Chamber and committees

Having listened to speeches in this debate, particularly from the Government’s side, it seems clear to me that the Government lives in fear of the cost of truth to our country, when it ought to be thinking about what the cost to our country is of lies and defence of misinformation.

Every family and every citizen of this country, when they are faced with the horrible circumstance of a relative, a friend or perhaps themselves being admitted to hospital in a crisis, wants some degree of certainty that the health service is equipped to meet their needs and save their lives. I cannot imagine the horror of realising not only that a child or relative has died, but that they died because of a system of failure, and because of lies and a lack of accountability.

That situation applies not only in the health service but across Government. It is a cultural problem in our country that has crept in slowly and almost imperceptibly over many years. Our country often tries to pride itself on being open and transparent. The Parliament was founded on those principles, and we created legislation such as the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 to cast a light on the workings of Government. In recent years, however, it has increasingly felt as though we are dealing with a clique or a closed shop. There seems to be a system of self-preservation for those at the top, whether in the Government or in the bureaucracy, that does not apply to those who are elected to serve in our democracy. It is a culture that looks inwards and that treats politics as a game of insider and outsider, in which the concerns of the insider happen to be more important than the people they are meant to serve. That cuts to the core of every aspect of what has gone wrong in the Queen Elizabeth university hospital.

The member makes a very good point. To curtail and suppress things rather than holding people accountable, getting to the root cause of the problem and avoiding unnecessary consequences is a symptom of a wider disease. In many cases, those consequences include lives being lost unnecessarily.

I come from a shipbuilding background and I distinctly remember my first week at the shipyard. There was a huge sign above one of the sheds that said, “Lives depend on us doing our job right.” That is an important point to remember. In project management, there is a moral obligation to be accountable and honest, because the protection of human life is at the core of any big project, whether in healthcare, construction, aerospace or shipbuilding. Those are high-stakes projects, and there is a total responsibility to act with integrity at all levels in management and commissioning. If any perverse incentive exists to ensure that safety is overridden, it must be nipped in the bud, but that simply did not happen in this case.

We know that there were other expedient factors at play. We know that pressure existed. We know that the final product was not safe and that it caused harm to the public. It caused unnecessary death. Where is the accountability for that failure? It is no good just acknowledging it. Where is the system of accountability? Where is the deterrence so that such perverse behaviours do not occur again? As parliamentarians, and even as members of the public, how can we have confidence that that will not happen again? Whether we are talking about a ferry that does not work or a hospital that causes death, myriad other symptoms exist across the public sector in Scotland that are causes for concern and that are raised routinely in this Parliament. We must understand what the underlying culture is and how we can address it.

The protection and preservation of human life in our country should be our overriding concern. To simply be dismissed and told that what we are doing as parliamentarians in seeking to hold the Government to account in that regard is ultra vires is appalling to me. Can members of this Parliament not show some degree of pride in their work and in what they are meant to be doing? That is important to me and I hope that it is important to others.

Such complex projects involve many ethical dilemmas, but we must never compromise on standards or rush to meet deadlines by skipping quality or safety checks. There is an issue even with basic routine maintenance. When one of my colleagues in Glasgow, Councillor George Redmond, was admitted to the Glasgow royal infirmary, even the showers were not working. Basic infection control and prevention of disease measures are failing on an on-going basis in the city today. Where is the accountability for that failure? It is simply not good enough to say that we acknowledge that things might sometimes go wrong. Where is the root-cause analysis? Where is the escalation? Why does the cabinet secretary not have a chart on the wall of his office with daily and hourly updates in red pen to show what is being done to fix the problem? Where is the system of accountability?

We constantly have the circular feedback loop—the doom loop—involving health boards, integration joint boards, ministers and parliamentarians, but none of it ever results in consequences. It is in that respect that we need to question our role in public life. I hope that parliamentarians will think about that, regardless of the inquiry and what it concludes. Some matters are self-evident—they are certainly obvious to me, and they should be obvious to colleagues across the chamber.

Will the member take an intervention?

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. I would have voted yes.

Another interesting point that was raised during the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee’s inquiry was the tension between revenue and capital. However, how preventative spend could better achieve goals might be another factor that the Government considers when trying to balance the challenges on expenditure.

We have seen residents of Bute having to travel by ferry to Paisley to access NHS dentists due to a lack of capacity on that island, and we have seen dental practices in Oban being unable to take on new patients due to staff shortages caused by a lack of housing. This is a holistic issue—it is about housing, transport and healthcare—and it is leading to a situation in which many people are unable to see an NHS dentist.

Does the Government agree that the lack of capacity is a systemic issue? Can salaried posts be created in such places? Will the minister engage with the royal colleges to offer a licensed dental surgery course for international practitioners to convert in Scotland?

Happy new year to you, Deputy Presiding Officer, and to colleagues across the chamber.

I commend the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee for lodging the motion for debate, which I was pleased to sign. I extend my thanks and congratulations to the petitioners, led by Helen Plank, on behalf of Scottish Swimming, and to all those who have signed and supported the petition to highlight the critical value of public swimming pools across Scotland.

The debate provides a timely opportunity to focus on the urgent need for continued investment in these municipal facilities. Many such examples have been cited by members. I join my colleague from Glasgow, Patrick Harvie, in recognising Whitehill pool in Dennistoun, which is a vital asset for the communities of Glasgow’s east end. I urge the Scottish Government to work with Glasgow City Council and Glasgow Life to secure its future.

That pool is one of the older ones. As mentioned, the average age of pools in Scotland is significantly higher than those across the rest of the UK usually are. The Whitehill pool opened in 1978, so it is approaching half a century old. It has served as an essential community asset in one of Glasgow’s most deprived areas, providing affordable access to swimming lessons, fitness classes and recreational activities that are crucial for tackling health inequalities, promoting physical activity and supporting mental wellbeing in a district of Glasgow where obesity rates remain stubbornly high and life expectancy lags behind the national average. Such facilities are not mere amenities—they are public health interventions and should be calculated as such. Generations of local families have used that pool to learn to swim and as a hub for fostering social cohesion in Dennistoun and beyond.

I have been involved in the campaign for many years. As the previous member of Parliament for Glasgow North East, I joined local residents in opposing proposed council cuts that threatened the pool’s closure, finally getting a commitment from the council to reinvest. Since my election to the Scottish Parliament in 2021, I have continued with cross-party working, supporting local councillors Elaine McDougall and Anthony Carroll, and standing alongside the save Whitehill pool campaign, which is led tirelessly by dedicated champions such as Bill Stark, the chair of the Whitehill swimming club, and Alwyn Poulter, who pressed Glasgow Life for new investment.

We have had hard-won victories, including a commitment to refurbishment works, but, unfortunately, the discovery of RAAC in the building in December 2023 has forced its indefinite closure—a devastating blow to the community. We know that it was not foreseen, but the presence of RAAC has been compounded by other structural issues, and repair costs are indicated to be £20 million. Although Glasgow Life has at times recommended the demolition or mothballing of the building, it recently retracted that position following continued community pressure.

The setback is now well into its third year, but it cannot become permanent. The closure of the pool has displaced swimmers to distant alternatives, disrupted learn-to-swim programmes and left a void in local leisure provision at a time when Glasgow Life is investing in and upgrading other facilities in the city ahead of the Commonwealth games. For example, in the summer, Tollcross international swimming centre received significant investment, as did Springburn leisure centre, where I first learned to swim at primary school. Whitehill should not be left as the outlier and the only major pool that is not benefiting from that wave of investment.

We need to commit to innovative thinking about municipal pools. We often focus on their running costs, but we are not thinking about the way in which they could be integrated with district heating systems, for example. We could certify Whitehill to Passivhaus standards, as we have seen being done with the recent investment in Blairgowrie leisure centre, which is Scotland’s first Passivhaus swimming pool, cutting energy costs by up to 80 per cent. That is a huge opportunity.

In an area such as Dennistoun, which has a dense tenement grid right next to Tennent’s brewery, which is a major heat generator, and the Hovis bakery, where the famous Mothers Pride loaves are made, there is already a heat generation network that could be integrated with local housing and could reduce energy costs for the whole community, as well as providing a good public facility.

We need to recognise that it is not just about investment in another leisure facility but about a potential massive investment in the public health of Glasgow and many other examples across the country. We need to let people swim again and build that national resilience.

rose—

The committee convener makes a powerful point about life saving, particularly in an educational context—teaching children the confidence to swim not just in a pool but in open water, and the appropriate safeguards to have in place for dealing with challenging conditions in open-water swimming.

I am sure that the cabinet secretary will have noted from Shelter Scotland’s report last week that two in five phone calls to its helpline are related to families who are urgently seeking temporary accommodation. It reported that clients are routinely being denied their right to temporary accommodation or are being placed in housing that is unsuitable according to the law.

Families are being forced to live in hostels or are put in dingy temporary flats that make them ill and leave children traumatised, with potentially lifelong effects on their mental and physical health. It is a national scandal that that is how thousands of children across Scotland are spending yet another Christmas—with precious childhood development being robbed from them because of an inadequate and declining housing supply. Does the Government recognise that this is a public health emergency as much as anything else? What will the cabinet secretary say directly to the families who are facing that housing emergency?