Chamber and committees

Over the weekend, I was shocked to read that all dental practices in the Outer Hebrides are now shut to new adult patients. It seems to be yet another extreme example of a substantial failure of workforce planning, leading to island residents once again paying the price. It is clear that simply changing incentives is not going to be good enough in some more remote areas. Could the minister consider the expansion of public dental provision so that direct salary dental vacancies are created in the islands?

It is with reluctance that we are, once again, having to raise the concerns about the safety of the Queen Elizabeth university hospital’s ventilation and water systems in the Parliament. We do so because we feel compelled to, because patient safety in NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde is still very much in question, and because we are not satisfied that the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care is sufficiently across the issue.

When the topic was last raised in the Parliament, I talked about the culture that needed to change in Scotland. That is a much wider and more encompassing issue. I talked about how we must end the situation where loyalty and compliance are rewarded over competency and moral courage and where being in the club is more important than holding institutions of power to account.

In the short time that I have to speak this afternoon, I will talk about how we can do things differently and build a culture that identifies good practice, emulates it, manages problems with integrity and starts to change things for the better through a system of moral courage.

In the shipbuilding industry that I came from, where health and safety must be kept at high standards because lives are at stake, there is a clear expectation at all levels of the workforce that everyone in a team has the responsibility to stop the job if they perceive that something unsafe is happening.

In every major disaster that we have seen in recent years, from the Boeing 737 MAX to Chernobyl, the same pattern applies. People feel that they are unable to speak out or raise concerns and, as a result, lives are lost. That is what has played out in the Queen Elizabeth university hospital. It does not matter whether someone is an apprentice, an engineer or a senior executive: if something is unsafe, they are supposed to call it out and, often, stop working until the issue is resolved.

That is an easy thing to say but, in practice, it takes a great deal of trust, training and courage for that approach to operate as it should. For an apprentice to speak out, they must have confidence that their concerns will be listened to, that action will be taken and that the blame will be on those who caused the issue or failed to act, rather than on those who spotted it and tried to get it resolved.

We have seen that those who had the moral courage have been harangued, cajoled and pressured into silence. It is their courage that we should recognise today, more than anything else, because they have acted with public spirit at their heart. They have undoubtedly helped to save lives, but it is too much of a loss for us to bear that people died unnecessarily as a result of negligence, and we must hold people to account for that. Lives are on the line.

Some members might be wondering how my point relates to the national health service, but it is clear that we need to improve our culture of management in the national health service. The lives of patients and staff are simply too important—any one of us or any member of our family could be affected—to allow an old-fashioned game of pass the blame to continue. We need staff to feel empowered to raise issues and to stop what is happening. We need them to know that their concerns will be acted on immediately and that accountability will lie with those who hold the relevant responsibilities for ensuring safety.

Although many will say that that is already in place, today’s debate shows that we are still not there yet. Today, there are still live risks with the ventilation system in the hospital. The failure to act to validate those critical systems is simply unacceptable and cannot be tolerated.

It is time for the leadership of the Government to stop playing games and to work with the national health service to improve its health and safety record. It is time to stop working towards election deadlines and, instead, do the harder job of guiding our public health system to where it needs to be.

None of the changes that are needed will help the people who have lost loved ones due to the unsafe water and ventilation situation. However, if they are implemented now, we can begin to create a national health service in which such scandals do not happen again. I hope that members will support our motion.

15:32

The Scottish Government has not placed a contract for a ship in Scotland in the past decade, and we are facing a significant challenge regarding the future of Ferguson Marine. There is a remedy in the procurement of those vessels, because, although they are not naval vessels, they have an obvious national security application. I know that UK Government ministers are interested in discussions with the Scottish Government about applying section 45 of the Subsidy Control Act 2022 in relation to the procurement and would look at options for doing so. Will the minister engage with UK Government officials and ministers on the option of securing a section 45 exemption and a direct award to Ferguson Marine?

It is with reluctance that we are, once again, having to raise the concerns about the safety of the Queen Elizabeth university hospital’s ventilation and water systems in the Parliament. We do so because we feel compelled to, because patient safety in NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde is still very much in question, and because we are not satisfied that the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care is sufficiently across the issue.

When the topic was last raised in the Parliament, I talked about the culture that needed to change in Scotland. That is a much wider and more encompassing issue. I talked about how we must end the situation where loyalty and compliance are rewarded over competency and moral courage and where being in the club is more important than holding institutions of power to account.

In the short time that I have to speak this afternoon, I will talk about how we can do things differently and build a culture that identifies good practice, emulates it, manages problems with integrity and starts to change things for the better through a system of moral courage.

In the shipbuilding industry that I came from, where health and safety must be kept at high standards because lives are at stake, there is a clear expectation at all levels of the workforce that everyone in a team has the responsibility to stop the job if they perceive that something unsafe is happening.

In every major disaster that we have seen in recent years, from the Boeing 737 MAX to Chernobyl, the same pattern applies. People feel that they are unable to speak out or raise concerns and, as a result, lives are lost. That is what has played out in the Queen Elizabeth university hospital. It does not matter whether someone is an apprentice, an engineer or a senior executive: if something is unsafe, they are supposed to call it out and, often, stop working until the issue is resolved.

That is an easy thing to say but, in practice, it takes a great deal of trust, training and courage for that approach to operate as it should. For an apprentice to speak out, they must have confidence that their concerns will be listened to, that action will be taken and that the blame will be on those who caused the issue or failed to act, rather than on those who spotted it and tried to get it resolved.

We have seen that those who had the moral courage have been harangued, cajoled and pressured into silence. It is their courage that we should recognise today, more than anything else, because they have acted with public spirit at their heart. They have undoubtedly helped to save lives, but it is too much of a loss for us to bear that people died unnecessarily as a result of negligence, and we must hold people to account for that. Lives are on the line.

Some members might be wondering how my point relates to the national health service, but it is clear that we need to improve our culture of management in the national health service. The lives of patients and staff are simply too important—any one of us or any member of our family could be affected—to allow an old-fashioned game of pass the blame to continue. We need staff to feel empowered to raise issues and to stop what is happening. We need them to know that their concerns will be acted on immediately and that accountability will lie with those who hold the relevant responsibilities for ensuring safety.

Although many will say that that is already in place, today’s debate shows that we are still not there yet. Today, there are still live risks with the ventilation system in the hospital. The failure to act to validate those critical systems is simply unacceptable and cannot be tolerated.

It is time for the leadership of the Government to stop playing games and to work with the national health service to improve its health and safety record. It is time to stop working towards election deadlines and, instead, do the harder job of guiding our public health system to where it needs to be.

None of the changes that are needed will help the people who have lost loved ones due to the unsafe water and ventilation situation. However, if they are implemented now, we can begin to create a national health service in which such scandals do not happen again. I hope that members will support our motion.

15:32

Over the weekend, I was shocked to read that all dental practices in the Outer Hebrides are now shut to new adult patients. It seems to be yet another extreme example of a substantial failure of workforce planning, leading to island residents once again paying the price. It is clear that simply changing incentives is not going to be good enough in some more remote areas. Could the minister consider the expansion of public dental provision so that direct salary dental vacancies are created in the islands?

Amendment 34 is in the name of Sarah Boyack, but she is away on Commonwealth Parliamentary Association business, so I am delighted to speak on her behalf.

Amendment 34 would require ministers to report regularly on the steps that they were taking to promote co-operatives and support co-operative development. It asks for clarity on the practical resources, including financial support, that have been made available and on how effective those measures have been. The amendment covers community-owned and democratic businesses to ensure that the models of ownership and control keep wealth rooted locally, which is critical, given that so much of Scotland’s wealth leaks out of the country due to overseas ownership.

Co-operatives are a core part of the community wealth building approach. Amendment 34 would ensure that their promotion was not just incidental but actively monitored, reported on and taken seriously as part of delivering the bill’s aims.

I commend amendment 34 to the Parliament.

The Community Wealth Building (Scotland) Bill is not just a means of trading a slogan; it represents a recognition that Scotland’s wealth is based in the local communities that we live in. It is often forgotten that 1.2 million jobs in Scotland—more than half of all private sector employment—are created and sustained by small and medium-sized enterprises, which are the foundations on which this country’s prosperity depends. Combined with the powers of the state, both local and national, they shape our lives, building up wealth in our communities and allowing each next new generation to be richer than the last.

Yet, for far too long, our policy in Scotland has relentlessly focused on a laissez-faire dependence on the initiative and enterprise of foreign corporations, and foreign ownership and investment from multinationals, rather than building up our home-grown talent and enterprise potential. That is how Scotland has become one of the most foreign-owned economies in the world. As a result, it has experienced a net outflow of wealth in every year since records began. That is not a trivial sum. We are talking about more than a quarter of a trillion pounds leaving Scotland between 1998 and the latest figures in 2021. That is the result of decades of people actively choosing the multinational rather than the local.

We can go back to the Toothill report of 1962, which determined that Scotland’s heavy industrial base was beyond reform and that, as a nation, we had to depend on external investment, primarily from the United States, into our light industries. We seem not to have shaken that dependence ever since. That has come at tremendous cost to our prosperity. Scotland is one of the most foreign-owned countries in the world and one of only a handful of such countries that are both rich and developed but not microstates or outright tax havens.

Gross national income provides a useful indicator for us. The Government has been undertaking experimental statistics, although I note that it has not done so since 2021. GNI provides a measure of the country’s total national income, including all the income earned by its residents and businesses both at home and abroad. It contrasts with gross domestic product—GDP—which measures the income of anyone within a country’s boundaries, regardless of who produces it. It is a useful indicator, at a macro level, of community wealth building. GNI tends to be based on ownership, whereas GDP is based simply on location. If we compare GDP with GNI in the latest statistics from 2021, we can see that £36.5 billion was extracted from Scotland in that year, largely in the form of profits and dividends to foreign-owned companies and shareholders, while only £26.4 billion flowed into Scotland, largely as foreign investment income. That represents a net outflow of £10.1 billion. It is important to note that that is 5.5 per cent of GDP, which is greater than the average of any World Bank income group, including the world’s least developed and most heavily indebted nations.

Only five polities in the World Bank’s GNI database are richer in GNI per capita than Scotland while having a higher rate of outward economic flow: San Marino, Singapore, Ireland, Luxembourg and the Cayman Islands. We need to address that structural problem and properly interrogate the nature of foreign direct investment. That is why we have pushed the Government through amendments to the bill. The Government does not properly scrutinise the nature of foreign direct investment projects to ensure that they actually add net value to the Scottish economy.

I admit that, like many of my Labour colleagues, I was sceptical about the Community Wealth Building (Scotland) Bill as introduced—it was a mouse of a bill, as Richard Leonard referred to it. I was worried that it would create lots of paperwork for underresourced local authorities, that it would be about just an empty slogan and that the opportunity to meaningfully create community wealth building would be lost. We are perhaps still sceptical in some respects, but I am pleased that we have been able to work constructively with the Government and colleagues from across the chamber to fashion a stronger bill that will genuinely support community wealth building activities—to give the mouse some teeth, I suppose.

We have worked to achieve the inclusion of community-owned financial institutions such as credit unions in the Government’s community wealth building strategic statement and as an option in the action plans. The Scottish Government has committed to procurement reform and community empowerment reviews—both of which are sorely needed—in the next session of the Parliament.

I would have liked there to be more measures supporting co-operatives and for there to be greater scope in the organisations that will be included under the action plans. I note the concerns that have been raised about the surreptitious rundown of Co-operative Development Scotland, and I was disappointed that the Government resisted the amendments in the name of my colleague Richard Leonard. However, we recognise that the bill is a useful starting point, and it will be up to the next Parliament to ensure that its promise truly comes to fruition.

We need to ensure that councils and public bodies are properly resourced so that community wealth building plans turn into real community wealth building activity. We must also ensure that, when procurement processes are reviewed in relation to how they keep to community wealth building goals, we then act accordingly and make the changes that will be required to use public purchasing power to drive wealth building in Scotland.

The prize of a Scotland in which wealth-generating activities circulate within our communities is one that is worth striving towards. I hope that we will be able to consider the bill as the beginning, not the end, of our community wealth building journey.

16:27

I will speak to amendments 13 and 17, which are in my name. They would both insert “co-operative financial institutions” into the measures that are associated with the ministerial statement and community wealth building action plans.

Amendment 13 would require Scottish ministers to set out how they will promote or support co-operative financial institutions when they set out the measures that they are taking or intend to take to support community wealth building.

Amendment 17 would ensure that promoting or supporting co-operative financial institutions is included in the list of measures that community wealth building partnerships may include in their community wealth building action plans.

Those amendments will act to support the valuable contribution that co-operative financial institutions, such as credit unions, make to our local communities and economies. I therefore commend the amendments to the Parliament and invite all members to support them.

I will speak to amendments 13 and 17, which are in my name. They would both insert “co-operative financial institutions” into the measures that are associated with the ministerial statement and community wealth building action plans.

Amendment 13 would require Scottish ministers to set out how they will promote or support co-operative financial institutions when they set out the measures that they are taking or intend to take to support community wealth building.

Amendment 17 would ensure that promoting or supporting co-operative financial institutions is included in the list of measures that community wealth building partnerships may include in their community wealth building action plans.

Those amendments will act to support the valuable contribution that co-operative financial institutions, such as credit unions, make to our local communities and economies. I therefore commend the amendments to the Parliament and invite all members to support them.

The Community Wealth Building (Scotland) Bill is not just a means of trading a slogan; it represents a recognition that Scotland’s wealth is based in the local communities that we live in. It is often forgotten that 1.2 million jobs in Scotland—more than half of all private sector employment—are created and sustained by small and medium-sized enterprises, which are the foundations on which this country’s prosperity depends. Combined with the powers of the state, both local and national, they shape our lives, building up wealth in our communities and allowing each next new generation to be richer than the last.

Yet, for far too long, our policy in Scotland has relentlessly focused on a laissez-faire dependence on the initiative and enterprise of foreign corporations, and foreign ownership and investment from multinationals, rather than building up our home-grown talent and enterprise potential. That is how Scotland has become one of the most foreign-owned economies in the world. As a result, it has experienced a net outflow of wealth in every year since records began. That is not a trivial sum. We are talking about more than a quarter of a trillion pounds leaving Scotland between 1998 and the latest figures in 2021. That is the result of decades of people actively choosing the multinational rather than the local.

We can go back to the Toothill report of 1962, which determined that Scotland’s heavy industrial base was beyond reform and that, as a nation, we had to depend on external investment, primarily from the United States, into our light industries. We seem not to have shaken that dependence ever since. That has come at tremendous cost to our prosperity. Scotland is one of the most foreign-owned countries in the world and one of only a handful of such countries that are both rich and developed but not microstates or outright tax havens.

Gross national income provides a useful indicator for us. The Government has been undertaking experimental statistics, although I note that it has not done so since 2021. GNI provides a measure of the country’s total national income, including all the income earned by its residents and businesses both at home and abroad. It contrasts with gross domestic product—GDP—which measures the income of anyone within a country’s boundaries, regardless of who produces it. It is a useful indicator, at a macro level, of community wealth building. GNI tends to be based on ownership, whereas GDP is based simply on location. If we compare GDP with GNI in the latest statistics from 2021, we can see that £36.5 billion was extracted from Scotland in that year, largely in the form of profits and dividends to foreign-owned companies and shareholders, while only £26.4 billion flowed into Scotland, largely as foreign investment income. That represents a net outflow of £10.1 billion. It is important to note that that is 5.5 per cent of GDP, which is greater than the average of any World Bank income group, including the world’s least developed and most heavily indebted nations.

Only five polities in the World Bank’s GNI database are richer in GNI per capita than Scotland while having a higher rate of outward economic flow: San Marino, Singapore, Ireland, Luxembourg and the Cayman Islands. We need to address that structural problem and properly interrogate the nature of foreign direct investment. That is why we have pushed the Government through amendments to the bill. The Government does not properly scrutinise the nature of foreign direct investment projects to ensure that they actually add net value to the Scottish economy.

I admit that, like many of my Labour colleagues, I was sceptical about the Community Wealth Building (Scotland) Bill as introduced—it was a mouse of a bill, as Richard Leonard referred to it. I was worried that it would create lots of paperwork for underresourced local authorities, that it would be about just an empty slogan and that the opportunity to meaningfully create community wealth building would be lost. We are perhaps still sceptical in some respects, but I am pleased that we have been able to work constructively with the Government and colleagues from across the chamber to fashion a stronger bill that will genuinely support community wealth building activities—to give the mouse some teeth, I suppose.

We have worked to achieve the inclusion of community-owned financial institutions such as credit unions in the Government’s community wealth building strategic statement and as an option in the action plans. The Scottish Government has committed to procurement reform and community empowerment reviews—both of which are sorely needed—in the next session of the Parliament.

I would have liked there to be more measures supporting co-operatives and for there to be greater scope in the organisations that will be included under the action plans. I note the concerns that have been raised about the surreptitious rundown of Co-operative Development Scotland, and I was disappointed that the Government resisted the amendments in the name of my colleague Richard Leonard. However, we recognise that the bill is a useful starting point, and it will be up to the next Parliament to ensure that its promise truly comes to fruition.

We need to ensure that councils and public bodies are properly resourced so that community wealth building plans turn into real community wealth building activity. We must also ensure that, when procurement processes are reviewed in relation to how they keep to community wealth building goals, we then act accordingly and make the changes that will be required to use public purchasing power to drive wealth building in Scotland.

The prize of a Scotland in which wealth-generating activities circulate within our communities is one that is worth striving towards. I hope that we will be able to consider the bill as the beginning, not the end, of our community wealth building journey.

16:27