First Minister’s Question Time
Engagements
1. To ask the First Minister what engagements he has planned for the rest of the day. (S4F-00991)
I thought that the chamber would like a quick update on the severe weather situation that many of our fellow citizens face, given that it will occupy ministers a good deal today.
As at 10.30, there were 12 flood alerts in Scotland and a flood warning for Glen Lyon in Perthshire. The catchment area of the Water of Ruchill has experienced heavy rain this morning, which may lead to the river becoming bank-full in Comrie. Additional flood defences have been installed around the village, and it is hoped and believed that they will hold. Other areas that could be affected by flooding include Whitesands in Dumfries and Dalmellington in Ayrshire. The resilience unit has been activated for most of this week and Scottish ministers, with their partners, are attending to their job and function in protecting the people of Scotland from the severe weather conditions.
We certainly hope that ministers are doing their job.
In February 2011, more than 18 months ago, John Swinney, as Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Sustainable Growth, made an announcement on college funding that still left a cut this year. On Tuesday, Mr Swinney said that he was always on top of the figures, as is his duty. He confirmed that he knew at the time that the First Minister was giving the wrong figures on colleges, despite nodding away along with the rest of the front bench.
When in the past 18 months did John Swinney inform the First Minister that college funding was to be cut this year? How often did he update him?
Ministers will attend to their job in doing their best to protect the people of Scotland from the extreme and severe weather conditions.
The mistake for which I apologised last week was my mistake. I read out a briefing—
That is not what you were asked.
Mr Henry, please.
—that suggested that college funding was increasing this year compared with last year, because it had been forgotten to include in a table the £11 million of additional funding that had been devoted to the colleges last year. That was why the mistake was made. I came to the chamber and apologised in full. Mr Russell has also come to the chamber and apologised in full. In any other parliamentary chamber that I can think of, when a minister or anyone else comes to the chamber to give an apology and explanation, that is accepted with good grace as the right thing to do. The same should be the case in this chamber.
I have looked carefully at the mechanism that was introduced in this Parliament for all members—not just ministers—to correct inadvertent errors. I note that it has been used six times by ministers and once by another Scottish National Party member. It has not been used by any other member in the chamber. Is that because other members have never made mistakes, or is it because they have chosen not to correct the mistakes that they have made?
Whatever that was, it was not a gracious recognition of the mistake that the First Minister made.
Last week, I was accused of being a puppet. It turned out that there was only one puppet in here and it was Pinocchio.
Ms Lamont, could you watch your language?
The fact of the matter is that, last week, we were able to hand the First Minister the document that was written by his own cabinet secretary that proved that we were right. Despite that, he chose not to be honest with us.
The First Minister did not answer the question that I asked him. Are we honestly expected to believe that the issue was not discussed at Cabinet? It surely cannot be right that levels of investment in Scotland’s colleges were not discussed at Cabinet, or at least by the finance secretary, the First Minister and Mike Russell. Did such discussions take place? If so, will the First Minister spell out when they took place? If they did not take place, why was that the case? Does that explain why he got the maths wrong last Thursday?
I read out the wrong figure from a briefing paper—that is the explanation. Let us examine Johann Lamont’s fantastic conspiracy theory. Why would I read out the wrong number from a briefing paper if I was aware of the various documents that had been presented? Why would the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning present the comprehensive information to the Education and Culture Committee if the explanation was not that I simply read out the wrong figure from a briefing paper?
I point out that the figure was wrong because we increased college funding last year, and that was not counted in the figure in the table that I read out. Incidentally, that table was lodged in the Scottish Parliament information centre last week. I hope that Johann Lamont has bothered to read it.
The explanation for all Johann Lamont’s wondering is that I made a mistake by reading out the wrong figure. Can we now move on to the substantive issue of college funding in Scotland and the Government’s efforts to protect and defend the education system in Scotland from cutbacks from Westminster and a surrender on policy by the Labour Party?
It does not take the First Minister long to get to the alibi when he is under pressure. Please take responsibility for something. [Interruption.]
Order.
When the First Minister accidentally read out the wrong figure from a briefing paper, why did his finance secretary and his education secretary, who knew that the figure was not true, start nodding in agreement with him? That goes to the heart of the Scottish Government’s pretence of competence—the approach is to keep people in the dark, assert the opposite of the truth and hope that no one notices.
The worrying thing is not that the First Minister allegedly got one specific figure wrong but that, if we are to believe him, he did not know whether spending on Scotland’s colleges was going up or down. Which is worse—that the First Minister is so incompetent that he does not know when spending is going up or down or that he deliberately misled the people of Scotland and denied the impact of his choices on the workforce in colleges and on communities across Scotland?
If people are to be held responsible for their body language when other people are making statements, the Labour Party is on very difficult ground, given the looks, glowers and other forms of body language that infect the Labour benches. [Interruption.]
Order.
I will introduce Johann Lamont to some of the substantive points. She says that it is evading responsibility to point out that there are severe cuts at Westminster that are affecting the people of Scotland. It is not evading responsibility to point out that, under the system of finance and government that the Labour Party has supported in Scotland, our budget has a direct relationship to the budget at Westminster, through the Barnett formula. It is therefore relevant to look at what is happening to budget funding in England and Wales.
Johann Lamont knows that the budget for Scotland’s colleges is going down by 1.7 per cent this year in comparison with last year. I wish that the situation was otherwise, but that is the reality. However, south of the border, the figure is 5 per cent. Given that our budget is directly related to the education budget south of the border, that is surely relevant information.
Another argument that I have put consistently to Johann Lamont is about support for the regionalisation programme. Through the non-profit-distributing mechanism, the Scottish Government is investing massive sums in the colleges of Scotland—colleges such as Forth Valley College, whose campus has been reinvigorated, and Kilmarnock College and Inverness College. Huge expenditure has been made in the Glasgow colleges.
That is the strategy—through the regionalisation concept and that investment—to bring about and protect the college infrastructure of Scotland, so that it can serve its duty to the students of Scotland. That is not evading responsibility; that is living up to the responsibility of doing the best that the Government possibly can do for the students and college students of Scotland in the face of attacks from Westminster. Johann Lamont and her party have supported the system that brings about the cut in funding.
For what it is worth, my body language says, “What on earth was all that about?” The questions are about the First Minister’s choices in education and his inability to be honest about what he chooses to support and not to support.
This is a man who, at 12 o’clock, can give the most exact answer ever given to a Parliament at any time, anywhere, but who has to admit by 5 o’clock that his statements were the opposite of the truth. That is because we provided the information, not because he offered it. Whether we are talking about Europe, Doosan investing in Scotland or the number of jobs in the renewables sector, the First Minister just makes it up. Does he honestly expect us to believe that he, his finance minister and Mike Russell did not agree college cuts in the months before they came to the chamber to deny them?
I ask the First Minister again: which is worse—that he does not know what his Government is doing to the colleges of this country, or that he is prepared knowingly to mislead the people of Scotland? [Interruption.]
Order.
I note that Johann Lamont has never made use of the facility for making a correction to what she has said in the chamber. I have a full list of the number of times that her statements in the chamber have been at variance with the facts. [Interruption.]
Order.
For example, on 9 February, she claimed that there was an £800 million steel contract for the Forth crossing, but actually the steel contract is around 10 per cent of the total contract. She has claimed that there were falling numbers of people in the national health service since the Government took office, which is also not true. Those claims and Johann Lamont’s apparent position that she never makes mistakes are at severe variance with the facts that we can produce for members. The difference is that when we made a mistake, both the education secretary and I apologised to members and corrected it. [Interruption.]
Mr Henry, that is enough.
The Labour Party never corrects its mistakes. It does not correct the mistakes that it regularly makes in the chamber, and it does not correct or apologise for its great mistakes, such as the war in Iraq, which was imposed on us by a Labour Government, and the private finance initiative programme, which will be foisted on Scotland’s finances for years and generations to come. There has been no apology from Johann Lamont not just for attempting to tear up the Scottish National Party manifesto but for tearing up the Labour manifesto on tuition fees, prescription charges, transport for older people and free care for the elderly. Each of those was identified in Labour’s manifesto last year and each is being consigned to the dustbin of history by her cuts commission. That is why the Government is trusted and the Labour Party is not.
This goes to the heart of the problem with the Scottish Government. The idea that that was an answer to the question that I asked is complete nonsense. I asked the First Minister which is worse—that he is so incompetent that he does not know that his spending choices are leading to cuts in colleges, or that he thinks that he can get away with misleading people? I have said that we need to be honest not just about what we choose to spend money on but about the consequences. What the First Minister has done is deny those consequences. I ask him to reflect again on the choice that he is making to cut spending on colleges at the very time when our young people need them most.
A mistake was made and apologised for. On the question of honesty, as deputy leader of the Labour Party, Johann Lamont promised to freeze the council tax on page 69 of Labour’s manifesto, retain the commitment to free personal care, retain the abolition of tuition fees for Scotland’s students on page 32 of the manifesto, and retain the concessionary travel scheme on page 64. [Interruption.]
Order.
No charging for prescriptions was promised on page 42 and protecting front-line police numbers was promised on page 48. Every single one of those solemn Labour commitments is in the process of being sacrificed and jeopardised. That is nothing like honesty. More important, that is why, as those facts become known to the people of our country, it will be a gey long time afore the Labour Party gets anywhere near government in Scotland.
Prime Minister (Meetings)
2. To ask the First Minister when he will next meet the Prime Minister. (S4F-00990)
I have no plans to do so in the near future.
In the First Minister’s answers to the Labour Party leader, we have all just seen him diminish his office. In one of his answers, he said that we must
“move on to the substantive issue of college funding”,
and I believe that he said that we should recognise his Government’s efforts to “protect and defend” the college budget. Let us look at that.
Last week, the First Minister repeatedly told us that the further education budget for 2012-13 is £546 million yet, in the draft budget for 2013-14, the Government says that the revenue budget for further education will be reduced to £511 million. Can he confirm that that represents a £34 million single-year cash cut? I can tell him now that that is more than 5 per cent.
It is actually £512 million, based on the figures that have been presented and according to the table that I have here, which I always present with great care to the chamber. [Interruption.]
Order.
Can Ruth Davidson understand that the decline in funding through the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills budget to the English further education sector is far greater than the decline that has happened in Scotland, or that is projected in Scotland? Each year, the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning, in conjunction with the Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Employment and Sustainable Growth, has managed to put extra funding into the college budget. That is the process of protection. If Ruth Davidson would care to glance at what is happening to colleges south of the border, she will see why we are protecting the colleges of Scotland.
Ruth Davidson supports the position in which our education budget is directly related to the education budget that is being pursued by her colleagues in England and Wales. I support the position in which Scotland will have its resources, in order to dictate our own priorities, so that we can invest in the students of this country. As long as we are under that constraint from Westminster, we will do our best to defend colleges and other public services in Scotland.
However, when budgets are collapsing south of the border, it ill behoves the Conservative Party to come to this chamber and suggest anything other than that that protection is being pursued for the benefit of the people of Scotland.
Although the First Minister is in charge of budgets in this country and has cut the colleges’ budget over the spending review period by 24 per cent, which is significantly more than the overall reduction in the budget, there is still no acknowledgement that any responsibility lies with him. Last Thursday—at the fifth attempt, by my count—the First Minister told the Parliament that the further education budget in 2011-12 was £555 million and that the budget for 2012-13 is £446 million. I apologise; it is £546 million. [Interruption.]
Order, Dr Allan.
The First Minister stated that, in 2011-12, the budget was £555 million and that the budget for 2012-13 is £546 million, yet today the Parliament’s independent information service—the Scottish Parliament information centre, to which the First Minister referred earlier—insists that the true figure for 2011-12 was actually £576 million and that the budget for 2012-13 is £526 million. Can he explain that discrepancy, either now, or at 5 o’clock?
Given that Ruth Davidson—no doubt inadvertently—made an error of £100 million in the first figure that she quoted, we look forward to the correction in the Official Report. [Interruption.]
Order. [Interruption.] Order, Mr Henry.
If Ruth Davidson was prepared to examine the documents that have been presented to the Education and Culture Committee, which I have had cause to examine in great detail over the past few days, she will find the explanation that she is looking for, which is that the money—the £15 million—was allocated to help with reorganisation in this financial year. It was given to the Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council in the last budget revisions, which allocated it to be spent in this financial year. She will find that point detailed in the explanation to the committee. That means either that she has not read the explanation, or that she chooses not to tell Parliament.
When we come to accuracy in this chamber, Ruth Davidson might remember that during her contribution last week on college funding she told Parliament that she was giving us examples of
“courses that are now no longer available under the education secretary’s stewardship”,
and she put forward a list of courses. I am putting into SPICe a list of where those courses are available. The higher national diploma in technical support, which she said was “gone” under Mike Russell’s stewardship, is available at Kilmarnock College, City of Glasgow College, Cardonald College, Langside College, Anniesland College, North Glasgow College, Edinburgh College, Forth Valley College, West Lothian College, Aberdeen College and—famously—Stow College in Glasgow.
That goes for the other subjects that Ruth Davidson said were no longer available. Once she has read the list in SPICe, will we get another apology from Ruth Davidson for coming to the chamber and inadvertently giving us misinformation, or will the Conservative Party hold to the idea that the Opposition parties never come to this chamber with inaccuracies? The only difference is that the Opposition parties never correct their inaccuracies and they never apologise.
I would be absolutely delighted to put into SPICe exactly which colleges the courses have been cut from, under Mike Russell.
In that half-answer that the First Minister gave me, he tried to account for £15 million of the discrepancy that I raised, which is the difference between the figure in the chart that was given to the committee and the figure that is available in SPICe, but he did not mention the Skills Development Scotland money of £5 million, did he?
That was also mentioned in the budget debate at stage 3. Of course, the £15 million discrepancy adds to a £30 million difference in the figures if it is allocated in the correct year, as the documents show. I am delighted that Ruth Davidson seems to acknowledge that the £15 million figure exists. She forgot to tell us about it in her question a few minutes ago.
I remind her of what she said in the chamber last week. She did not say that the courses are not available in one college; she said:
“I will give a few examples of courses that are now no longer available under the education secretary’s stewardship”.—[Official Report, 15 November 2012; c 13517.]
She then went through the courses and said that they are “gone”. She did not say specifically that they are not available in one college; she told the chamber that they are “no longer available”—that they are “gone”. Unfortunately for Ruth Davidson, there are students studying those courses across Scotland at the present moment. They are not “gone”. They are there. They exist. It is happening.
Perhaps Ruth Davidson will come to this chamber and not give us the old Tory adage, “Never apologise, never explain.” The Tories never apologise and they cannot explain.
Cabinet (Meetings)
3. To ask the First Minister what issues will be discussed at the next meeting of the Cabinet. (S4F-00992)
Issues of importance to the people of Scotland will be discussed.
Just what does it take for the education secretary to lose the confidence of the First Minister?
The education secretary is taking forward—under the most difficult financial circumstances that are being visited upon us by a Government that the member’s colleagues support in Westminster—a position in which no student in Scotland pays tuition fees. That is not just the students at our universities, but the 23,000 students in our colleges, who would be paying tuition fees if Willie Rennie and his colleagues had their way.
As usual, the First Minister is an expert on every other Government. The last thing that he is is an expert on his own Government. It is astonishing that, after all that has happened in recent weeks, the First Minister believes that Mike Russell should stay. It is wrong that the First Minister puts his interests above those of the colleges. We know that the relationship with college leaders has been wrecked. Principals will not speak out, in case their colleges suffer. The education secretary has got his figures wrong yet again, according to SPICe.
Mike Russell is so out of control that he is even reporting his own Government to the ombudsman. Does the First Minister accept that we need a change of approach, figures that we can all agree and an education secretary who we can trust to deliver? When will he grasp the thistle?
I have a list here of major figures in Scottish colleges who have supported Mr Russell in the recent disagreement with regard to Stow College. Mr Russell is pursuing the brief in an excellent manner across the range of his responsibilities.
Willie Rennie asked me a question: under what circumstances would I lose confidence in one of my ministers? I think that circumstances in which people across the country would be entitled to lose confidence would be if one had taken a firm and solemn manifesto commitment, such as there being no tuition fees for the students of a country, and then torn it up for seats at the Cabinet table at Westminster. In those circumstances, not only one’s colleagues but, more important, the people would lose confidence.
If Willie Rennie looks around at his diminished and reduced number of colleagues, he will see that the confidence that the Liberal Democrats have lost is the confidence of the people of this country—and the single biggest issue on which they lost that confidence was their decision to reintroduce tuition fees and the demonstration that they would do anything to support the Conservative Party in return for a share of power. Perhaps, when that realisation and the extent of the loss of the people of Scotland’s confidence in them dawn on Willie Rennie, he will be entitled to ask whether Scotland will ever lose confidence in a Government that maintains the principle of free education in this country.
Wind Turbine Manufacturing (Areva)
4. To ask the First Minister what benefits Scotland will receive following the announcement that French firm, Areva, is to locate its United Kingdom turbine manufacturing site in Scotland. (S4F-01000)
Earlier this week, I met Areva, which has announced that it will locate its turbine manufacturing site in Scotland. It will be one of its three major European sites. That is fantastic news for Scotland, with the potential to create 750 jobs in manufacturing and the supporting supply chain. It is further good news from the renewables sector, which has seen £2.8 billion of investment in Scotland since 2009 and delivers economic benefits to communities the length and breadth of our country.
I find it extremely encouraging that overseas companies continue to look at Scotland as a place to invest. Does the First Minister agree that the situation is perhaps slightly hampered by the UK Government’s confused and divided approach to its energy policies and that the only way of rectifying things is to take powers over energy policy, and indeed everything else, back to this Parliament?
I think that there is a great deal of strength in that particular argument. The Opposition benches should remember that Areva was one of the companies that recently signed a letter expressing concern at aspects of UK Government energy policy.
On Monday, however, I was absolutely delighted to find among the many welcomes for Areva’s announcement of its intentions a welcome from John Hayes, the junior energy minister in the Westminster Parliament, who was of course recently involved in a speech that was never delivered in which he was going to cite his opposition to wind technology. Although I welcome John Hayes’s salute for Areva’s intentions, I gently point out to the Conservative Party that it is not possible to manufacture wind turbines if one does not believe in wind energy playing a role in energy policy.
Out-of-hours Paediatric Services (Lothian, Fife and Borders)
5. To ask the First Minister what action the Scottish Government will take in response to concerns that out-of-hours paediatric services at NHS Lothian, Fife and Borders are at risk due to a shortage of trainee doctors. (S4F-00999)
We are very much aware of the situation in the south-east of Scotland and have made it clear to the three national health service boards involved that we will support every effort to ensure that the best quality paediatric services are maintained for children across the region.
Following a meeting earlier this week with NHS Lothian chief executive Tim Davison, the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing allocated up to £100,000 in this financial year and committed a further £500,000 over the next two financial years to support the appointments of four fixed-term clinical fellows, which will be followed up with a further national and international recruitment campaign for permanent trained staff to maintain services at St John’s hospital in Livingston. I hope that the member recognises the importance of that announcement.
I thank the First Minister for his reply and for the announcement. However, I wonder what the families and children in Fife, Lothian and the Borders are feeling and what they believe, given that the First Minister said in June that the closure of the paediatric ward at St John’s was unsatisfactory and that remedial action was well under way to prevent a recurrence. However, the situation has not improved; it is very much worse, with 13 staff down in the medical field. We know from the Lothian NHS Board announcements that St John’s paediatric ward is under threat of closure, that services across Fife, the Borders and Lothian are stretched to breaking point and that remedial action has not yet been taken.
Is this yet another broken promise? Is this another case of the public being misled, with the First Minister saying what he likes in the chamber regardless of what is happening in the real world of the NHS?
A serious recruitment issue has occurred because there are staff on maternity leave and because of other matters. That affects 12.3 whole-time staff out of 47 and, because that is 25 per cent of trainee numbers, that creates a significant difficulty.
The Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing has met the health board and has suggested the action that I have outlined, which is designed to address the circumstances. We will also be working with NHS Education Scotland to develop Scottish-based programmes of study to support the development of advanced nurse practitioners to help to sustain the provision of specialist paediatric services across the country. That is a response to the immediate situation that has arisen and a longer-term response to enable the position to be better across Scotland.
That is significant action in the face of a real problem and I would have thought that it would be welcomed across the chamber.
Year of Homecoming 2014
6. To ask the First Minister what the Scottish Government is doing to ensure that the 2014 year of homecoming is a success. (S4F-01003)
The year of homecoming in 2009 attracted 95,000 visitors to travel to Scotland and exceeded its target by generating an estimated £53 million in additional tourism revenue for Scotland in what was a difficult year for global tourism.
The themes for 2014 will hope to build on that success and the organisation is on-going.
I thank the First Minister for his response. He will be aware that the gathering 2014, which was to be the centrepiece of the year of homecoming, has been cancelled by Stirling Council for perfectly understandable reasons. He may also be aware of concerns that North American visitors are less likely to come to Scotland in June to attend an event at Bannockburn than they would be to attend a clan gathering event in July or August.
How will the Scottish Government and its agencies ensure that we have enough attractive events in 2014 to make up for the cancellation of the gathering, so that the large number of American visitors that our tourism industry is hoping for will still come here?
I direct Murdo Fraser to the president of the Council of Scottish Clans and Associations, Susan McIntosh, who said:
“we welcome the opportunity to work with the homecoming 2014 team to ensure that plans for the battle of Bannockburn ... event are developed with a clan audience in mind.”
On seeing the significance of that 700th anniversary and understanding how it must play a part in the year of homecoming, we took advice from a variety of quarters. That included a 26 May 2010 press statement, which said:
“the Scottish Conservatives believe that the 700th anniversary of the battle of Bannockburn must be the centrepiece of these national celebrations ... The fate of the nation was decided in the battle of Bannockburn in 1314 during the wars of independence and it must be the focal point for homecoming in 2014.”
The author of that statement was Murdo Fraser. I am following Murdo Fraser’s advice to the letter and I hope that it was not that statement that resulted in the disgraceful decision not to elect him as leader of the Conservative Party.