Chamber and committees

“The patronising disposition of unaccountable power” was the title of the Bishop of Liverpool’s report into the Hillsborough disaster, and it seems like an apt title for this egregious miscarriage of justice. The member for Falkirk East commented that the trauma that was visited on people was significant and that simply sending a letter to them might be damaging in itself. Will the Lord Advocate look at the processes for engaging with the individuals who have been identified by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, of which only around a fifth have come forward, and find a more proactive way of engaging with them? Will she perhaps also consider the potential costs of access to justice, particularly for those who found themselves bankrupted by the original convictions?

I am a long-standing sympathiser with the idea of a land value tax, because I believe that it is the most efficient tax yet devised by any economist. I would be interested in any proposals to advance that in Scotland. I understand that there is broad cross-party interest among members in that.

Returning to the specific proposal before us today, the visitor levy would not come close to plugging the estimated £1.5 billion black hole that has been created in council budgets across Scotland by the Scottish Government. However, it will mean that councils can raise some funds to, for example, keep museums and visitor attractions open in order to keep tourists coming to our towns and cities.

We do not want a situation of the tragedy of the commons, in which we have five-star hotels in the midst of public squalor, but, increasingly, that is the environment in the city of Glasgow, as cleansing department budgets are constrained and the capacity for the city to maintain its public spaces is reduced.

Any funding that is brought into our city through the visitor levy must go back into the city specifically to improve key services for people who live there. I have long called for local authorities to have the power to introduce a visitor levy. For example, the People’s Palace in Glasgow is badly in need of transformation. It is one of the city’s key attractions and needs to be restored and renovated, but Glasgow Life has continually had its budget slashed and has not had any financial headroom to do anything in nearly half a decade to repair that A-listed Victorian glasshouse and social history museum. A visitor levy would allow Glasgow Life some headroom to not only keep museums and galleries open but ensure their future.

That came into sharp focus during the 26th United Nations climate change conference of the parties—COP26—in Glasgow. A rough calculation demonstrated that a £10 per room per night tourist tax would have raised around £1.6 million from Glasgow’s 11,000 hotel rooms over the 14 days of COP26. Adding the 2,500 registered Airbnb residences in the city would have raised another £350,000. That sits in good context, because to save £1.5 million this year, Glasgow museums are having to cut 28 per cent of their curating staff, thus constraining the city’s capacity to put on exhibitions that attract people into the city. There is a seriously negative feedback loop in relation to Glasgow’s capacity to maintain its position as a cultural capital.

Other cities around Europe do this as the norm and specifically target the money at culture. In Cologne, it is called charging a tax for the promotion and advancement of culture in the city. That is what is on people’s hotel bill when they check out. That is a very reasonable position. We could have a flat rate or a percentage rate, as some cities do. I am open minded about that, and there should be flexibility for councils to consider that.

Ultimately, tourism is a valuable sector in Scotland’s economy. It introduces huge wealth to our cities, but we need to capture more of that wealth for the public good, because an increasing share of overall wealth of this country is being thrown into private interests at the expense of the public realm.

Every Glaswegian’s council tax bill says that we should pay up for Glasgow—I think that everyone should pay up for Glasgow, including those who visit our city to experience our cultural attractions.

I have the pleasure of closing the debate for the Labour Party—the party that brought us the national health service, our social security system and many other key pillars of our public services, having first formed a Government almost exactly a century ago. The main achievement of that first Labour Government, which was elected on 22 January 1924, was the Wheatley housing act of 1924, which went some way towards rectifying the problem of the housing shortage that was caused by the disruption to the building trade during the first world war and the inability of working-class tenants to rent decent affordable housing. The Wheatley act provided public housing to council tenants, as opposed to the previous Government’s privatisation agenda. It subsidised the construction of more than half a million homes with controlled rents by the 1930s, when the subsidy to encourage local authority housing was abolished by the Tories.

What do we have a century on, in 2024, in the wake of a similar disruption—the pandemic? We have housing emergencies in Scotland’s two largest cities, a homelessness crisis and a cut to the country’s capital budget for housing. That is a shameful indictment. A century on, we have made little progress. Indeed, we are going backwards.

The NHS is another great institution of our public services—one might say that it is the epitome of public services—but this Government has failed the people who give it so much, and it has failed NHS patients, too.

Yes, if I can have the time back.

My friend is making a very powerful speech. In relation to his point about the main banks in the UK, does he note that the five main clearing banks in Britain account for 85 per cent of all current accounts whereas, in contrast, in Germany, there are 400 Sparkasse banks and more than 1,000 co-operative banks? Even if the powers of financial regulation are reserved, there is clearly an opportunity for us to further diversify the financial footprint in Scotland for the development of credit unions and other such co-operative organisations in Scotland.

Data from NHS 24 reveals that the number of calls regarding alcohol problems has risen by more than 600 in two years and that the number of calls regarding psychotic symptoms has more than doubled since 2021. Those calls are not simply from people who are presenting for the first time, but from people who are not being seen urgently in the way that they should.

Last year, astonishingly, more than 7,000 children and young people were turned away from child and adolescent mental health services, which is an average of 26 children a day. Primary and community care services are under growing pressure, but ministers have failed to start recruiting to the promised additional 1,000 mental health roles while cutting the budget for the coming year by £5 million after inflation is taken into account. Will the First Minister accept that his mental health strategy will fail unless it is properly resourced?

Stephanie Callaghan makes a fair challenge about being inspired by previous Labour Governments. Labour has been in Government for only about 30 years of the past century, so the opportunity to serve, from the end of this year, will be significant.

The national missions that Labour has outlined will supercharge that effort. We need to be bold and resilient and to show the necessary ambition to dig ourselves out of the vicious cycle that the country has been in for far too long—it has certainly been in it for the entirety of my adult life. I do not want to be part of a generation that is poorer than its parents. We need to build out of that.

Our healthcare professionals are in a similar position. They have no headroom right now. Every day, they tell us that they are overstretched. Mental health services are at breaking point. In Scotland last year, waiting times in accident and emergency departments resulted in 1,600 excess deaths. Astonishingly, the principle of free care at the point of need is no longer taken seriously, with almost one in six Scots being on an NHS waiting list. Some are counting down the days between having a treatable condition and having a terminal condition. The SNP Government has let down patients and the people who work in our national health service.

The most glaring sign that NHS workers feel undervalued is the swathes of staff who leave to head overseas. We have to not only retain staff but grow the national health service workforce in Scotland. Labour will increase the number of training places in Scotland and will aggressively and relentlessly focus on countering the reasons why we fail to retain staff.

I am happy to do so if I can have the time back.

Yes—in relative terms, they are. However, that is not working well in absolute terms, as is demonstrated by the workforce challenges that we have in Scotland. The cabinet secretary should recognise those challenges with a degree of humility, because we are still not performing well enough and people are dying unnecessarily. That is not good enough on our watch.

The member for Glasgow Provan recognised some of the structural changes that are critical to any realistic change management programme, and I commend him for his speech. However, as was mentioned by my friend Alex Rowley, a member for Mid Scotland and Fife, the SNP Government has neglected public services across the board for years. The abject failure of the SNP Government, over 16 years, to reform Scotland’s public services means that they are crying out for investment.

My friend Carol Mochan, a member for South Scotland, highlighted the lack of focus, commitment and consistency that has characterised the Government’s programmes for many years. Indeed, it feels as though the Government is focused on public relations rather than on project management. Just one example that she cited was colleges.

Frankly, I find it risible that the Government’s motion claims that the Scottish Government continues to invest in delivering public services. When the Deputy First Minister set out the Scottish Government budget, just before Christmas, it did not sound, from where I was sitting, like a budget that was about promoting and advancing our public services. COSLA has since said that, as a result of the proposed budget, there will be

“cuts in every community in Scotland and job losses across Scottish Local Government.”

That is hardly the paragon of municipal socialism that characterised the first Labour Government.

It is about having fiscal rules that are characterised by discipline. The Government has been profligate with public expenditure.

I allude to the points of the member for Glasgow Provan about making capital investments that earn back income for the country. For example, colleges should make, not lose, money for the country by selling training programmes to industry, reinforcing our public services and stabilising our workforce challenges.

The Government does not seem capable of making such three-dimensional calculations and structures in its delivery of public policy. It is characterised by draughts players, not chess players. The SNP’s spin does not cut the mustard. The disastrous budget fails to invest in public services and will leave councils at financial risk. That is further evidence that communities across Scotland have been let down by the Government. Slow economic growth means that there is less money to spend on public services than could have been built up to reform them. If the Scottish economy had grown at the pace of the overall British economy since 2012, it would be £8.5 billion larger today.

The Scottish Government must prioritise economic growth across the country to ensure that the national health service is not stuck in a permanent crisis and that local councils are not left cash strapped.

I go back to the member for Glasgow Provan, because I was taken with his speech. He made important points on the complex realities of undertaking a change management process while adhering to the Christie principle of empowerment and the need to ensure clear lines of accountability and continuous improvement.

We need micro and macro reforms, which I could go into in great detail. One example could be our efforts to recharge the commercial shipbuilding industry in Scotland, but that would require an entirely different speech.

Listening to and empowering our staff and workers on the front line is essential to reform. Mr Kerr, the Conservative member, made the point about culture eating strategy for breakfast.

The motion that has been presented by the Deputy First Minister is puzzling. It is devoid of reality and of humility, which is a fundamental prerequisite of any reform programme. The Deputy First Minister said that the SNP is investing in public services, but the budget slashed funding for public services left, right and centre. The spin does a disservice to thousands of public service workers who feel overstretched, undervalued and demoralised.