Cromarty Firth (Ship-to-ship Oil Transfer)
To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on the potential environmental impact if the Cromarty Firth port authority’s application for ship-to-ship oil transfer in the Cromarty Firth is granted. (S4O-05554)
As the member will be aware, many concerns have been expressed about the potential impact on our marine environment of the current application. He may also be aware that, a few years ago, when a similar application was made elsewhere in Scottish waters, the then Minister for Environment and Climate Change, Paul Wheelhouse, wrote to the Secretary of State for Transport in the United Kingdom Government to seek greater powers for the Scottish Government in this reserved matter. Unfortunately, that request was declined. However, I have written again this week to make the same request. I have also made it clear to the secretary of state that the Scottish Government expects to be fully consulted prior to a final decision being taken on the application.
I am pleased to hear that the cabinet secretary has written again and that he has asked that the Scottish Government be fully consulted before a decision is taken. There is huge concern about the issue in my constituency and in neighbouring constituencies to the north of the firth, such as that of Rob Gibson, including a worry that the Maritime and Coastguard Agency will just follow a process and automatically grant a licence if the main conditions are agreed to. Will the cabinet secretary elaborate a wee bit more on what pressure he is prepared to put on the UK Government to devolve the power to us to deal with the matter?
I can assure Dave Thompson and other members that I will continue to apply that pressure. At the very least, the Scottish Government should be involved in the decision-making process. Our adviser, Scottish Natural Heritage, has submitted to the consultation as a statutory consultee. I have a copy of its submission, which indicates that it disagrees with the conclusion of the environmental statement about the residual likely significant impact on European designated sites. SNH advises the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, as a competent authority in the matter, to carry out an appropriate assessment. It believes that mitigation can reduce but not eliminate the risks to the integrity of several designated interests and says that it is not possible to conclude that there will be no adverse effect on the site integrity in relation to the Moray Firth special area of conservation, which is for bottlenose dolphins.
The cabinet secretary is aware that the consultation has been going on for months. There is great concern, as has been highlighted by my colleague Dave Thompson, yet there has been utter silence from the cabinet secretary. Will he reflect on whether he was wise to wait until after the consultation before expressing a view?
It is only right that the Cromarty Firth port authority should carry out a consultation on extending an existing activity. What I have said publicly in the past few weeks is that we would await the advice of our own advisers, who in turn are statutory consultees for the application that went through the consultation. However, the consultation has closed. Now that I am aware of the views of Scottish Natural Heritage and other advisers, as members can imagine I am very concerned about what I am learning and am taking a close interest in what now happens in response to the consultation.
This is a reserved matter. Unlike the situation with Forth Ports a few years ago, when a different type of oil was being proposed and different circumstances applied, there are still very real concerns about the Cromarty Firth application and the potential impact on the marine environment. That is why we will take a close interest in the issue and make our views known, to both the Cromarty Firth port authority and the UK Government.
General Practitioners (Reported Shortage in Rural Areas)
To ask the Scottish Government what steps it is taking to address the reported shortage of GPs in rural areas. (S4O-05555)
Ministers are fully committed to supporting primary care, including GPs, and ensuring that all communities in Scotland, including remote and rural, receive safe, reliable and sustainable health care services. Over the next three years, the Scottish Government will invest £85 million as part of the primary care fund. As part of that, £2.5 million will be invested in work to explore with key stakeholders the issues surrounding GP recruitment and retention, which can be particularly challenging in remote and rural areas.
I am grateful for that response but, in Dumfries and Galloway, there are currently 14 GP vacancies and that number is soon to go up to 16 with two impending retirements. Only four out of 12 training scheme places were taken up this year, and 25 per cent of GPs are over 55 and do not appear to be persuaded to continue working past retirement by the Government’s proposed contract. Why is it that, since the Government came to power, the proportion of the NHS budget that is allocated to GPs has reduced from 9.8 per cent in 2005-06 to 7.4 per cent in 2014-15? What action will the Government take to address the decline in the NHS budget to make general practice more attractive to young doctors and encourage older practitioners to remain in practice?
Under the Government, the number of GPs who are employed in Scotland has risen by 7 per cent to nearly 5,000 and we have recently announced an extra 100 training places. I accept that more needs to be done. That is why we are in the midst of negotiating a new contract, so there is no new contract for GPs to reject or otherwise; we have only just begun to negotiate it with the British Medical Association. I hope that the member will appreciate that.
If we get it right, the new model and contract have the potential to deliver Sir Lewis Ritchie’s vision for primary care, which is based on a multidisciplinary team in which everyone works to the top of their skill level, thus freeing up GPs to spend more time with the more complex cases. That is what we want to deliver and we will commit to more GPs to deliver that model; we have already said that.
I hope that the member appreciates that we are doing a range of important things to deliver a good future for GPs in Scotland. I hope that, through the junior doctor recruitment that will be happening in the next month, we will see a lot of junior doctors who want to come to Scotland to train for general practice here because it is a great opportunity for them.
“Personal Footcare Guidance” (Review)
To ask the Scottish Government whether it plans to review the “Personal Footcare Guidance”. (S4O-05556)
The national “Personal Footcare Guidance” was launched in September 2013 and we have no plans to review it at this time.
I thank the minister for her answer. She might be aware that my colleague, Patricia Ferguson, recently raised concerns with the cabinet secretary about the podiatry service that is being offered by NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde. Although I do not want to go into individual cases, I have examples of elderly and blind constituents who have been told to cut their own nails.
My concern is about the volume of complaints that we are receiving about the service. Will the minister seek statistics from the health board about the number of users who are being turned away from a service that they could previously access so that we can be assured that the upturn in the number of complaints is not a result of attempts to reduce costs? If the minister believes that the guidance is being followed appropriately, I urge her to consider whether unintended consequences are flowing from the guidance that was issued in 2013.
I thank the member for his supplementary question and I will be happy to look into the figures for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde.
Personal care is available without charge for those people who are over 65 and have been assessed by local authority as needing it. The legislation includes keeping fingernails and toenails trimmed as one of the aspects of personal care. However, it need not necessarily be carried out by a podiatrist. Detailed information is available from health boards and NHS inform about how one can look after one’s feet or have someone else look after them.
European Union Membership (Referendum)
To ask the Scottish Government what discussions it is having with the United Kingdom Government regarding the proposed referendum on EU membership. (S4O-05557)
Although the Scottish Government was not consulted on the UK Government’s proposals, I last spoke to the Minister for Europe, David Lidington, on 2 February and received an update on the Tusk letter and the UK Government’s position.
The Scottish Government believes that continued European Union membership is overwhelmingly in Scotland’s best interests, which is why we are making a positive, constructive case for staying in the EU.
It is essential to ensure that voters are fully informed of the arguments about EU membership and, as such, the Scottish Government is strongly opposed to a June referendum, as has been suggested. As a June date would cut across the election campaigns for the Scottish Parliament and other devolved Administrations, the First Ministers of the devolved Administrations wrote a joint letter to the Prime Minister on 3 February urging him to defer a referendum to ensure a debate that would be free from other campaigning distractions.
One of the threads of the UK Government’s negotiating position is to give greater powers to national Parliaments to block or scrap EU legislation. My understanding is that the UK Government has been exploring the possibility of a sovereignty bill to enshrine that. According to The Sunday Times, that could be either a British bill of rights or another bill. Does the cabinet secretary share my concerns about the implications for Scotland and will she seek urgent clarification of the UK Government’s intentions?
We share Roderick Campbell’s concerns. Alex Neil and Michael Matheson are, from their respective portfolios, seeking urgent clarification from the UK Government in relation to any proposals for a British bill of rights. We will stand firm in our position that we do not want diminution of any human rights across these isles. In addition, we need to respect the sovereignty of this place and of the people of Scotland.
On sovereignty and the so-called red card, I point out that the red card is meant to allow groups of national Parliaments to block EU legislation. It is worth noting that the existing yellow card procedure, which has a far lower threshold than that proposed for the red card, has been used only twice since 2009, and that the orange card has never been used.
NHS Lanarkshire (Meetings)
To ask the Scottish Government when it last met NHS Lanarkshire. (S4O-05558)
Ministers and Government officials meet regularly with representatives of all health boards, including NHS Lanarkshire.
Was the out-of-hours service in East Kilbride discussed at the last meeting? When can the residents of the town expect an update on the current interim situation?
As Linda Fabiani knows, the recommended interim model that NHS Lanarkshire introduced in the short term has given it an opportunity to develop a longer-term solution around a broad range of out-of-hours proposals, including for the East Kilbride area. I have made it clear to NHS Lanarkshire that those proposals must be developed in consultation with staff and the public, and that they must be completely in line with the outcome of the national review of out-of-hours services, the report of which was published at the end of November. I understand that NHS Lanarkshire intends to involve Sir Lewis Ritchie in discussions on taking forward the proposals, to ensure that what it is considering is very much in line with the national recommendations. I will be very happy to write to Linda Fabiani and give her a further update, in due course.
Climate Change Budget (Reduction)
To ask the Scottish Government for what reason it has reduced the climate change budget. (S4O-05559)
The draft budget embeds climate change spend within relevant portfolios, including support for renewable energy, energy efficiency, sustainable travel, waste reduction and natural carbon capture through forestry and peatland restoration.
Reductions are predominately in the energy budget; it is widely recognised that the United Kingdom Government is hampering the renewable energy sector and putting at risk millions of pounds of investment in the Scottish and UK economies. If the UK Government had kept to its previous commitments, the viability of many projects would not now be in question and Scottish Government support would have been maintained. In addition, the UK Government’s axing of its green deal home improvement fund led directly to Scotland losing £15 million in ring-fenced consequentials that supported our home energy efficiency programme cashback scheme.
Despite the raft of UK regulatory and policy changes in energy and energy efficiency, we have increased our climate change budget across other areas by £13.3 million.
It is disappointing to hear blame being passed to the UK Government, when those issues can be made priorities by the Scottish Government. Agriculture, for instance, accounts for a significant proportion of greenhouse gas emissions, so it is disappointing to see a reduction in the rural land use budget. How will that affect emissions?
After the failure to meet the climate change emissions targets again this year, what engagement has the Scottish Government climate change sub-committee had across portfolios on the draft budget and climate change?
The challenge that we have is that this Parliament does not have all the levers that it needs—not least in the crucial area of energy policy, in which we need the UK Government to assist Scotland’s drive to develop renewables and carbon capture and storage, and not to stymie it, as it has done recently.
We are developing a third report on policies and proposals, which will contain an assessment of the progress that has been made towards implementing policies and proposals that were set out in “Low Carbon Scotland: Meeting our Emissions Reduction Targets 2013-2027. The Second Report on Proposals and Policies”. It will include any adjustments that the Scottish ministers consider are required. It is our aim, wherever possible, to overachieve against future annual targets in order to recover the difference by which the earlier targets were missed. RPP3 will also set out proposals and policies to compensate, in future years, for excess emissions from previous annual targets.
Train Services (Edinburgh to Glasgow)
To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on extending train services between Edinburgh and Glasgow later into the evening. (S4O-05560)
The Scottish Government, as part of the ScotRail franchise agreement, specifies that later evening services are to be provided to cater for special and big events across the network, including in Edinburgh and Glasgow.
I welcome the improvements to the line and the minister’s assurance that such services will be provided when big events are on. However, it is important that people have reliable and frequent transport options that enable them to get home not only after attending events and gigs in the city, but after enjoying an evening that goes on until late.
The minister knows, of course, that Glasgow is now home to the third biggest venue in the world. There would be many benefits to introducing a later train service, where the conditions are agreed by staff and unions on an on-going basis. It would benefit towns such as Linlithgow in between the two cities. Will the minister look into maximising the potential for improvements to the line?
Alison Johnstone raises a valid point. There have been studies and a cost benefit analysis looking at the output of such an investment. In the context of the Government’s substantial multimillion-pound investment in infrastructure, track and rolling stock, I am happy to look again at further improvements that could be made in order to maximise rolling stock to suit the timetable, and to see what further support we can provide for economic growth.
Mental Health Issues (Awareness)
To ask the Scottish Government how it is supporting local organisations that raise awareness of issues surrounding mental health. (S4O-05561)
Mental health is absolutely a priority for the Scottish Government, and we continue to work closely with our partners, including the national health service, local authorities, the third sector, service users and carers, to ensure that we offer the best quality of life and opportunities for all people with mental health problems.
The Scottish Government funds the see me project, the Scottish Association for Mental Health, Voices of Experience, the Scottish recovery network and NHS Health Scotland, which all work with local organisations to raise awareness of mental health issues.
Last year, we announced additional investment of £100 million to improve mental health services over five years. The 2016-17 draft budget provides a further £50 million, resulting in a total package of £150 million to 2019-20.
Staff members at the Penumbra Fife youth project, which works in every high school in Fife, are now on 90 days’ notice as Fife Council has cut the organisation’s funding without prior consultation of service users. That will have a severe impact on crucial services that it provides.
Will the minister agree that early intervention is an important mechanism to prevent mental health problems and helps young people who are at risk to focus on positive outcomes?
That question is very important, not just locally for David Torrance but because this week is children’s mental health week. I certainly agree with Mr Torrance that early intervention with youngsters in particular is crucial.
I concur that Penumbra Fife is a great organisation. I am aware of the situation, although Penumbra has not approached me directly in relation to the matter. As Mr Torrance said, the decision is one for Fife Council, but I would certainly expect the council to have considered the impact that closure may have on young people, and to have in place plans to mitigate any adverse effects.
Glasgow Queen Street Tunnel (Closure)
To ask the Scottish Government what impact the closure of the Glasgow Queen Street tunnel will have on commuters in the Clydebank and Milngavie constituency. (S4O-05562)
The ScotRail alliance has developed a temporary timetable for the Queen Street tunnel closure that minimises the impact on all commuters and allows the vast majority of customers to continue to travel to and from Glasgow by train.
Four services will continue to operate each hour from Milngavie to Glasgow, and customers using Clydebank will experience a reduced service from four to two trains per hour. During the tunnel closure, there will be twelve trains each hour connecting the west of the city with Glasgow Queen Street low level and Glasgow Central low level.
With the upgrading works taking place at Queen Street to enhance our railways, will the minister, after the works are carried out, look at the possibility of a feasibility study for a rail halt at the Allander leisure centre, located on the branch line between Hillfoot and Milngavie, in order to increase capacity?
I understand that the council is carrying out an appraisal of that in line with our guidance. I am happy to look at the matter and to give it due consideration through, for example, the Scottish stations fund.
Before we move to the next item of business, members will wish to join me in welcoming to the gallery Her Excellency Päivi Luostarinen, the ambassador of Finland to the United Kingdom. [Applause.]