Chamber and committees

[Inaudible.]—of the debate.

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. I would have voted no.

Will the member take an intervention?

I apologise for my connection issues. I hope that you can hear me now.

I have been listening intently to the debate, and I agree with those members who have said that the Conservative motion is not only ignorant in nature but deeply divisive and unnecessarily damaging. Even its title fails to address the fundamental crux of the problem. People who are seeking asylum are not the primary issue when it comes to the housing pressure that exists in Scotland today. The issue is the rate at which people in the asylum system are being granted refugee status—because of the backlog that built up under the Conservative Government—and then settled on the basis of existing housing capacity, which is under pressure.

As my colleague Mr Griffin highlighted, the Conservatives’ hypocrisy is appalling. They should be eating humble pie for the vandalism that they have caused to the asylum system over the past few years. I say as someone who represents 95 per cent of the people who are seeking asylum in Scotland that that rings true. The penury under which people in the asylum system have been forced to live is shameful. People have had to survive on as little as £9 a week. For many people, that is simply unsustainable. Those are the most destitute people in our community. We should be doing as much as possible to get the backlog down, and I support the Labour Government’s efforts to do so as quickly as possible.

All levels of government must support people’s transition from the asylum system so that they can settle as refugees with the right to work, use their talents and contribute to communities. That is a good problem for Scotland to have because, as a country, we need more people. By the middle of the century, the number of working-age people is set to increase only by the equivalent of the population of Stirling while the number of retired people is set to increase by the equivalent of the combined population of Aberdeen and Paisley. It is not difficult to do the maths. Unless we grow the working-age population of this country and increase the number of people who are able to contribute to the workforce, we are in for a serious fall in living standards or a significant increase in taxation to deal with that issue. For the sake of our own wellbeing, we need to grow the country’s overall working-age population and to settle people.

Glasgow is a city that is well able to do that. It was built for 1.1 million people, but at the moment it has only around 600,000 people living in it. That is why more than 95 per cent—around 4,100—of the asylum seekers in Scotland are resident in the city. That is not a large number when we consider that there are more than 2,000 long-term empty homes in the city at the present time.

There has been a failure of policy in translating housing capacity to meet the demand of a growing population, for which the Scottish Government needs to step up and take responsibility. It is no good simply saying that the UK Government must somehow finance refugee accommodation. The responsibility transfers once refugee status has been granted.

I am open-minded about the idea of revisiting the Mears contract, which the minister suggested. I believe that there is a break clause that is due to come into effect next year. I would be happy to work with colleagues to explore an approach to the UK Government with a view to changing the nature of that contract. Perhaps there could be a municipal contract or the provision could be delivered through another means, such as local housing associations in the city. That would enable the pound to be recycled more readily into housing stock supply in the city.

We could look constructively at such ideas, but the Scottish Government must recognise that, ultimately, this is an issue of housing supply: the supply is not meeting demand. We need a growing population, particularly in Glasgow, and we need to address that issue urgently at all levels. Given that 44 per cent of homelessness applications are due to come from people who are refugees, it is clear that the situation needs to be managed efficiently and addressed.

There is added pressure from people coming into Glasgow from other parts of the UK; maybe we need to look at temporary application of local connection rules in order to staunch that flow of people.

Ultimately, the answer comes down to growing the housing stock: it needs to grow at a much faster pace than it is presently. Otherwise, there will continue to be social unrest, which is not good for our politics in general. We need to meet the needs of the people through housing supply.

The NHS was established by Labour to provide universal healthcare that is free at the point of use. The new Labour Government has provided the Scottish Government with record investment, but it has not been utilised effectively—that is self-evident. The choice that many of my constituents face is to spend their life savings on private healthcare or languish on waiting lists. That is a result of the failure of the Government after 18 years.

People in their 20s are waiting for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder assessments and elderly people are waiting for cataract removals. More and more people are being forced to seek private care out of desperation and pain. That is simply unacceptable, and it is reminiscent of a time before the national health service when private care was the only option. Does the cabinet secretary agree that the rise in paid-for visits to private clinics is a result of an NHS that is failing to meet people’s needs?

Product safety is at the heart of the issue. The vapes are being marketed not as containing spice but as containing THC. The study by the University of Bath, which covered about 2,000 vapes across 114 schools in seven regions in England, found that contamination with spice ranged from 13 per cent to 25 per cent in the case of London and Lancashire. Will the minister consider undertaking a similar discrete study to understand the prevalence of spice contamination in vapes in schools in Scotland and to ensure that we can take preventative measures accordingly?

Will the member give way on that point?

The member makes an important point about doing all infrastructure upgrades simultaneously to get the best utilisation of the line. Is there a risk of simply chasing decarbonisation as one metric at the expense of increasing capacity on the line? We need to do both at once, because just doing electrification might preclude further investments in the future.

Will the cabinet secretary take an intervention?

Does the cabinet secretary also recognise the importance of rail and rolling stock maintenance in Scotland? In particular, does she welcome the reopening by Gibson’s engineering of the Caley railway works in Springburn after a six-year hiatus, in the hope that it will succeed in getting more contracts after the recent award of the Transport for London contract?