustainable public services, but I must future proof public services for generations to come, which is what my plans are all about.
However, my plans are also about improving outcomes. Earlier on, during First Minister’s questions, I responded to a completely legitimate question from Mr Green—I see that he is over there—in which he, on behalf of his constituents, pressed me to strengthen the availability of certain services for people in the Highlands and in his constituency. I recognise that some of the impediments to addressing Mr Green’s concern are the obstructions that are placed in the way by health board boundaries.
Will the First Minister take an intervention?
If Mr Cole-Hamilton allows me to develop my point, I will let him intervene in a second.
That is not to say that people are not trying or working hard enough, but they have lines of accountability and financial accountability that make it difficult to provide solutions that might address Mr Green’s concerns, and that is because of the structural arrangements of health boards. If I want to address the issues that Mr Green raises in the Parliament, I need to find a means to do that, which is why I have opened up this conversation.
[Made a request to intervene.]
I had better give way to Mr Cole-Hamilton, and then I will be happy to give way to Mr Green as well.
The First Minister’s point speaks to the remarks that the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Care made in her intervention on me. It is not clear whether this is the point that he is trying to make to the Parliament, but the concerns that people in the far north have about their healthcare services is not due to their proximity to where decisions are made by their health service. Stripping power away from that community will make it harder to deliver adequate decision making and to provide a particular focus on health needs in the Highlands.
That misses the point that I am making, which is that I want to properly address Mr Green’s concerns but there are obstacles and obstructions in the way of doing that. I do not want to diminish local control, input or decision making; I want to find practical solutions that will address the legitimate concerns that have been put to me.
I am happy to give way to Mr Green if he wishes to intervene.
I hear what the First Minister is saying. However, all too often, the Scottish Government wants to take credit when things go right but, when things go wrong, it is the responsibility of a local authority or an NHS board somewhere else. My party leader, Alex Cole-Hamilton, is absolutely spot on: stripping decision making away from communities in Caithness—who, incidentally, already think that Inverness is too far afield—is not the right approach.
That is not the way in which I am framing the discussion. I am framing it as a way to improve outcomes for members of the public, in their communities and as close to home as I can possibly manage, while delivering fiscal sustainability, which is the point that Mr Marra put to me. That is the space that I want to open up.
A pathway to addressing that point was provided in the helpful speech that Mr Rennie made in the debate. Since the election, Mr Rennie has made multiple contributions. I have quoted him to several people around the country, because his contributions have been so important—I say that because I do not want to convey any ill will to Mr Rennie whatsoever. Mr Rennie pressed us to focus on improving and making a difference to people’s lives, and my programme for government is designed to do exactly that. Finding ways in which we can do some difficult things but with the objective of improving people’s lives will be at the heart of the programme for government that we take forward.
For fear of incurring more praise, I encourage the First Minister to fully explain that it is important that we break down silos within organisations as well as between organisations. Surely public sector reform is more about culture, behaviour and leadership than it is about structures. He is in danger of entering a pathway that leads only to debate, anger and frustration when we should be focusing on the detail.
It does not need to be about anger and frustration. It can be a reasoned debate. That is where we are in an interesting space as a Parliament.
I know that I can be a combative parliamentary contributor—
Never!
I know—it does not happen often. [Laughter.] However, I have structured a programme in a different way. I have not said that it is a take-it-or-leave-it approach. Instead, I have given Parliament space to engage in a conversation, so that members of Parliament—respecting their political outlooks, the geographies that they represent and all the diversity of the country—can contribute to a discussion that will make Scotland a better country as a result.
I believe that some of the issues that we have to confront are structural impediments; I have just rehearsed that at length with regard to the issue in relation to Mr Green’s constituents. However, there are also cultural impediments, and those cultural impediments can be addressed. That is why I have done what I have done in relation to violence against women and girls, because it starts at the top. I can set the culture for the country: on the question of violence against women and girls, as a male First Minister, I am saying to all the men and the boys in the country that behaviours and conduct have to improve. I will make that point loud and clear, wherever I can. However, that also applies to the culture within organisations.
The issues of individuals who have addiction issues in relation to drugs, for example, will also not be solved by being put in one neat little compartment. It will take housing interventions, education interventions, mental wellbeing interventions and all sorts of things. That is why we have to put individuals right at the heart of our public services, and that is what the programme for government is designed to do.
Having thought about those issues over the summer, and over the election campaign, I intend to embark on this Parliament in a way that tries to bring people in this country together, in order to make Scotland a more successful country. I look forward to engaging with Parliament in that respect.
Next
Decision Time