Chamber and committees

Earlier this week, the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee heard evidence from health boards regarding external pressures on their service delivery, including the impact of inflation and increased utility costs. Can the cabinet secretary confirm whether the Government has considered how to reduce revenue energy cost as part of the infrastructure investment plan proposals, for example, through capital investments in systems such as district heat networks, which could increase the sustainability of the hospital estates and support surrounding communities?

Will my friend recognise that one of the key aspects of the Glasgow’s helping heroes service that is so powerful is that it is veterans advising veterans, and that their lived experience is often critical? Often, those who are employed and still serving in the armed forces who advise people who are about to leave do not have the same insights as people who have been through the process already.

To develop the point about taxi renewal and a product being available, the switched-on taxis loan scheme is not attractive to older drivers, for the reasons that I mentioned in my speech, but perhaps work could be done with manufacturers such as Allied Vehicles to develop a personal contract purchase scheme or a patient leasing scheme that might be attractive to drivers. That might allow drivers to transition without the huge up-front capital cost of buying a vehicle, which is currently £60,000 to £100,000.

I am pleased to open the debate for the Labour Party. I thank the cabinet secretary for the valuable opportunity to speak on a matter that all of us in the chamber must be passionate about: the support of veterans and their families in any way that is practical and necessary. In that spirit, Labour will support the Government’s motion this evening.

It is Labour’s view that the qualifications, skills and experience of service leavers and veterans, whether reserve or regular, are undervalued and poorly recognised. The Scottish Government has a duty to right that wrong and indignity. Despite the unique impacts that the pandemic and the cost of living crisis have had on many veterans, and the laudable efforts of the Government to make progress, there is much more that needs to be done. Part of the reason why we are having this debate today is to put in place tailored support and to increase the funding to ensure that there is the capacity in our country to meet the scale of the challenge.

All of us who feel passionately about supporting veterans must do more to promote the proper use of the term, particularly among early service leavers. Often, early service leavers or reservists, or those who have left under difficult circumstances, struggle or are reluctant to identify themselves as veterans. They are entitled to identify themselves as veterans, whether they serve for decades with an illustrious career or undertake simply one day of basic training.

When the Scottish Government announced that it would include a question in the 2022 census about service in the armed forces, that was very welcome, as it will give advocacy organisations and others engaged in those issues tangible data from which to direct their outreach work. I hope that the cabinet secretary might be able to confirm when that data will be available.

I turn to a celebration of the work that is already being done on support for veterans and their families, in employment and in other areas. It is important to acknowledge that much good work is already being done to support ex-service personnel to take up employment in the civilian world. Large organisations such as Barclays, the FDM Group and Network Rail have dedicated programmes for ex-service personnel to support the transition from armed forces working environments to a civilian working environment.

Many other businesses, organisations and local authorities have committed to the armed forces covenant to treat personnel, veterans and their families fairly, and I put on record my admiration for those who signed that important pledge and, most important, who adhere to those values.

Labour supports establishing clear statutory targets to underpin delivery of the armed forces covenant, to provide a central focal point for supporting the anecdotal evidence that we have of good practice.

The organisations undertaking that work know that we, in Parliament, also understand that veterans and their families bring admirable qualities and values that they learned in the armed forces community and apply them to their work, to the benefit of all with whom they come into contact. If they are provided with the right support and transitionary training, veterans and their family members are worth their weight in gold and are some of our best citizens.

I recently visited RAF Lossiemouth and the garrison at Leuchars. The big issue that was raised, which Jamie Greene has alluded to, was that supporting those who are still serving to maintain their position with the resilience of their families around them is critical as well. That requires greater liaison between the Scottish Government, local authorities and the Ministry of Defence to ensure that there is an adequate supply of housing, that childcare facilities are available and that there is support for things such as starting up a business or contact with local professions, so that those families are engaged and integrated into the local community.

In Glasgow, SSAFA and Glasgow City Council jointly support the activity of Glasgow’s Helping Heroes. Since 2010, that organisation has provided a holistic service that provides advice and support on matters such as housing and homelessness, employability and training, financial issues, welfare benefits and health issues. I have witnessed at first hand the wonderful work of Rachel Tribble and her team, which is so transformative for service users. It is no exaggeration to say that their work can greatly improve, and even save, lives.

On Tuesday evening, it was my great pleasure to host SSAFA and Glasgow’s Helping Heroes here in the Parliament to celebrate their work and consider the evaluation report that was commissioned as part of Glasgow Helping Heroes’ 10th anniversary. The report, “GHH: A Vital Service—Enabling our Armed Forces community to thrive”, confirms that the social return on investment in such services is enormous and tangible. Researchers from the University of Stirling and Glasgow Caledonian University concluded that, for every £1 that was invested in the Glasgow’s Helping Heroes service, the social value of the result was £6.63. That figure reflects the time when Covid-19 restrictions were in place. It is estimated that, in normal times, the return could be as much as £11.68—an amazing return on investment, and something that we should look at as a national exemplar. That is why I ask the cabinet secretary and members across the chamber to support the amendment in my name.

Veterans and their families are not any more likely to struggle with unemployment than are those in wider society, but it is undeniable that they face unique challenges when working on civvy street. The holistic approach to support that is modelled by Glasgow’s Helping Heroes ensures that all those who are in our armed forces communities can thrive and continue to make our workplaces more diverse and ever more successful.

I move amendment S6M-08332.2, to insert at end:

“, and calls on the Scottish Government to enhance tailored support services available to veterans by scaling up examples of successful models, such as the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association and Glasgow City Council’s Glasgow’s Helping Heroes service, to become national standards.”

I congratulate my Glasgow colleague Pauline McNeill on bringing this important motion to the chamber for debate.

I hope that the minister has heard the words of members around the chamber on the critical issue that is faced by taxi drivers across our city and Scotland more widely. I speak from some experience: my dad is a taxi driver. He is in his 60s and drives a taxi in Glasgow. He does that because he was made redundant from the shipyards and it was a way for him to earn a stable income and have more control over his life after suffering from the impact of deindustrialisation in Glasgow.

That is the story of many taxi drivers in our city, who do the job because it offers flexibility and a stable income. They are, by and large, in their 50s and 60s. They are not the sort of people who are prepared or able to take on tens of thousands of pounds of debt to finance the purchase of new vehicles—nor would they want to, because they are not at the point in their careers where that makes sense.

We therefore have this wicked problem of a crunch. A new technology is coming in and internal combustion engine vehicles are being phased out, the new second-hand market is not established yet and there is not the financial wherewithal or the products available to facilitate that transition meaningfully. To add insult to injury, Glasgow City Council is pig-headedly pressing ahead with the blunt implementation of a low-emission zone and has not paid heed to the valid concerns that taxi drivers have raised.

I know that taxi drivers are not luddites. They are not anti-environmental improvement. They want to go with the grain, but they need to be given a fair deal in the way that bus companies have been given a fair deal to renew their fleets with substantial and generous public subsidies along with their large capital-raising capacity.

Taxi drivers, who are often self-employed, often do not have the means to raise capital and are at a point in their lives where they cannot get that kind of finance, so they need extra support from the Government. If they do not get that, the public good that taxis provide—which colleagues across the chamber have so eloquently described, whether it be the educational aspect, disability access or support for our night-time economy—will suffer. Indeed, we will all suffer, because we all have skin in the game with regard to having a thriving taxi industry.

Given that the transport system in Glasgow is basically non-existent from half past 11 at night until 6 am, taxis are all the more critical. We have heard about the safety implications of their not being available for workers and those who participate as consumers in our night-time economy, and we have also heard about the chilling effect that it is having on our wider economy, which is worth billions of pounds a year. Glasgow’s city centre has a very low residential population, so the city relies disproportionately on, as Mr Simpson described, people travelling from the outer suburbs and from places such as East Kilbride to visit hospitality venues in the city centre. If they are not able to do that, it will change behaviour, which will have an effect on revenue and result in business failure. If we do not address this issue at first hand, it will have a compounding effect.

We have lots of opportunities. I know that we have heard pretty damaging figures such as the number of licences in Glasgow being down by 15 per cent since 2019. In fact, I would argue that, when we add in shift drivers, the actual availability of taxis on the road is twice as big a factor, with a potential loss of up to a third or even a half of the available taxis on the streets of Glasgow at any one time. That number is pretty horrific, and I know from personal experience of coming off the train at Queen Street in the evenings how difficult it is to get a taxi, particularly midweek.

However, although this is a major issue, there are solutions. Greater Manchester’s clean air plan shows that it is possible to take action to improve air quality without harming the taxi trade; its proposal for a Greater Manchester-wide clean air zone has been introduced alongside funding of £21.4 million for the taxi industry to renew its fleet and allow for the transition to more compliant vehicles. We could do the same sort of thing with a major manufacturer such as the Allied Vehicles Group, the UK’s largest taxi manufacturer, which is based in and employs 600 people in Glasgow. That is one example of a joined-up approach that could be taken—that is, working with the industry to develop a product that is practical and which can work better than what has been done previously. The switched-on taxi loan scheme does not work. It does not provide the scale that is needed, and it does not address the issues.

I therefore appeal to the minister to look again at this problem and work with the council and the industry to solve it. There is a willingness to do this—we just need to get the right pieces in place to make it work.

It is disappointing that the Government is minded not to support Labour’s amendment. I can perhaps reassure the cabinet secretary that we do not propose putting a universal, statutory straitjacket on Government and to dictate how local services should be designed. Instead, it is about advertising or creating national exemplars that can offer inspiration to local authorities when they are designing services that are appropriate to their area. He might perhaps consider supporting the amendment in that spirit, even at this late stage.

There is scarcely a bigger icon of Scotland’s social history than the Glasgow School of Art, yet we are almost five years on from the second disastrous fire there, with a predicted completion date of 2030. The Notre Dame cathedral fire in Paris happened a year later, yet its rebuild is due to complete next year.

With the news earlier this month that the tendering process for the Mackintosh building restoration project has collapsed, effectively putting the rebuild effort back to square 1, will the minister for culture now instruct that the project be directly overseen by the Scottish ministers in order to get the restoration of this international architectural icon back on track?

The minister knows that substance use is often a form of self-medication for underlying mental health disorder and trauma. Yet the recent budget accounted for £290 million for mental health for the coming financial year, which is merely a reversal of the £38 million cut in the emergency budget review. That effective freeze will have a direct impact on services and risks increasing the likelihood of people using substances to self-medicate in the absence of professional help.

Today’s announcements are welcome, but does the minister not accept that the Government could prevent such harm in the first place by going to the root cause of the problem and increasing the mental health budget in line with the 10 per cent commitment of overall NHS expenditure that was made previously?

I thank the member for Aberdeenshire East for lodging the motion for debate on Marie Curie’s great daffodil appeal. Everyone here, I think—in both the chamber and the public gallery—will have had some experience with the vital work of Marie Curie at some point in their life, and I am pleased to have the opportunity to discuss the importance of that care.

Just last week, I had the privilege of visiting the Marie Curie hospice in the grounds of Stobhill hospital in Glasgow. I remember fundraising for the hospice as a pupil at the nearby Turnbull high school some years ago, but this was the first time that I had the chance to see inside the new facility, which opened in 2010.

During my visit, I was struck not just by the impressive nature of the facility but by the peaceful environment that the staff and volunteers have created for those who visit, often under very difficult and distressing circumstances. The exceptional team there stressed the importance of making patients and their families feel welcome and at ease, and shared its hope that local people around the hospice will use the facility as a community space, stopping in for coffee or lunch, instead of seeing it as a daunting or strictly medical facility. That was very important and insightful.

I was born at Stobhill hospital, and I remember my gran passing away there in 1995. It is interesting to reflect on the contrast between how we treat the start of life and how we treat its end, which will be a universal truth for us all. It is something that we, as a society, still have a dread of and a fear of talking about. It was interesting to be confronted with that in quite a stark way at the hospice. It left me with some significant things to reflect on.

I was also privileged enough to meet some of the patients receiving palliative care in the hospice. One of the patients has not been far from my mind since my visit last Friday. The patient had dealt with various challenges throughout the course of her life. She told me about those challenges, but she was even more keen to tell me about the positive path she had paved for herself after surviving that trauma, prior to her cancer diagnosis. Her two boys had grown up healthily, she had moved into her own home and she was enjoying quality time with loved ones. She said:

“I was listening to myself speak to people, knowing that it was the real me, and I liked the real me—then I was diagnosed with cancer.”

Sadly, I was informed this morning that she passed away last night. I know that the care of Marie Curie in her final days brought her comfort and dignity, which was incredibly important to her and which made a deep impression, even in the few minutes that I spent with her.

Her story sums up one of the many cruel aspects of cancer. This disease does not care how old you are or if you are at an exciting or positive juncture in your life. We have no control over when cancer throws people’s lives into chaos or despair, as we heard powerfully from Hayley at the reception in Parliament earlier this week, as the member for Aberdeenshire East mentioned. It was a deeply moving testimony.

What we have control over is the quality of care that people receive in the wake of a cancer diagnosis, and hospices such as Marie Curie and others need our sustained support to guarantee that care. News reports this month indicate that hospice leaders in Scotland expect a £12 million increase in wage bills if they are to remain competitive with the NHS and retain staff, and those reports are troubling to hear.

The reality is that most hospices are reliant on donations to meet those costs. Marie Curie needs to raise £250,000 per week to fund its services in Scotland. Approximately 70 per cent of funding for Children’s Hospices Across Scotland comes from fundraising. The Accord Hospice in Paisley depends on donations for 60 per cent of its income, and its costs have risen by £300,000. Fundraising, which can often be hard to predict, and yearly reviews of what funding is sustainable makes forward planning and responding to local need a challenge for hospices, and a deeply distressing one at that.

I therefore urge the Scottish Government to provide urgent support for palliative care providers to provide assurance that staff salaries are competitive with the national health service, and to commit to establishing a national partnership with hospices in the longer term so that the sector can deliver sustainable and universal palliative care options in line with the needs of local communities. That is a no-brainer. It will save the NHS money and deliver better dignity to all our citizens who are facing the end of their lives at that point in their lives. It is important that we consider the appropriate settings for people and that they are not dying inappropriately in acute hospitals. As I mentioned earlier, and as has been movingly mentioned by others, cancer is a disease that, in many ways, we cannot control. That is even more reason why we should commit to improve the aspects that we can.

Ferguson Marine has no funding beyond the completion of hulls 801 and 802. According to the benchmarking report set out by First Marine International, the Scottish Government has not invested capital to improve the yard. It has also not established a fund for builders refund guarantees, which would be necessary to win export orders. Unless the Scottish Government awards the small vessel replacement programme to Ferguson Marine, the yard will fail.

Will the Deputy First Minister agree to implement actions in line with all those points, as the basis for a new commercial shipbuilding strategy for Scotland?