Chamber and committees

The First Minister may recall that, before Christmas, I put to her a question regarding councils placing unaccompanied children who are seeking asylum in hotels. Since then, there have been reports that at least 200 children are missing or have been abducted from six Home Office hotels in England. I know that the First Minister will share my horror at that, as—I am sure—will members in the chamber.

Regarding the safety of unaccompanied children in Scotland, can she give an assurance that that is being delivered here, regardless of which authority is providing their accommodation?

Is she aware of any instances occurring in Scotland that are similar to those that have been reported in England? Can she provide an update on what steps the Government is taking to ensure that unaccompanied children are being moved from hotels into secure accommodation?

I am grateful to the cabinet secretary for sharing those details on trainee doctors in Scotland, but he will know that Australia and New Zealand are carrying out extensive marketing and recruitment campaigns that are targeted at trainee doctors who work in Scotland’s national health service. That is exacerbated by a lack of available specialist training posts and general burn-out due to high working hours. Can he advise us what proactive steps the Government is taking to retain those doctors once they have completed their foundation training? Why does he think they are being seen as such an easy target?

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. My app was not working. I would have voted yes.

The glaring omission in that answer was about the impact on the Scottish shipbuilding industry.

When I asked a written question about what weighting is applied to foreign shipbuilders as against domestic shipbuilders, the Scottish Government told me that it scores foreign and domestic shipbuilders in the same way on social value and other criteria. Therefore, an apprenticeship that is created in Turkey weighs the same as an apprenticeship that is created in Greenock. That is absurd, given that analysis shows that every pound that is spent on domestic shipbuilding returns a 35 per cent benefit to the local economy and supply chains in Scotland.

Does the minister not realise how foolish that approach is and that continuing with it will result in the terminal decline of shipbuilding in Scotland, given that most foreign shipbuilders are heavily subsidised by their Governments and are therefore able to submit bids that domestic shipbuilders are simply unable to compete with?

To ask the Scottish Government what economic analysis it considered prior to awarding ferry contracts reportedly worth £115 million to a shipyard in Turkey. (S6O-01791)

Following a Glasgow City Council decision last week on community grant funds, a number of organisations, some of which provide mental health support and access to food, are facing funding cuts or even closure. Given the bleak outlook for households, as highlighted by Marie McNair, will the Government ensure that organisations in Glasgow and elsewhere that provide such lifeline support will not be forced to pull out of communities or close when those communities face such hardship?

Does the member agree with me that, although care is critical, resourcing it also essential? The disproportionate cuts that have been imposed by the Government on local government have only exacerbated the delayed discharge problem.

I recognise the point that Gillian Martin makes, which I think is very important. When I was a member of the House of Commons, I raised that issue repeatedly in an effort to get the Treasury and HM Revenue and Customs to address the situation. I recognise that that is a cross-party effort. However, pensions are not the single factor that is driving vacancies in the national health service. There are many things that the cabinet secretary and his team could be doing to mitigate and to solve the problems in our NHS workforce. Young doctors and medics, in particular, are going to Australia in huge numbers, and that is not because of pensions.

It is extremely important to reference the human consequences of the failures that I listed. Statistics are released on a regular basis, and I fear that, at times, it is forgotten that behind every one of those statistics is a human being, who is often in tragic circumstances. I cannot be the only member whose inbox is regularly inundated by constituents detailing their harrowing experiences when they call on our NHS services. I make it clear that, in detailing those experiences, neither I nor those constituents are being critical of the staff who work on the front line, day and night, to keep our NHS afloat despite the incompetence of Government policy.

The content of those emails and pieces of correspondence ranges hugely, but one thing that binds every one of them together is that they paint a picture of a healthcare system that is crumbling and failing patients. In November, I was contacted by an ambulance driver who told me that, when he started his shift that morning at 7 am, his first patient had been waiting for an ambulance since midnight. He went on to detail horrendous cases, such as that of a toddler with complex medical needs who was having recurring seizures and had waited for more than five hours for an ambulance. When the crew arrived, the patient’s oxygen level was so low that their condition was deemed to be life-threatening.

In October, while on a constituency visit, I was approached by a constituent who told me a harrowing story about his father, who had suffered a stroke. Because of the delay in getting to A and E on time, because of ambulance shortages, he has been left permanently disabled. When the family asked the cardiologist how severe his stroke had been, they were informed that, if his relatives had got him in a car and brought him up to A and E instead of waiting for the ambulance to arrive within the appropriate timeframe, he would have been left without any permanent complications. Imagine the guilt of that tragedy and the lifelong complexities and burdens.

Just last week, I was contacted by a constituent whose mother-in-law was deemed medically fit to be released from hospital into a care setting in October. She was released on Friday 13 January and was charged £430 for the privilege of an ambulance transfer from the hospital in one health board to a care setting in another.

I could go on all day about the cases that have been brought to my office that show the state that our NHS is in. Every winter, we go through a crisis worse than that which came before. Every winter, we hear details of harrowing and devastating tragedies that could have been avoided. And, every winter, this Government comes to the chamber parroting excuse after excuse. It is not good enough. As much as I respect the cabinet secretary, on this occasion he is in over his head.

We have a workforce that is the best in the world, but it is exhausted and demoralised beyond precedent. The Labour Party has continually called for and argued for an integrated health and social care system, for an increase in social care workers’ pay to £15 an hour, and for a fully funded sustainable workforce plan to be the backbone of this Government’s plans. To date, we have been ignored, accused of scaremongering and, worst of all, accused of talking down the very national health service that this party created. Each of those accusations is not only a grotesque mischaracterisation of our position but a slap in the face for those of us who want nothing more than to see a national health service that is fit for the 21st century, that patients can rely on and that values and cherishes its workforce. On the basis of the current trajectory, under this Government it is unlikely that we will see any of those things any time soon.

I mentioned in my speech the £430 ambulance cost to transfer a 95-year-old constituent from one health board area’s hospital to a care home in another health board area. Does the minister recognise that we should not tolerate such incidents in the NHS?

I speak in support of the Labour motion, because the crisis faced by our national health service impacts on every one of our constituents. As we have seen in recent weeks and months, the NHS’s continued decline is not only a matter of grave concern but a matter of deep regret. The national health service is Labour’s greatest-ever achievement, and I can assure everyone in Scotland that defending it against cuts, neglect and continued decline will always be a priority for our party.

Let us look at that continued decline. As has already been outlined very eloquently by my friend the member for Dumbarton, since the cabinet secretary has been in post, Scotland’s national health service has experienced the worst A and E waiting times on record, the highest-ever number of patients languishing on NHS waiting lists, the worst performance against cancer waiting time targets, the largest increase in levels of delayed discharge and the most vacancies ever recorded in the NHS workforce. That can only be described as a litany of failures—a litany of failures that has devastating human consequences for the people whom we are here to represent in this place and one that, frankly, should result in the health secretary resigning.