Chamber and committees

I will take an intervention, and I hope that I will get my time back.

I warmly welcome the debate and the opportunity to consider the significant announcements that were made last week.

We have heard from many members about the backdrop to the discussion. Across the UK, we have the sharpest fall in living standards, rising food and fuel prices and rising inflation. As members said, Brexit, the pandemic and Ukraine make the economic situation more challenging.

As members also said, there seem to be specific issues in Scotland around poor productivity and earnings growth. The growth forecasts are poor.

We know that, given the announcements last week, we face significant cuts in budgets for many sectors for which the Scottish Government is responsible.

I will focus on the impact of those cuts. Local government will be significantly affected by a cut of approximately 7 per cent. When the announcements were made last week, Unison’s Scottish secretary, Tracey Dalling, said:

“This is a desperate day for public services that will have catastrophic consequences for Scotland’s communities”.

I want to focus on a sector for which the impact of the cuts will be disastrous: the justice sector. The sector is already in crisis. Before the pandemic, approximately 13,400 sheriff court trials were outstanding. As the Criminal Justice Committee indicated in a report earlier this year, there are now approximately 32,400 outstanding cases in the sheriff court.

In last week’s announcements, significant real-terms cuts of at least 20 per cent over the next few years were proposed. The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service budget is frozen at £170 million per year until 2026-27, the community justice budget is frozen at £47 million per year until 2026-27, and the justiciary budget is frozen at £29 million per year until 2026-27. The legal aid and Scottish Police Authority budgets are also frozen, along with the budgets for the Scottish Prison Service, the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service and the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service.

I fully appreciate that politics is about priorities and choices, as members have said, but those real-terms cuts will have significant impacts on a sector that is already in crisis. The projected gap is £3.5 billion. The Parliament needs to debate such issues, because the impacts will be significant.

We know that there is a massive backlog in trials—43,606 as of February—and that Scotland has the highest proportion of people in prison anywhere in Europe. It has historically had very high percentages of people on remand, which rose to 30 per cent, and perhaps higher, during the pandemic. We also know that it costs £40,000 a year to keep a prisoner in prison. There are significant impacts and consequences of the types of cuts that were announced last week, which the Parliament needs to debate.

I have focused on one sector, but other sectors have similar stories. It has been said that it is a matter of choice and that other sectors have perhaps done better. The challenges that we face in the health sector and social security budgets have been mentioned.

I hope that we have a serious debate about how we make the Scottish Parliament’s budget bigger. I do not think that it is helpful to specifically focus on independence in this debate, because the Parliament can do many things with the powers that it already has. We heard a number of speeches about income tax, and we heard my colleague Paul Sweeney talk about what could be done with district heating. There is much that could be done on municipal energy production that would contribute significantly to many of the issues before us today.

We urgently need to consider what we could do on land taxes, and we need serious proposals for a land value tax, including looking at what we can do to tax the profiteers such as Amazon, which operates out of warehouses that could fall under a land tax. Those are the kinds of debate that we should be having in the chamber.

I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests. To ask the Scottish Government, in light of recent reports, whether it will provide further information regarding existing ScotRail contracts with Abellio. (S6T-00768)

The information in the media came from a freedom of information request. Can the cabinet secretary inform the Parliament how much money is involved in those contracts?

I am grateful to the cabinet secretary for that answer. Perhaps she will reconsider some of the issues around confidentiality and write to me in detail on the contracts, given that we are talking about fare payers’ and taxpayers’ money.

I hope that the minister agrees that every penny of money that we put into our railways should go into the system, rather than leaking out of the public sector. Could she outline whether any rail replacement services are being provided by Abellio, given that we know that there are contracts relating to that, yet there is currently a lack of rail replacement services? Will she commit to looking at that commitment and the other Abellio contracts in order to bring them back in-house as soon as possible, as she has indicated? Will she give us a timescale in relation to that?

I welcome the opportunity to speak in the debate. As a member of the Criminal Justice Committee, I welcome the commitment to a public health approach, as it is clear that the criminal justice-led approach has not worked. It has not prevented the rise of problematic drug use or turned round the lives of those with drug abuse problems.

I think that we all know that drug abuse is a major problem in many of our communities. It is a major problem for our criminal justice system, and it has become a massive problem in our prisons, where drugs are readily available and where many prisoners take drugs for the first time. Many offences are committed while individuals are under the influence of drugs, and many offences are associated with serious drug abuse.

There were 1,339 drug-related deaths in 2020. As a number of members have said, there is no doubt that there is a direct link to poverty, trauma and deprivation.

Scotland has a problem with high-risk patterns of drug use, and we need to look at how that compares with elsewhere. The number of drug-related deaths has been increasing since 1996 and has increased substantially in the past 20 years, when the average age for a drug-related death has increased from 32 to 43. People who live in the most deprived areas are 18 times more likely to have a drug-related death than those who live in the least deprived areas, although the likelihood has been only 10 times greater in the 2020s. We also know that more than one drug is present in a person’s body in 93 per cent of deaths.

We need to be aware of all those factors when we look at how we tackle the problem. More than 10,000 people have lost their lives to drugs since 2007. The crisis is complex, and we need bold action to reduce drug-related harms. We need a holistic approach that is grounded in public health. We also need to recognise the problem of those who are living with addiction being exploited by criminal gangs. The drugs trade has links with organised crime.

The cuts to council services and to alcohol and drug services, which Claire Baker spoke about, and the underfunding of public services more generally are an important factor. Levels of inequality are rising, and the gap between rich and poor in our society is growing.

Last year, the Scottish Ambulance Service attended 2,500 incidents in which street benzos were involved. More than 1,000 of those were overdose incidents. As has been said, we know that the problems are becoming greater for women, in particular, which is an aspect that we need to consider very seriously.

We know that there are no silver bullets, but there is strong evidence that drug consumption rooms and safer drug consumption facilities are effective. They are not a new idea—the idea has been around for many decades—but there has been disagreement over many years as to whether the practice is compliant with the misuse of drugs legislation.

Earlier in the parliamentary session, the Criminal Justice Committee heard evidence from the Lord Advocate that she believed that there might be a possible legal route, or a public interest ground, for providing drug consumption rooms in the public sector. She indicated that she would consider a new proposal on public interest grounds provided that it was

“precise, detailed and specific, underpinned by evidence and supported by those who would be responsible for policing such a facility”—[Official Report, Criminal Justice Committee, 3 November 2021; c 20.]

The Scottish Affairs Select Committee highlighted in its evidence work by the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs that said that no overdose deaths had occurred in such facilities as at 2016. I hope that the Scottish Government is considering what can be done to address the specific issues that the Lord Advocate raised in relation to drug consumption rooms, which Paul Sweeney seeks to introduce in his proposed drug death prevention bill, to ensure that we can consider how to provide a legal framework in the public sector for drug consumption rooms. That is only one small part of a complex and challenging issue for the Government and all of us, but I hope that it is one aspect on which we can quickly see movement from the Scottish Government.

I welcome the Scottish Government lodging the motion for debate today; I also welcome the wide-ranging debate. As Daniel Johnson said at the beginning of the debate, most people across the country probably do not know what community wealth building is. I hope that today’s debate has spread some information on what it is about. A number of speakers have spoken about the core principles of community wealth building: progressive procurement; fair employment; shared ownership; the just use of land; and financial decisions that benefit the local community.

The debate is not a new one, in that it is fundamentally about power, wealth and how decisions are made. As a number of speakers have said, those are not new issues. However, for community wealth building to work and to be real, there will need to be fundamental changes to how government at all levels makes decisions and policy. That is one reason why, in our amendment, Labour calls on the Scottish Government to look at

“all public procurement policies to ensure that”

the community wealth building agenda

“is embedded at every level”.

Much of the debate today has been about local initiatives and local government, but the Scottish Government really needs to look at its own practices as part of this agenda. A number of speakers have spoken about that.

Not all the challenges that we face are by any means within the Scottish Government’s control. Pauline McNeill was correct to point out the backdrop of a financial crisis that is going to hurt every community and most individuals in this country, through the cost of living crisis and the energy crisis.

Will the member take an intervention?

The minister will be aware that, in our amendment, we call on the Scottish Government to look at all public procurement policies to ensure that community wealth building is embedded at every level. Is the Scottish Government doing work to look at its own contracts and procurement policies to ensure that the community wealth building agenda is being fully recognised and embedded in those?

I welcome any investment in communities that helps put money and power in the hands of ordinary people, from whichever part of government it comes. I think that all of us should welcome any initiative from any part of government that is a positive policy. If the member does not mind, however, I do not think that this is the place for such party-political points. I make the point that many of the criticisms that he puts to the Scottish Government are criticisms that can be fairly put to the UK Government.

I will move on. I have spoken a bit about the huge challenges that our communities face, and a number of speakers have pointed out the challenge of poverty. The pandemic has been a period in which we have seen the wealth of the richest increase, and a number of speakers—including Maggie Chapman, who spoke about The Sunday Times rich list—have also spoken about that. The reality is that inequality in Scotland has increased over the past 10 years. According to Public Health Scotland, the difference in life expectancy between the poorest and richest areas is 26 years for men and 22 years for women. That is the backdrop for our discussion in today’s debate. We are right to say that the community wealth building agenda is one that helps to address some of those issues, because this debate is about wealth and power.

Globalisation—which, in many ways, is the opposite of some of the principles of community wealth building that we have discussed today—often sucks the life out of our economies. Importing all our plastic toys from China is the complete opposite of community wealth building.

A number of speakers, including Fiona Hyslop and Audrey Nicoll, were right to talk about local initiatives in their communities. A number of speakers talked about energy initiatives—whether that be municipal ownership and production of energy, the Edinburgh Community Solar Co-operative or the building of solar and wind farms in North Ayrshire—that are about building capacity locally, generating power locally and keeping wealth local. Fundamentally, the debate is about how our economy is organised. Collette Stevenson was correct to point out the supply chain issues relating to transparency in procurement processes, and the need for ethical procurement that prioritises local jobs.

We need a people-centred approach to local economic development in Scotland that redirects wealth back into local economies and that places control and benefits in the hands of local people. We need a local-first approach to all procurement at both local and Scottish Government levels. I look forward to the rest of the debate and to the minister’s response.