Engagements
Later today, I will have meetings to discuss the Minister for Transport and Infrastructure’s announcement this morning about upgrading the A90 to dual-carriageway standard. That is not as big a project as the M74 or the M80, which is now approaching completion. Nonetheless, it is a vital part of Scotland’s road infrastructure network and I am sure that everyone in the chamber was delighted by that announcement this morning.
This week, Labour released a list of 100 promises that Alex Salmond made to Scotland and that he has broken. Here is another one that is not in that list. In April 2008, the First Minister promised that he would never leave the city of Aberdeen in the lurch. This week, Aberdeen City Council announced that it will make 900 council workers compulsorily redundant. Those workers are in a pretty big lurch. What is the First Minister going to do about it?
The Scottish Government has sent a strong signal to the public sector to avoid compulsory redundancies. That is our dearest wish and our policy position. We are negotiating with our unions on pay restraint to make that possible. I am sure that the administration in Aberdeen is anxious to do that and will make proposals to make it possible in the city.
The Scottish National Party will never get away with saying one thing in Holyrood and another in Aberdeen. The SNP councillors in Aberdeen have not heard the First Minister’s signal. They are not doing all that they can do to avoid the redundancies. For the sake of £3 million for a voluntary redundancy scheme, they are going to make 900 workers redundant. They can find £60 million for their new council headquarters, but they cannot find £3 million for a voluntary redundancy scheme.
Iain Gray needs to catch up with two particular things. First, he needs to catch up with the situation in the north-east of Scotland. The council in Aberdeen is trying to avoid compulsory redundancies. That is its policy; that is what it is trying to do. I hope that Iain Gray will support it in trying to avoid compulsory redundancies and lend his voice to that aim and ambition.
Maybe we can get back to Aberdeen. I call Iain Gray.
We have an SNP First Minister here and an administration in Aberdeen with the SNP as part of it. Is the First Minister seriously saying that it is Ed Miliband’s fault? Of course, it was a different story when SNP councillors planned to close schools in Argyll. The Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning ordered them to do a U-turn and walk out on the council. When SNP councillors in Aberdeen are planning to sack 900 workers, will the First Minister get on the phone and tell them to walk out on their mess, too?
I was merely pointing out, from the words of Ed Miliband, that he is prepared to accept responsibility for at least two thirds of the funding cuts that are now being imposed on Scotland.
If Ed Miliband is willing to take responsibility for anything, that puts him one step ahead of Alex Salmond, who has never taken responsibility for anything in his life.
First Minister, I must ask you to be relatively brief, please. Time is marching on rather too quickly. [Interruption.]
As everybody in the chamber knows and would acknowledge, the 2.6 per cent decline in revenue funding to local government for next year is a difficult settlement. However, it is better than for any other major public service except the health service, which we are protecting under this Government. It is acknowledged across local government that that causes pressures, so councillors must do their best to avoid compulsory redundancies—as they will do in Aberdeen and as the Government is doing in Edinburgh.
Order. The chamber will come to order.
Secretary of State for Scotland (Meetings)
I have no plans to meet the secretary of state in the near future, but I heard him on the radio this morning.
In Scotland, cancer sufferers are being denied access to a range of drugs that can prolong life for some patients, which are now available in England. A report in October by the Rarer Cancers Foundation published a list of at least 18 drugs that are available in England but not in Scotland. The Scottish Conservatives have proposed the setting up of a Scottish cancer drugs fund to help patients in Scotland to get those drugs. Does the First Minister agree that Scottish cancer patients deserve the same access to those drugs as patients in England have?
Annabel Goldie should acknowledge that the Scottish Medicines Consortium is a very robust system of authorising drugs in Scotland and has been widely admired. It has difficult decisions to make, as resources are constrained in the health service even though the NHS budget is being protected by this Administration. The SMC has to make difficult decisions, and they are made only after tremendous consideration has been given to their effects.
I have listened carefully to what the First Minister has said. Difficult challenges confront us, but I do not think that we should ever be timid about looking at what is happening elsewhere. This specific issue is one of importance and urgency. The United Kingdom Government’s commitment to set up a cancer drugs fund for patients in England and Wales has been warmly received by cancer sufferers, their families and campaign groups there. It is time that the Scottish Government took action here. The UK Government thinks that the issue is so important that it has provided interim funding.
It is wrong to say that in Scotland we do not have access to the range of drugs to which people in England have access. That is just not true. The process that we have at the moment is independent and robust. We are always prepared—and the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing is always prepared—to meet members to discuss ideas and concepts that could improve the situation further. However, on this most sensitive of issues, Annabel Goldie should acknowledge that we have a robust and independent process in Scotland that serves patients and the people well. Every decision in this area is a difficult one. It is extraordinarily difficult to have to have resource consequences as part of the decision making. We will meet Annabel Goldie to see what ideas she can suggest, but let us start from the basis that the process that we have in place in Scotland now is independent and robust.
Cabinet (Meetings)
The next meeting of Cabinet will discuss issues of importance to the people of Scotland.
Last week, I informed the First Minister that the high pay bill for the public sector had increased by £53 million in just one year. Does he know what the bonus bill is for the same period?
I have all the figures here. I am delighted that Tavish Scott has returned to this subject, as I can now explain the conundrum that he put to us last week of the so-called £50 million that Jeremy Purvis said we could save.
That answer was utterly dreadful. It had nothing to do with the question that I asked. The First Minister’s answer needs to be clearer, because the bonuses were signed off by his Government—they are the First Minister’s bonuses. It was his policy that promised punitive action on high pay, so why have bonuses gone up by 50 per cent at Scottish Water, Scottish Enterprise and the Scottish Prison Service? Bonuses are up to £48 million in the public sector and high pay is up £50 million. Will the First Minister tell us what has been cut to pay for his bonuses and high pay?
For the second year running, we are asking chief executives to waive all or part of any bonus, and many have agreed to do so. We have restricted the level of non-consolidated performance payments for senior civil servants to £600,000, which is down from the £1.2 million that we inherited from the Labour-Liberal Administration.
That is because it is true.
I know—after that wonderful point of order yesterday, which had us all spellbound—that such things often do not occur to Mike Rumbles very quickly, but the point is that the only way in which we could save £50 million is by sacking 450 consultants. If we just want to reduce their pay to under £100,000, we would save £450,000. Those things are not matters of politics; they are matters of arithmetic. Just as we should beware of Greeks bearing gifts, we should beware of Liberal Democrats with budget-saving ideas.
What is the Scottish Government’s position on the report by the Scottish digital network panel that a new television network for Scotland should be created and funded from the licence fee?
The Scottish Government welcomes the panel’s report and agrees with the central recommendation that a new digital network for Scotland should be established and funded from the television licence fee.
Order. I am sorry, First Minister.
In response to the UK Government’s recently published local media action plan, the Scottish Government will argue that a Scottish digital network, with scope for local opt-outs, is the best way of delivering more localised broadcasting and will bring benefits for viewers and the creative industries in Scotland.
At 2 per cent of the licence fee, the proposals for a Scottish digital channel should be taken seriously by the BBC.
Yes, I do. I acknowledge, in supporting the idea, that it has had cross-party support. I am looking for the Conservatives’ media spokesperson; I do not know whether he is here today, but nonetheless—
He is in Malawi. There was no disrespect intended, because I was going to say that Ted Brocklebank, with his experience in broadcasting, was one of the first people to bring forward that idea. It is an idea whose time has come, and we should continue to unite as a Parliament to press the issue. We should be extremely grateful to the network panel that was headed by Blair Jenkins, the former chair of the Scottish Broadcasting Commission, which has produced such an excellent and thoughtful report that members in the chamber can, I hope, unite behind.
The First Minister is aware that Labour has supported the idea of investing in and growing the Scottish broadcasting industry, and a Scottish digital channel, provided that it is not at the expense of existing Scottish output and that it is a channel of quality.
As Pauline McNeill knows, and has acknowledged and supported in previous discussions and debates, if one looks at the spending of the licence fee in Scotland and the spending on BBC Scotland, and at the Scottish contribution to the network, which is still way under population share, it is not unreasonable for the digital network panel to suggest a proposal that would cost 2 per cent of the licence fee.
Domestic Violence
Domestic abuse is completely unacceptable and the Government continues to work closely with all key partners, including the police, to ensure that perpetrators are held to account and victims have access to appropriate support.
Will the First Minister agree that those figures show the need for continued support for the groups that are doing excellent work to deal with the serious and stubborn problem of domestic abuse in Scotland? Given that sentencing for those offences is crucial to the overall approach, what consideration has been given to building on the success of the domestic abuse court in Glasgow that was established in the previous session of Parliament, and to developing approaches in other parts of the country?
The route that we have chosen, in distributing the 40 per cent increase in funding to tackle this serious issue, is to ensure that a variety of support services and groups are assisted directly. For example, there is £2 million to fund ASSIST—advice, support, safety and information services together—and 73 projects are funded under the violence against women funding stream, many of which directly address domestic abuse.
It is a particular worry that more than half of domestic abuse victims have previously suffered abuse. There are good examples, such as the domestic abuse task force that Strathclyde Police has established, and which targets the more persistent offenders. Can the First Minister cast any further light on what the Government can do throughout Scotland to get into the intractable problem of repeat offenders?
A range of funding streams provide support to look at that particular issue. We obviously have a serious problem, and the statistics bear that out. The Government has had Robert Brown’s support on a range of justice measures that we now see are yielding results, given the 30-year low in recorded crime in Scotland. However, there are still areas where there is much to do, and domestic abuse—violence against women in particular—is one of those areas. I hope that Robert Brown will acknowledge that the variety of projects and funding streams that are being introduced show that we recognise the seriousness of the issue, just as the reporting of it indicates that we now understand the problem better and are seeking to address it in the most serious way.
Is the First Minister aware of concerns that have been expressed by Scottish Women’s Aid regarding the effect that alcohol has on domestic violence, including the perception that being drunk can somehow be seen as an excuse for committing such appalling crimes, and the fact that violence is likely to be more severe when the perpetrator is drunk? Does the First Minister agree that it is imperative that we tackle and reduce overconsumption of alcohol if we are to have a serious reduction in those terrible figures?
Yes, I agree with that. Alcohol is not an excuse for domestic abuse or any other crime and can never be considered so. Parliament and society must recognise that the role of alcohol in a range of crimes is hugely significant in Scotland. That is why the Parliament, sooner rather than later, will have to tackle the booze culture in Scotland head on, which would result in remarkable improvements in the social fabric of Scotland on domestic abuse and on many other issues.
Student Support
Yes, I do. As Jeremy Purvis knows, the draft budget will ensure that not a single student place at college or university will be lost, despite the savage cut in Scotland’s budget that has been imposed by the Liberal and Tory United Kingdom Government. The draft budget also protects the funding for student support, with a guarantee that no student will receive less living support next year than they receive this year. We have provided record funding of £84 million for student support in the current academic year, and the draft budget maintains that for 2011-12. That is a 25 per cent increase over the period of the Administration.
On Monday, I met three students who are in receipt of bursaries that give them the opportunity to be at college. In my discussions with John Swinney on the draft budget, I have indicated that we will work with the Government to tackle the £1.7 million real-terms reduction in the bursary budget for such students. Given that, as part of the bonuses that Tavish Scott talked about, £4.25 million was paid out at Scottish Water in the past year, is that fair arithmetic?
The arithmetic that counts is the 7.5 per cent increase in the number of places at college and the 25 per cent increase in the student support budget. We always listen to students and others in society who have a case. For example, we listened when we preserved the education maintenance allowance, which has been cancelled by the member’s colleagues south of the border, but which helps tens of thousands of people from poorer backgrounds in Scotland to maintain their places in education.