First Minister's Question Time
Engagements
To ask the First Minister what engagements he has planned for the rest of the day. (S3F-1294)
Later today I will have meetings to take forward the Government's programme for Scotland.
I know that the chamber will want to join me in recalling that Sunday 21 December marks the 20th anniversary of the Lockerbie air disaster. The community in Lockerbie will be observing the anniversary with a dignified programme of events to mark the occasion. Our thoughts are with them and with all those whose lives have been affected by the atrocity.
Later today, in a display of Christmas solidarity, all the party leaders and I will be launching the homecoming programme for next year. I know that the whole chamber will want to support that wonderful initiative, which is so important for our country.
Following that, I will be speaking with the directors of Norfolkline, which has today announced the opening of bookings for the first sailings of the new Rosyth to Zeebrugge ferry, which is of enormous importance not only to communities in Fife, but to our whole country.
Those of us on this side of the chamber wish to be associated with the First Minister's remarks regarding the people of Lockerbie and that anniversary.
A year ago, on the day on which we rose for the Christmas recess, the First Minister sneaked out his consultation on the Scottish Futures Trust. A year later, the Finance Committee has published its report on capital investment and has said that there is insufficient information to judge whether the SFT will be a mechanism for improved value for money, to judge its role in managing a pipeline of projects, or to comment on the accountability and governance issues relating to the SFT.
A year after the consultation was launched, we still do not know what the SFT is or how it will work. Does the First Minister still believe that it is ever going to build anything? If he does, does he believe in Santa, too?
I will answer the question about Santa first. I note that Iain Gray told The Big Issue in Scotland that his Christmas wish was
"to get the new style Ray-Bans—as modelled by one Barack Obama."
I cannot promise that I can get him Barack Obama's pair, but I will see what I can do about getting him some sunglasses.
The Scottish Futures Trust promises and offers the people of Scotland better value for money than they have had from the disgraceful excesses of the private finance initiative and public-private partnership models. I have been totalling up the massive capital investments that have been announced or taken forward by the Scottish Government since the Scottish National Party came to office, and it comes to a grand total of more than £8 billion. However, the most satisfying aspect of that is that no less than £2 billion of that sum will be spent on projects under the non-profit distributing model, which is the financial mechanism that is at the heart of the Scottish Futures Trust proposal.
The First Minister's Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Sustainable Growth has admitted that the non-profit distributing model is a version of PPP. The difference between PPP and the Scottish Futures Trust is that PPP actually builds schools and hospitals. The First Minister said that the trust would build bullet trains, roads, super ports and a Forth bridge, and that patriotic Scots would buy patriotic bonds for those patriotic projects. Last week, the Scottish Government published its strategic transport priorities for the next 20 years. The document was 3,000 pages long, and the Scottish Futures Trust was not mentioned once. Not one of the 29 projects will be built by the Futures Trust; the Futures Trust is dead. Will the First Minister do Scotland's parents, pupils, passengers and builders a favour, and bury the Futures Trust once and for all?
I remind Iain Gray—and Andy Kerr, who is sitting beside him—of the PFI disasters under the Labour-Liberal Administration. I remind him of the contrast between Hairmyres hospital, for which every single one of us will be paying for the next 20 to 25 years, and the announcements that this Administration has made, for example on the £842 million that will be invested in the new Southern general: public finance in the public health service.
I do not know whether Iain Gray has caught up with the instructions from London, but he might wish to know and understand that as of next April, after a transition period, everything comes on balance sheet: public-private partnerships, PFI, NPD—every capital investment. That is a recognition that PFI was part of the age of irresponsibility of off-balance-sheet funding. Therefore, it is important to get value for money from the capital projects, the efficiencies and the savings that the Scottish Futures Trust will bring forward.
For 10 years, PPP not only built schools and hospitals, but created tens of thousands of jobs for Scottish workers. The Futures Trust debacle is costing Scotland jobs. The construction industry says that 25,000 jobs have gone already and 100,000 more are at risk, and yet the Government still plays politics with infrastructure.
In last weekend's B-movie, John Swinney played a poor man's Jimmy Cagney, reduced to threatening that schools and hospitals will "get it" unless funds are forthcoming for his Forth crossing. That might have been a potent threat if anyone in Scotland believed that the Government was ever going to build any schools or hospitals in the first place.
The Futures Trust—[Interruption.] I can wait all day.
Order. The First Minister will get plenty of time to answer—Mr Gray is allowed to ask a question.
The Futures Trust—with no future—has £23 million against it, which could build new homes for almost 300 families. Will the First Minister take that money away from the Futures Trust now and use it to create some of the construction jobs that Scotland so badly needs?
The Scottish Futures Trust offers savings of £150 million a year in the capital programme. I repeat to Iain Gray the figure of £8,000 million of capital projects that have already been announced during this Government's term.
In between the long pauses in Iain Gray's questions, I did not quite get the references to Jimmy Cagney, but I note that—apart from his wish for sunglasses—Iain Gray's new year's resolution is to get a Johnny Seven gun. I might manage the sunglasses, but even Jimmy Cagney cannae manage the gun.
We have all seen the First Minister's I M Jolly, but really he should be starring in "Only an Excuse?" It is not just his Futures Trust that is dead in the water; it is his local income tax, which no one wants, and his concordat, which councils want to renegotiate. It is also his energy policy, which even his economic advisers say is wrong. It is a response to the economic crisis that will culminate tomorrow in his launching a commemorative shortbread tin—nice, but not nearly enough. As Scots face the challenges of 2009 and circumstances change faster than ever before, the First Minister must raise his game, because he looks more and more like a rabbit caught in the headlights, paralysed by policies that do not work but that he will not drop.
Question.
I will come to the question—the answer will be much longer coming.
The Government has run out of ideas and is fast running out of excuses. Will the First Minister admit that after only 19 months he has run out of steam?
I do not know about I M Jolly, but I think that Iain Gray badly needs a new script writer. I M Jolly is a character whose role is to be depressed and scunnered—Iain Gray plays that character every week.
Since we are on the subject of finance, Iain Gray has had three weeks in which to work out whether the £500 million of Labour cuts are actually £500 million. Three weeks ago he told us that
"it may well be less than that, as we know".—[Official Report, 27 November 2008; c 12865.]
The Finance Committee has received Professor David Bell's estimate of Labour Party cuts, which is more than £500 million. As he thinks about the new year, how can Iain Gray ask a single question about finance, given that we are looking forward to £1 billion being slashed from the Scottish budget over two years by Alistair Darling, Gordon Brown and Jim Murphy? It may not be entirely surprising that Iain Gray is totally at the mercy of decisions made in London—after all, they even run his constituency party.
Secretary of State for Scotland (Meetings)
To ask the First Minister when he will next meet the Secretary of State for Scotland. (S3F-1295)
I have no plans to meet the Secretary of State for Scotland in the near future.
In May, Her Majesty's chief inspector of constabulary for Scotland, Paddy Tomkins, published a report revealing that, when it comes to investigating and tackling serious fraud, Scotland is badly behind the rest of the United Kingdom. Specifically, the report called on the SNP Government to establish a national fraud capability and to do so as a matter of urgency—within three months. Seven months later, we do not have it. Given the turmoil surrounding the economy, the markets and our financial institutions, that is an extraordinary and scandalous dereliction of duty by the Scottish Government. All that has happened is that somewhere there is a working party. When did the Scottish Government first receive the chief inspector's report? When was the working party set up, how often has it met, and who sits on it for the Scottish Government?
I have read the report, which is being taken forward. Annabel Goldie should understand that Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary for Scotland asked that, after the assessment of risks and threat had been completed, a report be made to the Scottish Government in 2009 on the need for such capacity. She should also remember that the national casework division of the Crown Office already tackles serious fraud investigations and prosecutions on a Scotland-wide basis.
HMICS's recent inspection recommended the measures that Annabel Goldie has outlined. Work is under way to respond to those recommendations, and a short-life working group to take them forward has been established. The business case will be presented to the Scottish Government in February 2009. We are working closely with the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland on examining the need for a national fraud capability, but the establishment of such a capability depends on the business case. That is an entirely sensible way in which to proceed.
Those were not answers, but absolute drivel. It is no wonder that Paddy Tomkins, the chief inspector, said on "Newsnight Scotland" on Tuesday that he was
"disappointed by the speed of progress to date",
adding that the issue
"needs to be tackled with alacrity"—
a word that may not be in the First Minister's vocabulary but is understood by everyone else.
It is inconceivable that, in the briefing tome in front of him—and, interestingly, there have been no whispered sweet nothings from Mr MacAskill, which shows just what a vacuum there is on this subject—the First Minister does not have the information that I, like everybody else, am looking for. The First Minister is forever bleating on about the powers that he does not have while refusing to use the powers that he does have.
Will the First Minister answer me? Why, on this urgent and overdue matter, has his Government behaved with such inexcusable delay? When are we actually going to get the much-needed and overdue new national fraud capability?
Annabel Goldie should have another look at the Tomkins report, which argued that, within three months, a post should be established to examine how harmonisation on fraud should be handled throughout Scotland. Following work with ACPOS, it was decided to proceed with a short-life working group to carry out exactly that process. It was always intended that a business case for how to deal with such a significant change would be made in the early part of next year, and I think that February 2009 should be considered as the early part of next year.
As for Mr MacAskill whispering sweet nothings into my ear—and as Annabel Goldie will concede—two things that he might want to whisper regarding the criminal justice system in Scotland are, first, that we have a 25-year low in recorded crime, which Annabel Goldie would do well to acknowledge; and secondly, that we have a record number of police officers to keep our communities safe. In the Christmas spirit, I am prepared to acknowledge Annabel Goldie's role in supporting this party in delivering that commitment, in the teeth of opposition from elsewhere and the abstention of the Labour Party on the matter.
Cabinet (Meetings)
To ask the First Minister what issues will be discussed at the next meeting of the Cabinet. (S3F-1296)
The next meeting of Cabinet will discuss issues of importance to the people of Scotland.
That most senior and most loyal SNP back bencher, Alex Neil, told the Finance Committee that Scottish
"chief executives of quangos have been paid mega film-star bonuses."
He added that they were
"taking the taxpayer for a ride."—[Official Report, Finance Committee, 9 December 2008; c 864, 867.]
Was he right?
What he was right to do—as I always find is the case when I listen to Alex Neil—was to point out that the pay levels that were set by the quango state in Scotland during the term of the previous Administration were set when Tavish Scott was a minister of the Crown. There will be a general welcome for the fact that, during the past 18 months of this Administration, the number of national public bodies in Scotland has already been reduced from 199 to 165.
The difficulty for the First Minister is that new contracts from his Government are coming thick and fast. He has slashed the Scottish Enterprise budget by 40 per cent during a recession, yet the chief executive still gets £245,000 a year. The First Minister's new skills quango is advertising a six-figure salary for its chief. The advisory body that is the new Futures Trust also offers six figures, despite its being entirely bypassed by the transport strategy.
If the First Minister will not tackle his quango fat cats, is he tempted to look one last time at what is left of the arc of prosperity? Will he consider Ireland? Its budget proposes a 10 per cent cut for Government ministers. In these tough times, will the First Minister order the same for his ministers?
Yes!
Order.
I suspect that ministers in this Administration will accept the same pay levels and increases as members of the Scottish Parliament. Of course, given that we have far fewer ministers in this Administration, each minister gives better value for the public purse.
I will not mention overseas travel in this Administration, which is substantially less than it was under the previous, Liberal and Labour Administration. Given that it is Christmas, I will not blame Tavish Scott for the previous Administration's excessive travel budget, because I noted that in The Big Issue in Scotland he said that his Christmas wish and new year's resolution was to try to be nicer to Alex Salmond—I look forward to that at First Minister's question time in future. The present that Tavish Scott said he always wanted was a seat in the House of Lords.
Ooh!
It is not within the powers of this Administration to grant that wish. Anyway, Lord George Foulkes has used up our quota.
Methadone Prescribing (Research Report)
To ask the First Minister, in light of the recent research report by the University of Glasgow on the effectiveness of methadone prescribing policy, what actions will be taken to address the report's findings. (S3F-1309)
We agree with the conclusion of the research, which confirmed
"the value of methadone-maintenance services as part of a ‘mixed economy' of services for the treatment of drug use."
However, the national drugs strategy was clear that the focus of all drug treatment and rehabilitation services should be recovery. We want that wider range of services to be in place, to enable people to move on from their problem drug use towards a drug-free life and to make a positive contribution to Scottish society.
We recently announced the first national target for access to a range of drug treatments, through the health improvement, efficiency, access and treatment—HEAT—system, and we are working with the sector to ensure that targets are met.
I reinforce concerns that have been raised by the Maxie Richards Foundation. The foundation says that the £25 million that is spent on drugs harm reduction has only a 3 per cent success rate and fails to deliver the vital services that are required to treat people who have a drug addiction. I urge the First Minister to consider action that would tackle how we deal with drug addiction in Scotland.
The Government's strategy to tackle issues to do with drug addiction was approved a few months ago by every party in the Parliament. It is based on the idea of recovery and on person-centred care. In the strategy document, we say:
"recovery should be made the explicit aim of all services".
Many members do not think that that was always the case in previous strategies.
The strategy acknowledges that different approaches work for different people. The key is to ensure that the range of services is available in all parts of Scotland. The Government is focused on achieving exactly that.
I am sure that all members acknowledge that drug addiction is a serious problem, not just for the people who are addicted but for their families and the communities in which they live. I am sure that the First Minister agrees that we should take every possible step to tackle that blight throughout Scotland.
Does the First Minister acknowledge that most sensible people in Scotland think that it is reasonable that people who are addicted to drugs and who are in receipt of benefits should be given support and treatment to come off drugs? Why is the First Minister opposed to doing that?
We do not want to create a situation in which benefit claimants jump the queue for rehabilitation services. It is sad that the queue was lengthy under the previous Administration, and the issue needs to be tackled now.
A pilot study in England on benefit withdrawal, which took place a few years ago, concluded that there were negative consequences of the approach for families, wider society and drug addicts. Given the pilot's conclusions and concerns about acceptable provision in the system of access to rehabilitation and about the priority that people in the queue should have, there are good reasons for being cautious about believing that the withdrawal of benefits would offer a magic solution.
Construction Industry (Jobs)
To ask the First Minister what the Scottish Government's position is on the statement by the Scottish Building Federation that the 20,000 construction jobs lost in the last year will put Scotland's ability to build new roads, schools and hospitals at risk. (S3F-1302)
The Scottish Government understands the pressures that the construction industry faces. We also understand the need to support the industry now to maintain capacity. That is why we are accelerating our affordable housing investment plans and producing new capital investment plans.
I will give examples of that approach. We have announced £18 million of accelerated affordable housing investment and a further announcement will be made shortly on the remainder of this year's allocation. There were 432 local authority new-build housing starts in 2007-08, which is the highest figure for a decade. We are building on that through the £25 million fund to kick-start a new generation of council house building, which all but disappeared under the previous Administration. [Interruption.] Well, a grand total of six council houses—all in Shetland—were built in the last four years of Labour Party rule.
We have accelerated construction of the next stage of the Edinburgh to Glasgow rail improvement programme, which is worth up to £1 billion and which will increase rail capacity between Glasgow and Edinburgh. The key design contracts for that will be signed this month, ahead of schedule.
The First Minister knows that, among the 20,000 job losses, many apprentices face unemployment. At the UK level, clearing-house arrangements have been put in place to find such apprentices employment so that they can finish their training. The Northern Ireland Executive has guaranteed to find a job for every apprentice in the construction sector who faces unemployment. Will the First Minister give Scottish apprentices the same guarantee?
We are putting in place arrangements between Skills Development Scotland and the partnership action for continuing employment—PACE—initiative for that purpose.
I say to John Park that economic recovery and how it affects different sectors of the economy are hugely important. Some of us have had grave doubts that a general VAT reduction, at a cost of £12 billion, will have as much effect as would investing a similar amount in capital projects throughout the country. I raise that because the argument should be taken forward. We have now conducted an analysis by using the input-output model for Scotland, on the basis of Treasury assumptions, which I will make available to all MSPs. That analysis shows that a capital investment programme would create twice as many jobs in Scotland, which would include no fewer than 5,000 jobs in the construction sector, as a general VAT reduction would.
The point is that as we look to secure our construction industry for the future through training programmes and by meeting targets and requirements, we should also think about how best to avoid construction workers being made unemployed in the first place. According to the analysis that I cited, capital investment beats what the Chancellor of the Exchequer has done.
Energy Efficiency (Action Plan)
To ask the First Minister when the Scottish Government will produce an energy efficiency action plan. (S3F-1313)
Our Climate Change (Scotland) Bill, which is the most ambitious bill to tackle climate change anywhere in the world, includes a mandatory provision to introduce an energy efficiency action plan for Scotland. That will require the Scottish ministers to report to Parliament every year on the action plan's implementation and to review it every three years at least.
On 5 November, the Scottish Government published its renewable energy framework. Section 3 of it, which is on energy efficiency, confidently says:
"We will set out in 2008 our Energy Efficiency and Micro-generation Action Plan, outlining the actions we are taking and plan to take across Government."
Last night, the Minister for Environment told the Parliament that he did not believe that the energy efficiency plan had been delayed, so will it be published in 2008?
I know that members want to see faster progress than even the statutory provision in the Climate Change (Scotland) Bill. That is why we will publish an outline of the action plan this coming spring.
Which spring?
For the benefit of Mike Rumbles, I am looking at the efforts of the previous Administration. It promised a strategy in 2005 and then again in 2006, and it then delayed it until 2007. It never appeared.
The action side of the equation is important, and I know that that is what Liam McArthur is really interested in. That is why we are working with the energy companies to ensure, for the first time, that we see our fair share of carbon emissions reduction target spending on energy efficiency in Scotland. That is why we have launched the energy saving advice network—a one-stop shop offering advice to consumers and businesses on better energy use. That is why we have trebled—I repeat, trebled—the budget for community generation and microgeneration.
I would have thought that, given the Christmas spirit that is flooding through the chamber, even Liam McArthur—lo unto the Liberal Democrats—would welcome that programme of decisive action by the SNP Government.
When will the Government introduce measures to cut red tape on microrenewable generation for households and small businesses, as it has promised to do, and will it do so in line with World Health Organization guidelines on permitted development?
We are bringing forward exactly those orders because we want to ensure that everyone in Scotland can reap the benefit of that trebled budget for microgeneration—which I know, in his heart, Lewis Macdonald really supports.
That concludes questions to the First Minister. I suspend this meeting until 2.15. [Interruption.] Of course, I completely overlooked the fact that we are going on to members' business, so I ask members leaving the chamber to do so quietly.