Chamber and committees

I thank my regional colleague for that intervention. There is clearly concern about the pace at which the devices are being rolled out. Last year and during the lockdown period, it was fundamentally important that young people could get access to digital devices, so that they could learn from home. I know from my experience on East Renfrewshire Council that the roll-out of money from the Scottish Government has been slow and patchy, and I think that we would all like to see progress being made on that. I hope that the minister will be able to say something in her concluding remarks about what progress the Scottish Government intends to make on ensuring that the policy is delivered. It is all very well saying that there will be a device for every child, but we need to know when that is going to happen.

As has already been said, many of the policies are just headlines and have not been delivered, and timescales are slipping. We know about what is happening with free lunches, but, in many local authority areas, breakfast clubs were cut years ago and local authorities have not been given appropriate capital funding to deliver increased dining space. We talk about free instrumental tuition, but many bands and orchestras have already folded and work to reach the poorest children with music tuition stopped. As we have just heard, the Government announced the provision of a digital device for every child, but hundreds are still waiting. Further, council family learning services and outreach have been decimated.

It is clear that we need to look at the fundamentals in order to tackle poverty in our schools and in our communities. We need childcare that supports people to access learning and the labour market, with councils and partner providers fully funded to deliver with the genuine flexibility that was promised and is required. We need wraparound childcare not just in the early years, but also in primary, before and after school, where we know that the cost of childcare can be exorbitant.

Given the context of Covid-19, we need a recovery that works for everyone. That means universal availability of holiday clubs and extracurricular activities to help all our children and young people bounce back, particularly in terms of their mental health and wellbeing.

All evidence shows that addressing issues of poverty during childhood and in schools vastly increases the life chances of those raised in low income households. Poverty touches all areas of life and Scottish Labour believes that fighting to end poverty should be the key priority of everything that we do in this Parliament, and that begins with our youngest citizens.

Does Ross Greer accept that, in large authorities with expanding school populations, such as East Renfrewshire and East Dunbartonshire, there will be a requirement for further capital funding to ensure that school lunches can be provided within lunch time? I am thinking, in particular, of Mearns primary school in Newton Mearns, where there are upwards of 1,500 pupils to be fed over the lunch period.

In politics, it is often easy to give something a title and forget about the magnitude and the reality of what lies behind those words. We have already heard today about austerity, but that really means falling standards of living for the poorest in our society through Government cuts. The Government speaks of a budget of choices, but what it really means is cuts to the moneys that are available to local government to educate our children, lift the bins and fill the potholes.

I fear that the expression “cost of living crisis” is becoming another one over which there is much hand wringing by Scotland’s Government but little real action. We know the reality of the crisis: sleepless nights for thousands of people about how they will pay their bills, ensure that their children have enough to eat and get to work as the cost of petrol and public transport goes up and up.

We cannot allow the cost of living crisis to become another phrase that is timeworn by the inaction of the UK and Scottish Governments. As we emerge from the pandemic, during which many Scots experienced a collapse in their earnings, thousands of people who were just getting by are being propelled into poverty and precarity. The crisis continues to devastate family finances and the UK and Scottish Governments are simply not doing enough and are not focused on the real needs.

Despite promising cheaper energy bills during the 2016 Brexit referendum, the Tories have alternated between being completely silent on the crisis and being completely tone deaf. Despite the crisis, they have hiked up taxes for working people and dished out temporary loans—a heat-now, pay-later measure that only exacerbates the issues in the long term.

Let us not forget that the SNP Government has presided over the crisis in Scotland. It recently nodded through increases in water charges and increased rail fares at a time when families are least able to afford them. In response to urgent calls for support, the SNP and Green Government has failed to use the extent of the powers that it has and instead has offered one-off payments equating to less than £4 a week. That is the equivalent of one single off-peak ticket from Paisley to Glasgow and, with current fares, it is hardly a measure that will soften the blow.

While Scottish families are choosing between heating and eating, Government-owned Scottish Water and its subsidiaries are sitting on a cash mountain of more than £500 million. Scottish Labour’s amendment demands that that cash mountain is used to deliver a rebate of £100 to every household on their water charges.

As I come to the end of a decade as a local councillor, I have been reflecting on the importance of local government in delivering targeted support to those who would otherwise remain in crisis. Our local councils are quickly becoming the last line of defence in the cost of living emergency. The amazing people I have had the privilege of working with in local government are being starved of cash and forced to make unpalatable decisions. We need more money, advice and rights services, more funding for Citizens Advice, more community resilience groups and more support to help people pay their bills.

Copying the Tories by giving people a £150 council tax rebate will not cut it. If the Government is serious about tackling the cost of living, it must properly fund local government to deliver the services that people rely on, and give people real financial help that they can spend in their local communities to build up local economies. I point to the innovative work that is being done in Labour councils across Scotland, such as the community wealth-building agenda in North Ayrshire in my region, and the club 365 holiday hunger programme in North Lanarkshire—once again, councils being the last line of defence.

It is clear that, as my colleague Pam Duncan-Glancy articulated, Scottish Labour has a plan at every level of government to tackle the crisis and help people through it. It is also clear that the situation is grave for people across Scotland, and it will take more than warm words to heat homes and put food on the table.

Convener, I have not quite finished.

I am tempted to go into a shopping list of things that I would like Audit Scotland to look at, but I will resist.

Given the pressures that exist in emergency medicine, which this committee hears quite a lot about, and, more broadly, in respect of A and E attendance and the Scottish Ambulance Service, will a particular focus be placed on emergency medicine?

The committee is holding an inquiry on pathways into care, and we are looking at GP and pharmacy services and the different levels of service that can be offered. Is there any work forthcoming from Audit Scotland that might help to supplement and support our work?

Key to many of our questions this morning is the issue of scrutiny and the on-going assessment of the work that has been done in order to deliver change. What future work on health and social care is Audit Scotland currently planning to undertake?

Good morning. I am interested in how social care and the national care service sit alongside each other. In January, you produced a report in which you highlighted the scale of the challenge in social care, which sits alongside the pressures that exist in the NHS. We know that delayed discharge and blockages further up, at the other end of the scale, are often caused by a lack of availability of care packages.

In your January report on social care, you said that the Government needed to move faster to take action to alleviate some of the issues than the five-year timescale that is envisaged for a national care service to be set up. Are there things that can be done now to alleviate the issues that are being experienced in the NHS and to provide social care more quickly? Do those include improving pay and conditions of staff, further recruitment of new care staff and looking at care packages across the country?

I thank the minister for her undertaking. I think that everyone in the chamber would welcome that detail as the situation develops, because it is concerning.

To push the minister further on her previous answer, how does the Government intend to increase awareness of the symptoms among parents and carers, given the importance of early diagnosis and health interventions? Public Health Scotland has highlighted the importance of increased hand and general hygiene, as the minister alluded to. How will the Government support that messaging for families at home and in early learning and childcare settings and school settings, particularly at a time when people might be becoming more lax or less observant in that regard because Covid-19 regulations are changing?

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on the reported recent outbreak in cases of hepatitis in children across Scotland. (S6T-00640)

The situation is, naturally, very concerning. There has been an increase in cases across the UK, with the World Health Organization having been informed and the UK Health Security Agency co-ordinating that investigation. It is vitally important that work to identify the factors that are causing the infections moves at pace, and that a high level of support is offered to the affected children and families.

We all want to avoid speculating on the causes of infection, which could cause further anxiety in communities; however, there have already been media reports suggesting a number of potential causes. I note what the minister said about Covid-19 vaccination, but there have also been stories about toxins in food, drink and toys, which all cause concern in the wider community.

Will the minister say when she expects further detail on the causes, in order to avoid such speculation and to ensure that the right plan is in place to tackle the concerning infections?