Chamber and committees

Presiding Officer, I extend to you and all colleagues my best wishes for a happy Christmas and a good new year.

To ask the Scottish Government what support it is providing to the thousands of children who will be living in temporary and unsuitable accommodation over the Christmas period. (S6O-05316)

Will the Deputy First Minister at least welcome the fact that £40 million of capital investment is going into two very deprived communities in Glasgow—Springburn and Sighthill, and Castlemilk—and that the funding will be allocated and prioritised by a neighbourhood board that will be set up in conjunction with the local authority, local parliamentarians and councillors? That could be an interesting experiment in how we direct significant levels of capital funding in deprived communities. Is the Scottish Government interested in engaging with that in a way that will enable us to build further capital investment in clearly deprived communities?

Humza Yousaf mentioned the excellent example of SWAMP in our city, and it was great to hear that the minister visited the Willowacre Trust. Such organisations are critical, because around 60 per cent of Scots over the age of 50 experience loneliness most or all of the time, particularly at this time of year. The concern is that the funding of local organisations is so precarious that they do not know from one year to the next whether they will be able to continue their services.

Another example is the Alive and Kicking project in Springburn, which is putting on a special Hogmanay party for elderly people in the area, but it has just been through a hugely onerous process to secure three-year funding.

Will the minister do more to work with health and social care partnerships to ensure that the benefits of such services from a public health perspective are reflected?

To ask the Scottish Government what support it is providing to NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, in light of reports that the national health service board is dealing with a much higher rate of flu patients compared with previous years. (S6O-05281)

It is good to see that, rather than absorbing hundreds of millions of pounds of losses, the UK Government and Scottish Government are working together to create new industrial activity at Grangemouth. The two announcements are to be commended, particularly the guaranteed interview scheme to reabsorb redundant workers, pioneered by Unite. That is really welcome.

How can we convert the 140 projects more rapidly? Two in the space of 12 months seems like a low rate of conversion into real projects on the ground. Will the minister commit to using the full power of the Government to punch through any blockages around the progress of those projects—whether those blockages are to do with staffing, planning, policy or finance—so that we can mobilise and create more industrial employment?

Will she consider how the Scottish Government might co-invest with investors in equity shares to create industrial activity so that we can crowd in wealth and have long-term state control?

Staff in Glasgow hospitals say that beds are filling up at an alarming rate due to what has today been called a super-flu. In other health boards, hospital visitor restrictions are in place. Scotland appears to be facing a worst-case scenario this winter, but the situation could have been managed more effectively if the suggestions that we made to ministers months ago had been heeded.

Flu vaccination rates are unacceptably low. It is shocking that more than 300,000 fewer adults have been vaccinated this season compared with two years ago. That is completely unacceptable. What additional measures will the Government introduce to rebuild Scotland’s vaccination rate before our healthcare system is completely overwhelmed?

The four ferries being built in Turkey deliver precisely zero social or industrial value to the Scottish shipbuilding industry, and CMAL has confirmed that the tender scoring for the new northern isles freight flex vessels is weighted 70 per cent to quality and 30 per cent to cost, and only 3 per cent of the quality element score relates to community benefits. Yet again, that fails to meet the key recommendation of the national shipbuilding strategy that a minimum 10 per cent social value weighting should be applied to evaluations in new competitions, in line with Treasury green book guidance and the Cabinet Office social value model, so that a 30-year cross-Government shipbuilding pipeline encourages participation from the United Kingdom supply chain. Will the Scottish Government move to enforce the minimum 10 per cent social value weightings for new competitions from now on?

I congratulate the Scottish Veterans Commissioner, retired Lieutenant Colonel Susie Hamilton—sorry, it is of course Lieutenant Commander Susie Hamilton, as she was a naval officer, or a marine, not an army officer—on her excellent progress report and on her work over the past few years in holding the Government and the Parliament to account on their efforts to improve the lives of veterans across the country.

As Edward Mountain said, around 4 per cent of our population are veterans. There is significant regional variation, with Moray top of the league table, given the concentration of Royal Air Force veterans in that community. It is important for us to recognise the significant regional focus. We should also recognise that half of those in the veteran population in Scotland are of working age and that they represent a significant store of value as citizens of this country. They are an immense store of knowledge and national resilience.

I have just returned from the international sea power conference held in London yesterday, at which the First Sea Lord set out, in stark terms the existential risk to the country’s safety that is posed by other state actors, most notably Russia. Given that situation, we need to consider national resilience in a way that we have not done in recent years, and our veterans community offers a significant vanguard group for us in that regard.

We must also consider the mixture of veterans in our community. Technically, I am a veteran, and 22 per cent of our veterans are reservists, so it is not all about regulars. We must also consider those who fought in hot conflict zones but who have not necessarily had the same support as their regular counterparts on returning from those zones. Especially for people around my age, we need to think about how they have dealt with that, the mental health impacts and the longer-term effects that it has had.

It is important to note that Lieutenant Commander Hamilton’s points in the report are all positive—there are no red actions. That is commendable and shows the united front that the Parliament has had in supporting the Government’s efforts in recent years, with this being the ninth debate on the issue, as the minister pointed out.

Lieutenant Commander Hamilton has, however, highlighted a number of key actions. She says that we need

“a more formalised structure to provide strategic leadership and direction in employability, skills and learning.”

That could be led in the public sector to a much greater degree than it is, particularly through organisations such as Social Security Scotland and the national health service, which are among Scotland’s biggest institutional employers. We could see a lot more formal direction and strategic leadership in public sector organisations to demonstrate best practice.

The commissioner recommends that we need

“Stronger oversight and clearer collaboration across public, private and third sector partners ... to drive sustained improvement.”

That is a reasonable recommendation, and I hope that the Government will set out detailed responses on how it intends to make progress on it.

On Mr Mountain’s point about the focus on veteran homelessness and housing, it is important that we recognise the risk there, particularly for veterans. A nomadic lifestyle typifies the service person, and it is important to provide stability for those who move on from service, particularly regular service. His proposal is, therefore, reasonable. We have liaised with UK Government colleagues on that issue and are minded to support the amendment. It is important that we work across Governments to realise that objective.

The Labour UK Government has announced a new UK-wide veteran support system called Valour, which is backed by £50 million of funding, to ensure that veterans have easier access to essential care and support. It is based on best practice, most notably that developed by the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen & Families Association, and Glasgow’s helping heroes service is an excellent benchmark of excellence. Scotland already has a one-stop-shop casework service at which veterans can present themselves without facing any impediments to receiving tailored support from people who are veterans themselves. We could do with having more of that excellent model in this country. The Valour scheme was established very much in that spirit. It is important to note that £27 million of the funding is going live for local bids, to turbocharge the system and ensure that veterans have easier access to essential care and support through the new support hubs. I hope that the Scottish Government will engage with UK Government counterparts to ensure that we make the most of that funding in Scotland and establish a comprehensive network in this country.

Will the member take an intervention?