Engagements
To ask the First Minister what engagements she has planned for the rest of the day. (S4F-03161)
I have engagements to take forward the Government’s programme for Scotland.
At the age of just 29, Gordon Aikman was diagnosed with motor neurone disease. After years as a healthy and athletic young man, he is now in a wheelchair and relies on visits from care workers three times a day. He is dying.
I was in the room with the First Minister when she met Gordon and promised to look at the lack of MND nurses in Scotland, and I listened closely last January when she announced plans to double the number of specialist MND nurses in Scotland. We now know that that pledge has not been met—Nicola Sturgeon has not kept the promise that she made directly to Gordon Aikman.
As Nicola Sturgeon herself said:
“For people living with MND this is urgent, time is not on their side”.
Will the First Minister give a precise date for when she will deliver on her promise to double the number of specialist MND nurses who are working in our national health service?
I say to Kezia Dugdale, first that my admiration for Gordon Aikman, for the way in which he has confronted the dreadful diagnosis with which he was faced and for the way in which he has conducted his campaign, knows no bounds. As I have been over past months, I continue to be determined to work with him and others to ensure that we fulfil our obligation to improve healthcare and social care for people with MND and other devastating illnesses of that type.
My second point is that I genuinely do not think that it is fair of Kezia Dugdale to say that we are not fulfilling the commitment that we gave to Gordon Aikman. The funding is being provided and health boards are in the process of recruiting additional nurse specialists. The delays are to do with difficulties in recruitment and getting the right people with the right skills into post, but the process is continuing, progress is being made and over the next few weeks I expect health boards to do what they require to do to fulfil the commitment to double the number of MND nurses.
Of course, the commitment was to double the number of MND nurses and to ensure that MND nurses are funded by the national health service. Those are commitments to which I remain absolutely committed.
I am sorry, but the First Minister promised that that would be in place by the end of October, and it is now January.
I hear the First Minister talk about Gordon Aikman’s courage. All the party leaders in Parliament have had their photo opportunity with Gordon and have praised him for his bravery. However, he does not want our admiration and he did not let the cameras into his life for the sake of celebrity. He did it to leave this world a legacy for those who come after him.
There are thousands of people across the country who are coming to the end of their lives and who need support. Just yesterday, new figures were published that confirm that at least 276 people died while waiting for a social care package. It is a scandal that it took a dying man to make a freedom of information request to expose the scale of the social care crisis in this country. Can the First Minister tell me how her £500 million of cuts to council budgets will help to solve the social care crisis?
Let me take the two issues in turn.
First, on MND nurse specialists, to date this Government has invested £2.4 million of recurring funding in a new specialist nursing and care fund. That includes up to £700,000 to fulfil the commitment that from 1 April 2015 all MND clinical nurse specialists will be paid for from public funds. That is now in place and is fulfilling the first part of the commitment that I made to Gordon Aikman.
As I said in my earlier answer, we remain committed to ensuring that the number of MND specialist nurses is doubled and that that happens as swiftly as possible. We are seeing progress. I outlined the fact that this is not about funding but about making sure that health boards recruit the right people with the right skills into the posts. We have already seen progress towards meeting the goal in the five NHS boards that employ MND nurses. NHS Lothian and NHS Tayside have already increased capacity, and NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde has appointed two new MND specialist nurses who will take up their posts later this month. All other NHS boards that employ MND clinical nurse specialists are in the process of recruiting additional nurses. That is the commitment that was made: it will be delivered in full.
On social care, what Kezia Dugdale did not refer to in her question—perhaps unsurprisingly—is the fact that, in the draft budget that the Deputy First Minister outlined to Parliament just before Christmas, we made a commitment to build on our work to integrate health and social care. That is the biggest reform of how we deliver healthcare that the country has seen since the establishment of the NHS. We committed to building on that by putting an additional £250 million from the NHS into social care next year, in addition to the extra money that we had made available to support integration of health and social care.
Kezia Dugdale talked about the number of hours of social care that are delivered. As the population ages and the needs of older people become more intensive and more acute, we must expand social care. That is the reason for the budget decision that was taken. Kezia Dugdale might be interested to know—if she does not know it already—that we have, over the past few years, been seeing an increase in the number of hours of social care that councils provide. In 2015, 706,000 hours a week of social care were provided by councils, which was up 4 per cent on the figure for the previous year, and up from 607,000 hours at the start of the current session of Parliament. We are also seeing the average number of hours of home care that are received each week steadily increasing. In 2000, the figure was 5.6 hours and last year the figure was 11.5 hours. That means that the intensity of social care is increasing, which is enabling more people with intensive needs to stay at home.
This Government has taken, and will continue to take, action to ensure that we have good-quality social care that protects individuals, and to ensure that we are protecting our national health service.
In that long answer, there was one simple fact: the First Minister has put £250 million into the budget but has taken £500 million out. That is the classic sleight of hand that is the SNP Government’s style.
In the past 24 hours, we have seen a massive debate open up about the future of our council services. From Moray to Dundee, councils are taking tough choices because the Scottish Government has left them with no alternative, and one of the most important services that our councils provide is social care. Last night, on “Reporting Scotland”, the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing gave the game away when she admitted that there is a social care recruitment problem. I see her nodding her head in agreement—she is absolutely right. We know that, each year, one in five care workers leaves their job because of low pay, poor conditions and insecure work. Payment of a living wage would fix that, and it would improve the care that people receive.
Before Christmas, the SNP Government voted against Labour’s plans for a living wage for care workers. The first minister could reverse that decision today. She could make a pledge to the 39,000 care workers who would be guaranteed a living wage for the first time, she could make a pledge to the thousands of people who are waiting for a social care package, and she could make a pledge to the families of the 276 people who died last year while they were waiting for the support that they needed. Will the First Minister today guarantee that she will introduce a living wage for care workers?
On the living wage, a fact of which Kezia Dugdale is either not aware, or is aware of but chooses to ignore in her questioning, is that this year this Government is investing £12.5 million in partnership with local councils as part of a £25 million package to improve wages and conditions in the social care sector. We are determined to continue to make progress towards payment of the living wage in the social care sector. If Kezia Dugdale wants us to go faster, she is quite entitled to bring forward costed proposals as to how we could do that in the context of next year’s budget, and to say clearly from where the money would come.
I return to the overall question of local government funding. The reduction in local government budgets that is proposed for the next financial year amounts to 2 per cent of its total revenue expenditure: 2 per cent. That is before we take account of the additional £250 million in social care, which is of course on top of the £500 million that we are already investing over three years to support integration of health and social care.
The council tax freeze is fully funded: the Scottish Government gives councils money to compensate for not increasing their council tax rates. Indeed, a recent Scottish Parliament information centre report said that the council tax freeze is possibly overfunded, with an estimated [Interruption.]—
Order.
This is from a SPICe report. Labour members are very keen to quote SPICe reports when it suits them, so they might want to listen to what this one says. It says that £164.9 million extra is going to local government. Those are the facts.
These are challenging times for everyone because of the cuts that are being imposed on the Scottish Government’s budget. There is a question that Labour has to address. We are in a budget process right now, so if Labour wants local government to get more money in next year’s budget—that is what we are talking about—it has to set out where that money will come from. Is Labour going to break its own commitment to freeze the council tax or is it going to take money from other parts of the budget? Which is it and when on earth is Labour going to tell us?
I ask Ms Dugdale to make her next question brief, and the First Minister to make her answer brief, too.
Let me give the First Minister some facts. We brought forward proposals for a living wage for care workers, but the SNP voted them down. I hear the First Minister make commitments on lots of things. She can promise a £250 million tax break to big airline companies, but she cannot promise care workers a living wage. [Interruption.]
Order. Wheesht!
That says a lot about the priorities of this SNP Government.
The problem of council cuts is not going away and the social care crisis is not going away. Despite all the waffle from the First Minister, people are dying while waiting for support. Is that really the Scotland that the First Minister wants to live in?
There we have it: the last vestiges of credibility that Kezia Dugdale and the Scottish Labour Party had have just disappeared. We are back to the mythical air passenger duty money; today we hear about the fourth thing that it is going to be spent on. First it was education, then it was restoring tax credit cuts, then last week in this very chamber we heard that it was for first-time buyers grants, and today it is for the living wage in the social care sector. It is absolutely dire: that lot over on the Labour seats are clearly not fit to be an Opposition, let alone an alternative Government.
This is where it gets real for the Opposition—a matter of weeks away from an election. I know that Labour does not think that it has any chance of winning the election and that it is still trying to scramble into second place over the Tories, but it has a duty to put forward detail. I have outlined our plans on social care and I have outlined how we will work towards the living wage in social care. If Labour wants us to do it faster, it has to tell us how. I challenge Kezia Dugdale in the context of this budget process over the next couple of weeks to bring forward costed proposals for how all her plans are to be funded. If she does not do that, she does not deserve to be taken seriously by anybody.
Secretary of State for Scotland (Meetings)
To ask the First Minister when she will next meet the Secretary of State for Scotland. (S4F-03160)
I have no plans at present, but in light of his announcement yesterday, I wish him all the best.
This morning, we learned that teachers unions are again threatening strike action over the workload that they face. That is on the back of a crisis in teacher recruitment in Scotland, with training places going unfilled—particularly in maths, physics, computing and technology—and evidence that the attainment gap in our schools is still growing.
We need to act. Last week, we in the Conservative Party published our plans to support Scottish schools. In that document, we called for the Scottish Government to introduce the teach first programme, which is an innovative scheme that is now Britain’s largest graduate recruiter. It trains many of the best graduates and places them in some of our most challenging schools. However, they currently only go to schools south of the border. With teachers threatening to strike, a shortage of graduates going into teaching and poor areas falling behind, why does the First Minister not back that scheme for Scotland?
First, I disagree with many aspects of Ruth Davidson’s characterisation of our education system, but I will not go into that in the interest of time.
As I believe Ruth Davidson is, I am serious about raising the standards of education in Scotland and closing the attainment gap. We see some signs of the gap narrowing in the upper stages of secondary school, but I want to have the data and information to ensure that we can set measurable targets for closing it in primary and lower secondary school as well. In that context, when I launched the national improvement framework last Wednesday, I said that I close my mind to nothing that can be proven to work in raising standards. That remains my position.
As members are aware, round about this time last year—if memory serves me correctly—I visited a school in London to look in detail at the experience of the London challenge. Before I say this, I accept that there will be different views from the one that I am about to express, but somebody who was close to the implementation of the London challenge said to me that the one thing that they would advise me to be cautious about in learning from it was teach first. In their experience, it was not the thing that had made the biggest difference. That does not mean that I am closing my mind to anything, but it means that we will continue to look at the best evidence of what works. That is the spirit in which I will continue to move forward with the task of improving education for all young people in Scotland.
As ever on the topic of education, we seem to have an awful lot of warm words and open minds but not much actual leadership. The consequences of the Government’s inaction are beginning to damage our chances of improving our schools to the best of our ability. We have looked at the numbers this week. They show that, last year alone, 100 Scottish graduates joined the teach first programme. That is 100 trainee teachers who studied in Scottish universities and who could, right now, be preparing to work in our schools but who were, instead, recruited by teach first and will now go and do some great work teaching disadvantaged children in England. That just goes to show that, when it comes to our schools, the Scottish National Party Government would rather export good teachers than innovate teacher training.
We are losing some of our best graduates to schools south of the border—graduates who could be teaching in our most disadvantaged schools. The First Minister has the power to change that. Why does she not?
Much of what Ruth Davidson just said is arrant nonsense. We will do whatever we think works to improve Scottish education.
Angela Constance has recently made announcements about the fact that we are increasing the target intakes for student teachers by 60 for primary and 200 for secondary, so we are increasing the number of teachers who are going through training. Part of the focus that we have put on raising attainment is on the quality of the teachers who go into our schools. We are ensuring that we reform how teachers are trained. We recently announced the qualification for headship, which will be mandatory by 2019. We are making sure that the best graduates come through, get the best training and go into our schools to provide the best education.
We will continue to focus on the things that we think work. The national improvement framework will give us the framework to determine whether what we are doing is working or whether we need to do more. In the context of the election campaign that lies ahead, we will set out over the next few weeks further thoughts about how we do that over the lifetime of the next Parliament. I continue to welcome views from all parts of the chamber, but the national improvement framework is evidence that we are getting on with the job.
Cabinet (Meetings)
I am sure that all our thoughts are with the injured and the family and friends of those who have lost their lives on the streets of Jakarta today. It is a reminder that we must all stand together against global terrorism.
To ask the First Minister what issues will be discussed at the next meeting of the Cabinet. (S4F-03159)
I echo Willie Rennie’s comments. Today, we have seen another terrorist atrocity, and our thoughts are with those who have been affected in Jakarta.
Matters of importance to the people of Scotland will be discussed at the next meeting of the Cabinet.
The Conservative Party is proposing an 18 per cent increase in the council tax in Moray. Putting to one side the contradictions in Conservative policy, surely that shows the enormous pressure that councils across Scotland are under. The £500 million cut to council budgets will hit schools. The £500 million cut is a choice of the Scottish National Party Government, so will the First Minister review that decision today?
As I have outlined in previous answers to other leaders, the council tax freeze—as Willie Rennie well knows—is fully funded. Every year that the council tax has been frozen, the Scottish Government has compensated councils for the amount that they would have raised in revenue if they had increased the council tax by the rate of inflation. As I said earlier, a recent report by the Scottish Parliament information centre suggests that the council tax freeze might actually have been overfunded in the past few years.
As a percentage of their total revenue expenditure, the reduction in councils’ budgets is 2 per cent. I do not pretend that that is easy for any council to deal with, but we live in challenging financial times. In that context, it is fair to say that local government has been treated reasonably and fairly. Of course, none of what I have said takes account of the additional investment in social care that we have just talked about.
We will put forward our plans for how we take the country forward and how we invest in the things that matter—how we build up social care, protect our national health service and improve education—and it is incumbent on other parties over the next few weeks to do likewise. It is incumbent on them to do so in an honest way, which is not what the Tories are doing at the moment. They are putting out leaflets that oppose tax rises in Scotland on the same day as their councillors in Moray are threatening to hike up council tax by 18 per cent.
The First Minister has many choices, and the following is one of them. Even if Moray Council increased the council tax by just £1, the First Minister would hit it with a £1 million penalty, which would hit schools, nurseries and council services. Will she commit to lifting the threat of that £1 million fine, which would be a double whammy in that Moray Council would be taxed by the Tories and fined by the nationalists? Where is the fairness in that?
Those will be the Tories that Willie Rennie’s party propped up in government for the past five years and the Tories who, helped by the Liberal Democrats, have imposed real-terms cuts on the Scottish Parliament’s budget. Willie Rennie’s hypocrisy on this really does know no bounds.
The council tax freeze is fully funded. What Willie Rennie wants us to do is to provide money to councils that freeze the council tax and also to councils if they do not freeze the council tax. That does not seem fair on the councils that freeze the council tax.
We will put forward our proposals in this budget and for the longer term in the next session of Parliament. I say again that other parties have a duty to do likewise. If they want us to make different decisions in the context of the budget for the next financial year, they should come forward with costed alternatives. If they want more money in next year’s budget to go to local government, each of the other parties that are arguing that case must come to John Swinney and the Parliament and point to the line in the budget that they want to take that money from. That is what comes with the responsibility of Government, and it speaks volumes that none of the other parties even begins to understand that.
Renewables (Discussions with United Kingdom Government)
To ask the First Minister what recent discussions the Scottish Government has had with the UK Government regarding the future of renewables. (S4F-03171)
We have had numerous recent discussions with the UK Government on the future of renewable energy. We have set out clearly our views on the impact of recent UK decisions, which are creating huge uncertainty for the renewables sector. As well as hampering our progress towards a low-carbon economy, they are adversely impacting on potential employment in Scotland and creating the likelihood of increased costs for consumers.
Given the continued impressive renewable output that is being reported in Scotland, does the First Minister share my concern that the Tories seem more interested in throttling the industry through regressive policy approaches than in giving it the support that they seem to reserve for the nuclear power industry?
Yes, I share that concern. I have already mentioned our concerns in general. We have particular concerns about the effect on the hydro sector. On onshore wind, the UK Government has badly damaged investor confidence by the premature closure of the renewables obligation, and on offshore wind, there are delays in the allocation round for contracts that are impacting on major developments off our coasts. To add insult to injury, the UK Government has cut the Peterhead carbon capture and storage project.
Scotland’s huge energy potential is at risk of being switched off by the Tories. That would be an absolute, total disgrace, and I urge them to think again on all those issues.
Affordable Homes
To ask the First Minister whether the Scottish Government’s target for building affordable homes will resolve the “housing crisis” that she referred to during First Minister’s questions on 7 January 2016. (S4F-03168)
The Scottish Government is clear in our commitment to deliver at least 50,000 affordable homes over the next five years. That commitment, which has been warmly welcomed by the housing sector, will support around 20,000 jobs a year and generate in excess of £10 billion of economic activity. That will build on our achievements in this session of Parliament in delivering more than 30,000 affordable homes, including 20,000 for social rent.
I thank Ken Macintosh for his recent letter to me in which he announced for the first time—albeit that it looked as if it was done on the back of a fag packet—Labour’s policy on housing supply. I look forward to hearing now how that will be paid for and what commitment Labour might have on social housing. Ken Macintosh’s leader has said that it is still thinking about that.
The First Minister’s boasts about meeting affordable homes targets do not square with her confession last week that she has presided over a “housing crisis”. She has turned a housing shortage into a housing crisis. Just one aspect of that crisis is the fact that more than 1 million Scots are living in fuel poverty. They are struggling to afford to heat their homes this winter. Given those circumstances, can the First Minister explain why her Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Constitution and Economy, who is whispering in her ear right now, cut the fuel poverty budget in the budget? Will she pledge to take real action and join Labour in pledging to introduce a warm homes act for Scotland?
We have maintained the fuel poverty budget at £104 million and lost £15 million from United Kingdom Government funding, because it has ended a project. That is the reality.
Let me remind members across the chamber that that contribution on housing came from a member of a party that built the grand total of six council houses the last time that it was in government. That was the shining record of the previous Labour Administration. [Interruption.]
Order.
By contrast, the Government has met our target of 30,000 affordable homes, including 20,000 for social rent. In the next session, if we are re-elected, we will build 50,000 affordable homes, which will be a substantial increase. Seventy per cent of those will be for social rent. That will be a 75 per cent increase in the number of social rented houses that we have built in this session.
We are the party with not just the record, but the ambition for the future on housing. Labour is still squirming in embarrassment. As Iain Gray said, it passed great housing legislation, but forgot to build the houses to implement it.
Schools in Deprived Communities (Funding and Teacher Support)
To ask the First Minister what criteria the Scottish Government is using to allocate funding and teacher support for schools in deprived communities. (S4F-03162)
We used the Scottish index of multiple deprivation, which is a long-established set of indicators that shows levels of deprivation in communities across Scotland, to identify the seven authorities with the greatest concentration of primary-age children living in the 20 per cent most deprived areas in Scotland. We have worked with those authorities to agree funding for the primary schools that would benefit most.
On Monday this week, I announced that an additional 57 schools outside those seven local authority areas have been allocated moneys through the attainment fund. They were identified by using the SIMD.
Does the First Minister accept that evidence produced by experts such as Professor Sue Ellis and Dr Jim McCormick confirms that the majority of deprived pupils do not in fact attend schools in the most deprived areas? Does she therefore agree that Scottish Government policy, which targets only selected schools in selected local authorities registering a high deprivation index, has its limitations and that a much better policy would be to target the available funds on individual pupils?
We are looking to target the money as effectively as possible; indeed, after listening to views and evidence, we have extended the programme beyond the seven local authority areas to a further 57 schools across, I think, a further 14 local authorities. As I said earlier in response to a question from Ruth Davidson, we will put forward further substantial proposals, as we get nearer to the Scottish election, on how we will extend the approach that we are taking.
I could not be more clear and serious about the commitment that I am making on educational attainment. If I am re-elected as First Minister—I take nothing for granted—I will be judged on that, among other things, over the life of the next session of Parliament. It is in my interests and, more important, in the interests of young people across our country that we do what needs to be done to deliver on that commitment. I am determined that we do exactly that.
I apologise to the many back benchers whose supplementary questions I have been unable to take today. Some of those supplementary questions were very important from a constituency point of view, but leaders’ questions and answers are taking 20 minutes, which is clearly unacceptable. I appeal yet again to the party leaders to cut down on the amount of time that they are taking for questions and answers.