Chamber and committees

The Audit Scotland report states that

“The NHS was not financially sustainable before the Covid-19 pandemic”

and that six boards require additional financial support from the Government or to use non-recurring savings in order to break even. Is the cabinet secretary confident that those boards will be able to achieve financial balance in 2022-23, or is it likely that on-going support will be required? What is his assessment of the issues that are being experienced by the boards? Is it a case of weak financial management, or is a lack of adequate resourcing a more fundamental issue?

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to the recent report by the charity, Magic Breakfast, showing that four in 10 Scottish schools have no breakfast provision at all and that breakfast provision in Scotland reaches the fewest disadvantaged pupils per school of any United Kingdom nation. (S6O-01046)

Last week, we had a debate in this chamber about the cost of the school day, and yet again the Government pledged its support for free breakfasts. In its manifesto for the Scottish Parliament elections last year, the Scottish National Party pledged to provide free breakfasts all year round, for all children in state-funded schools. That has been reiterated in the SNP’s local government manifesto in the past few weeks.

There have been lots of promises, but the Government has rolled back on its pledge to extend free school meals to all primary pupils in time for the start of the 2022-23 school year and is yet to set a new delivery date. There is no clarity on free breakfasts, which are vital. Indeed, they are even more vital during the cost of living crisis—

Magic Breakfast estimates that the cost of providing free breakfasts would be £20 million and points to underspends in pupil equity funding as a way to achieve that. When will the Government keep its promise and deliver free breakfasts in Scotland? Free breakfasts have been provided in Wales for years.

I am pleased to close the debate on behalf of the Scottish Labour Party.

I think that we have found consensus in the debate. I believe that, across the Parliament, we are committed to improving and enhancing the uptake of walking across Scotland. We have heard many strong examples, particularly from the lockdown period, of people rediscovering the joy of walking, as I spoke about in my opening speech.

However, we have to be honest about the barriers that exist and the work that is still required to make sure that walking activities are accessible to all, and we offer our amendment in that vein. I note Brian Whittle’s contribution and Edward Mountain’s intervention on the cuts that local authorities have experienced to budgets for place and space. The roles of working co-ordinators, outdoor access officers and countryside rangers are often the first things to go when there are decisions to be made.

I return to the importance of safety measures for vulnerable people, particularly in urban communities, where parks and canal routes are often dangerous, particularly for women. We have called for additional safety measures to improve women’s safety. In my opening remarks, I spoke about the importance of piloting physical safety space audits, but it goes further than that. We need to provide planners with guidance on how to make communities safer, including on safe walking routes in urban communities and in new estates across Scotland.

Gillian Martin and Gillian Mackay, who are my colleagues on the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, made important points about the importance of walking for good mental health. It is good to hear about what is being offered in different parts of the country, and I was particularly taken with the examples that Gillian Martin shared about dogs. I know that Gillian Martin is a dog lover, as am I.

Supporting our third sector in a sustainable way is key in all this, because many third sector organisations are struggling to maintain their services, which are often provided free of charge to the public. My colleague Alex Rowley made some excellent points on that. If we are going to get walking strategies right and encourage a broader uptake of walking, we have to listen to the groups who are supporting walking, day in and day out, across our country. That is about sustainable funding that can help them to expand and grow the services that they offer.

Labour members want to see active travel budgets more widely being put towards assessing and developing safer routes in combination with using the planning system to ensure less car use and make residential areas low-traffic neighbourhoods by reducing speeds and considering volumes of traffic, while maintaining local access for those who need it.

I enjoyed the majority of former minister Graeme Dey’s contribution, although I confess that I am not a golf fan. I particularly enjoyed what he said about the campaign trail and the steps that he is achieving. Perhaps in future elections, Presiding Officer, we should have a competition between members to see who can do the most steps. Given his comments on the shortage of bikes, it would be helpful to know why the free bike pledge has appeared in the manifestos of the SNP and the Green Party. I believe that the pledge did not feature in the coalition agreement, so it would be good to understand: if not now for free bikes and provision of access to bikes, when?

I am rapidly running out of time, so I will conclude. Active travel is vital to improving health inequalities, but proper funding for councils must mean proper funding for the infrastructure that makes walking a reality.

This debate is extremely important as we mark national walking month. We should take the time to thank all the organisations that have engaged with and briefed us ahead of today’s debate, in particular Paths for All, sportscotland and the Scottish Rights of Way and Access Society. Their engagement in the debate and more widely on the issue of walking across Scotland is hugely important and they make a vast contribution.

We also start with a degree of consensus on the vital importance of getting out and walking or wheeling, and on the improvements that that simple activity can make to our physical and mental health and wellbeing. I am sure that, like me, members across the chamber rediscovered what it is to take time to walk or wheel during the lockdown periods of the past two years. Many people found huge benefit from going out for that daily walk or wheel, whether in our beautiful countryside, beside our lochs and mountains, in our urban parks or along canals. In many ways, people rediscovered the joy of what was around them and saw huge benefits for their health and wellbeing.

We know from evidence that a 20-minute walk can reduce the risk of a number of preventable health conditions, including certain cancers, depression, heart disease and type II diabetes. Supporting people to be physically active is vital to our public health mission in Scotland and active travel is vital to reducing health inequalities, meeting our climate targets and relieving pressure on the national health service. It is not just walking, of course; associated activities such as running and cycling also have an impact and must be supported.

The national walking strategy is hugely important for encouraging people to walk. As the strategy was originally launched in 2014, I hope that the minister will say more about its refresh and update, particularly as we recover from Covid-19 and hope that people sustain that level of activity. There are many strong recommendations in the strategy and it points to the work that we still have to do. Figures from local authorities in 2019 show that the proportion of trips made on foot ranged from 39 per cent in Dundee to just 11 per cent in East Renfrewshire. As I hail from East Renfrewshire, it is clear to me that we need to do more locally and nationally to get those numbers up.

Another key recommendation in the strategy is that there must be

“Better quality walking environments with attractive, well designed and managed built and natural spaces for everyone”.

That brings me to the Labour amendment. Although, as I have said, many people in our communities rediscovered walking in the lockdowns, they also discovered that paths are often inaccessible or covered in litter, that too many pavements are cracked and broken, and that too many parks are dark, unlit and unsafe to go to, particularly for women on their own. Councils are struggling to keep up with repairs and it is becoming harder and harder to sustain

“attractive, well designed and managed”

areas for walking, wheeling and cycling.

The truth is that, since 2013, the Scottish Government has cut £6 billion from local authority budgets and, right now, there is an eye-watering outstanding roads repair bill of at least £1.7 billion. That bill has been accumulated under the Government, and it makes already dangerous conditions worse—and that is even before we come to pavements. People will not walk if the infrastructure is not there to support them. Understandably, cash-strapped councils have had to prioritise other issues.

That has had an adverse impact on our most deprived communities and has limited the options for people to get out and take the most cost-effective form of exercise. We on the Labour benches have called for active travel spending to be increased to 10 per cent of the overall transport budget, to give priority to encouraging and enabling people to get out of cars and on to bikes, and to walk more, which will benefit their health and the health of our communities. We have also called for additional measures to improve women’s safety, including a pilot of physical space safety audits and providing planners with guidance on how to make communities safer.

That brings me to cycling, which we believe is a key component of the wider active travel agenda and is highlighted in our amendment. In last year’s election, the Scottish National Party promised free bikes to all school-age children who cannot afford them. In August 2020, the Greens called for all children from low-income families to receive a grant towards bikes and helmets to get to school safely. However, 18 months on, only 238 bikes have been given out, and the Government does not even have the statistics on how many children are using those pilot schemes.

I am in my last seconds.

That is a case of something perhaps looking good in a leaflet but not being delivered in reality.

Walking, wheeling and active travel are paramount for our health as a nation and our sense of wellbeing. However, we must do more to encourage more people to get out and about and to get active, particularly in our most deprived communities, and further cuts to local government services and infrastructure will hinder, rather than help with that.

I move amendment S6M-04256.1, to insert at end:

“; recognises that wider cuts to local authority services hamper active travel and the implementation of a gendered approach to safety; considers that improvements to roads and pavements are necessary to improve levels of walking and wheeling, particularly in more deprived areas, and calls again on the Scottish Government to provide access to a bike for every child who cannot afford one by the end of 2022.”

Good morning, minister. I will ask a wee bit more about the Government’s “Alcohol Framework 2018: Preventing Harm”. There is a lot in it and the committee is keen to hear about progress. I am particularly interested in actions 9 and 15, which require close working with the UK Government, and in the acknowledgement that we need collaboration on those actions. What interactions and meetings have taken place since 2018? We appreciate that there have been two years of pandemic, but it would be good to get a sense of what progress you feel has been made.

My question is focused on the online purchase of alcohol and how we can perhaps further regulate that. It obviously became more prevalent during the pandemic lockdown periods. Certainly, people can buy alcohol from Amazon and other online sites, and we saw relaxation of licensing rules to allow pubs and venues to deliver to people’s homes. I want to get a sense from the minister of whether any work will be done to review the impact of online sales and what they contribute in terms of the overall percentage.

Thank you; that is useful.

I want to expand on the issue of calorie labelling guidelines, which is a key ask of many third sector and other organisations from which we have taken evidence. What progress is being made on that? There is a sense that progress on trying to get a consensus has been too slow. In your opening remarks, you alluded to the ubiquitous nature of alcohol, and part of that is about advertising. There is an issue about the information that is out there in terms of things such as labelling and standards.