Plenary, 20 Jun 2002

Meeting date: Thursday, June 20, 2002

Official Report 766KB pdf

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First Minister's Question Time

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Cabinet (Meetings)

To ask the First Minister what issues will be discussed at the next meeting of the Scottish Executive's Cabinet. (S1F-1982)

I echo your remarks, Presiding Officer. We all admire the work that is being done by David Trimble and Mark Durkan to bring about normal democratic government in Northern Ireland.

The Cabinet will discuss youth crime and other important issues next week.

I associate the Scottish National Party with the First Minister's welcome to David Trimble and Mark Durkan.

I will quote to the First Minister a letter from an elderly constituent that was received by one of my colleagues. The lady writes about waiting times. She says:

"I have cataract in both eyes. I have completely lost the sight in one eye and the other is deteriorating very quickly."

The lady has been told that

"The waiting time for routine appointments is approximately 70 weeks".

She has also been told that the waiting time for treatment could be a further 28 weeks. That is 98 weeks in total—nearly two years. How does that square with the First Minister's statement of 30 May that no patient in Scotland waits more than 12 months for treatment?

Mr Swinney, as ever, distorts the figures on out-patient and in-patient waiting times. I share his concerns—as I am sure does every member in the chamber—about the length of time that people have to wait for cataract operations. I agree that those waiting times have to come down.

We are taking initiatives—such as the one that was announced by Malcolm Chisholm this morning—to ensure that we in Scotland have the best-quality health facilities. It is deplorable that the Scottish nationalist party could not bring itself to welcome that new development earlier today, and I challenge Mr Swinney to do so now.

Such initiatives are a bit rich when we consider that they come from a Government that has already cut the number of acute beds in Scotland by 800. It is a bit late for the First Minister on that matter.

The First Minister's words are all carefully chosen. He is going round the country pledging to people that they will not have to wait 12 months for treatment but, in a letter from the general manager of Hairmyres hospital, the lady whose letter I quoted has been told that her wait will last 98 weeks. Why does not the First Minister tell people the truth about the health service?

As Mr Swinney knows, there is a difference between in-patient and out-patient operations. I take it that his answer to my challenge is no. [Interruption.] Members who think that serious issues—particularly elderly people who are in need of cataract operations—can become merely the subject of abuse and shouting in the chamber are very wrong.

I take it that Mr Swinney's response is that he does not welcome the fact that there is now a new public hospital in Scotland that will deal with the waiting times to which he referred. Go on, Mr Swinney—welcome that announcement.

I am just waiting for the First Minister to own up to the fact that he has cut capacity in the health service during all the years in which he has been in office. If the First Minister wants to know about his carefully chosen words, I will read them to him. He said:

"Nearly 4 per cent of all patients in England are waiting more than 12 months for in-patient treatment. In Scotland no patients are waiting that long."

Since he came to office, the First Minister has been caught with closed waiting lists and with reclassified waiting lists—now he has been caught deceiving the public on waiting times. Is it true that the First Minister cannot be trusted on health?

What a load of absolute rubbish. It was absolutely clear at the time that those waiting time statistics were about in-patient waiting times. It is absolutely right that that was made absolutely clear on that day. Mr Swinney failed that day to welcome the fact that waiting times were coming down. He failed to welcome the fact that the longest waiting times were coming down. He has failed to welcome any good new development in the health service in the past six months and yet again today he fails to welcome the fact that we have a hospital that will carry out 5,000 more operations in the health service in Scotland. He should congratulate Malcolm Chisholm—[Interruption.]

Order.

Thank you, Presiding Officer. Mr Swinney should congratulate Malcolm Chisholm today on his successful negotiation for a hospital facility that is worth £200 million, but which the Executive has bought for £37.5 million. Five thousand more operations will be performed and many people, including elderly people in Scotland, will be very grateful as a result.

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Prime Minister (Meetings)

To ask the First Minister when he next plans to meet the Prime Minister and what issues he intends to raise with him. (S1F-1983)

I expect to meet the Prime Minister in an hour, when I will ask him what he thought of the new school that he opened in Glasgow today.

I thank the First Minister for that up-to-the-minute answer.

When the First Minister and the Prime Minister have got round to celebrating yet another private finance initiative—an inspired Tory idea for improving public services in Scotland—I wonder whether, given that the Prime Minister is the head of the civil service, they might get round to discussing the recent weekend row over the recruitment of 40 policy advisers, which produced a rather unseemly squabble that reflected no particular credit on the First Minister.

The First Minister may claim to have been unaware of that particular recruitment campaign, but is he aware that in this financial year, the cost of administration in Scotland will have risen by £67 million since 1999, and that there are more than 600 more civil servants in Scotland today than there were in 1999? Will he tell me how many more civil servants the Scottish Executive intends to employ and whether it is true that the total will soon number 5,000?

Well, well, well—civil service jobs in Scotland. The Government in 1992 was a Conservative Government and there were 54,000 civil servants in Scotland. The number of civil servants in Scotland today is 44,000. Nobody in the chamber needs to take any lessons from the Conservative party about civil service jobs in Scotland. The current civil service recruitment exercises are well within budget, well within the right numbers and compare favourably to the record of the Conservatives when they were in Government. I hope that David McLetchie will admit that today.

I will admit that the First Minister is a genius at distorting figures, because he knows well that the numbers to which he referred were subject to substantial reclassification as a result of many jobs going out of the public sector and into the private sector. [Interruption.]

Order.

I am talking about the core staff who service the Scottish Executive, whose number has risen from approximately 3,500 to 4,300 in the past four years. That number, according to the former adviser to the First Minister's predecessor, is projected to rise to 5,000 before long.

The fact of the matter is that not only do we have many more civil servants advising the First Minister and his bloated team of ministers, but we have four times the number of ministers that we had in 1999. We have five times the number of special advisers and, of course, we have spent seven times more on the Holyrood parliament building than we were told we would spend. Far from presiding over a fitter and better-equipped Government, the Executive has presided over an explosion in the amount of taxpayers' money that the Executive spends on itself. Does not that just go to show that the First Minister's claim of doing "less better" is a totally meaningless soundbite?

Not at all. Let us look at a more recent example. I accept that Mr McLetchie's party might have wanted to reduce the number of civil service jobs in the mid-1990s, but let us look at the record immediately before the new Government took over in 1997. There were not 44,000 civil servant jobs in Scotland, as there are today, but 46,000. The figure was high even at the end of the previous Conservative Government. Those numbers are accurate.

I want to make one point very clear to Mr McLetchie. The jobs that I am most concerned about in Scotland are the jobs of the people in Dumfries to whom I spoke on Monday about boosting tourism in Dumfries, and the jobs that Iain Gray was discussing with Scottish businesses this morning at a Scottish Council for Development and Industry seminar on ensuring that we have more exports to, and trade with, China. Those are the sorts of jobs that really matter—jobs for businesses in Scotland, jobs in tourism and jobs in a new hospital, which Mr McLetchie was able to welcome this morning even if the SNP was not. Those are the sorts of jobs that matter and those are the jobs that we will continue to prioritise.

Does not the First Minister think it ridiculous that civil servants who work for the Scottish Executive report to Tony Blair and Sir Richard Wilson in Downing Street, rather than to him?

I was going to say that I hope that Alex Neil is never First Minister, although I may hope that he gets another position. I hope that he is never First Minister because he should know, after having been a member of the Parliament for three years, that civil servants in Scotland report to me. They might be part of the UK civil service, but they report to me.

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Free Personal Care

To ask the First Minister whether all local authorities are on track to deliver free personal and nursing care on 1 July 2002. (S1F-1990)

All the necessary legislation and regulations are now in place for free personal care to be provided for people at home, as from 1 July. For people in care homes, full guidance has been issued about payments, eligibility and contracts, to which local authorities are working closely. I have no reason to believe that any local authority will fail to meet the implementation date, but we will continue to monitor the situation and to provide support and guidance as required.

Is the First Minister aware, or concerned, that Glasgow City Council has stated its fear that it does not have enough cash to meet the needs of pensioners' free personal care? Is he aware that colleagues have received correspondence from constituents in Fife that states that they have been told to expect lengthy waits—as long as until September or October—before they will be assessed or, indeed, receive payments? Will he assure me that any delay in the receipt of payments will be resolved as quickly as possible? Will he confirm that payments to individuals in care homes will be backdated?

The rules, as agreed by the Parliament, will be properly and fully implemented. I hope that local authorities are able to complete all assessments as quickly as possible. We have set them a difficult challenge to meet the timetable. However, that was the right thing to do and we are providing every support and assistance that we can.

The First Minister will recall that the three-month delay in implementing free personal care was in order to allow all assessments to take place. Will the First Minister therefore tell us why, less than two weeks before 1 July, thousands of elderly people all over Scotland still await assessment? Will he confirm that one of the reasons for that is the Scottish Executive's delay in publishing and issuing guidance to local authorities? More important, will he today give an absolute guarantee that, by 1 July, all eligible elderly people will have been assessed and be in receipt of free personal care?

I try to avoid being personal, but I have to say that I was disappointed by Nicola Sturgeon's response this morning when she failed to welcome the new hospital in Clydebank. I am also disappointed that she seeks, in this way, to run down the scheme that was agreed in the Parliament. The nationalist party might want the scheme to fail, but it will not. The timetable was ambitious but it is largely being met. People in Scotland's local authorities are working extremely hard to ensure that that happens. It would be right and proper for us to thank and congratulate them, rather than denigrating their work as the nationalists have done today.

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Scottish Executive (Policy Analysts)

To ask the First Minister why the Scottish Executive is increasing the number of policy analysts it employs. (S1F-1989)

Departments estimate that over the next 12 to 18 months there will be a need for a few additional posts. All such posts will be funded within existing resources.

Now that peace has broken out between the First Minister and the permanent secretary, may I draw his attention to the Scottish ministerial code. Section 5.1 states, inter alia, that

"Civil servants paid from public funds should not be used for party political purposes."

Will the First Minister give a categorical assurance that those who are appointed to the new posts will work for the general public good and not for the selfish political and partisan interests of the Labour and Liberal parties?

Yes.

It is clear from the U-turns and climbdowns over the policy analyst adverts that the First Minister is not in control of the civil service. Given that it is clear under section 51 of the Scotland Act 1998 that Tony Blair is in charge of the civil service, will the First Minister tell us what his limited delegated responsibilities are? When he next sees Tony Blair, in an hour's time, will the First Minister argue the case for a Scottish civil service to be controlled by the Scottish Parliament?

Here we see the hidden agenda of the past week. No, I will not. The UK civil service has a reputation for independence and quality that is almost second to none in the world. Scottish civil servants are proud to be part of that. As part of their daily work, they report directly to Scottish ministers and it is right and proper that they do so. Ms Hyslop might want to politicise them, but I do not.

Will the First Minister, for the benefit of those who might not share the processes of the Labour party in forming their manifesto—recognising that the Conservative party will have no difficulty in producing a manifesto that delivers nothing for Scotland and that the nationalists might at some stage attach a budget to their manifesto—agree that the Labour party's manifesto will be delivered and implemented by the Labour party—

Order. The First Minister does not answer questions as leader of the Labour party—he answers questions as the First Minister. We move to question 5.

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Euro 2008

To ask the First Minister what progress is being made on the bid for the European football championships in 2008. (S1F-1987)

We are making excellent progress on our joint bid with Ireland. The Scottish Football Association and the Football Association of Ireland made their presentation to the Union of European Football Associations in Geneva yesterday and it was well received. Last Friday, the Prime Minister offered his enthusiastic support for the Scotland-Ireland bid.

How will a successful bid benefit not just the cities that host the games, but other cities and towns throughout Scotland, which are included in the bid as training venues and which might serve as bases for players and fans alike?

Many benefits could arise from the bid. If the bid is successful, I hope that the initial benefits of the games and the tournament will be shared throughout Scotland. That is why we have been particularly keen to involve the clubs in the north-east of Scotland as part of the bidding process.

We also need to maximise the benefits of the bid in other ways by promoting Scotland before, during and after the tournament. We must promote Scotland to tourists and so gain benefits from the beds that will be used and money that will be spent by the people who come with the supporters. We must ensure that many communities throughout Scotland allow local facilities to be used as training grounds and local hotels to be used for teams, their supporters and other people attending the tournament. If we can share those positive aspects throughout Scotland and in Ireland, the benefits of the tournament will last for a long time.

The Euro 2008 bid is crucial. Given that the First Minister's choice for the world cup—Paraguay—has now been knocked out, will he tell us whether he will support England in the world cup in return for England's generous support for our bid for Euro 2008?

We might have the support of the Prime Minister but we do not yet have the support of the English Football Association—perhaps it could become a negotiating counter overnight. We should all have sympathy for the underdogs and I wish all the underdogs well over the weekend.

Will the First Minister congratulate Ireland on its magnificent performance in the world cup?

Will he also congratulate Bertie Ahern on his re-election? We hope that his re-election will help to make the Euro 2008 bid successful and that it will help to ensure that association football is recognised in Scotland and Ireland as one of the greatest international sports—a sport that is capable of building and consolidating great friendships between the people of Scotland and Ireland and all the nations of the world.

I have already congratulated Bertie Ahern. I am also delighted to congratulate Mary Harney on her re-appointment as deputy. The Government of Ireland will work closely with us on the bid over the coming years, and will continue to work with us if we are successful in winning the European football championships.

The success of the world cup in recent weeks has shown what a difference such a tournament can make to the countries where that tournament is held. It can also make a difference to the atmosphere around the world, with countries getting to know each other better and playing competitively while expanding understanding across the globe.

I certainly congratulate Ireland on the way in which—in the absence of our fantastic Scottish supporters—its supporters have represented Scotland and Ireland, and our bid, so well in Korea and Japan.