First Minister (Engagements)
At 11 o’clock this morning, I joined members from across the chamber in observing two minutes’ silence in remembrance of the servicemen and women who have made the ultimate sacrifice. On Sunday, I will formally mark armistice day by attending the remembrance Sunday commemorative event in Edinburgh. I know that MSPs will attend their constituency events throughout the country.
The First Minister’s Scottish Futures Trust was supposed to raise patriotic bonds for patriotic bridges, patriotic schools and patriotic hospitals, but it has raised no money and built no bridges, schools or hospitals. It was also supposed to end the need to buy in expensive consultants. How is that going?
As Iain Gray well knows, the Scottish Futures Trust is involved in billions of pounds of capital investment projects throughout the country. The returns and the savings that it has made have been appropriately audited and they amount to hundreds of millions of pounds.
If the Scottish Futures Trust is so efficient and so cheap, why did it spend £872,000 on consultants last year? It has 26 staff and a chief executive who earns £200,000 a year, but it spends £2,000 a day on consultants and it has yet to build a single school.
Let us deal with the reality of the Scottish Futures Trust, which is supporting projects that are worth £7.3 billion. The SFT’s efficiency savings have been externally audited. The audit shows that, in 2009-10, £35 of benefit and savings was achieved for every £1 that was spent on the SFT.
Order.
I remind Iain Gray that the organisation that he derides week after week in the chamber has delivered 20,000 modern apprenticeships across Scotland, which is one third more than the Labour Party ever achieved in its term of office.
Here is a tip for the First Minister: he must get the answer to question 1 after that question and not find it after question 2 but give it anyway.
Order.
Of course I welcome—[Interruption.]
Read the Official Report.
Mr Swinney.
Of course I welcome 20,000 apprenticeships.
We argued for putting the money for them into the budget. The point is that Skills Development Scotland also spent £2.3 million on consultants last year, so we could have had another 1,500 apprenticeships instead of an army of consultants. This is the organisation that is meant to be creating opportunity for our young people and ensuring that we have the skills that we need to get the economy growing. It is no wonder that our recovery is slow.
If Iain Gray did not want to know about the Scottish Futures Trust, he should not have asked me a question about it. If he did not want to hear another answer on Skills Development Scotland, he should not have asked me about it in question 3.
Tell that to the unemployed.
Mr McNeil.
That is higher than the rate of growth in the rest of the United Kingdom and is second in the G8 only to that of the Federal Republic of Germany, so it is a highly satisfactory figure. The challenge for Scotland and for us all is whether we can sustain that level of recovery in the face of the greatest public spending cutbacks in London for more than a generation.
This time, he gave the answer to a question that I did not ask at all. The question was: how much is Scottish Enterprise spending on consultants? He does not know. I will tell him. Last year, it spent £21 million on consultants.
If Iain Gray wants answers to questions that he should have asked, he should have asked them, instead of rambling across the range of economic statistics.
Prime Minister (Meetings)
I have no plans to meet the Prime Minister in the near future.
The First Minister is a passionate advocate of independence and autonomy for the governance of Scotland. Why is he such an entrenched opponent of independence and autonomy for the governance of schools?
As Annabel Goldie knows, we are plotting a new future for the schools of Scotland. We have welcomed innovative ideas, for example in East Lothian. I understand that a full report on the initiative, after consultation, will be presented in December. Many other initiatives are under way around Scotland. East Lothian Council is involved in talks with Midlothian Council about joint delivery of education in the two authorities. Talks between other local authorities are taking place in parallel to that.
I realise that I am no competition for Finnish models.
Order.
Perhaps that should be Jack Russell.
I congratulate Annabel Goldie on embracing the obvious model analogy into which I was gallantly and chivalrously trying not to lead her.
Secretary of State for Scotland (Meetings)
I have no plans to do so in the near future.
NHS Education for Scotland is a quango that is responsible for training doctors and nurses in Scotland. Was it really a good idea for eight people to be sent to a conference in Miami in May?
NHS Education for Scotland does an important job for education and training across the health service in Scotland. There are aspects of NES’s recent activities that the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing has recently spoken about, but I do not think that Tavish Scott should deflect from the crucial and important job that it does for training and education across Scotland’s national health service.
I do not think that I did. The issue is what NES has been up to in this case. Six of the eight Scottish delegates to the conference in Miami were paid for by that NHS quango, but the other two were paid for directly by the Scottish Government at St Andrew’s house. These are difficult financial times, and everyone else in Scotland knows that every penny has to be watched carefully, yet NES does not even know how much it costs to send all those people abroad, and it reacts to criticism by wanting to recruit more spin doctors to explain it all away.
As Tavish Scott well knows, and as I know he was about to inform the chamber, the course concerned was on professional competence in medicine. It was a medical-related training course. He, and his handyman next to him, Mr Rumbles, would not wish to give any other impression—including from the holiday brochure that they have there.
That is the First Minister’s standard answer to anything that I ever say in the chamber. I asked about the First Minister’s performance and about his Government. The only thing that changes about Mr Salmond is the excuses, which get longer.
The performance of this Government has been to freeze consultant salaries, to freeze distinction awards and to freeze management fees. The performance of the Liberal-Labour Government was to allow increases in all three components of salary. If Mr Scott disnae like the answers to the question, he should not open up to examination the deplorable record of the Liberal Democrats in government in Scotland in the past—[Interruption.]
Order, Mr Scott.
And, of course, there is now the extraordinary record of the Liberal-Conservative coalition that is in government in London.
The First Minister will be aware of recent events affecting Campbeltown. What actions can he and his ministers take to minimise and prevent the possible unemployment triple whammy in Campbeltown, owing to the difficulties that are now faced by the Skykon wind tower company—which the First Minister opened—and to the collapse of Highlands and Islands Enterprise’s construction framework contractor Rok, which owes its subcontractors in Campbeltown, including McFadyens Contractors, hundreds of thousands of pounds? Its work on the new Skykon factory, which is vital for making Skykon more competitive, is 90 per cent complete but still needs to be finished. What will the First Minister do to prevent an unemployment meltdown in Campbeltown and to ensure continuity for Skykon, which is the only wind tower producer in Scotland?
The Skykon group has encountered financial problems, which, as Jamie McGrigor probably knows, are sourced not on the Campbeltown contract but across the range of activities in the group. The Scottish Government hosted a meeting of interested parties on Tuesday, in an attempt to be of assistance in assembling a rescue package, which of course depends on a number of agreements, particularly from Skykon financiers, and on the financial stability of the rest of the group. Contingency plans are also being prepared.
Roads (Winter Weather Assistance)
The Scottish Government continues to work with local authority partners to improve winter resilience across Scotland. A report commissioned by the Scottish ministers on the lessons learned from last winter was published in August and included 11 recommendations, which are being progressed jointly with local authority partners.
I am sure that the First Minister agrees that the conditions that we experienced last year were by no means new to Scotland and that the increase in admissions to accident and emergency units last winter was linked to the severe weather conditions.
Yes, I will. That was one of a range of successful initiatives that were taken in response to the emergency conditions last winter. There was general acknowledgement in the Parliament, and rightly so, that our authorities’ response to the exceptional conditions was, on the whole, extremely good and extremely competent. It is to everyone’s credit that despite last year’s good performance, no one is resting on their laurels and people are considering the lessons that can be learned to improve performance if we are again hit by an exceptional winter.
The First Minister will recall the concern that was expressed during last winter’s fearsomely bad weather about the lack of Scottish Government action to assist in the identification of vulnerable people, particularly older people, who were trapped in their homes without the support that they needed, because carers were unable to reach them, despite their best efforts. Will the First Minister agree to establish a Scotland-wide telephone helpline in preparation for a recurrence of the weather that we experienced last winter, so that there is no repeat of last year’s situation, when people had to access information via the web, despite the fact that disproportionately fewer older people have access to the internet, and when in some circumstances people phoned local numbers that were not staffed?
Local authority helplines are in existence to deal with that eventuality. The disagreement with Johann Lamont was that she thought that we could centralise such a function effectively; in our opinion, it was far better to apply the help that was required at local level. The response of our services was exceptional.
Forensic Services
I am surprised that Lord Foulkes does not already know that, as the Cabinet Secretary for Justice clearly explained the position at the meeting with Lothian MSPs on 28 October. As, I suspect, he does know, an announcement will be made later this year.
I am grateful to the First Minister, because that gives us some time. Is the First Minister aware that Grampian and Lothian police boards support option 2, to keep a full forensic service in Aberdeen and Edinburgh? Since I have noticed that the First Minister has a particular enthusiasm for all-party campaigns to keep services open, will he, as a Grampian MSP, join me and other Lothian and Grampian MSPs in our campaign to keep a full forensic service at Aberdeen and Edinburgh? If we do not do that, it will be a victory for the criminals whom those services have helped to put behind bars.
I have just been handed a note that explains why Lord George Foulkes did not know the answer to his question: it is because he stormed oot the meeting after five minutes and did not hear what the Cabinet Secretary for Justice said. In his newly found devotion to all-party consensus campaigns, if George Foulkes would hang aboot for mair than five minutes, perhaps the people of the Lothians would be better served by their MSP, or are we to conclude that the Scottish Parliament’s loss is the House of Lords’s gain?
Is the First Minister aware that the Aberdeen staff have proposed an alternative to option 2, which I support? Can he confirm that the Cabinet Secretary for Justice is not restricted to choosing one of the four options on which the Scottish Police Services Authority consulted?
As the member knows, the SPSA board initiated a searching examination with customers across Scotland on a national service model for the whole of the forensic service, and the options paper presented the recommendations from the SPSA, and the cabinet secretary will announce his decision on the matter before the end of the year. He will take into account all the positive suggestions that have been made from a range of interests around the country, given the importance of the issue.
Consultants Distinction Awards
The Scottish Government has taken, and will continue to take, action to curb excessive payments to higher paid public servants. We have already frozen the value of existing distinction awards at last year’s level for consultants in Scotland. We have also restricted new awards to those that become available from consultants who leave the awards scheme. That has released £2 million of savings in the current financial year.
I thank the First Minister for his comprehensive answer, and I am pleased that he is giving evidence to the review, which should ensure that the award scheme will come into line with other public sector pay schemes and is affordable.
I am sure that Nanette Milne does not mean to do this, but she does not give the full canvas of increases in the distinction awards year after year over the past 10 years. I have the figures before me now, and they show that there has been an increase in distinction awards every single year from 2000, 2001 and 2002 until the past two years, when they were frozen by the health secretary after, if I remember correctly, vigorous questioning from Dr Ian McKee.
So it is somebody else’s problem.
I hear Johann Lamont muttering that it is somebody else’s problem. If we had had an exodus of consultants from the Scottish NHS to the English NHS, I suspect that Johann’s colleagues would have been the first to complain that we had not considered the consequences of our action. Far from waiting for a Labour Government that refused to take any action, or even waiting for a Liberal-Conservative Government that has now established the review that we called for, the health secretary has already taken action to freeze the awards for the first time since devolution, clearing up the mess that we inherited from the Labour-Liberal Administration.
We will have a very brief supplementary question from Jeremy Purvis.
In 2009, the Scottish Government put in place not a UK scheme but a new Scottish scheme that will come into force next year. The First Minister is right that there were no new awards in 2010, but the clinical awards for next year include a new round for 25 additional awards, totalling £1.25 million, scheduled for February 2011. Before it is too late, will the First Minister ensure that no new awards are issued next February?
As Jeremy Purvis should know, the budget is published next week, and I suspect that he should wait, like everyone else, to see the budget rather than make assumptions about what is in it.
It is your scheme.
What we have had no explanation of is why, under the years of Labour-Liberal Administration in this chamber, the distinction awards scheme increased year after year, without any thought of any Liberal minister, including that stringent guarantor of the public purse Tavish Scott, of restricting the awards scheme.
Briefly please, First Minister.
And I know that nobody in the Liberal Democrat party wants to be reminded of their current record at Westminster, but just occasionally we in the other political parties are entitled to say that we do not need to look at the crystal ball of future Liberal policies—we can read the book of their track record in administration in Scotland.
On a point of order, Presiding Officer.
Order. Members are quite entitled to raise points of order.
Presiding Officer, it is a very serious point of order. Will you investigate the proceedings at the meeting to which the First Minister referred? I can tell you categorically, as can the other people who were present, that the reason why I left the meeting was that the Cabinet Secretary for Justice refused to give a date for publication—[Interruption.] Let me finish. He refused to publish the report, and he said that he had not even read it. It is categorically the case, as members from other parties who were present can prove, that the First Minister has misled the chamber.
The member has made his point, but it is not a point of order for me to consider.
On a point of order, Presiding Officer. I am sure that it is not the First Minister’s intention to mislead Parliament, so I wonder whether he will correct two factual errors that he has made. First, it is not the case that consultant salaries have been frozen, as he said earlier. Secondly, the rise in the salary of the medical director by £50,000 to a staggering £235,000 was under the ministerial direction of the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing. She sanctioned that increase.
It is the First Minister who is responsible for what he says.