Chamber and committees

Plenary, 06 Oct 2004

Meeting date: Wednesday, October 6, 2004

Junior Ministers

The Presiding Officer (Mr George Reid):

The next item of business is a debate on motion S2M-1823, in the name of Jack McConnell, on the appointment of junior Scottish ministers, and two amendments to the motion.

The First Minister (Mr Jack McConnell):

I will be brief and will not reiterate what I have already said, but I want to make a number of important points about the nomination of Johann Lamont—I have been making mistakes about the pronunciation of her surname for 20 years and I am determined to get it right today—and Rhona Brankin to be junior ministers in the Executive.

Johann Lamont has made a considerable contribution to the work of the Parliament, not least through her convenership of the Social Justice Committee and the Communities Committee. She has steered through and been involved in consideration of some of the best legislation that the Parliament has passed on housing, sexual offences and—in the past year—antisocial behaviour. Johann Lamont—[Laughter.] I will get it right. Johann Lamont has shown that the Parliament and its committee system can work with the Executive. She has also demonstrated an ability to drive forward a policy issue and to turn it into action and achievement. I am certain that she will be an excellent junior minister in the Executive.

Rhona Brankin, who has served well in the Executive before as Deputy Minister for Culture and Sport and Deputy Minister for Environment and Rural Development, has an understanding of the importance of the national health service that many members cannot share. I believe that she will bring that experience to her ministerial portfolio and that it will complement her skills and abilities and her belief in our policies—which will not only take forward Scotland's health service, but improve our national health—in a way that will support the direction in which we are travelling.

Both those junior ministers will join a team that is committed to improving Scotland's national health and our national health service. As well as being committed to record levels of resources and record staffing levels, that team is committed to reforming the national health service in Scotland, to delivering localised services in every case in which that is appropriate and to ensuring that we have the specialised services that can save lives and cure people in a way that was unimaginable 10 or 20 years ago. Our team, which will be assisted by Rhona Brankin, will take forward the health improvement agenda. It will deal with issues such as mental health, the health of our young people, including their diet and exercise, and smoking and alcohol abuse.

Just last Thursday, Margaret Curran outlined the communities agenda of progressing the provision of affordable housing throughout Scotland. Thousands of new homes are desperately needed in urban and rural communities. The communities portfolio includes the agenda of tackling poverty in Scotland, not simply by delivering more handouts, but by giving people the opportunities to work—through the provision of child care, new skills and support in the community for them and their families—so that they can get into work, stay in work, earn a living and ensure that their families can prosper. Those are important agendas for the Executive, the Cabinet and the junior ministers, who I hope will join us after today's vote.

Those agendas are in stark contrast to the Scottish National Party's opposition over the past five years to the housing investment in Glasgow and elsewhere through the transfer of housing stock to local people and tenants, who will now control their own housing. They are in stark contrast to what we hear from the Conservatives, who have not challenged Rhona Brankin's appointment but usually like to talk about their policies for the national health service. Their policies would break up the NHS and would mean that those who can afford to pay for operations are subsidised so that they can have those operations more quickly; their policies put aside the needs of those who cannot pay for their operations but need a health service most and need it when they have to have it.

There is a stark contrast in the Parliament between the policies that take Scotland forward and the Opposition policies, which show poverty of ambition. Our policies will see Johann Lamont and Rhona Brankin take forward the work that has begun to a new stage after our new Parliament building is formally opened on Saturday. Our policies will ensure that, in future, young Scots have a better community in which to live.

I move,

That the Parliament agrees that Rhona Brankin and Johann Lamont be appointed as junior Scottish Ministers.

Shona Robison (Dundee East) (SNP):

Mr McConnell will need to start practising Johann Lamont's name.

I have no personal grudge against Rhona Brankin, although her appointment shows the benefit of asking ministers no-brainer questions at question time, but the way in which her appointment came about symbolises everything that is wrong with the Executive's approach to the health service. First, we were told that the reshuffle was kicked off by one deputy minister resigning due to—wait for it—hospital cuts in her area. We were then told that the so-called new team, which is anything but new, is the right team for the right time.

Mrs Mary Mulligan (Linlithgow) (Lab):

I make it clear that I resigned from the Executive to ensure that the people of the Linlithgow constituency get the best possible health service, but I am certain that they will get that only through the policies of the Labour-led Scottish Executive.

Shona Robison:

I find that hard to understand, as I am sure Mary Mulligan's constituents will, because the same Labour-led Executive is causing the problems that her constituents face in the hospital services. I will let Mary Mulligan try to explain that to her constituents; I am sure that she will have a good time doing so.

We have been told that the new Cabinet is the right team for the right time, which one national broadsheet translated into:

"The shortage of talent shines through".

As I prefer to say, the sacked are back.

We are expected to believe that the appointment of one of Jack's lads—the straight-talking Mr Kerr—with assistance from Rhona Brankin, will sort out those pesky members of the public who simply do not listen hard enough to the Executive's explanations of why it is closing down their local services. We are expected to believe that, if the Executive says those things a bit louder, all will be well. We are told that Mr Kerr and Ms Brankin are a team that will be able to explain better to the public why services are being cut—presumably in the same way as Ms Brankin explained to the fishermen why they should lose their jobs when she was in control of the fishing industry. We are expected to believe that, if the public would only listen a bit harder, they would understand why all the cuts are necessary and would meekly accept their local hospitals' fate. I suggest a different tack: perhaps the public are right and the Executive should listen to their views and change policy direction.

The problem is that, even among Mr McConnell's back benchers, many do not believe that the change of face matters. As Bristow Muldoon said, the issue is the health policy, not the face in the job. I could not agree more. As we know, Mr Kerr could not wait to get in front of the cameras to tell us that there would be no change in policy, which raises the question of the point of the reshuffle in the first place. We are supposed to believe that a fresh—or, in Mr Kerr's case, not-so-fresh—face is enough to turn round a health service that faces major problems and a lack of strategy.

John Swinburne (Central Scotland) (SSCUP):

Does Shona Robison agree that the health service in Scotland is in crisis? Does she also agree that no political party has the answer to all the health service's problems and that we will find a solution to the health problem only when the Parliament stops treating the issue as a political football and gets cross-party agreement on the health service, with all parties pulling together?

Shona Robison:

I certainly agree with Mr Swinburne that no one party has all the answers. Every party has issues to bring to the table. What I would say is that we will never agree to hospital cuts. That is where any cross-party co-operation stops. If Mr Kerr refuses to listen to the views of the people, it will be his Westminster colleagues who will suffer the effect at the elections next year—something that they are acutely aware of and jumping up and down about.

Some have gone further and have suggested:

"Even if the executive had a vision, Mr Kerr would not be the politician to advance it. Health needs a skilled, confident, articulate politician to enunciate policy … He is no communicator."

While that may or may not be true, the issue is whether there is a coherent strategy even to try to articulate. There is not. There is a complete lack of Government strategy and vision. Despite having been in power for five years in Scotland, the Executive has no strategy for the health service. At the Health Committee yesterday, we heard that there is no national strategy for work force planning to ensure that we have the right staff to do the right jobs.

Today, it has been revealed that the Executive will not meet its target of recruiting 600 new consultants by 2006. The Executive has no clear way of meeting the pledge for 12,000 nurses, which will hardly match the number leaving the profession, as the Royal College of Nursing said yesterday.

The common failing, whether on hospital closures and downgrading or on the lack of work force planning, is that the Executive has not developed a clear national strategy and plan for delivery. Ministers are flailing about, having to deal with one crisis after another. [Interruption.] I can tell Mr Kerr that merely changing the faces and shouting louder will not change a thing. Only a change of policy will do that.

I move amendment S2M-1823.2, to leave out "Rhona Brankin and".

Bill Aitken (Glasgow) (Con):

To parody the old song, what a difference a week makes. Is this the same Jack McConnell who, only last Thursday, enthusiastically applauded Malcolm Chisholm and gave him his full support? Within a few days, poor old Malcolm finds himself kicked into the long grass. One minister down, two hospitals saved—that just shows what effective opposition can do.

Looking around the chamber, I can see Karen Whitefield, Gordon Jackson, Helen Eadie and Richard Baker. What do they all have in common? As well as effectively being candidates for the Scottish minorities group, they are four of only 17 people on the Labour benches who have not held ministerial office or been given committee convenerships. Helen Eadie should not worry: her chance will come and, next time, she will be a minister.

What is happening here today is illustrative of exactly what is wrong with the Executive. Politicians once talked about ministries of all the talent. Here we have ministers totally and utterly bereft of talent. What does the First Minister do? Largely, he moves the same old, tired faces round the Cabinet room table. Nevertheless, as the justice portfolio falls into disrepute and despite all that is going wrong there, Cathy Jamieson retains her post. At a time when business and commerce are seriously concerned about the future of Scottish business, the First Minister does not negotiate with the Liberals to see whether a change in that ministry would be necessary.

What we are seeking to do today is not aimed at Johann Lamont personally. We have to practise the pronunciation of that name—only a Glasgow guy can get it right.

Johann Lamont (Glasgow Pollok) (Lab):

I point out that my obsession with the pronunciation of my name is intended to ensure that nobody thinks that I could have any connection with the Tory ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer, Norman Lamont.

Bill Aitken:

As I have pointed out before: a fragrant, if prickly, rose by any other name.

Is it not rather sad that Margaret Curran, who is one of the most effective ministers and with whom I have enjoyed many jousts over the years, should again be sidelined? She has been sidelined because she has shown a degree of ability. If she thinks that that is to damn her with faint praise, she should ask herself why she was moved. The reason was that Jack McConnell reckons that, like Lady Macbeth, Margaret Curran will be, if not the one to plunge the dagger into him, the one to arrange the mechanics of the deed.

This is a rather depressing morning because, with due apologies to Johann Lamont and Rhona Brankin, we are simply being asked to reshuffle the old, tired pack. That is not good enough. The reshuffle will not make a whit of difference to the way in which Scotland is run because it is not the faces that need to change but the policies. Imagination has been singularly lacking from everything that the Executive has done over the past five years. The no fresh talent initiative that Jack McConnell has introduced today will not make things better at all. I urge all members to support our amendment in the spirit in which we will be supporting the SNP amendment.

I move amendment S2M-1823.1, to leave out "and Johann Lamont".

Christine May (Central Fife) (Lab):

I have rarely heard anyone speak to an amendment without referring to it once, as Bill Aitken has just done. However, I rise to speak in support of the appointment of Johann Lamont as Deputy Minister for Communities. I know that, when the Parliament approves her appointment, she will make an excellent minister. I also know that she has proved to be a doughty fighter for social justice, the social economy and co-operation and collaboration for the benefit of our communities. She has kept me fully informed of the work that has been going on in the Communities Committee, which she has convened, and my constituents in Levenmouth and Glenrothes have benefited from the work that she has done. As a fellow Co-operative Party group member, she has consistently argued for the development of social enterprises and local co-operatives to bring the benefit to local areas of local economic development led by local people.

I cannot for the life of me understand why some people do not recognise the traits and abilities that Johann Lamont has shown. I find it inconceivable that anyone could suggest that she is not an ideal candidate for the job for which she has been nominated today—a nomination that I am proud to support. I also find it inconceivable that the communities brief should be so denigrated by members when our constituents are telling us day in, day out that they want better social cohesion in our communities and legislation to reduce binge drinking and to improve health. That is just what the Executive is doing in cutting deaths from cancer, strokes and coronary heart disease, in moving services closer to the people and in encouraging local enterprises with the involvement of local people. If any member thinks that that is not what we are here to do, I say to them that they do not know what the voters of Scotland want from our Parliament.

John Swinburne is right to say that there must be a consensus on the way forward on health. We cannot improve people's health, ensuring that they are sick less often, only to demand that there be thousands of hospital beds that are no longer needed to deal with traditional illnesses, as those illnesses are being dealt with in our communities.

The Cabinet reshuffle is about refreshing the team. It is about establishing a team behind which we can get and that we can lobby for improvements in our communities. I urge the Parliament to oppose the amendment in Bill Aitken's name and to support the First Minister in the appointment of the junior ministers.

Maureen Macmillan (Highlands and Islands) (Lab):

I support the First Minister's motion. I am proud and happy to be one of the 17 perpetual back benchers. The 17 Tories all have some title, so it ill behoves them to cast aspersions.

Bill Aitken:

Will the member give way?

Maureen Macmillan:

No.

I recently had the privilege of receiving a letter from Fergus Ewing, who addressed me as the minister for the Highlands and Islands, and I am pleased to be known as such.

Mr Frank McAveety (Glasgow Shettleston) (Lab):

Good idea.

Maureen Macmillan:

I thank Frank McAveety—it is a good idea.

I will speak particularly in support of Rhona Brankin's appointment as Deputy Minister for Health and Community Care. She has a proven record as a depute minister, having served well in the culture and sport brief, when she was generally agreed to have done an exceptionally good job for the arts and for women's sport.

As Deputy Minister for Rural Development, Rhona Brankin had to deal with the fishing brief at a time of difficult change for the industry. She had a reputation for being hard working and for not being afraid to confront difficult issues, despite the intimidation and bullying that she experienced, of which some parties should be ashamed.

Nicola Sturgeon (Glasgow) (SNP):

Will the member round up her tribute by giving us her views on why, if Rhona Brankin was so good, Jack McConnell sacked her as a minister?

Maureen Macmillan:

Such decisions are for the First Minister. The intention is to refresh the team. [Interruption.] Andy Kerr is prompting me, but I will not say what he suggests, because I do not think that Nicola Sturgeon would recover from it.

I am especially pleased to welcome Rhona Brankin as Deputy Minister for Health and Community Care because I know of her genuine interest in and commitment to the provision of health and care services and of her commitment to promoting healthy living. As an MSP for the Highlands and Islands, I am also pleased that the deputy minister will be a woman who lived for many years in Ross-shire and who has first-hand experience of rural health issues. I look forward to working with her and Johann Lamont and I support the First Minister's motion.

Mr Ted Brocklebank (Mid Scotland and Fife) (Con):

Members should make no mistake—an opportunity has been lost. Okay, it might be a bit melodramatic to talk in terms of deckchairs and the Titanic, but the event looks like the reshuffling of a well-worn deck of cards.

I take nothing away from the two ladies who are to join the ministerial team. I imagine that Johann Lamont—with the stress on the first syllable—or Lamont—with the stress on the second syllable—or, as the late, lamented Rab McNeil used to describe her, Johann Sebastian Lamont, is a capable lady. I know that Rhona Brankin created a bit of a stir in her fisheries days in places such as Peterhead and Pittenweem, where she was described as the incredible "No" woman. Never mind—I do not suppose that either regards herself as an ace in Jack's reshuffled pack.

As for the Executive's wild card, Frank McAveety, although I do not always share his taste in Armani tee-shirts, he would certainly never have chosen a pin-striped kilt to go with the highland jacket that the Parliament bought for him. I have always found him to be courteous and his tastes to be wide ranging—and I am not just talking about culinary aspects.

I do not understand why the rate for the job of Minister for Tourism, Culture and Sport, which was £73,000 a year for Frank McAveety, has suddenly risen to £87,000 a year for Patricia Ferguson. I have no problem with people receiving the rate for the job and I am sure that Patricia Ferguson and her husband, Bill Butler, need every penny of their joint £137,000 in parliamentary salaries, but Frank McAveety must be baffled. Why does his untried successor automatically merit £14,000 a year more than he received? Why is Nicol Stephen apparently worth an extra £14,000 a year at the same time? The important point is that, far from setting an example and taking a key opportunity to cut ministerial jobs in line with his pledge to be tougher on efficiency in Scotland, Jack McConnell has added another £30,000-plus to the ministerial wage bill. So much for leaner and more efficient government.

So much, too, for open and transparent government, as Annabel Goldie and Bill Aitken have pointed out. Last Thursday, after seeing off the Tory vote of no confidence, Malcolm Chisholm was surrounded by congratulatory fellow ministers. Jack McConnell even patted him on the back. Nobody noticed the dagger. Five days later, after publicly backing his Minister for Health and Community Care, Jack sacked him. Malcolm Chisholm's successor, Andy Kerr, has broad shoulders as well as Brylcreemed hair. Let us hope that he and his deputy—the winsome Rhona Brankin—keep a careful look over their shoulders to see what happens when they fail to stop the pack of cards that is the health service collapsing.

Poker players know that every hand is a winner and every hand is a loser. In the short term, those in Jack McConnell's new ministerial deck are certainly winners in a monetary sense, but Scotland's taxpayers are among the losers, especially people on fixed incomes who will see their council taxes soar, despite Andy Kerr's pious hopes last week. Jack the joker tells us that his newly shuffled team will produce the goods, but I have no doubt that the electorate will see through card-sharp Jack's latest shuffle from the bottom of the deck.

Jeremy Purvis (Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale) (LD):

Will the member give way?

Mr Brocklebank:

No.

Instead of more bloated salaries, more limos and more platitudes, when will the people of Scotland get a fair deal from the Executive?

Christine Grahame (South of Scotland) (SNP):

I congratulate Christine May; I think that I have now endured the longest job application in history. I note that Maureen Macmillan, who congratulated the First Minister on his appointments, supports him, but does not support the proposed cross-party group on hospital closures from which, I understand, she recently withdrew. I hope that the Belford protesters are well aware of that.

I say well done to Rhona Brankin, who has worked hard to get back to where she is and to earn a reprieve. I say to other members on the back benches that there is a route: they should do what Rhona Brankin did. I am sure that Christine May is paying attention to that.

Frank McAveety's ticket to the front seems to be on a rubber band, so I say to him, "Third time lucky; you never know."

To Ted Brocklebank, I say that the exercise is like moving deck chairs on the Titanic. Moving the Minister for Health and Community Care, Malcolm Chisholm, has brought dismay to the professionals.

Mr Kenneth Macintosh (Eastwood) (Lab):

Christine Grahame is interested in the talent on the Labour benches, but will she remind us how talented she is? Exactly what proportion of the vote from SNP members did she get when she stood for the leadership?

Christine Grahame:

I am delighted with the vote that I received from SNP members, and when our elected members voted, I came top of the list for the national executive committee, sunshine.

We are having this debate and going through all these cosmetic moves because constituents are hammering at the doors of Labour MPs and MSPs; the debate has nothing to do with addressing the concerns of Scotland's patients and professionals.

I will pose the real questions. Why is Scotland's health service so sick after seven years of Labour at Westminster and five years of Labour in the Scottish Parliament, with the Liberal Democrat lackeys propping it up? Why are there not enough consultants, nurses and dentists? NHS dentists are as scarce as hens' teeth. The list goes on. There are not enough beds. Waiting lists are growing: individuals—real people—are awaiting biopsies for seven months to find out whether they have cancer and people are waiting for seven to nine months for operations that would cure them. Professionals are talking about a crisis. Beleaguered professionals are going public on behalf of their patients.

As a former convener of the Health Committee, I have respect for Tom McCabe. He got into the portfolio and worked at it, but he had two agendas. The other agenda was the top job, but he was not going to get that, because of too much talent and—like his colleague, Ms Curran, who is a lady for whom I have great respect—too much ambition. As a result, she has been sidelined into dealing with business motions, which Euan Robson dealt with at one time—need I say more? What a fate for talent.

The other matter, of course, is the back benchers—wonderful people, but the problem is, what good is it for Scotland or the Parliament having them all parked on the back benches?

In the meantime, Scotland's health service sinks like the Titanic, despite the money invested in it, because team McConnell on the bridge has not simply charted the wrong course, but has charted no course at all. Instead, it has simply tacked this way and that according to the way the political wind is blowing. The national framework should have been started years ago, not delivered next spring.

I say to the members of the new ministerial health team that the iceberg is in their sights and they have little time to manoeuvre. In the next few days—not weeks or months—they must prove to the Scottish people that they are listening to the public, to the professionals and to this Parliament. They must apologise for the chaos that they have caused in the people's national health service, courtesy of the Liberal Democrats. I tell them to listen not to their MPs but to the Scottish public, who will hold them accountable at the next election. To coin a phrase that should come back to haunt them, the ministers have 24 hours to save the health service.

The First Minister:

I regret the fact that Bill Aitken was not really listening to what was said about the communities portfolio. He described the allocation of that portfolio to Malcolm Chisholm as putting Malcolm Chisholm "into the long grass." I say to Bill Aitken that businesses the length and breadth of Scotland genuinely believe—and I agree with them—that resolving the problems in our planning system and ensuring that there is more affordable housing in Scotland are fundamental to Scotland's future economic growth. If Bill Aitken thinks that those issues should be in the long grass, then he is wrong and out of touch with businesses and with the people whom they employ.

With due respect, I also suggest to those who believe that the position of Minister for Parliamentary Business is not significant and important in this new building, when we all have a responsibility to win the respect of people outside the building and throughout Scotland, that they are wrong. The position is central to the success of the Parliament and to earning the respect and confidence of the people of Scotland.

However, the main points that have been made in this short debate are about the health service, and I will make just two or three points about that. First, genuine debates are taking place and, in many cases, local communities have genuine concerns about individual proposals from individual health boards. However, the way in which to deal with that is to engage in the debates and to try to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem. If members on the Executive benches, including both Malcolm Chisholm and myself, had taken the same approach as the Opposition in Oban and Fort William, by scaremongering among local people and worrying them about the future of their services, and had not done what we did, which was to encourage those responsible for the local service—the professionals and others who can help us to make the decisions—to come together to find a long-term sustainable solution for the two hospitals, we would have been giving up absolutely on our duties and responsibilities.

I believe firmly in the power of dialogue between people who genuinely have the interests of the health service at heart. We will continue to pursue that approach in other parts of Scotland, just as we have this past week when that approach has worked in Glasgow and the western Highlands.

Shona Robison:

Will the First Minister give way?

The First Minister:

Ms Robison need not worry; I will come back to her remarks in a second.

When we do that, we will remember that, despite some individual controversial proposals, we have a £700 million modernisation plan for Glasgow hospitals that will replace the Victorian hospitals of the past with brand new facilities that will benefit local people in Glasgow and the length and breadth of Scotland; that, this year, we will have invested £282 million in vital new hospital buildings and equipment, which will improve the health service in Scotland, not cut it back or send it into decline or chaos; and that, as I said here last Thursday, we see more than 100 new or refurbished health centres, general practice surgeries, pharmacies and other family health facilities that are delivering care in the community where that care is most needed, which we can do nowadays with the best of technology and the best skilled staff. Those are the challenges that face the modern health service.

When I attended a charity ball organised by Enable about six months ago, I listened to a 64-year-old woman who had spent every year of her life since she was 15 in an institution in Lanarkshire. The institution has been knocked down and she is now in the community and has a job. Health care in the 21st century should be about that, not about the old buildings that the SNP wants to keep open.

Shona Robison:

Will the First Minister give way?

The First Minister:

No. Shona Robison cannot change her words now. She said that the SNP could never agree to closures and changes in the health service, but her analysis is very wrong.

Subject to a vote that I believe is about to take place in the Green party, only one party does not have enough talent on its benches to be led in this Parliament, and that is the SNP. I point out that those are not my words; we believe that there are plenty of talented people in the SNP who could lead the party in this Parliament, but its members chose—

Stewart Stevenson (Banff and Buchan) (SNP):

Will the First Minister recognise that while this party has a man representing Scotland in London his party has London's man representing it here?

The First Minister:

For the avoidance of doubt, I repeat the point to Stewart Stevenson and everyone else: only one party in the Parliament does not have the talent on its benches to be led here. We believe that the talent exists in this Parliament to lead the SNP here, but the SNP itself does not appear to have the confidence to believe that.

I absolutely assure members that the new team that I hope the Parliament will endorse will, on behalf of the partnership that has done so much for Scotland over the past five years, take us forward into the new stage of devolution. I say to Annabel Goldie that I, too, remember a phrase from my French lessons at school: il pleut toujours. It certainly felt like that back in Arran in the 1970s. However, today the sun is shining on this team's bright new prospects for Scotland. We will ensure that we take Scotland forward and I hope that the Parliament will agree to the motion.

The Deputy Presiding Officer (Trish Godman):

We now move to the vote. The first question is, that amendment S2M-1823.2, in the name of Nicola Sturgeon, which seeks to amend motion S2M-1823, in the name of Jack McConnell, on the appointment of junior Scottish ministers, be agreed to. Are members agreed?

Members:

No.