Many members made observations about local challenges. We need fundamental reform and we need to build greater value in our public services. That is about moving away from a system of reaction to one of prevention and looking at not just short-term costs but long-term value.

The cabinet secretary makes a fair point but, as ever, the Government is rich on rhetoric and poor on the delivery of tangible benefits, and that is after 18 years—my entire adult life—of having the privilege of being in power in this country. That opportunity of being in government has been squandered in many respects, not least in relation to the flagship national care service, and that was largely because the Government seemed to want to be an inch deep and a mile wide on the issue. It failed to make the key calls on the structural reform that is needed in social care. As was mentioned earlier by my colleague the member for West Scotland Ms Clark, 77 per cent of residential care capacity in this country is delivered by private providers. The Scottish Trades Union Congress has estimated that, on average, £4,000 per bed is extracted in profit from people seeking social care. The most profitable care home provider extracts £13,600 per bed.

That is the fundamental problem at the heart of public service delivery. We are not making the big calls that previous generations made, such as when building the national health service, by saying, “We’re not going to have private profit extraction in our acute hospital system; we are going to remove the grubby pound sign from the provision of healthcare”. Those are the sorts of calls that were needed and, because of the failure to make those calls, we have ended up with the programme falling apart and with the bill a pale imitation of what was originally very ambitious.

Similar issues due to failures to reform have been laid out by colleagues. Pam Duncan-Glancy highlighted colleges, for example. A couple of years ago, I spoke to a college principal in Glasgow who talked about local industrial and economic needs and why the college could not make bespoke courses and programmes to serve local industrial requirements. He said, “We’re not able to do that—to diverge, to innovate or to be enterprising”. As a result, one of the biggest industries in Glasgow is having to build its own college to train people for its workforce, because the local colleges are not able to provide for its requirements.

That is another example of wasted public service innovation and a wasted opportunity to reform public services. I know that many members and, indeed, ministers share these frustrations, but there seems to be an inability to fundamentally reform the civil service and the institutions of Government to respond to the generational challenges that we face. Many of the speeches in the debate came up short in trying to address the fundamental issues.

We have to recognise that every aspect of making decisions comes with costs. The member for Glasgow Maryhill and Springburn cited hospices, for example. Yes, there will be a challenge due to the change to national insurance contributions, but, similarly, the change in NHS pay structures for nursing has meant that hospices have struggled to recruit nurses because of the pay differential. In addition, the business rates that councils are extracting from hospices—

It is a pleasure to support the amendment in the name of my colleague Mr Marra. There has been an interesting series of speeches this afternoon, reflecting on the great pride that this country has in its tradition of public service—a tradition that we hold dear and a great inheritance from previous generations, going back over a century, of building the public institutions from which we benefit today. The challenge for this generation has been to sustain, grow and build on that legacy.

A couple of weeks ago, I celebrated my birthday and thought about when I was first able to cast my vote as an 18-year-old, in 2007, at the election when the present party in government first came into office. At that time, I was very attracted by what was being offered by what became the Government, in particular on scrapping and reforming the council tax and dumping student debt. As someone who was just about to leave high school to go to university, the idea of dumping the debt was very attractive, and I was seduced into casting my regional list vote for the SNP on that occasion. Sadly, I feel that, as a naive 18-year-old, I was badly missold in that investment.

Eighteen years on, with the long years of this Government in power, it is difficult to see what truly great reforms have been achieved during that generation in office. Reflecting back on that period when I was growing up, it has certainly been a difficult time for our country and for my generation—the first generation in history destined to be poorer than their parents. We have grown up in the shadow of a banking crisis, which was then turned into a manufactured crisis in public expenditure by the Conservatives. However, the bad hand that the Scottish Government might have had in recent years has been played very badly indeed. We have seen a Government increasingly characterised by reaction rather than by the prevention of problems, with a focus on stripping out cost rather than building long-term value. Those themes were at the heart of many of the speeches that were adumbrated this afternoon.

In a nation where we have had declining living standards and stagnant growth and wages, the chess moves available to build back and improve our public services are very challenging. There are no cost-free options to develop long-term value creation. It has been somewhat disingenuous—or perhaps naive—of some parliamentarians to suggest today that there are cost-free options available to this country for reforming our public services, putting them on a trajectory where we can build a positive legacy for future generations.

Many members reflected on the decline in local services. The member for Banffshire and Buchan Coast talked about libraries.

In November, the minister told the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee that trade union calls for sectoral bargaining were not covered by the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill and that the matter would need to be covered in a separate piece of legislation. Given that there was scant detail on fair work in the minister’s statement today, I presume that that is still the Government’s view. Does the minister not agree that collective bargaining arrangements for social care staff must be included in the bill, given that the changes that she has set out today can be implemented only with the support and confidence of those key workers?

“Progress towards the targets” seems an interesting way of describing it when NHS funding for mental health has decreased to just 8.53 per cent, which represents a £238.5 million shortfall when adjusting for inflation. In the 2022-23 financial year, no health board achieved the Government’s 10 per cent spending target and only one board invested at least 1 per cent of its funding in CAMHS.

We have been hearing about the target since 2021, yet the share of the spend is actually going backwards. There is now just over a year of the parliamentary session left. Will the Government work with health boards to ensure that spend is suitably allocated to realise the commitment before the next election, or is it content to continue posturing instead of delivering on the target?

I am very much enthused by the member’s energetic anecdotes about his experiences of attending carnivals in Glasgow. Does he agree that, in this year, which marks the 850th anniversary of Glasgow’s burgh charter, and given the heritage of the Glasgow fair, which dates back to 1190, when Bishop Jocelin first got permission from the King to host the fair, we should be putting the showmen’s traditions of Glasgow, which date back to the 12th century, at the heart of the Glasgow 850 celebrations?

Rhoda Grant is making a very powerful speech on the report. Perhaps she might reflect on the power of co-operatives and their potential further development in rural settings, which might improve economic justice in areas such as housing, retail and food production.

As Peel Ports has jurisdiction from the River Clyde at Glasgow Green right down to the Firth of Clyde, it has a significant impact on about 450 square miles of inshore waters. It has claimed that the imposition of conservancy fees for leisure vessels is common practice on the part of other statutory harbour authorities. I asked the Scottish Government whether it could provide data on that, but it does not hold such data, which I find alarming. Does the cabinet secretary understand why that is the case? Will she look to gather data on other statutory harbour authorities’ charging of leisure vessel conservancy fees? Will she also examine the oversight and regulation of port authorities in Scotland more generally?

Does the cabinet secretary agree that the financial model that has been pioneered by Lar Housing Trust over the past decade shows great promise? It uses loan-based finance—rather than the traditional grant-based financing model—which could significantly increase the country’s capacity to build affordable housing.

The point that the member makes about the individual caseworker is really important. Anecdotally, I found that, although the different charities mean well, people who were phoning them up were being sent from pillar to post. There was a lack of consistency, and the level of frustration eventually scunnered people enough that they disengaged. That is an important point to address.