Chamber and committees

Good morning. The Accounts Commission recently reported on Glasgow City Council’s early retirement and redundancy payouts. I was staggered to find out from the report that there was no independent scrutiny of the early retirement and redundancy payouts from restructuring and that the financial terms for the departures of five officials cost more than £1 million. Given that those payouts have come as the council is grappling, as are many others, with on-going budget cuts, that is embarrassing for the council—in particular for councillors, who are having to face up to the scenarios that can occur. However, there is also anger from communities, who see that the cuts always trickle down into communities while, on the other hand, there are big payouts for council officials.

Collectively, how can we look at that better? How can councillors be involved in the processes so that they are always sighted on them, whether in their audit or scrutiny committees or through any other mechanism that could be available to them to prevent such scenarios as I have described from happening in future?

That is helpful.

You referenced whistleblowing. Are the whistleblowing procedures in councils robust enough, or should councils be mindful of them to ensure that people feel confident to raise such matters through the correct processes?

The cabinet secretary will be aware of the report that was published by Homes for Scotland on 17 June. In it, Homes for Scotland recommended an overhaul of Government regulations to reduce the cost and complexity for SMEs that are trying to build more homes across the country.

However, I will ask the cabinet secretary about planning hold-ups, specifically. I was appreciative of the cabinet secretary’s previous commentary in response to Michelle Thomson’s question, but 96 per cent of SME house builders still believe that the planning process is slow. Is the cabinet secretary working cross-Government, with different portfolios, to ensure that we speed up the planning process and that SMEs are not disadvantaged when they try to build more homes?

Thank you, convener, and good morning, committee. Before I make my opening remarks, I declare an interest as I sit on the advisory board for Pregnant Then Screwed. It will therefore come as no surprise that I am here to support the petition in the name of Carole Erskine and the fantastic work that Pregnant Then Screwed does to highlight the challenges that many families right across Scotland face with childcare.

The challenges are very evident from the petition that has been submitted and the 2,600 submissions from parents who are struggling to grapple with the current 1,140 hours offering. If I may, I will use my personal experience of applying for childcare for my daughter, who is three. I have just embarked on the application process for the 1,140 hours of childcare, and even filling out the forms is not an easy process.

The process is usually quite lengthy. You have to number the nursery or childcare provision that you wish your child to undertake 1, 2, 3 and so on, and then you are beholden to local government as to whether you obtain one of those nursery slots or are directed to other nursery provision elsewhere. When the latter ends up being the case, parents have to travel considerable distances just to drop their child off at their childcare provision.

We have not even begun to look at the costs associated with the 1,140 hours provision. The hours will cover roughly two full days and another half-day; if you are a full-time working parent, you will have to cough up the costs for another two full days of provision. That shows the significant financial challenges of not only trying to access a nursery close to home, but the additional costs associated with the current funding model that we have in Scotland.

In the Pregnant Then Screwed survey of 2,600 parents whose submissions I have just mentioned, 83.7 per cent of parents said that their childcare costs were the same as or more than their income. Moreover, anyone listening to the radio this morning will have heard a parent explaining that their childcare costs could amount to £1,600 a month. That shows the stark costs of childcare in Scotland.

You have received useful responses from the SPNA and the NDNA about the petition’s request, setting out their concerns about local government, which has overall control of the budgets, and the requirement to provide funded hours. The fact is that nurseries in local authority areas cannot normally accommodate working parents who, for example, have 9-to-5 jobs. They might have to drop their child off at about 8 o’clock in the morning and might not be able to pick them up until 6 o’clock, and not all local authorities are able to provide that offering. As a result, those parents have to rely on the private sector, which is usually the poor man in the relationship with local authorities when it comes to the 1,140 hours provision.

I believe that it is time for an independent review, because we need to fully understand the costs facing parents and what they are having to front up in addition to the 1,140 hours. In other areas of the United Kingdom, the free funded childcare offering has been expanded from nine months to three years old, and I believe that that should be considered, too. We should be putting childcare back at the top of the Government’s agenda.

My request to the committee, therefore, is not to close the petition, but to look at referring it to another committee. I understand that we have roughly 20 weeks left before the end of the parliamentary session, but I would suggest that there are legacy reports. Even if the committee in question could not find time to consider the petition between now and the end of the parliamentary session, the matter could be covered in a legacy report, and it would show that the Parliament is taking seriously the issues that parents across the country are experiencing daily when it comes to providing their children with the best possible start in life.

I will not give way, as I am in my last couple of seconds.

Housing is central to the debate. Scotland’s housing emergency was not created overnight; it is the product of decades of failure to build enough homes. We see that through the homelessness applications and through the thousands of Scots who are trapped on social housing waiting lists. Yet, asylum seekers are being placed in hotels while local families wait.

The solution is straightforward. If we get a grip on the housing emergency and build more homes, we will be able to look at immigration in a new light. However, I fear that, until then, we will still have tensions in Scotland, because we are not addressing the big issues that matter in this country.

We are trying to have a grown-up debate in the Scottish Parliament. The public are not extremists—they are asking fair questions. We are trying to bring the debate to the chamber in order to talk about the wider issues surrounding asylum seeker hotels and the issues that could alleviate some of the tensions, such as housing, which I will come on to discuss.

One of the banners at the protest read “Migrants adored, pensioners ignored”. That sentiment is completely blunt, but it captures what I believe many people in Scotland are feeling. The pressures of both legal and illegal immigration expose the failures in housing, healthcare and public services. Too many hard-working people who live and work in Scotland are feeling ignored by Governments—I use that word in the plural—that have completely failed to get a grip on the issue.

We need to look at the demographics of the people who are arriving in Scotland. Across the UK, 62 per cent of asylum claims are from adult males, whereas just 21 per cent are from adult females. For small boat arrivals, the imbalance is even greater: around 75 per cent are adult men, while only 10 per cent are children. They are not families fleeing together—they are overwhelmingly single men of working age. People see those demographics and wonder why women and children are not being prioritised as part of the asylum system. Meanwhile, in Scotland, more than 1,500 asylum seekers are being housed in hotels—that is almost a quarter of the number that are in the system. Across the UK, the number of those in hotels still stands at more than 32,000, despite repeated promises to reduce it.

This afternoon, we have heard that local authorities are struggling to house the surging number of asylum seekers in Scotland. Communities, especially in my Central Scotland region, are feeling the consequences of that and tensions are rising. The debate is important because we have a duty to confront our constituents concerns, however difficult that is. We cannot simply dismiss them.

In October 2023, the rape of a 15-year-old girl in Falkirk by an asylum seeker who had entered the UK illegally left the community shaken. As part of the perpetrator’s defence, his lawyer cited cultural differences and language barriers as reasons why he did not understand his action but did not say that they were an excuse for the crime that was committed. Irrespective of the people I represent, the plain fact is that a young girl was attacked by someone who illegally entered the UK.

Protests have taken place outside migrant hotels in my region. The use of hotels has become a flashpoint and has fuelled anger and disgust, but we cannot brand everyone who raises concerns as racists. We, as politicians, must listen.

That is helpful.

The plan appears to be quite cluttered—it includes requirements for food strategies, potential community wealth-building duties and other elements. If the Scottish Government’s aim is to simplify the policy and programme for delivery, how will that be achieved when we have another national plan and 46 new local food plans? How do we make the plan relevant?

That is very helpful—thank you. I am not entirely sure whether anyone else—

That is great, convener. It was an open-ended question, because I know that best-value audits happen in all local authority areas; I just wanted to clarify that point.

I want to raise with councils the issue of housing budgets. Again, housing is a topical issue, given that several councils across the country have declared housing emergencies. I have been made aware that certain local authority areas have struggled to access housing budgets from the Scottish Government. Those in the housing sector have applied for housing funding through local authorities but there seems to be a block at Scottish Government level. Has that happened in any of your local authority areas? What impact could it have on your ability to utilise all levers to try to build more homes in your areas? I am not sure who wants to start on that.