Meeting of the Parliament

Meeting date: Thursday, June 17, 2010

Official Report 982KB pdf

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First Minister’s Question Time

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Engagements

1. To ask the First Minister what engagements he has planned for the rest of the day. (S3F-2476)

Later today, I will have meetings to take forward the Government’s programme for Scotland.

In March, I asked the First Minister whether the curriculum for excellence would be ready in time. Since then, things have gone so well that the Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association is planning industrial action, and the Educational Institute of Scotland agreed last week to ballot teachers on a curriculum for excellence work to rule. Can the First Minister explain why teachers have had to take that action?

Changes in the curriculum, and in Scottish education in general, have always been met by some degree of uncertainty. I can go through the list for Iain Gray. There were similar calls from the teaching unions when higher still was being introduced, for example. With the efforts of the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning, we are seeing a substantial and increasing body of opinion rallying behind the curriculum for excellence. Of course, it would help if some of Iain Gray’s self-proclaimed enthusiasm and support for the curriculum for excellence was reflected in his words in the chamber and he matched his enthusiasm with his attitude to the new curriculum.

I am not sure how having a ballot on industrial action for the first time since 1986 can be described as rallying behind the education secretary. I think that the education secretary’s view is similar to that of the First Minister. The education secretary has said where he thinks the problem lies. He has said that teachers who sit back and expect everything to be done and handed to them on a piece of paper are bound to be disappointed, and he has told teachers in no uncertain terms that they

“are not going to get everything on a plate”.

Mike Russell thinks that the problem is lazy, whingeing teachers who should get on with things. What arrogance. Does the First Minister agree with his education secretary?

I do not share Iain Gray’s interpretation of the motions at the EIS’s annual conference last Friday. He will know, for example, that a motion to boycott the new curriculum was rejected at the conference. He has probably also noticed the speech that was made by the general secretary of the EIS, Ronnie Smith, who reflected on his political career in teaching unions. He talked about

“budget and service cuts being visited upon our schools and colleges and universities in the twilight years of a Labour Government”.

There seems to be substantial recognition in the EIS leadership of where the responsibility for a lack of public spending lies.

I do not share the attitude that people are whingeing about changes in Scottish education. There is an argument that some politicians in the chamber are whingeing about a range of attitudes. In fact, if Iain Gray is not careful, he will become the vuvuzela of Scottish politics. [Interruption.]

Order.

The First Minister really needs a new joke writer.

I, too, have read Ronnie Smith’s comments. He looked back to the 1980s and said that 40,000 teachers marched against cuts then and that 10,000 teachers are marching against cuts under the Scottish National Party. He asked what kind of progress that is.

As for not boycotting the curriculum for excellence, the trouble is that the First Minister does not understand how curriculum development works. People do not need to boycott it; if they work to rule, they will kill the new curriculum stone dead.

The First Minister should listen. Teachers are under pressure because the Government has cut their numbers, not their class sizes. The Government has left teachers having to beg parents to buy jotters and pens for their classes and now it is asking teachers to create courses out of chaos. Teachers have neither the time nor the money that they need. That is why they are taking industrial action against the SNP Government. This week, 55,000 Scottish children will go to their primary school prom; in August, they will go to high school. Can the First Minister look their parents in the eye and tell them that the curriculum for excellence will be ready?

I point out to Iain Gray that there was a motion before the EIS conference to boycott the new curriculum. That motion was rejected because the Educational Institute of Scotland does not want, in Iain Gray’s words, to

“kill the new curriculum stone dead”.

That is what Iain Gray and his party want. The EIS substantially supports the new curriculum, largely because many of its members are in primary schools, where the curriculum for excellence has already been implemented successfully. Iain Gray must not project his own political feelings on to the delegates of the Educational Institute of Scotland. It is one thing to interpret Ronnie Smith’s remarks to the conference; it is another to quote them. Ronnie Smith spoke of

“budget and service cuts being visited upon our schools and colleges and universities in the twilight years of a Labour Government.”

I suspect—this is an interpretation—that Ronnie Smith realises that, if cuts of £500 million are made to the Scottish budget by the Labour Government—[Interruption.] The Labour Government cut the Scottish budget by £500 million. Even given the increasing share of that budget that this SNP Government has allocated to local authorities, the cut to their budgets is still roughly £150 million, or an average cut of £5 million per local authority. That seems to have a pretty strong logic. If a Labour Government at Westminster cuts the Scottish Government’s budget by £500 million, a share of that will fall on local authorities—[Interruption.]

Order.

Given that fairly straight and impeccable logic, how can Iain Gray seriously deny the Labour Party’s responsibility for the economic and financial pressures that face every level of government in Scotland?

Frankly, if you have £34 billion, which is £1 billion more than you had last year, and you inherit £1.5 billion of resource for a rainy day, logic says that there should not be cuts in our schools, but there are.

When I taught, pupils had a single transferable excuse: “It wisnae me.” That is what we are hearing from the First Minister. He is either saying, “It wisnae me, it was the Westminster Government” or, “It wisnae me, it was the big, bad councils.” In Mr Russell’s case, we are hearing, “It wisnae me, it was the teachers complaining. They should just get on with it.” As an excuse, it was laughable in kids; it is pathetic in a First Minister of Scotland.

Parents and teachers do not believe that the curriculum for excellence is ready and they know whose fault that is. They saw Maureen Watt fail, they saw Fiona Hyslop fail, and they are now seeing Michael Russell fail. A real First Minister would step up in person, get the local authorities and teachers around the table and guarantee the resources and preparation time to make this work.

Question please.

Will Alex Salmond do that or will he, too, fail our children?

Getting people around the table, including representatives of the teaching unions, is exactly what the curriculum for excellence management board has done. With teacher representation, the board is working much better than it did under the previous Administration.

Let us get on to the point about funding. Over the past three years, the percentage funding to Scottish local authorities has risen from 33.39 per cent of the Scottish budget under the previous Labour Government to 34.08 per cent this year under the SNP Government. If the share allocated to local government is increasing, but Iain Gray believes that local government does not have adequate finance to perform its duties and provide services, then it follows logically, does it not, that the overall cake must be too small. Therefore, the £500 million cut that was implemented by the previous Labour Government is pertinent, because if the share for local government is increasing—as it is—then it follows, by logic, that the blame must lie with the cuts implemented by the previous Labour Government.

Of course, if Labour was arguing that more money should be spent this year, that would be one thing, but so many people on the Labour benches—including Andy Kerr, sitting to the left of Iain Gray—want a further cut of £332 million implemented this year. How can it be that so many members of Iain Gray’s party, including aspirants to the leadership such as David Miliband, want to cut the Scottish budget even further than the cuts already implemented by the previous Labour Government, while Iain Gray turns up week after week demanding higher spending? If anybody on the Labour benches can come up with an answer to that conundrum, they should be immediately promoted to the front bench. Any resignations that there have been have not happened in this Government.

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Prime Minister (Meetings)

2. To ask the First Minister when he will next meet the Prime Minister. (S3F-2477)

I will meet the Prime Minister next week.

A year ago, at First Minister’s question time, I raised the issue of Salduz v Turkey, the human rights case concerning the right of a person who is detained by the police to get legal advice. Last week, the Lord Advocate issued interim guidelines on that very point. A year ago, I asked what steps the First Minister had taken to assess the potential impact of the Salduz ruling on Scotland. I did not get an answer then, and nothing happened until last week. So can I ask the First Minister, in the 12 months since I first raised the issue, how many suspects have been interviewed without a solicitor, how many of them were convicted and how many of those convictions could be appealed?

Annabel Goldie has missed out a rather pertinent fact in the story. She was absolutely right to raise the issue last year, and I hope that I gave a considered reply. However, the issue came to court in Scotland in October of last year, when seven Court of Session judges, in the case of the Crown v McLean, found in favour of the Lord Advocate’s position that Scots law is compatible with the European Court of Human Rights and the European convention on human rights. That was the unanimous ruling in the High Court by seven Court of Session judges last year, subsequent to Annabel Goldie’s question.

Of course, it is absolutely correct that the joint working group has been meeting for a year, looking at all possible contingencies in terms of the live case before the Supreme Court, on which we will not get a ruling and a judgment until October. However, I think that it would be unwise to plan wholesale changes to the Scottish legal system when the Court of Session judges unanimously supported the position that our legal system is compliant with the European convention. Equally, however, it is sensible to have in place contingency measures for all eventualities, such as the operational guidance and advice that the Lord Advocate issued last week.

The events as narrated by the First Minister involve his admission that the Lord Advocate is making contingency plans, to use his phrase. Time will tell whether the stable door should have been bolted 12 months ago, rather than last week. Given that the Lord Advocate now has contingency plans to safeguard future prosecutions and that the First Minister has alluded to Government contingency plans, exactly what are those plans? If the pending judgment is adverse, and retrospective in effect, the doors to Scotland’s jails could be flung open and there could be far-reaching implications for our criminal justice system, the safety of communities and victims’ peace of mind. What are those contingency plans to which the First Minister referred? He needs to plan now and not start rushing around the day after the court judgment is issued.

I must be cautious about commenting on a live court ruling. If an adverse ruling came from the Supreme Court, the retrospective aspects would date back to 1999. Annabel Goldie might remember the issue that involved the European convention and prisoners that was settled last year through co-operation between the then Westminster Government and the Parliament. The retrospective element of that dated back to this Parliament’s creation. The idea that the retrospective element could have been removed by taking action last year is wrong.

A balance must be struck. If the ruling on the European convention were accepted, as Annabel Goldie suggests, that would involve substantial changes to the Scottish legal system. In their judgment in the McLean case, the Court of Session judges drew attention to a range of other protections in the Scottish legal system. I will not list them all, but they relate to corroboration; the fact that silence does not imply guilt in Scotland’s system, unlike other legal systems; and the pertinent point that suspects can be detained without charge for only six hours in Scotland—that timescale is much longer in other legal systems.

I make the point to Annabel Goldie that it is perfectly right and proper for the law officers to make contingency plans—as they have done—to protect the public interest. However, it would be entirely wrong to pilot through wholesale changes in the Scottish legal system before a court judgment said that they were necessary, particularly in the light of the Court of Session case, which I hope that Annabel Goldie has read, in which seven Court of Session judges said unanimously that our current system was convention compliant.

Another issue is that the new Government at Westminster—or at least Annabel Goldie’s party’s part of it—planned substantial changes to how the European convention is interpreted in what that party called British law, by which I think that it meant Scots and English law.

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Secretary of State for Scotland (Meetings)

3. To ask the First Minister when he will next meet the Secretary of State for Scotland. (S3F-2478)

I have no plans to meet the secretary of state in the near future, but I am sure that a meeting could take place in the relatively near future.

It is an important step for our Parliament, Presiding Officer, that you are hosting a meeting between committee conveners and the Secretary of State for Scotland today.

From independent economic forecasts, everyone now knows how bad the public finances are. Labour’s former Chief Secretary to the Treasury admitted that there was no money left so, in Scotland, we must spend taxpayers’ money wisely. However, last week’s Finance Committee report says that the SNP Government’s budget planning is patchy and lacks urgency and leadership. Given that, is this the best time for Scottish Enterprise to advertise the contract that I am holding up to spend £400,000 on corporate-branded gifts? That is £400,000 of taxpayers’ money on golf balls, stress shapes, hip-flasks and mouse mats.

I will offer a quick correction. I understand that the Secretary of State for Scotland is meeting parliamentary committee conveners. I have no responsibility for the Parliament and I have no role to interfere in any way in that meeting, but I am happy to welcome it.

As for the budgetary pressures, Tavish Scott is right: there is no question whatever but that the previous Administration wrecked the public finances. [Interruption.] Well, most fair-minded people would say that the comment that the previous Labour Government wrecked the country’s public finances is pretty reasonable and fair. [Applause.]

Order.

It is unreasonable to diminish the work of Scottish Enterprise and Scottish Development International. Substantial evidence from the assessment of SDI as an agency that attracts inward investment shows that SDI is among the best-performing agencies in the world. Just last week, we received substantial evidence that the efforts that SDI is making to internationalise Scottish business are bearing fruit.

I remind Tavish Scott that the export figures that were released last week showed an increase in Scottish manufactured exports of 3.5 per cent in the past year, which compares with a fall throughout the UK of 5.3 per cent. It should be recognised that that substantial effort owes huge amounts to individual companies. However, Tavish Scott would do well to acknowledge that, whatever particular criticisms he might have, SDI and Scottish Enterprise are performing extremely well for Scotland in very difficult circumstances.

Let me try the question again. Would not the £400,000 of taxpayers’ money to which I referred be better spent by Scottish Enterprise on helping the people who are losing their jobs? Yesterday’s figures show unemployment still rising at double the rate of the rest of the country. People who have lost their jobs will be asking why the Government’s priority is corporate gifts, not protecting jobs.

Is it not time for the First Minister to get a grip on every line of Government spending? Last week, a report put Scotland bottom of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries for business start-ups, yet our main economic agency is spending time peddling contracts for novelty golf balls. That Scottish Enterprise tender deadline was yesterday lunch time. Will the First Minister show some leadership today, stop that £400,000 contract and make the priority jobs, jobs, jobs?

The priority of SDI and Scottish Enterprise is jobs. I will give Tavish Scott an example of what SDI is doing to assist companies. In 2005-06, 662 companies were assisted by Scottish Enterprise’s internationalisation efforts. The figure now stands at more than 900, which indicates that the efforts that SDI and Scottish Enterprise are making are bearing substantial fruit. That is validated by the most recent manufacturing export statistics. During a substantial recession of extraordinary proportions, inward investment figures are also holding up extremely well in Scotland. I say to Tavish Scott that the people who are making substantive efforts to promote Scotland abroad are doing an excellent job. It would be encouraging if, just occasionally, all the parties that are represented in the chamber were to underline and support their efforts.

For the sake of accuracy, I point out that the meeting with the Secretary of State for Scotland to which committee conveners and business managers have been invited will be hosted and chaired by my deputy, Trish Godman, not by me.

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Asylum Seekers (Detention of Children)

4. To ask the First Minister what discussions have taken place between the Scottish Government and the United Kingdom Government regarding the detention of children of asylum seekers. (S3F-2482)

Over the past three years, we have made repeated representations to the United Kingdom Government on the detention of children. We welcomed the proposed ending of detention at Dungavel. We are opposed to detaining children anywhere in the United Kingdom, but we welcome the review of the detention of children that the UK Government announced last month and its recognition that there is a serious problem. We are clear that it is unacceptable for children to be detained anywhere in the UK and have offered whatever assistance we can provide to the UK Government to enable it to bring forward its intended policy.

One of my constituents is 10-year-old Precious Mhango, who has twice been detained. The experience had an horrific effect on her emotional and physical wellbeing, as I witnessed first hand when I visited her in Dungavel last year. However, when she was transferred to Yarl’s Wood, the deterioration in her health was dramatic. It resulted from the fact that she and her mother were completely isolated from their close-knit group of friends and supporters. Those supporters will continue to fight for Precious and her mother, but no one can guarantee that they will not be detained again. The only difference is that, this time, Precious would leave St Maria Goretti primary school at 3 pm and be in Bedfordshire by nightfall, with no warning. Does the First Minister agree that, however well intentioned the change, that situation is just wrong?

I agree. I share the member’s concerns about the transfer of children from Scotland to Yarl’s Wood. The welfare of children should be the Parliament’s paramount concern. Locking up children in England rather than in Dungavel does not solve the problem; indeed, it could be argued that it compounds problems for children. We have expressed our concerns to the Home Office. The Minister for Culture and External Affairs has written to Damian Green, the UK Minister of State for Immigration, to request that the Home Office review the case of Precious Mhango and her mother Florence. There is a huge consensus across Scottish society on that point. The case should be reviewed.

Will the First Minister clarify what contingency plans the Scottish Government has in place to deal with the responsibilities that it has in relation to such young people’s health, education and general wellbeing when they are returned to mainstream society in Scotland?

I point out that when those children have been in mainstream society in Scotland they have been well looked after by a combination of Government and local authority agencies throughout the country. The problem exists not when families are outside detention centres but when they are inside detention centres.

Of course, the prospect of being taken to a detention centre understandably provokes uncertainty and anxiety in families. Whatever the particular anxiety is in the case that Anne McLaughlin raised, which I absolutely share with her, I want to respect the moves that the UK Government is making to end a situation that I hope that all parties in the Parliament regard as unacceptable.

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Police Interviews (Procedure)

5. To ask the First Minister how the Scottish Government will inform the Parliament of any changes in police procedures for interviewing suspects. (S3F-2492)

The Lord Advocate issued interim guidance to the police on 9 June, which required them to offer detained suspects access to a solicitor before and during interview in serious cases with immediate effect. That will be rolled out to all cases on 8 July. The Lord Advocate has decided to publish the terms, and copies of the guidance have been lodged in the Scottish Parliament information centre.

The change in procedure will have implications for many aspects of the Scottish legal system. Does the First Minister have an initial estimate of how much additional funding will need to be made available through legal aid to achieve the change?

No, I do not have that estimate, partly because the Minister for Justice is engaged in discussions to resolve that and a range of other issues.

Richard Baker is aware that, because of the separation of powers, decisions of the kind that we are discussing lie with the law officers and the Lord Advocate. It is right that the Minister for Justice is involved in a range of discussions, to cope with any eventuality in relation to his responsibilities, but Richard Baker will be aware that the key responsibility in terms of decisions and the issuing of guidance properly lies with the Scottish law officers. That is the system of governance with which we have lived for a substantial time.

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Free Personal Care (Affordability)

6. To ask the First Minister, in light of the recent comments by Lord Sutherland on free personal care, whether the Scottish Government considers that this policy is affordable in the long term. (S3F-2483)

The Scottish Government remains absolutely committed to free personal care, which delivers real benefits and better outcomes to more than 50,000 older vulnerable people throughout Scotland. Lord Sutherland made it clear in his report that we need to adapt policy to address demographic changes in the medium and longer term. We are currently asking people across Scotland to consider the future care demands and needs of older people and we will listen to what people have to say in the context of that consultation.

I welcome the First Minister’s response. I am sure that all members value the policy of free personal care and welcome the Westminster coalition Government’s pledge to protect health spending, which will mean that funds in the area will be available to the Scottish Government through Barnett consequentials.

The First Minister will know that Lord Sutherland has called for a single budget to be established for health and social care, to provide savings to plough into front-line services. Will the Scottish Government give active consideration to the idea?

I am sure that that view will be put forward.

People who take the view that because of budgetary pressures free personal care must be jettisoned are looking at the issue far too simplistically—I know that Murdo Fraser is not among those people. Free personal care was one of the great achievements of this Parliament—in a united fashion—and the proper funding of the policy has been one of the great achievements of this Government during the past three years, because the policy was not properly funded before that. There is joint political interest in maintaining the policy, which is meaningful and important to people in Scotland.

How we organise and deliver social services and the health service is a substantive point for debate. It might well be that changes of the nature that have been described could produce substantial savings without jeopardising the care that is given to people.

Given that the delivery of free personal care has saved the Treasury £40 million per annum in attendance allowance, would it be equitable if the Conservative-Liberal coalition were to return that money to Scotland?

That would be a substantial and important contribution to the respect agenda.

12:29 Meeting suspended until 14:15.

14:15 On resuming—