Chamber and committees

It is a pleasure to contribute to today’s debate. I pay tribute to all colleagues on the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee. I do not sit on the committee, but I keep a close eye on it, given the importance of its work.

I do not intend to take up the full time that I have available today. I will try to focus my remarks on the crisis that our child and adolescent mental health services face by highlighting the real-life challenges and consequences that many of our constituents live with as a result of that crisis.

The report on the health and wellbeing of children and young people highlights many challenges, but, for me, the starkest of all relates to the pressures that CAMHS across Scotland face. The most recent Public Health Scotland data shows that, at the end of 2021, almost 10,500 children and young people were waiting to be seen by CAMHS. Of that number, 46 per cent were waiting longer than the 18-week target that the Government has set. That is an extraordinary number of children and young people who are, to be frank, being failed by the system. We know that that target is vital. In its submission to the inquiry, Social Work Scotland stated that “long delays” in accessing treatment can lead to “more entrenched difficulties” by the time a child or young person is finally able to access the service.

There is no denying that the impact of the pandemic has been hugely significant, and the report acknowledges that. However, if anything, that makes it all the more important that we get on top of the problem now. We could talk about statistics all day—I am sure that that would be done with the best of intentions—but we cannot shy away from the fact that there are real-life consequences to delays in accessing CAMHS.

I absolutely recognise that. We need to have in place much more robust mechanisms that show us where performance is good and how that can be quickly cross-pollinated to other health boards in different areas, because there is an administrative lag in the bureaucracy across Scotland—things are quite fragmented. That is a constructive suggestion about how we move forward, and I commend it. I encourage the committee to press that issue with the minister. I hope that he has heard Gillian Martin’s comments and will address the issue in his closing speech.

I will mention a constituency case that troubled me so much. I was contacted by a constituent regarding his 13-year-old daughter, who is care experienced and was adopted by the family about eight years ago. The pandemic had a profound effect on her. The lockdown and the lack of school routine and normal socialising led to some challenging behaviour at home—so much so that the family sought a CAMHS referral on 2 June 2020. More than two years later, there is still no timeline or indication of when she will be given access to the services that she needs.

In April 2021, the family’s GP made another referral, due to the deterioration in her mental condition and a perceived increase in risk. That particular crisis led to an emergency CAMHS appointment, but the assessment was that she should remain on a routine waiting list. Heartbreakingly, she wants to engage with CAMHS and cannot understand why she is being made to wait so long. As the chamber will appreciate, that situation is not only having an adverse impact on my constituent’s daughter; the challenging behaviour is having an adverse impact on the whole family, one of whom has been sitting her national 5 exams in recent months.

My constituent is just one of the parents who find themselves in that position, and his daughter is sadly one of thousands of kids who are waiting for vital treatment. It is clear that, in many circumstances, the 18-week target for treatment is nothing more than a cruel pipe dream. In my constituent’s case, that target has not been missed marginally. We are now 106 weeks down the line—a period almost six times longer than the 18-week target—and the family is no further forward, with no light at the end of the tunnel.

The longer we continue to shirk that issue, the longer children and their families will continue to be failed by the system. I ask the minister to engage with that issue constructively and request that my constituent’s case be looked at urgently. I am happy to share the details with her if she agrees today to intervene and insist that the case is resolved with NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde.

Fundamentally, we need to do much better, because we are currently failing thousands of children across Scotland who desperately need our help.

On the critical issue of CAMHS, does my friend agree with me that it is unfortunate that the minister did not address the Glasgow case that I have raised? Perhaps he could encourage the minister to take cognisance of that and respond to me in due course.

It is a pleasure to open the debate on behalf of the Labour Party. I thank the Scottish Conservatives for lodging the motion. The debate is long overdue and urgently needed following last week’s demoralising spending review, when the cabinet secretary heroically attempted to spin cuts that the Tories themselves would be proud of as fiscal prudence—she has done so again today.

However, to put it bluntly, the economic outlook for the next five years is nothing but grim. We often hear warnings of economic uncertainty, and it seems as though not a day goes by without headlines about record fuel prices, record gas and electricity bills and record inflationary pressures.

Of course, those pressures all contribute to the economic forecasts that we are discussing, but the underlying vulnerabilities of the Scottish economy run far deeper than recent price spikes and the cost of living crisis, so I was dismayed to read the Government’s amendment to Liz Smith’s motion. It can only be described as showing the Government burying its head in the sand rather than addressing the failures that it has presided over.

The Scottish Government has done its usual by pointing the finger at Whitehall and highlighting the failings of the Tories—rightly, in this case, but it is also an attempt to distract from the myriad failures that it has presided over in Scotland.

I am afraid that the underlying indicators of economic performance are clear for everyone to see. The Scottish Fiscal Commission’s recent forecasts highlight the stark reality of the challenges that we all face, with productivity stalling, real wages falling and tax receipts significantly lower than previously predicted.

It is an economic forecast that many of us have been warning about for a long time, but the cabinet secretary has point-blank refused to accept it. Take productivity, for example. The SFC states that

“Productivity growth has stalled in Scotland since 2015.”

I repeat—it has stalled since 2015. The single biggest, most important factor in improving prosperity has stalled—seven years of absolutely no progress whatsoever despite repeated warnings.

The cabinet secretary can play the blame game all she likes, and the amendment in her name attempts to do just that, but it is abundantly clear that the Government has no plan for improving productivity forecasts.

We see the same scenario when it comes to average earnings in Scotland. Every year for the next five years, Scotland is forecast to lag behind the UK as a whole. That is not a recent phenomenon. Between 2016 and 2020, earnings in Scotland increased at a slower rate than in the rest of the UK, and the Scottish Fiscal Commission states that, in recent years, the gap has widened, not narrowed. Since 2016, Scotland’s average earnings have grown by 21 per cent, which is 5 per cent less than the UK average over the same period.

Will the minister take an intervention?

Given the cost of living crisis, I am happy to accept the proposal for a superannuation.

However, the key proposals are about efficiency of investments and return on investments. There are huge, endless opportunities to increase revenue and get public investments to raise more money for Scotland. There are innumerable opportunities to outline that. Instead of having multinational utilities, the Scottish Government and councils could be making big, bold moves to aim to be the main supplier of heating to all households and businesses in Scotland, with a mass roll-out of publicly owned and developed district heating networks. There is no state entrepreneurship. That is just one example that I give John Mason to take into consideration. In his constituency, in Dalmarnock, there are district heating schemes that are not being expanded and, currently, social housing is being built with gas boilers fitted into the properties. That is introducing and seeding a cost of living crisis in our midst, when we could be doing something different.

I take no pleasure in pointing out those facts, because I want nothing more than for Scotland’s economy to be prosperous, thriving and providing a solid foundation for the improvement of people’s lives. Of course I want that, but the fact is that it is not happening. Scotland’s economy is underperforming, and the Scottish Government needs to take its share of the blame. Yes, external factors have played a role. Brexit, Covid and global inflationary pressures cannot be ignored, but the problems that I have outlined existed well before any of those external factors came in, and have left our economy less resilient in the face of those shocks. The reality of what the poor economic forecasts mean in practice is stark. Last week, the cabinet secretary outlined the Scottish Government’s spending priorities. Health and social security budgets were protected, but everything else was raided. The Scottish Fiscal Commission says that, in 2023-24 and 2024-25, spending on all other areas is expected to fall in real terms. In 2025-26, only the net zero and energy and transport portfolios are expected to increase. There we have it in black and white: austerity, the very thing that the cabinet secretary spent the bulk of her speech criticising in withering terms. For the next three years, the budgets that are afforded to local government; education and skills; the economy and finance; justice and veterans; the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service; net zero, energy and transport; and external affairs and culture will be hammered, and the consequences could not be clearer.

Further cuts to local government will mean further job losses, drastically reduced services, cuts to education and skills, the further widening of the attainment gap and the sacrifice of the life chances of our children. Decimated transport budgets will result in even poorer services, which will push people away from public transport—and increase the costs and subsidy dependence—at the exact time when we should be encouraging them back.

Perhaps the worst consequence of all is the admission of scathing cuts to the number of public sector jobs in Scotland. That point is perhaps the most illustrative of the short-sightedness of this Government when it comes to the economy. Instead of investing, retaining, skilling up and increasing the wages of public sector employees, it sacks them, with the profound personal and financial consequences that that decision will have on families across Scotland. It is a symptom of a Government that is run by accountants, not economists.

It does not take an accountant or economist to see the perilous state that the Scottish economy is in. People can feel it in their pockets and in their pay packets every day. Unless something fundamentally changes and the Scottish Government finally takes its head out of the sand, we will continue on that managed decline and, before we know it, it will be too late to reverse the downward spiral that we are in.

As our amendment today states,

“the failure to grow Scottish wages will also mean that hard-working people are more exposed to the pressures of the cost of living crisis.”

That needs to be at the forefront of our minds. Squabbling about constitutional arrangements, firing figures across the chamber, blaming the Tories and cutting vital budgets will not help ordinary, hard-working people. Everyone needs to be laser focused on improving their lives in the coming years. All the evidence that I have seen so far suggests that the Government is incapable of providing that focus.

I move amendment S6M-04815.2, to leave out from “is deeply” to end and insert:

“notes the recent findings of the Scottish Fiscal Commission and is deeply concerned by many of the trends identified, including that productivity growth in Scotland has stalled since 2015 and earnings growth is lagging behind the UK’s; is further concerned, in particular, by the revised downward growth estimates and decline in real earnings, and that the Scottish Government has imposed higher tax rates on Scotland without increasing revenues, compared with the block grant adjustment, due to the ongoing issues relating to weaker productivity and inflexibilities within the Scottish labour market, with the result that net Scottish income tax receipts in 2022-23 are forecast to be £428 million less than if income tax had not been devolved; considers that this is a consequence of the Scottish Government’s failure to use the taxation, borrowing and investment powers of devolution to support and grow the Scottish economy; notes that this has directly resulted in less tax revenue available to invest in Scottish public services, and is further concerned by the real-terms cuts of more than £1 billion announced by the Scottish Government, which will affect local government, the police and higher education, among key services; calls on the Scottish Government to ensure that policies to deliver long-term growth, including collaborative projects with the UK Government such as city deals, are a priority within Scottish Government spending plans; further calls for a finance bill mechanism to be introduced to evaluate the effectiveness of public spending; calls for plans for a second independence referendum to be taken off the table, and believes that the failure to grow Scottish wages will also mean that hard working people are more exposed to the pressures of the cost of living crisis.”

I thank the minister for her statement, but it has left me rather underwhelmed. She has said repeatedly that establishing overdose prevention centres in Scotland is a priority and that they are an essential tool for tackling the drug deaths crisis in our midst; yet, in today’s set-piece statement on drug deaths, there was not a single mention of the Government’s work so far on delivering overdose prevention centres in Scotland. The minister will know that, yesterday, I launched my consultation on my proposed member’s bill to establish OPCs in Scotland, but I must ask why it has been left to Opposition members to drive the pace of reform when we agree on the need for them. When are we likely to see genuine, tangible updates and progress from the Government on the delivery of overdose prevention sites within its competence?

Will the member give way?

On partnership and dialogue, would the Deputy First Minister consider consulting councils and other stakeholders that have been affected by building controls applying emergency powers where they declare a building to be dangerous? That has an incredibly onerous effect on residents and that is little appreciated, unless one is at the sharp end of it. In a democracy, that feels rather overwhelming and there have been overzealous applications of such powers. There is no room for discretion and no room for assisting residents in recovering personal belongings—even professionally or medically vital equipment. We need a more conciliatory and co-operative approach going forward. Could that be incorporated into the study that the Government is doing on the issue?

I thank Tess White for bringing the debate to the chamber. I declare an interest as a director and trustee of the Glasgow City Heritage Trust.

I note the points that were made in the opening speech about the immediate recommendations of the report into storm Arwen and how important they are, but I think that we need to take cognisance of some of the longer-term impacts and continuing effects of storm Arwen—most notably, in relation to buildings that were damaged in that storm.

There is a particularly egregious case in Glasgow that I have been dealing with over the past few months. On 29 January, hundreds of residents in the Park Circus area of Glasgow were evacuated from their homes due to damage that was sustained at the historic Trinity College tower from storm Malik. There had been long-term concerns about the structural integrity of that building, but motion sensors in the building were triggered by the storm, which caused building-control engineers to attend immediately and evacuate not just the building and the owners there, but the surrounding streets. An impasse continues to this day, with residents unable to get back into their homes. There is uncertainty and there is a dispute between council building-control engineers and the owners’ engineers about the nature of the repairs and what is required.

That shows that there is a lack of accountability and a lack of communication under emergency delegated powers for building safety and building control. Those powers have not been addressed well enough in the context of such disasters. Residents have suddenly found themselves not just out of their homes and displaced for an indefinite period, but faced with bankruptcy. That is not only because of the costs to repair the building—they are in dispute with the council about the nature of the repairs—but because of the costs of compensating other residents who have been displaced from their homes because of the exclusion zone. That represents a serious challenge that we need to think about for the longer term. The report does not adequately address that matter, and this is a case that we need to take seriously.

There have been efforts in Parliament and the Government to address the matter more widely and for the longer term. The Built Environment Forum Scotland produced a series of recommendations in 2019 to improve the resilience of heritage buildings. The aim was to establish long-term solutions that would assist and compel owners in multiple-ownership properties—in particular, tenements—to maintain their buildings, and to have in place financial resilience so that there would be no shortfall when there is a sudden maintenance event, such as a storm hitting and causing unexpected damage.

Legislation will be slow in coming. The report that the Scottish Law Commission proposes will take until 2026, which is nearly a decade after the recommendations—or, at least, the exercise to investigate recommendations—were put in place. The requirements are quite straightforward: buildings should be inspected every five years and owners’ associations should compulsorily establish sinking funds and building reserve funds.

There are complex policy and legal issues, notably around the interaction of the proposed legislation with existing property titles and human rights concerns, but we need to move much faster if we are to address the major strategic threat that extreme weather events pose to our built environment, and the subsequent huge effects on people’s lives when they are suddenly kicked out of their homes and lose shelter and the fundamental right to property.

We need to look at what the Scottish Law Commission is saying, which is that it will take until 2026. That is way too slow; it is not fast enough, so we need to look at a way of increasing the pace. Sadly, it is an indictment of the level of importance that the Government is placing on the issue that we do not have enough rigour in the approach. We have seen all too clearly, as a result of storm Arwen, the serious impact that storms can have. The Trinity College tower case is but one egregious example, but with 76,000 pre-1920 tenements in Glasgow, with an estimated repair bill of £3 billion, the problem will only get worse as time goes on. Let us get ahead of the problem instead of dithering for another parliamentary session.