First Minister’s Question Time
Engagements
1. To ask the First Minister what engagements he has planned for the rest of the day. (S4F-01582)
I have engagements to take forward the Government’s programme for Scotland.
Why is the Scottish Government cutting help for victims of the bedroom tax by £20 million next year?
I should congratulate Johann Lamont first. If my memory serves me correctly, this is the first time she has mentioned the words “bedroom tax” and raised the matter at First Minister’s questions. Now that the Labour Party feels itself to be in a position to address at First Minister’s question time a huge issue that has affected people in Scotland over a matter of months, we should congratulate Johann Lamont on raising it at last.
As Johann Lamont well knows, the Scottish Government has made a substantial increase in discretionary housing payments—one and a half times what the Westminster Government was offering—in order to address, and to allow our local authorities to address, some of the worst aspects of the bedroom tax. That effective action has been welcomed by a wide range of organisations that care about the people of Scotland and talk about the bedroom tax all the time.
Yes, of course—but the problem with the First Minister is that he talks about the bedroom tax all the time, but does not act in the interests of ordinary people. If people were to be comforted by promises in the future, we would be in a strange place. What we can do now is what actually matters. There is £20 million this year, but there is nothing next year and, this year, there is half of what the organisations that he mentioned expected.
The real reason why the Scottish Government is cutting off support for the victims of the bedroom tax is that it sees injustice not as an opportunity to help people in Scotland who are suffering, but as one to be exploited ahead of the referendum. If the First Minister really wanted rid of the bedroom tax, he would urge voters in England in 2015 to vote Labour to abolish it—[Laughter.]
Order.
—rather than asking them to vote for Nick Clegg, as he did in 2010. The memory banks have been wiped, but the evidence of the First Minister’s poor judgment is seen again in that.
We know that the First Minister does not agree with John Swinney on renationalising postal services, on pensions or on the public finances. Does he agree with his Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Employment and Sustainable Growth that the reason why the Government will not help victims of the bedroom tax is that it does not want to let Westminster “off the hook”? [Interruption.]
Order.
The finance secretary, John Swinney, has helped victims of the bedroom tax. I will quote the people who talk about the bedroom tax all the time. Shelter Scotland’s Graeme Brown said:
“We are delighted that the Scottish Government has listened to Shelter Scotland’s campaign and is making £20 million available to help thousands more households … affected by the so-called bedroom tax.”
Children in Scotland’s chief executive Jackie Brock said:
“Whilst Scotland does not have the power to change the policy, we are pleased to see the Scottish Government utilizing the powers they do have to help mitigate the impact on our most vulnerable households.”
Let us not have it from Johann Lamont that John Swinney has not helped people who are afflicted by the bedroom tax. That is the effective action that the Scottish National Party Government has taken.
In Johann Lamont’s question was something more interesting. She says that what we must do in order not to have the bedroom tax imposed on the people of Scotland is to make an appeal to people in England to vote Labour. That is the sum total of the Labour Party’s ambition for the people of Scotland. Many people in Scotland—this party, other parties and many people throughout Scotland—say that the way to stop iniquities such as the bedroom tax being imposed on the Scottish people is to take the power over social security so that we can build the society that we want to have.
John Swinney has given less than half of what people asked for this year and will give them nothing next year. The reason why he will give them nothing next year is that that is another justification for separation, rather than a policy that should be tackled.
The First Minister is fond of saying that the best people to make decisions about Scotland are the people who live here, and who care most about Scotland. He has the power to help victims of the bedroom tax now and, with an underspend of £179 million last year, he has the funds. Is it not the case that although the First Minister might live in Scotland, he has decided not to act because he does not care about the victims of the bedroom tax and would rather exploit their pain?
Of course, the £20 million that we are providing is the limit, under the powers that we have at present. That is exactly what Shelter asked for.
Let us return to the question of where these matters should be governed and settled. I presume that even Johann Lamont and the Labour Party do not believe that the Scottish Government can find resources to cope with all the welfare changes that are being imposed on the Scottish people. I presume that they accept that, in conjunction with our colleagues in the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, we have done what we can on council tax benefit. I presume that Johann Lamont understands that the reinforcement of the ability of Scotland’s charities to help people who are in extremity has been an important move to make, and I presume that she concedes that Shelter asked for £20 million because it realised that that is the legal limit that exists under the powers of this Parliament.
If it is accepted—as it is by many people, including the charities—that we are doing everything we can, within the powers that we have, to mitigate the effect of Westminster-imposed cutbacks on the Scottish people, surely the solution is obvious. If we want not to have the bedroom tax, and if we do not want people with disability to be subjected to humiliation, why cannot we in this country have the power to frame our own welfare system so that it meets the ambitions of the Scottish people?
If the First Minister was interested in his day job, he would know that there is not a £20 million limit on what he can spend. Even if that were true, it does not explain why he is not putting any money into next year’s budget. There is nothing there.
Perhaps another reason why the Government is not helping is that, instead of having civil servants try to improve the lives of Scots and to find ways of supporting people, the First Minister has them writing fantasy plans for a Scottish air force, Scottish embassies and our own secret service.
While the First Minister has been doing that, between trips to the Ryder cup and Wimbledon—I advise him not to go again to Wimbledon and behave in the way that he did this year—we have been working. I have here the bill that can protect Scotland from the bedroom tax. It has been lodged in Parliament today and it has support from the very organisations that the First Minister has cited. Instead of cutting help for victims of the bedroom tax, will the First Minister pledge to sign this bill now and do the right thing by Scotland, rather than the right thing by the SNP?
It is now six months since SNP councils across the country moved to a no-evictions policy. That did not meet with unanimous support: on 25 March 2013, Aberdeen City Council, which is led by Labour in alliance with the Tories, rejected the motion that called for no evictions. [Interruption.]
Order.
On 13 February, the Labour-Tory alliance in Falkirk Council rejected the SNP motion. This spring, the Labour Party refused to endorse the no-evictions policy that was being implemented by SNP councils across Scotland, and we all know that Labour-run North Lanarkshire Council was trying to evict a disabled single mum until the Daily Record exposed it on 22 August. It was only after the council leader, Jim McCabe, was confronted by Ms Fraser and the Daily Record that the eviction threat was withdrawn. If the Labour Party’s concern is for people across Scotland who are under the heel of the bedroom tax, why did it not support the SNP’s policy of there being no evictions across Scotland?
But then, of course, Johann Lamont has a track record these days: it is of waiting to raise the bedroom tax until it was said at the Labour conference that—finally—the Labour Party is prepared to argue for a repeal of the tax. For six months, we have been waiting, with different interpretations from different Labour figures in Scotland, because they have been waiting for God, or for Ed Miliband, to give them the sign that they could argue for repeal. It has been six months since Nicola Sturgeon pledged to repeal the bedroom tax in an independent Scotland.
It is absolutely extraordinary to argue, as Johann Lamont and Jackie Baillie do, not that we could not control social security in Scotland, but that we should not control social security in Scotland. That is why the majority of the Scottish people see the route forward for social security—so that we can banish the bedroom tax from Scotland and banish the iniquities that are being foisted on people with disabilities—as being to take the power in this country to have a social security system—[Interruption.]
Order.
—that is fair and which meets the aspirations of the Scottish people.
Secretary of State for Scotland (Meetings)
2. To ask the First Minister when he will next meet the Secretary of State for Scotland. (S4F-01573)
No plans in the near future.
On Tuesday, Nicola Sturgeon stood in the chamber and, when talking about pensions, said:
“those who try to perpetuate the myth that Scotland’s population is somehow uniquely ageing or ageing faster than that of the rest of the UK are simply wrong.”—[Official Report, 24 September 2013; c 22775.]
However, National Records of Scotland says:
“The age structure of Scotland’s population means that it is projected to age more rapidly compared to the UK.”
The First Minister’s deputy says that Scotland is ageing more slowly, while his Government’s own agency says the exact opposite. Which is correct?
I heard the exchange between Gavin Brown and Nicola Sturgeon, so I have the exact detail on this. The dependency ratio in Scotland is currently below that of the United Kingdom, with an estimated 589 dependants per 1,000 people of working age in 2013 compared with 615 for the UK as a whole. From around 2026, the gap between the Scottish and UK dependency ratios is projected to decrease. That is exactly the population projections and the same data source cited by National Records of Scotland to the Scottish Parliament in the 2010-based forecast. We now have the 2011 census.
The paper sets out the dependency ratio, which is the internationally accepted standard measure of population pressures showing the ratio of dependants to those of working age. Far from ignoring the National Records of Scotland, we used NRS projections and involved NRS staff in drafting that section of the report.
I hope that that detail satisfies Ruth Davidson, as indeed it should have satisfied Gavin Brown two days ago.
The First Minister is absolutely correct. The Scottish Government, in its paper on Monday, used some National Records of Scotland projections. It used the projections that show that, between 2010 and 2035, the number of pensioners in Scotland will increase by 26 per cent while the number in the rest of the UK will increase by 28 per cent. What it did not include was the fact that the number of people of working age in the rest of the UK will increase by 16 per cent and the working-age population of Scotland will increase by just 7 per cent over the same period.
That matters, because Monday’s pensions paper said that, under independence, Scots could retire earlier and on more money because Scotland’s population was ageing at a different rate from that in the rest of the UK. National Records of Scotland shows that 7 per cent to 26 per cent is 3.71 pensioners for every worker—more than twice the rate of the rest of the UK.
The First Minister talked about dependants. That was another pauchling of the figures on Monday, because the figures that the Government used when talking about pensions—[Interruption.]
Order.
It would be worth while for the First Minister’s back benchers to listen to this.
The figures that the Government used compared the ratio of workers with the ratio of pensioners and children but, as everyone knows, when we are dealing with pensions, it is the ratio of workers to pensioners that counts.
All Monday’s promises, such as they are, are based on the Scottish National Party convincing people that Scotland’s demographic time bomb is not the same as those in other countries. That is just not true. The Government knew that all along, as its own agency told it. The First Minister pauchled the figures. Is not it the case that the SNP’s pension policy just does not add up?
I am not certain that Ruth Davidson is fully in command of the subject. [Interruption.]
Order.
I will say three things to Ruth Davidson. First, the dependency ratio is the number of under-16s and those over pensionable age per 1,000 people of working age. That is what the dependency ratio is.
Secondly, the review of the increase in when the pension is paid in the pensions paper is based on another matter: it is based on life expectancy at age 65, which is 1.2 years higher in the United Kingdom than in Scotland for women and 1.3 years higher for men. Obviously, we want to do something about life expectancy, but it is not fair to ignore that reality in deciding the appropriate pension age, and we doubt very much whether the UK Government, in increasing the pension age, took into account those life expectancy figures in Scotland. In fairness, it is reasonable to propose a pension age that is appropriate to Scottish conditions, and that has been welcomed by a range of experts.
Thirdly, given the Tory track record, I am fascinated by the fairly blatant scaremongering on pensions. I was therefore interested in a letter that one of my constituents in Aberdeenshire sent to the Department for Work and Pensions pensions service. The reply that was received said:
“In reply to your letter regarding your state pension if Scotland votes for independence, if Scotland does become independent, this will have no effect on your state pension. You will continue to receive it just as you do at present.”
Given that the pensions service, which is an agency of the UK Government, is sending such definitive information to my constituents in Aberdeenshire, it ill behoves Labour or Tory scaremongerers to come to the chamber with a scaremongering agenda. I have the letter from the Department for Work and Pensions. I presume that Ruth Davidson welcomes that reassurance.
Alison McInnes has a supplementary question.
Today, the Scottish fire service board is voting on the closure of six of the eight emergency control rooms in Scotland. People across Scotland, including in my North East Scotland constituency, where the control room in Aberdeen is under threat, will be deeply concerned.
Local knowledge of our communities and the geography of each area is vital to ensuring that the right rapid response is dispatched to each emergency. There is a very real risk that having only two control centres, in Dundee and Johnstone, will mean the loss of that crucial local knowledge and increase risks to lives. The Scottish Government has taken away all local decision making on that. Will the First Minister step in to halt that irrational and dangerous move?
That is not a reasonable presentation of what the fire service’s board is doing. As it pointed out, the single fire service changes are very decentralised in terms of the impact that they will have on giving people assurance that firefighters will be able to attend local conditions in the most effective and efficient way.
Any Liberal Democrat should have a care in talking about the fire service at the present moment. I presume that the people who care most about the fire service are firefighters and the people in the service. I remind the member as gently as I possibly can that, in England and Wales, under the control of the Tories and Liberal Democrats, firefighters are currently on strike, just as the Scottish Government and the Fire Brigades Union are trying to find a settlement that will avoid a strike in Scotland. Any Liberal Democrat who comes to the chamber and weeps crocodile tears for the fire service should look at the total disarray south of the border.
Cabinet (Meetings)
3. To ask the First Minister what issues will be discussed at the next meeting of the Cabinet. (S4F-01584)
Issues of importance to the people of Scotland.
On Monday, I met John Young from Patna in Ayrshire to see for myself the devastation left by Scottish Coal at the Dunstonhill opencast mine. The financial shortfall to restore the mines in East Ayrshire alone has risen to an estimated £130 million, and the figure could be higher, as there is a real doubt that all the restoration bonds can be recovered.
Despite the growing restoration bill, the council has now given permission to mine for coal at two sites, without there being any bonds or financial guarantees. Hargreaves mining company will not pick up the cost of restoring the sites if the mines fail again.
John Young is angry that his community has been ripped off by mining companies and let down by his council and his Government. Will the First Minister step in and stop this reckless behaviour?
Before the First Minister responds, I remind members, as I did at the beginning of last week’s debate on opencast, that there is a live case on restoration before the Court of Session. Members should take care to avoid mentioning the details of that case.
In terms of your guidance, Presiding Officer, Willie Rennie should, in fairness, look at the efforts that Fergus Ewing and councils not just in Ayrshire but elsewhere in Scotland are making to come to an effective settlement that provides for restoring what can be restored, protects the environment for the future, builds a better system and, of course—the thing that Willie Rennie did not mention—preserves vital employment in an important industry.
Given the efforts that the minister has made, in conjunction with local councils across Scotland—councils of different political persuasions, incidentally—I do not think that a reasonable person could come to any conclusion other than that the minister is acting in the best interests of and balancing the interests of people in the communities of Scotland.
There are signs that the industry could fail again. The world coal price remains low and the insurance bond market is closed. The Scottish Government seems incapable of reading those signs. Not only is the Government supporting mining without financial guarantees—the very problem that got us into this situation in the first place—but I have discovered that its own agency, Scottish Enterprise, is proposing to give taxpayers’ money to Hargreaves mining company. Public funds are going to an industry that has already ripped us off.
Surely it is time to call a halt to this environmental injustice and economic madness. Will the First Minister act now, or will he sit idle while the companies rip us and our environment off again?
That is not a reasonable way to portray the efforts of the energy minister.
At no stage in either question did Willie Rennie express the slightest sympathy with, endorsement of or solidarity with the workers in the industry. I do not think that an argument on such an important issue that does not balance councils’ and communities’ concerns, environmental concerns and concerns about employment in places such as Ayrshire and Fife offers a reasonable perspective.
I look forward to the day when Willie Rennie meets the workers who he proposes should not have jobs, to look them in the eye and tell them exactly what the Liberal Democrat policy is.
Royal Mail Privatisation
4. To ask the First Minister whether the Prime Minister has responded to his letter calling for a moratorium on the privatisation of the Royal Mail. (S4F-01587)
I am disappointed that I have not yet heard from the Prime Minister. It is clear that the people of Scotland resoundingly do not want this misguided privatisation and that the moratorium should be confirmed as soon as possible.
It is surprising that the First Minister has not had a response.
Yesterday, Labour Party members, at their conference in Brighton, overwhelmingly backed a resolution that called for the renationalisation of the Royal Mail should the sell-off go ahead. Will the First Minister urge Mr Miliband to back the position of the Scottish Government by publicly endorsing the views of his party, which could render the privatisation infeasible?
It is true that I have not had a response from the Prime Minister, but I seem to have got a response from the Labour Party conference, which is all to the good. Now that, after six months, the Labour Party has followed the Scottish National Party policy of repeal of the bedroom tax, we should welcome the Labour conference’s endorsement of our call to take the Royal Mail back into public hands.
I am told that the resolution was passed overwhelmingly. I hear that it might even have been passed unanimously. I presume that that means that the Scottish delegates at the conference, such as Johann Lamont, voted for the renationalisation of the Royal Mail. [Interruption.] I do not know why Johann Lamont is pointing; I am just saying that if the resolution was passed nearly unanimously, I assume that she was there, speaking for the majority wishes of the unions and Labour Party members. That makes the attacks that I had from MSPs following First Minister’s questions last week all the more strange. So, which is it: the response to public ownership that we saw so resoundingly from the Labour conference, or the back calling at the SNP that we saw from Labour MSPs last week?
Older People (Residential Care)
5. To ask the First Minister what action the Scottish Government is taking to improve the quality of residential care for older people. (S4F-01577)
The Government is committed to ensuring the highest possible standards in the residential care sector. We require the Care Inspectorate to inspect every care home in Scotland unannounced at least once every year. Additional inspections are carried out in the services at greatest risk, which means that those services are now inspected several times a year to ensure that the required improvements are being made.
The Pentland Hill care home in Edinburgh has had a series of poor inspection reports. The most recent one was truly appalling and there is now a police investigation into four deaths. Does the First Minister agree that there is something seriously wrong with an inspection regime when it has repeatedly identified problems in key areas but little or nothing appears to have been improved?
I cannot comment on an on-going police investigation—there are strict rules on that.
Let us take the general issue. Most people would accept and agree that the new inspection regime for care homes is a substantial improvement. I see Jackie Baillie sitting in her place. She will remember that she welcomed it comprehensively on 15 September 2011 in the Parliament. It is a hugely, substantially better regime than that which it replaced. The importance of the unannounced inspections and the follow-up inspections is that whether we are dealing with issues in the health service or issues in care homes, the absolute priority is to have an inspection regime that brings these matters to light. The real difficulties, as we have seen tragically elsewhere in the health service or care homes, come when, over a prolonged period of time, safety issues are left unaddressed. It is the whole purpose of the inspection regime to identify such problems. I am sure that the various investigations, including the police investigation, will be carried through without fear or favour and will do whatever else is required.
I should say that Alex Neil has asked Bupa directors to meet him later today to discuss in more detail what urgent steps they have been taking to improve the quality of residential care across all their Scottish homes.
Mobile Phone Coverage (Rural Areas)
6. To ask the First Minister what recent discussions the Scottish Government has had with providers of mobile phone services to improve coverage in rural areas. (S4F-01574)
We are committed to improving mobile coverage across rural Scotland. We are working collaboratively with four mobile operators to address issues around coverage and performance at both ministerial and official level. The Deputy First Minister met Three on 20 May and the Minister for Local Government and Planning met EE on 17 September.
We acknowledge that mobile coverage in rural areas is substandard. The Office of Communications data, of course, said that 96.6 per cent of the population had 3G coverage—91 per cent in rural areas. I am sure that Liz Smith welcomed the Scottish Government’s evaluation of that data and its republication. We suspected that that Ofcom data did not give the complete picture of our experience in rural areas.
The Scottish Government’s report has made it very clear that in something like 60 per cent of Perth and Kinross and 53 per cent of Stirlingshire there is no 3G coverage, which obviously has an impact on individuals and businesses, particularly if somebody has to contact the emergency services. What discussions is the Scottish Government having with local authorities to bring forward plans to use the £150 million of investment that is available from the United Kingdom Government to help this process?
I think that Liz Smith will agree that, given that the previous Ofcom stats were the only ones available, the first step was the welcome “Mobile Performance and Coverage” report from 16 September, which has just been published to address that and to try to explain why we felt that the Ofcom figures were not carrying forward the true picture in much of rural Scotland. I am sure that she also welcomes the fact that we have already engaged with the mobile operators. There will certainly be engagement with local authorities in terms of rolling out the substantial and very ambitious improvement plan.
I welcome the fact that Liz Smith has come with a question addressing mobile coverage and has not made the blunder of her better together colleagues by suggesting that somehow mobile charges would be higher in an independent Scotland. I think that we can safely say that that particular piece of project fear has been thoroughly debunked.
This is an important issue for my Arran constituents. The emergency medical retrieval service, which transfers critically ill patients from remote and rural areas, relies on mobile phones to operate and has expressed concern at the lack of coverage. The First Minister will know that, for years, United Kingdom ministers have failed to remedy the situation. Although Ed Vaizey, the UK Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries, said that coverage would be rolled out by 2015, there is no indication when it will happen in the lead-up to that date, despite the fact that the EMRS has said that mobile phone coverage for Arran is the number 1 priority for Scotland.
Can we get a question, Mr Gibson?
Does the First Minister agree that the UK Government should redouble its efforts to deliver mobile coverage and will he press it to do so?
We have been working with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to ensure that the mobile infrastructure project has maximum impact. For example, we have recently helped to facilitate discussions between the supplier Arqiva and Scottish local authorities, which, as has been said, have a crucial role to play in the project given their role in local planning decisions.
The Deputy First Minister will seek clarification from DCMS on the member’s behalf about the expected impact of the initiative on Arran because, as he rightly says, there are particular issues that give the matter even more importance than it has in the many other rural areas of Scotland.