Engagements
To ask the First Minister what engagements he has planned for the rest of the day. (S3F-2239)
Later today, I have engagements to take forward the Government’s programme for Scotland.
Unemployment is growing more quickly in Scotland than in Britain as a whole and 16 to 24-year-olds are the worst affected. In two budgets, we in the Labour Party have argued that giving our young people the skills and jobs they need must be the top priority. The situation for our young people is getting worse, not better. What is the Scottish Government doing to give our young people the skills they need?
As Iain Gray should be aware, the Scottish budget contained funding for a substantial increase in apprenticeships to enable more of our young people, during these difficult economic times, to have the advantages of skills. He will also be aware that colleges and universities received a substantially better settlement this year than, for example, their counterparts south of the border. The evidence in the Scottish budget is of a huge amount of effort across the range of economic initiatives to improve the employment situation in Scotland for young people and everyone else. That makes it all the more remarkable that the Labour Party decided to vote against that budget and those initiatives for Scotland.
It is crucial that every penny of the budgets that are allocated to support our young people and their skills should be used to the best advantage but, last Friday, Skills Development Scotland staff in Lanarkshire—an area that is particularly badly hit by youth unemployment—were told that 20 per cent of the funding for the crucial get ready for work programme was unused and unspent. That is £800,000 that should have been helping young people into work. How much of the skills budget throughout Scotland is sitting unused and unspent?
The skills budget for Scotland has been substantially enhanced and increased. I am sure that, shortly, Iain Gray will celebrate Skills Development Scotland’s announcement on the highly demanding apprenticeships targets that have been reached. The evidence is absolutely clear: there has been an expansion of key initiatives in skills, training and education to help our young people. Given that the Labour Party pretends to support all those initiatives, what is perplexing to young people and to members of other parties is why on earth Labour members voted against those initiatives in the budget debate only a few weeks ago.
The First Minister clearly does not know how much of his skills budget throughout Scotland is underspent. The invest in an apprentice scheme, one of the schemes to which the First Minister refers and which gives businesses £1,000 to take on an apprentice, proved popular. Unfortunately, it ran out of money in a fortnight, leaving hundreds of businesses and apprentices disappointed. There is plenty of money for some things, though; tomorrow, SDS will spend £20,000 to fly in hypnotist Paul McKenna to give 260 unemployed youngsters a pep talk.
Apparently, he will hand out signed copies of his bestsellers “Instant Confidence”, “I Can Make You Rich” and, of course, the classic “I Can Make You Thin”. Is that really the First Minister’s strategy to help our young unemployed?
Scotland does not need Paul McKenna when Iain Gray sends it to sleep every week.
Iain Gray says that we do not have the statistics. I will help him by providing some of the key statistics for ScotAction and the drive to help young people in Scotland. ScotAction is investing £145 million to help unemployed people to enter the labour market, to help employees to develop workforce skills and to support those who face redundancy due to Labour’s recession. During 2009, £16 million of additional help was provided to support 7,800 additional apprenticeships. Over the next 12 months, the Scottish Government will provide 34,500 training opportunities, 15,000 modern apprenticeships, 14,500 training places and 5,000 new flexible training opportunities. We have launched the 16-plus learning choices, which guarantee entitlement to a place in learning and training to any young person who requires that at present. Those are the substantial initiatives that the Government is taking forward. What perplexes everyone in Scotland is why every Labour MSP voted against that help for our young people in Scotland.
I presume from that hypnotic recitation of numbers that the First Minister has finally found the right page in his briefing.
The point is that the budgets to which he refers are not being spent or used properly. One in five of our young people leaves school with literacy problems. Would it not be better to give them more literacy training, instead of a stage show at Hampden tomorrow? What is Paul McKenna going to do—hypnotise them into believing that they have a job, a future and a chance in life? Twenty thousand pounds could have opened up 20 more apprenticeships. Alex Salmond is the illusionist here, fooling Scotland and failing our young people. It is time he looked deep into the eyes of the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning, Mr Russell, and told him to get this shambles sorted out.
Paul McKenna will be asked to run an additional course on how to be an Opposition leader and not read out my funny lines in rote fashion.
Statistics are quite important, as they are the basis on which a budget proposition is put together. Iain Gray has not questioned the numbers that I cited showing the tens of thousands of people around Scotland who will be helped through Labour’s recession by the action of the Scottish National Party. Those are the facts that Iain Gray does not want to acknowledge or accept, because no one can understand why the Labour Party voted against them in the budget. The SNP Government and a number of parties represented in the chamber decided to vote for the budget precisely because it helps young people and others in Scotland who are suffering the effects of Labour’s recession. The Labour Party is not only culpable for causing the recession; it is doubly culpable for refusing to support measures to help people through its recession. That is why no amount of coaching or training will ever turn Iain Gray into an effective politician.
Prime Minister (Meetings)
To ask the First Minister when he will next meet the Prime Minister. (S3F-2240)
I have no plans to meet the Prime Minister in the near future.
Freedom of the press and the independence of broadcasters are key pillars of a democratic society. The First Minister is under suspicion of undermining those pillars and using taxpayers’ money to compromise the impartiality of Scottish Television. That is why, yesterday, the Office of Communications launched an official investigation into the affair. The issue is causing concern and the First Minister must be totally transparent.
Indeed, we got “full disclosure” from the Government yesterday. It revealed that it has spent £625,000 of taxpayers’ money on sponsoring programmes on STV. We know that other money is spent on advertising, but has any more taxpayers’ money been spent by the Government or its agencies on sponsoring programmes? Can the First Minister confirm that yesterday’s statement was full disclosure?
The figure is £618,000 according to my notes, and it was certainly disclosure.
The point about the statement is that there was a demand from another Opposition leader—Iain Gray—to reveal how much money the SNP has given STV since 2007. The Scottish Government allocated and spent a budget of £618,000 for sponsoring programmes. One interesting fact in the disclosure—presumably, this was unknown to Iain Gray when he demanded it—was that, although that is a substantial sum, it is half as much as was spent by the previous Labour Administration. I know that Annabel Goldie relished there being full disclosure in our answers and that she was not responsible for the previous Administration, but now that that fact has been fully ventilated perhaps it will allow her to put into context some of the rather absurd suggestions to which she seemed to allude.
I asked the First Minister whether we have been given full disclosure on Government expenditure on sponsoring programmes. His response, if I may say so, is both intriguing and troubling. I have here a document from Scottish Natural Heritage that confirms that more taxpayers’ money was used to sponsor other programmes on STV. That begs the question what else the First Minister is hiding and how much more taxpayers’ money has been spent. Why is he not being transparent? Is there anything else that he needs to reveal after his so-called “full disclosure” yesterday? For example, I have here an example of the Government’s response to freedom of information requests from the Sunday Express. It is pretty obvious that not much information is being disclosed. Indeed, I think that, for the First Minister, FOI must stand for “full of ink”. Will he undertake this afternoon to issue unredacted documentation to take us at least one step closer to full disclosure?
Let me see whether I can help Annabel Goldie with full disclosure by giving her the breakdown of the Government’s expenditure on sponsoring programmes on STV. In 2009-10, £18,000 was spent on the children’s panel programmes. In 2009-10, we sponsored “Make Me Happier”—something that I try to do myself at every possible opportunity—which was a series of programmes to promote the well-being of Scots, fronted by Lorraine Kelly, that looked holistically at how exercise and so on can help our mental state. That is something that I try to do as well.
In addition, £150,000 was spent on the homecoming series. I recently, for the first time, saw two of the programmes—which, incidentally, were watched by 2.517 million Scots, or more than half the population, which seems a considerable success for Scottish programming—but I had nothing to do with their content. I am not, therefore, in a position to apologise for the fact that one of the programmes was introduced by Alastair Campbell playing the bagpipes—it was not a sinister attempt to undermine the credibility of the Labour Party in Scotland—or that Sir Menzies Campbell chaired the judging panel on another. Nor am I responsible for Charles Kennedy introducing another of the programmes—which was not an attempt to remind people that the Liberal party once had an outstanding leader who used to get lots of votes. None of those things was my responsibility. All I was trying to do was encourage more Scottish programmes and more Scottish jobs so that Scotland and homecoming could be increasingly successful.
With that assurance, will Annabel Goldie please accept that that is a perfectly acceptable and proper way to spend public money in Scotland?
Cabinet (Meetings)
To ask the First Minister what issues will be discussed at the next meeting of the Cabinet. (S3F-2241)
The next meeting of Cabinet will discuss issues of importance to the people of Scotland.
This week is Scottish tourism week. Last night, in the Parliament, industry leaders predicted that 2010 will be a tougher year. Extra burdens on Scottish tourism could cost jobs and businesses. Why, then, are so many Scottish hotels facing an increase in their business rate bills from 1 April—they are way above inflation? Their business turnover is being hit in these tough economic times but their business rate bills are going up by 20 per cent, 40 per cent, 80 per cent and even 120 per cent. Does the First Minister think that that is fair?
As Tavish Scott should well know, rating valuation is done by independent assessors, not by the First Minister or the Government. What the Government has done, of course, is drive down business rates in Scotland. The small business bonus scheme is incomparably the best deal for small businesses anywhere in these islands. Furthermore, the rating valuation position between Scotland and the rest of the UK is at its best level ever in favour of Scottish business. Given that range of actions that the Government is taking forward, some of which were supported by the Liberal Democrats, surely Tavish Scott will have to accept that the promotion of Scottish business has been a central aspect of this Government. We do not control the independent valuer, nor should we.
The information is on the First Minister’s Government website. I was not asking the First Minister about general business rates, but about the detail of hotels in Scotland. We should look at the bills that they face in just three weeks’ time: Stobo Castle will get a £25,000 increase in its bill; Prestonfield House in Edinburgh will get a 70 per cent increase; and the Queens Hotel in Lerwick will have to pay 65 per cent more. Let us look at the hotels where the Cabinet stayed during its summer tour last year: Malmaison in Aberdeen, the Apex in Dundee, the Radisson SAS in Glasgow, The Townhouse Hotel in Melrose, and—for the First Minister—Dryburgh Abbey Hotel. The increase in business rates that those hotels will have to pay in the new year are respectively 42 per cent, 59 per cent, 43 per cent, 31 per cent and 120 per cent. Will the Government change its mind and help Scottish hotels that are facing these eye-watering increases?
Tavish Scott should accept that the valuations of individual premises were carried out not by the First Minister but the independent assessor who rates individual businesses. That is how the system works. If Tavish Scott believes that the First Minister or Mike Rumbles or anyone else should get into the business of saying what individual properties should be valued at, he would introduce an innovation into the rating system that would be unprecedented in the developed world.
I remind Tavish Scott of the things the Government is responsible for. The 2010-11 business rate poundage is 40.7p. It matches that of England and is the lowest national poundage ever set in Scotland. As a result, the overall benefit to Scottish businesses in this coming year has been estimated at more than £200 million. The package of reliefs that has been introduced is worth a further £2.4 million over five years. It is the most generous package in the United Kingdom and includes an expansion of the small business bonus scheme. Following revaluation, 60 per cent of Scottish businesses will be better off, with an average saving of more than £1,000. Given that Tavish Scott is criticising the independent valuation of the rating assessors, what will he say to the 60 per cent of businesses that will be better off or to the Federation of Small Businesses, which has supported enthusiastically the initiatives that this Government is taking forward?
I will take a constituency question from Willie Coffey.
I am sure that the First Minister will share my concern about the evidence that is emerging from the fatal accident inquiry into the tragic death of my constituent, Alison Hume, in Galston. Will he ensure that the Scottish Government will review the health and safety guidance that the emergency services operate so that saving lives is always the priority and that that is reflected clearly in any revised guidelines?
I thank the constituency member for raising this important matter, which has caused great public concern. It is a tragic incident for all concerned. Given that it is the subject of a fatal accident inquiry, it is inappropriate for me to comment on the detail of the incident at this stage. However, subject to the disclosure of the findings, it will be important that lessons are learned and acted upon. Health and safety regulations are, of course, a reserved matter. That said, they impinge on services that are within the devolved remit.
I can advise that work involving the Health and Safety Executive and the Chief Fire Officers Association on the development of a high-level statement to clarify how health and safety law duties should be complied with in the operational work of the fire and rescue service has been going on for some time. I confirm that the Scottish fire and rescue advisory unit will take part in the launch of that statement on Friday 12 March and that a similar event for the Scottish fire and rescue service shortly thereafter is being planned.
Last week, the First Minister urged the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers and ScotRail to resolve what he described as “an unnecessary dispute.” I have with me a letter that states that the decision to run driver-only trains on the new Airdrie to Bathgate rail link is one for Transport Scotland. That means that, ultimately, it is a decision for ministers. I am sure that the First Minister did not wish to give a misleading impression to Parliament. Can he confirm that it is a decision for Transport Scotland, and can he tell the Parliament what action his Government will take to resolve the dispute?
Last week, I said that the Government was concerned about the safety arguments that the RMT had made. As a result of a meeting, we did two things. First, we asked Transport Scotland to check with three safety bodies about the operation of driver-and-ticket-examiner trains. The replies that came back indicated that those bodies did not have safety concerns. That should not have been a surprise to Karen Whitefield, because—
That is not what I was asking about.
I pointed out last week that about 60 per cent of services that run in Scotland run on that basis. The previous Administration operated and launched services on that basis.
What I was asking—
Order.
The Government is taking the points that the RMT made extremely seriously.
There is to be a further meeting between the Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change and the union. Matters of safety—even when we have been assured that they have been examined and that they are satisfactory—are something that we take very seriously, and that is part of the Government’s role and responsibility.
I again urge a resolution to the dispute, because it is an unnecessary dispute—but that is properly a matter for ScotRail and the RMT.
Alcohol Consumption (Pregnancy)
To ask the First Minister how the Scottish Government plans to tackle the problem of alcohol consumption during pregnancy. (S3F-2251)
The Scottish Government’s alcohol framework outlines a package of measures to tackle alcohol misuse in Scotland. They include legislative measures that are being developed in the Alcohol etc (Scotland) Bill, particularly action on minimum pricing and on irresponsible promotions, that are supported by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, ChildLine, Children 1st , the Aberlour Child Care Trust, YouthLink Scotland, Barnardo’s Scotland, Action for Children Scotland, Quarriers and Parenting across Scotland. The bill is complemented by a range of non-legislative measures that include targeted action on foetal alcohol spectrum disorder and it is backed by record investment, totalling almost £100 million over three years, in treatment and support services.
The First Minister will be aware that Dr Harry Burns, the chief medical officer, has said that he believes that the incidence of foetal alcohol spectrum disorder in Scotland has been significantly underestimated. Given the impact that the condition can have on the unborn child and noting the report from Children in Scotland on the matter, does the First Minister agree that the problem demonstrates yet again why all parties represented in the chamber should be united on taking action on alcohol abuse?
A team is being put in place to work on foetal alcohol spectrum disorder. Part of that work will focus on the prevention of alcohol-exposed pregnancies and on the promotion of healthy pregnancies. A pack of resources on alcohol interventions in the antenatal setting has been developed, and it will be issued to every national health service board by the end of this month.
Jamie Hepburn has made a point about how alcohol misuse can affect unborn children in particular. As we know, and as we must accept, alcohol misuse goes through the range of society.
It has a range of dreadful effects on public order and on the public health of Scotland. In those circumstances, it behoves everyone in the Parliament to respond to the scale of the challenge by examining outwith the normal argy-bargy of party politics the measures that the Government is proposing. This issue above all is an example of what is right, as opposed to who is right.
Does the First Minister agree with Children in Scotland’s submission on foetal alcohol syndrome and foetal alcohol spectrum disorder to the House of Commons Health Committee that accurate measurement of the incidence of the conditions can occur only after there is a critical mass of health practitioners who are able to make the diagnosis correctly? What steps is the Government taking to create such a critical mass?
Ross Finnie’s question is perfectly fair. I know that he recognises the specifics of the action on FASD that I have just listed. As a general proposition, his point seems reasonable; the work of the team that has been put together to undertake specific work on foetal alcohol spectrum disorder is therefore all the more important.
Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi (Status)
To ask the First Minister whether the Scottish Government will provide an update on the status of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi. (S3F-2257)
Mr al-Megrahi remains terminally ill with incurable prostate cancer.
On 12 January, the Cabinet Secretary for Justice told the Scottish Affairs Committee in Westminster that Mr Megrahi was “alive and well”. In his other responses to the committee, there was no hint of regret from Mr MacAskill about any aspect of the handling of the entire affair. Since January, the Scottish Parliament’s Justice Committee has produced a report that was highly critical of many aspects of the process. Would the First Minister now like to offer any words of apology or comfort to those relatives of the Lockerbie victims who were, and continue to be, distressed by his Government’s decision and the process by which it was reached?
I believe that Mr MacAskill took the right decision for the right reasons, which are the reasons that were articulated at the time. They have been explained and promoted as sensitively as possible and in a way that, as far as is possible in such matters, has avoided unnecessary party politicking.
I attended the meeting of the Scottish Affairs Committee to which Dr Simpson referred and do not agree that the tenor of the submissions was anything like what he suggested. Whatever people think about the decision, it should be recognised that there was no ulterior or other motive for Mr MacAskill’s decision other than the criteria that he established and outlined in his statement to the Parliament.
Since our initial debates on the matter, we have had some clarity on the United Kingdom Government’s position. The UK Government has maintained that the decision was not for it to make but has said, in the words of the Foreign Secretary in the House of Commons:
“British interests, including those of UK nationals, British businesses and possibly security co-operation, would be damaged ... if Megrahi were to die in a Scottish prison”.—[Official Report, House of Commons, 12 October 2009; Vol 497, c 31.]
Given that statement, Richard Simpson should consider carefully the great benefit of the justice secretary of Scotland making a decision based on Scottish judicial principles and no other criteria whatever.
Sex Offenders Disclosure Scheme
To ask the First Minister when the Scottish Government will roll out its proposed plans for a sex offenders disclosure scheme. (S3F-2245)
The roll-out of the Tayside disclosure pilot will, for the first time, empower parents, carers and guardians to access the information that they need to keep children safe. I expect a phased roll-out to begin in the autumn, after publication of the evaluation that this Administration commissioned.
I welcome the Tayside pilot’s reported success to date, but does the First Minister agree that it is a difficult policy area with many complex concerns? For example, the scheme provides for action when there is no criminal record of sexual offences but there are other reasons why the police might be worried about the safety of particular children. That is obviously proper, but it raises the possibility of innocent people being scapegoated. Given that the Cabinet Secretary for Justice has already agreed, as the First Minister’s statement confirms, to roll the scheme out across Scotland months before the pilot has finished and before its evaluation, will the First Minister say whether any difficulties have arisen during the pilot that mean that changes to the current arrangements need to be made?
I accept of course that the Tayside pilot does not end until May 2010—I think that the evaluation of the pilot is due out in August this year—but I do not think that that should stop us from examining the experience that we have had with the pilot scheme in Tayside since it was introduced last September.
The experience to date not only allays many of the fears about civil liberties that Robert Brown has expressed but justifies the decision to prepare for the pilot’s roll-out across Scotland. Robert Brown is not alone in questioning such an initiative, but he should accept the analysis so far. For example, Assistant Chief Constable Iain Livingstone holds the public protection portfolio for the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland, and ACPOS is as aware as anyone else of the concerns that Robert Brown has articulated. Iain Livingstone has said:
“The police service in Scotland welcomes the decision to bring forward the implementation of the sex offender disclosure scheme throughout Scotland.”
That statement was made on the basis and experience of the pilot scheme so far.
12:30 Meeting suspended until 14:15.