Chamber and committees

Do our local authorities provide a lot of that information in the returns that they submit? Do we know what is happening in the area through the national performance framework? How can we gather that data better, although not in a way that is more onerous, and take account of the data that we already have?

That was going to be my follow-up question. Where was that paper looking at? Did your paper on ill health look across the UK?

I, too, thank the committee for its dogged investigation into the matter. Proper spending of public money is of the utmost importance. The principle is not optional or aspirational; it is fundamental to public trust in Government and public bodies. The financial governance that we have seen at WICS was, to be frank, gobsmacking.

The findings laid out in the Public Audit Committee’s report paint a scandalous picture—one of serious failures in financial management, in board oversight and in culture at the very top of a public body. As has already been rehearsed today, all the lavish spendings that we have heard about are not appropriate uses of public funds—they do not reflect public sector values, they fail to deliver value for money and they absolutely erode public confidence.

The failures in governance were just as stark. The report found that the WICS board did not exercise the oversight that was expected of it. Any of us who are or have been members of boards must absolutely understand the responsibility that comes with it when it involves careful management of public resources. Decisions in this case were taken without any due process, without any challenge and without reference to value. The culture that developed within the organisation, which was described by staff as “toxic”, further compounded those governance breakdowns.

My thoughts are with the staff who endured the reported toxic environment, as I know how damaging it can be, especially when there appears to be no clear path to challenge or change it.

Acknowledging those failures is only part of the response. The Scottish Government must expect the highest standards from its public bodies. In the light of the issues raised, action has now been taken. The Government commissioned and published and is now implementing the findings of both internal and independent reviews, which have led to concrete changes in how WICS is governed, in how the Scottish Government exercises its sponsorship responsibilities and in how whistleblowers are supported.

We have seen some progress. WICS has accepted responsibility and has begun the hard work of reform, by tightening financial controls, strengthening internal assurances and refocusing its leadership on transparency and accountability. The Scottish Government, for its part, has taken steps to ensure that its oversight of all public bodies, WICS included, is stronger, clearer and more robust. It is good to hear from the cabinet minister today that reliance on one person’s reporting and sponsorship arrangements will no longer happen.

Public money must always be treated with respect. The reforms are not just about process but about trust—trust that public bodies are acting in the public interest, trust that decisions are taken with integrity, and trust that, where there has been a failure, there is accountability.

Going forward, the focus must now be on embedding a culture of compliance in WICS—one that values scrutiny, upholds standards and earns public confidence.

I echo the calls for a focus on the future of Scottish Water. As it is a beloved institution, we need to make sure that it is fit for purpose. On the operations of other quangos out there, we need certainty that we can have confidence in our public bodies and how they use public funds.

My heart is sore for the families and communities who have lost loved ones to entirely preventable drug deaths. It is imperative that we remain focused, given the rise in the number of suspected drug deaths in this current year, in part due to the increasingly toxic supply.

One of the most powerful yet underused tools that we have is advocacy, which is an essential part of the MAT standards. It takes a human rights-based approach that gives people a voice, support and a fighting chance. People knowing their rights and exercising them will be absolutely key to the success of that mission. Organisations such as Reach Advocacy Scotland have been leading the way in delivering high-quality advocacy training in that field. People need to know their rights, and they need to be supported to claim them. Does the minister agree that advocacy must remain non-negotiable as part of Scotland’s drug policy? Will she update us on the support that the Government has given?

To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of the recently published NatWest Group and Beauhurst’s “New Startup Index”, indicating that Scotland has one of the fastest growing start-up economies in the UK. (S6O-04869)

Does the Deputy First Minister agree that the report shows that Scotland is the fastest growing start-up economy in the UK and one of the fastest growing in Europe, with investment growing by 120 per cent in just over four years? Does she agree that that remarkable progress has been achieved by forward-thinking Scottish Government policies, in the face of Brexit damaging trade and labour markets and successive UK Governments failing to deliver the investment that Scotland needs? That is especially the case in rural communities such as mine, where all and any opportunities and such positive growth are very much welcome.

Like my colleague George Adam, I am very concerned about the number of journalists who have been killed in Gaza.

When I graduated with a degree in journalism, I left the university building with an absolute knowledge in my heart that my job would be to go out into the world and bear witness and hold a mirror up to the world to show exactly what is happening.

What we are seeing in Gaza is not collateral damage but a pattern. Will the First Minister join me in emphatically condemning those killings? Will he make urgent representations to the UK Government and international bodies to demand action to stop the killing of journalists and to secure accountability from those responsible? After all, deliberate attacks against journalists during an armed conflict constitute a war crime.

Sticking with the issue of good nutrition in early years, Lindsay Jaacks spoke about the studies showing that two to four-year-olds are among the healthiest population groups at the moment. I want to think a little bit about the stage before that. We know that those who are eligible will get the best start grant, so they will be able to get nutritious food in their very early years.

Consider the food environment in those very early years, which takes parents away from thinking about what they could do in their household to give their youngest children nutrition from what they regularly eat. The food environment out there is all about pre-prepared, pre-packaged food that is sometimes not as nutritious as it is made out to be. How do we ensure that we are focused on early years nutrition—before the point when children access early years education—so that we are giving kids and the families who are supporting them the best opportunity?

I agree. We have anchor institutions such as local authorities doing all of that good work, and we would hope that, in the future, we would have, say, the health and social care partnership as an anchor institution in a particular area starting to look at how local food could be used in care home settings, or the NHS starting to do the same thing locally. When we see that sort of thing receding, it raises a slight concern. Is it your view that this plan, and then the local plans, should help drive all of that forward?

I am going to spend some time thinking about the food industry itself and will also come back to the issue of procurement.

The food and drink industry responded to our call for views and is clearly engaged in the creation of a good food nation. How can the plan ensure that industry involvement in the development of a good food nation is suitably balanced with public health policy objectives and with ensuring the prevention of ill health, malnutrition, alcohol-based harm and obesity? We talk a lot about the food and drink industry, so where in the good food nation plan is there space for the drink industry when we are thinking about harm prevention? How do we balance the strong and powerful voices of some of the big actors in this space with a public health approach?