Good morning, everyone. The first item of business is general question time. As always, short questions and answers would be appreciated.
Public Sector Recruitment (North-east Scotland)
To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to support public sector recruitment in the north-east. (S4O-03871)
The recruitment of staff is a matter for individual public sector organisations and the Government provides a strong level of public funding to them to support that task. The Government also has a range of policies to support those who are finding times difficult financially. Our pay policy focuses resources on the lower paid by promoting the Scottish living wage alongside distinctive measures to address low pay.
The cabinet secretary agreed to discuss an Aberdeen weighting for salaries with public sector employees in the city and region last May to aid recruitment. What steps have been taken as a result of that undertaking? I understand that one Scottish Government agency in the city has already uplifted wages to reflect the high cost of living in Aberdeen. Does that make the case for the Scottish Government to support other public sector employees in the city in the same way?
Under the current arrangements, an element of Scottish public sector pay policy enables public sector organisations to make specific arrangements when they find it challenging to recruit individuals because of a particularly competitive labour market. Those provisions exist and have been used, and I know that that has been the subject of public comment in Aberdeen in relation to Marine Scotland. Those arrangements exist for public bodies that operate under the Government’s public sector pay policy so that they can take appropriate steps if they can demonstrate the market issues that have to be addressed by paying the support that is required to recruit for key vacancies.
Does the cabinet secretary agree that the development of affordable housing at the Craiginches prison site for a target market of public sector workers demonstrates the Scottish Government’s commitment to the recruitment and retention of public sector staff in the north-east?
Mr Allard makes a good and strong point. The Government acted in collaboration with NHS Grampian—in concert with the local authority into the bargain—to identify and take forward the site of the former Craiginches prison as a location to provide accommodation for key workers in the city, as we recognise the challenges with access to the housing market. Of course, that is in addition to the £47.6 million for affordable housing support that the Government makes available to assist Aberdeen City Council and Aberdeenshire Council in developing a broad range of affordable housing units.
Using the former Craiginches prison site was an initiative that the Government took to recognise the difficulties and challenges for key public sector workers in accessing affordable housing. I am delighted that we have made progress on that.
Briefly, Nanette Milne.
I am sure that the cabinet secretary will agree that a very important concern in Aberdeen is the difficulty in recruiting senior health professionals and retaining them in their posts once they discover the cost of housing in the area. I know about the Craiginches proposals, which will not necessarily provide what is wanted uniformly, and I know that the Government has been considering what could be done to alleviate the situation. Will the cabinet secretary give me any information about whether suitable housing might be available for incoming staff to purchase or rent?
A range of housing providers are active in the market in north-east Scotland. The investment that the Government is making in the Aberdeen western peripheral route will also open up new opportunities for significant housing developments on the city’s periphery.
I reiterate to Nanette Milne the point that I made in response to Christian Allard, which is that, when the Government was able to take the opportunity to expand the availability of affordable housing through the Craiginches site, we acted quickly and decisively to secure that for the public good. That is in addition to the strong programme of investment that the Government has made in supporting the housing market in north-east Scotland.
Care Sector Staff (High Standards)
To ask the Scottish Government how it ensures that consistently high standards are maintained by staff in the care sector. (S4O-03872)
Consistently high standards are maintained through the regulation of the social services workforce by the Scottish Social Services Council. Social care staff must register with the council and comply with its codes of practice, which set out the standards that workers must meet.
The quality of staffing in care services is also assessed as part of all Care Inspectorate inspections. The Care Inspectorate has a range of enforcement powers, with which services must comply or face closure. In 2013-14, 91 per cent of care services were awarded grades of good, very good or excellent for the quality of staffing.
I thank the cabinet secretary for her response, which dealt directly with the quality of staff. In the second of the 2014 Reith lectures, Dr Atul Gawande focused on systems in healthcare, from simple checklists to complex mechanisms and processes. He argued that they could be better designed to transform care, from the richest parts of the world to the poorest. Does the cabinet secretary agree that simple systems of checklists in our care settings for elderly patients would have a significant impact on the wellbeing of those patients, such as my constituent’s mother, who suffers from advanced dementia and does not receive regular and adequate hydration, while her caregivers have regular and legislated-for rest breaks?
We have in place a range of national care standards that describe what individuals can expect from a care provider. They focus on the quality of life that the person who uses a service experiences. The standards for care homes for older people, for example, cover day-to-day life, including keeping well and eating well, and, on hydration, include the standard that an individual can have hot and cold drinks whenever they like.
It is up to service providers to ensure that they meet such standards. Ways to do that could include the use of checklists, but the focus must be on caring for the individual and their needs.
Is it fair that many councils fund the council care sector at a rate that is up to 80 per cent higher than the independent sector rate, yet the same high-quality standards are—rightly—expected of all care providers?
This is a long-standing issue, which was regularly raised when I was the public health minister. We have good discussions through Scottish Care about how we can better support the sector to respond in the way that we need it to respond, which covers not just care homes but care at home. I would be happy to keep Mary Scanlon updated on how those discussions are going.
South Ayrshire Council (Accounts Commission Report)
To ask the Scottish Government what action it will take as a result of the statutory follow-up to the Accounts Commission report on South Ayrshire Council of February 2014. (S4O-03873)
Local authorities must use resources as efficiently as possible and deliver services effectively to ensure that taxpayers get the best possible value. The Accounts Commission published a best-value report on South Ayrshire Council in February 2014 and a further report in December 2014. The latter report notes that the council has made a good start on developing an improved framework to help it to demonstrate best value. The council now needs to continue the improvements that it has started in order to deliver improved services and achieve better outcomes for the people of South Ayrshire.
The local government minister normally writes to the relevant council leader when a best-value report is published, and I did so in the case of South Ayrshire. In my letter, I noted the progress that has been made and reiterated the Accounts Commission’s findings on the need for effective implementation and sustained improvements. I will take a close interest in the council’s progress and in the further report that the controller of audit has been asked to prepare within 18 months.
I, too, welcome the December update of the Accounts Commission review, which indicated some improvement in South Ayrshire Council’s performance. Does the minister agree that the council—and possibly all other councils—should have a limited number of key performance outcomes that are made widely known to its citizens and that all would benefit by ensuring that reports on the council’s performance against those key indicators are produced quarterly and communicated appropriately to those same citizens?
Councils must publish performance information that the Accounts Commission specifies. Under the 2014 direction, which was published in December, there are three headline indicators regarding corporate management, service performance and how much reporting is taking place against the requirements of the local government benchmarking framework. A lot of that is published online with support from councils.
The Scottish Government supports that approach, but any council is free to be proactive in publishing and promoting such performance data, especially when it is already collected. That could only help to ensure greater transparency, to ensure that local citizens have an idea of how their council is performing and to ensure that local government is paired with an informed local democracy.
Smith Commission (United Kingdom Legislation)
To ask the Scottish Government what recent discussions it has had with the United Kingdom Government regarding the publication of draft legislation arising from the recommendations of the Smith commission. (S4O-03874)
There have been a number of contacts with the UK Government at official and ministerial level to take forward implementation of the conclusions of the Smith commission. I have been assured by the Secretary of State for Scotland that the Scottish Government will be fully involved in further work to develop draft clauses for publication later this month.
What discussions have been had or plans made by the Scottish Government regarding early action on transferring powers that do not require primary legislation?
The Scottish Government has set out to the UK Government a number of areas where we believe that it is possible and practical for powers to be transferred in early course. One of the most significant priorities that were advanced by the First Minister in her discussion with the Prime Minister in December was the issue of 16 and 17-year-olds being able to vote in the 2016 Scottish Parliament elections. Progress is being made in that respect.
There are a number of other areas of activity where we would like to see swifter progress, not least of which is on the devolution of the work programme, which the Smith commission said should be the subject of early devolution and which the Scottish Government is concerned is the subject of contract extension, which we believe breaches the spirit of the Smith commission report.
I am sure that the cabinet secretary will be aware of Scottish Labour’s call yesterday for a section 106 order to be brought forward to transfer the responsibility for the job-creating powers of the work programme to the Scottish Government ministers. We have had positive comments of support for that, particularly from Glasgow City Council and the City of Edinburgh Council. Will the Scottish Government also support that call?
With the greatest respect to Duncan McNeil, he has obviously not been listening for some considerable number of weeks, because we have made that point to Parliament, consistent with the Smith commission report, in which the Smith commission said that the work programme was one of the areas that could be the subject of early devolution. We as a Government have been concerned that, at the same time as that report was being finalised, the Department for Work and Pensions was consulting about extending the existing work programme contracts and not enabling early and timeous devolution of the responsibility to the Scottish Parliament.
I welcome Mr McNeil’s support for what the Scottish Government has been trying to do. I encourage him to use every opportunity he has to say to the United Kingdom Government, consistent with the spirit of the Smith commission, that there should be early devolution of the work programme so that we can ensure that it is configured in a fashion to meet the needs and expectations of individuals who want to access employment in Scotland.
Like many in Scotland, I look forward to the launch and publication of draft clauses later this month. I hope that the cabinet secretary will respond in a far less curmudgeonly manner to that exciting development than he did to the Smith agreement, which seemed to frazzle in his hand within 24 hours of the agreement being published.
Everybody now accepts that the political debate in Scotland has moved on from what powers this Parliament has or will get to what we do with the powers. If the cabinet secretary is given the power over air passenger duty, which he is so enthusiastic should be devolved here, will he abolish the duty or will he just reduce it?
If I can be so ungallant to Baroness Goldie on a Thursday morning, being accused of being curmudgeonly by her is a bit like the pot calling the kettle black. [Interruption.]
Order.
Air passenger duty is one of the topics that we have said to the UK Government merits early devolution. We also made clear in the white paper exactly what our proposal would be on reducing air passenger duty. I have reaffirmed that position to Parliament, as have other ministers, and I urge the UK Government to take speedy and timeous action to devolve the responsibility to allow the Scottish Parliament do something different from the current regime that has been put in place by the UK Government.
Health and Social Care Integration (South Lanarkshire)
To thank the Scottish Government—sorry, although I hope that I might thank the cabinet secretary after her answer. [Laughter.] To ask the Scottish Government what progress has been made in integrating health and social care in South Lanarkshire. (S4O-03875)
Good progress has been made in South Lanarkshire to integrate adult health and social care. A shadow chief officer and shadow integration joint board have been appointed and are making significant progress in line with their agreed work plan.
I thank the cabinet secretary for her answer. There is concern in my East Kilbride constituency about hospital discharge delays because of the lack of home care packages. I have many constituency cases in which people’s wellbeing is being disadvantaged. Is she confident that matters are progressing well towards 1 April, which is the date of full implementation? What dialogue is being held with South Lanarkshire Council and NHS Lanarkshire to ensure that they are working towards an integrated care package?
I thank the member for her question. The health board and the local authority in South Lanarkshire are making good progress towards submitting their integration scheme for approval by 1 April. I am confident that they are on track to put in place their integrated arrangements during the coming year.
As I have said many times, tackling delayed discharge is my top priority. We have been working hard with partnerships over the past few weeks and will continue to do so.
We recently allocated £300,000 to the partners in South Lanarkshire. The council and the health board are matching the allocation so that they have the services in place to ensure that patients flow through the hospital and return home or to a care home place. At the latest delayed discharge census, 16 South Lanarkshire residents were delayed in hospital for more than four weeks. However, recent local information indicates that the delays are considerably reduced. I hope that the member will welcome that.
Delayed discharge is not just a problem in Linda Fabiani’s constituency.
Will the cabinet secretary meet the Opposition health teams to give an update on health and social care integration, particularly in relation to budgets? Will she ensure that the integrated resources framework for each local authority and health board area is published now, so that the budget can reflect the frameworks?
I am very happy to provide such a briefing. A lot of work is going on with individual partnerships—first, to help them through the winter period, when there are obviously significant challenges and, secondly, to take advantage of integration from 1 April. I am happy to give Richard Simpson and the other Opposition spokespeople a full update on the plans that are being put in place to ensure that we do that.
NHS Lanarkshire and NHS Forth Valley (Meetings)
To ask the Scottish Government when it last met representatives of NHS Lanarkshire and NHS Forth Valley. (S4O-03876)
The Scottish Government regularly meets representatives of NHS Lanarkshire and NHS Forth Valley to discuss issues of interest
Is the cabinet secretary aware the many NHS health boards, such as NHS Lanarkshire, are issuing a directive that a cheaper drug be prescribed for certain routine complaints and infections rather than the tried and tested drug to patients with repeat prescriptions? That frequently results in the patient then experiencing side effects and having to make a follow-up appointment and the original repeat prescription having to be reissued. Given all that and the cost implications involved, should the matter be looked into?
Those are clinical decisions. However, I am more than happy to look into the case that she cites. If she writes to me with more information, I will have a full look at the detail of the issue that she raises.