Labour has used its Opposition day today to raise the critical issue of waiting times in our national health service, which is an issue that every one of us has a stake in. Our communities, family members, relatives, colleagues and friends are at risk as a result of the NHS not performing to the best that it can. This Parliament must take cognisance of that, because it is the single most important area of public policy that it deals with.

The facts are stark and incontrovertible. Despite the Government’s attempts to erase those facts in its amendment to Labour’s motion, they remain. Currently, almost 825,000 patients are on NHS waiting lists for tests and treatment. That is more than the combined population of Glasgow and Dundee, and it is simply unsustainable and unacceptable. It creates huge national pressure, and it means that we have a sicker population and a vicious cycle that affects every area of public life.

Long waits have continued to rise, despite the First Minister’s promise to eradicate them entirely. We are not seeing an effort to get ahead of the problem at a sufficient rate. Indeed, the 12-week treatment time guarantee has been broken 680,000 times since it was introduced. That is the equivalent of more than the entire population of Glasgow alone. In addition, the Government’s commitment to delivering 55,500 additional procedures has not been met.

The minister mentioned in her closing remarks that areas of improvement include CAMHS waiting lists. I am afraid that that is a bit of a mirage. I investigated what was going on in Glasgow and discovered that the only reason that the waiting lists have been going down is that face-to-face consultations have been substituted for telephone consultations. That is simply not good enough, and it is not good enough for the minister to come to the chamber and misrepresent what is going on in our CAMHS system in that way.

As I said, it is our families and friends who are languishing on those waiting lists, awaiting care that they desperately need while their health and overall outcomes worsen. Those are the people who email us daily and come to our constituency advice surgeries in desperate situations, eager to get support. It is not good enough for the Government to simply deny their lived experience and their reality. It is our duty as parliamentarians to give voice to their frustrations and difficulties.

The Scottish Government talks about waiting well but, unfortunately, people are dying while waiting. We have heard numerous examples of the terrible situations that are taking place. Indeed, 18,390 patients died in 2022 while stuck on an NHS waiting list, and there has been a 39 per cent rise in deaths since before the pandemic in 2019. It simply is not good enough for the Government to use the pandemic as an excuse. The member for Kilmarnock and Irvine Valley ought to listen more to his constituents in that regard, instead of patronising them in the way that he did in his speech.

Ms Boyack, one of the members for the Lothian region, highlighted our excellent NHS clinicians, but they are being betrayed, too. They are not just working in obsolete facilities such as the Princess Alexandra eye pavilion in Edinburgh. Oncologists who came to the Parliament in the past few weeks told us in devastating terms that they are watching cancer patients go from being treatable at the point of diagnosis to being terminally ill—indeed, I have met those patients personally in Glasgow’s hospices. That is a betrayal. An extrajudicial death sentence is being visited on the people of Scotland in some instances. That is the reality of what is going on.

Taking responsibility does not simply mean saying that there is a problem; it means dealing with it and addressing it. We all have a stake in the matter.

That characterisation is simply not true. The fiscal rules that Labour is setting are about improving economic growth by applying discipline to public spending. Here is a good example. The Scottish Government sits here impotently denying that it can invest in national treatment centres because of capital spending constraints while wasting £1.2 billion on delayed discharge. That is incompetence. Saying that there is no ability to undertake capital investment simply does not stand up to scrutiny.

We must address the vicious cycle. I urge the Government ministers to stop thinking like accountants and start thinking like economists, like the Audit Scotland reports have urged it to do. This is all about connecting up a whole system. Mr Mountain, one of the members for the Highlands and Islands region, highlighted the example of hearing aids, which might seem more benign. However, that speaks to back-door privatisation, because the current situation basically means that people cannot get hearing aids—and they cannot access dental treatment or get eye tests either. Those who can, pay, and those who cannot, languish, suffer and cannot go to work or function as citizens. We get a sicker population and a less economically productive society.

The Government must address that vicious cycle. It simply cannot just point at what is happening in other parts of the UK. It should take responsibility and address those issues, as we as parliamentarians in Scotland should be doing here.

The recent announcement of the suspension of the regeneration capital grant fund has come as a blow, particularly to Springburn in Glasgow, which had hoped to get capital investment as a result of that funding award. Will the minister agree to meet me and, indeed, all colleagues who represent the area to look at how we can invest in Springburn? It sorely needs that capital investment.

The shipbuilding financing guarantee programme of the Turkish national investment bank, Türk Eximbank, can provide direct loans and letters of guarantee to Turkish shipbuilding firms so that they may obtain competitive pre-financing of up to 85 per cent of the contract price. Will the cabinet secretary introduce a similarly competitive shipbuilding financing guarantee programme in Scotland?

I thank the minister for giving such a constructive response to the debate. Might she consider improving the obligations on landlords in the forthcoming housing legislation to ensure that they more readily assist people who face a terminal illness by adapting their homes so that they can stay there instead of ending up in hospital, as they otherwise would?

I rise to mark Marie Curie’s great daffodil appeal, which runs throughout the month of March. It is an opportunity to raise awareness and funds to help Marie Curie continue to carry out its vital work in Scotland.

Marie Curie is Scotland’s largest provider of end-of-life care and palliative care for adults. Last year, the charity supported 8,000 terminally ill people in Scotland to die with dignity, ensuring that they were comfortable, well looked after and able to die in a place of their choosing.

Marie Curie operates in 31 of the 32 local authority areas in Scotland, but service levels vary across the country. Although Glasgow and Edinburgh are served by dedicated Marie Curie hospices, areas outside the central belt largely have hospice care at home.

Marie Curie services take a significant amount of the strain off the national health service, but commissions from health and social care partnerships cover only 40 per cent of their costs. As the demand for palliative care increases in Scotland—10,000 more people will require palliative care by 2040, which is a 20 per cent increase on the current figure—funding for health and social care partnerships is actually being cut. Nine out of 10 Scots will need palliative care at the end of their lives, so every citizen has a stake in it.

Scotland’s increasing population of people who are over the age of 85 is having the biggest bearing on increasing demand for hospice care. Unfortunately, it is estimated that, by 2040, the incidence of dementia as the main cause of death will rise by 185 per cent.

Recruiting and retaining staff in Marie Curie hospices is proving to be difficult. Hospices simply cannot match the agenda for change pay rise that was rightly given to NHS staff, because no additional funding was made available to them. It is therefore critical that, with demand for palliative care rising in the coming years, we have a more sustainable and fairer funding settlement for the hospices so that Marie Curie can continue to be there for people when they need it.

It is no good simply having a negative feedback loop in which people are stuck in acute hospitals, dying in inappropriate conditions, often without dignity, when they could have a hospice bed, but the hospice cannot be staffed because the staff are not there. It is a perverse and cruel situation for people to be in. That is why initiatives such as the great daffodil appeal are so vital to Marie Curie. When people donate to or take part in fundraising efforts, they make a significant contribution to ensuring that comfort and care is available for those who need it at the most critical moment in their lives.

The work of Marie Curie goes beyond palliative and end-of-life care. I pay tribute in particular to the extraordinary volunteers who give up their time to become Marie Curie companions. They are trained to provide support for people who are approaching the end of their life, and to the families of those people. Those volunteers are truly inspiring; they are there for people at the most difficult of times, providing practical and emotional support such as helping around the house, doing the shopping or talking through how people are feeling when they are faced with such a devastating diagnosis and the end of their life.

The dying in the margins research that was conducted by Marie Curie and the University of Glasgow found that one in three working-age people who die do so in poverty. It is clear that deprivation is exacerbated at the end of life, and I feel that that is a particularly cruel injustice to so many Scots. I have been personally affected by the stories that were shared in the dying in the margins exhibition that came to Parliament some months ago. Those stories should infuriate us all, and invigorate, encourage and inspire us to be stronger advocates for our constituents so that they have housing that is fit for purpose and the social and financial support that they need to empower them to make real decisions with real agency about where they choose to end their lives.

Last year, I had the opportunity to visit the Marie Curie hospice at Stobhill in Glasgow. I grew up with that place and it was the local charity that was supported by Turnbull high school in Bishopbriggs, where I was educated. It was particularly interesting to see the results of the huge fundraising effort that took place 14 years ago—it was probably the biggest public fundraising effort that has happened in Glasgow in recent years—to raise £16 million to rebuild the hospice. Half of that money came from Evening Times readers in Glasgow, which, I think, signifies the importance of that hospice to people across the city.

I was particularly struck by a patient from Glasgow’s east end whom I met there, who very sadly passed away just a couple of days after I visited. She had a difficult upbringing. She had a chaotic childhood and had used drugs, and she faced difficult circumstances, but she finally felt that she had got her life back on track and she was in a good place with her two teenage sons. However, she then got what she thought was tonsillitis or a throat infection.

She went along to her general practitioner to seek help and persisted for more than a year with a chronic throat condition, but unfortunately she was just fobbed off and not taken seriously. When she was finally able to get a diagnosis, it was terminal. She was facing the end of her life, and she was only in her late 40s. I believe that, had she been from a more affluent part of the city and not the east end, her concerns would have been taken more seriously, she would have been approached with more agency from day 1, and she would still be alive today. Cases such as hers put the dying in the margins research into stark perspective, certainly for me, and we must do better. That is the essence of social justice. Having a conversation with her in moments of deep frustration and deep sense of grief about the life that she was robbed of will never leave me.

The great daffodil appeal is an opportunity to promote Marie Curie and all the work that it does to improve people’s lives in the most devastating and difficult of circumstances. I hope that as many people as possible will support this year’s appeal.

At the outset of the debate this afternoon, the minister said that we need change—Labour members certainly agree. However, as GMB Scotland’s secretary, Louise Gilmour, said, the

“National Care Service is going nowhere slowly”.

As my colleagues before me have set out, it is—because a national care service has been a long-standing policy position of our party—a matter of sincere regret that Labour will not be able to support the general principles of the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill this afternoon. It was an idea that was proposed by the Labour Party more than a decade ago, and it was a matter on which consensus emerged in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

As my colleague Mr Smyth just said, that there should be parity of esteem between the national care service and the NHS is a clear mission statement that we can agree with. However, as with many good ideas, when they reach the hands of the Scottish Government, they seem to have gone there to die.

I can say that in committee we have tried repeatedly to engage constructively with Government ministers. That holds for two committees of which I have been a member in recent times, including when Mr Stewart was the Minister for Mental Wellbeing and Social Care. He came before the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee and made the repeated dubious assertion that framework bills are a matter of normal practice and that the National Health Service (Scotland) Bill of 1947 was a framework bill. I am afraid that the Hansard Society disagrees with him: the National Health Service (Scotland) Bill of 1947 was around twice the length of this framework bill, so I have to dispute his point on that.

Critical and fundamental issues with the bill remain outstanding. Indeed, in an effort to repair relationships, including by addressing key stakeholders’ derision of the draft legislation, the Government has been trying to run a public relations offensive over the past 24 hours. I have had sight of a just-published PR statement from the Government, stating:

“the National Care Service will provide support to anyone in Scotland who needs it through social work, social care support for carers, primary care and community health services”.

Then at the end, the press release says:

“the bill allows Scottish ministers to transfer social care responsibility from local authorities to a new national care service. This can include adult and children’s services, as well as areas such as justice and social work. The Scottish ministers will also be able to transfer healthcare functions from the NHS to the proposed national care service”.

Well, which is it? We are not getting clarity on the definition, even within the same press release. Is a comprehensive service being proposed, or are Scottish ministers still undecided about what will happen with children’s services, justice services, social work and so on? There is simply no definition. We do not have confidence in the draft legislation, at stage 1.

We hoped that the Government’s National Care Service (Scotland) Bill would provide the transformation that has been alluded to by members on the Government side today, but the reality is that the framework bill, as published, no longer reflects what the bill will become. It is a travesty and a usurpation of the parliamentary process.

The Conservative spokesman made the point that the Law Society of Scotland raised concerns about the tendency towards skeleton bills, as did the Hansard Society. I mentioned earlier the concern that was raised by the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee on the same matter—that such a bill risks undermining the role of Parliament. Ms Mackay of the Scottish Greens said that, in framework bills, the potential exists for flexibility. I note that point, but the reality is that that does not preclude us from defining key aspects in the bill and creating a baseline. That requires ministerial leadership and heft from the Government. The mission orientation that we saw from the Government of 1945 that built the national health service is, sadly, sorely lacking 75 years on. That is what we need today—what is there is not good enough.

We need to be clear that we take no joy in not being able to support the bill at stage 1, because we have engaged throughout the process in good faith. I am sure that all members of the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee can agree that we very reluctantly had to part on that final page of recommendations, but we were largely together on a lot of the substance. It is a fact that there are fundamental issues to do with lack of definition, which mean that the bill is simply not good enough or mature enough to pass Parliament at this stage. The role of Parliament is to stand up for the people of Scotland and to ensure that the legislation that is passed into the statute books is of good enough quality to ensure that people’s lives are improved. We cannot have that confidence in the bill, at this stage.

There are major issues with stakeholders, as I have mentioned. As my colleague Carol Mochan outlined in her speech, the STUC says that

“the Bill as proposed does not address the key issues that undermine the provision of social care”.

The Royal College of Physicians says that

“serious concern must be given to whether we continue with the current proposals”.

The Royal College of Nursing says that it is

“extremely concerned that pushing ahead with the current bill will deepen the crisis”.

Stakeholders have come back to tell us that the co-design process, which is much lauded by the Government and which we would like to support in good faith, has had no transparency and no common reference points. The Coalition of Care and Support Providers in Scotland has said that there is no clear connection between what is being heard and what is being delivered in the bill. That was characterised by the member for Aberdeen Central’s speech—the text of the bill, which we have interrogated in committee, also uses grandiloquent language but, sadly, no real substance is reflected in it.

That is why, with great reluctance, we fundamentally cannot support the bill. I mentioned that we had, in 1947, a bill for the national health service of 81 sections and 90 pages. This bill, of 38 pages and 48 sections, simply falls far too short, so I urge parliamentarians to reject it at stage 1.

Will the minister give way on that point?

To ask the Scottish Government what engagement it has had with Police Scotland regarding the policing strategy for the safe consumption room pilot in Glasgow. (S6O-03129)