Chamber and committees

I thank the cabinet secretary for her answer and note her previous answer to Donald Cameron. The Scottish Crofting Federation has expressed bitter disappointment that the crofting reform bill has not been included in the programme for government. Donald MacKinnon, the chair of the federation, described it as “galling” that neither the bill nor any actions specific to crofting were included in the programme. The working group on the bill, which is the voice of crofters and communities, was disbanded when the Government abandoned the process. Will the minister clarify the Government’s position on the progress of the bill and will she reconvene the group as soon as possible in order to explain her decisions to stakeholders and to re-engage on these important issues?

In closing for Scottish Labour, I begin, as colleagues in the chamber have done universally, by paying tribute to carers across Scotland. Throughout the debate, we have heard powerful stories about the lives of carers in every community, in a diverse range of families and in a range of caring settings. As with all our debates on the issue, it is key that we reflect carers’ voices and that they are central to our considerations. They are real people—not abstract numbers or financial calculations.

As my colleague Pam Duncan-Glancy said in her characteristically powerful opening speech, the debate is about people who take on caring roles to enable others to live their lives to the full. We have heard about the serious challenges that carers face, which I will come on to in a moment.

We in Scottish Labour agree that the payment is needed by Scotland’s carers and should be in their bank accounts before Christmas, which is why we will back the principles of the bill at decision time. However, we have concerns, as my colleagues have outlined. We share, based on evidence from carers and carer organisations, the Social Justice and Social Security Committee’s concerns about certain aspects of the bill, as set out in its stage 1 report. In that regard, I note the contribution from the committee’s convener, Neil Gray.

Martin Whitfield said that the one-off increase is

“a sticking plaster to cover a gaping wound”,

and I think that there is something in that. Those who contributed to the committee’s report concluded that it is not sufficient to lift carers out of poverty. That is because a third of carers are struggling to pay utility bills, 47 per cent have been in debt and half are struggling to make ends meet and are cutting back on food and heating as a result. Colleagues, including Maggie Chapman, spoke about those issues and the painful decisions that have to be made. We believe that the bill must increase the supplement on a permanent basis until the new benefit—carers assistance—is introduced.

As we have heard, Carers Scotland has estimated that, every single day of the Covid pandemic, unpaid carers have saved the Scottish Government £43 million through the care that they have provided. Carers feel undervalued and forgotten about in the midst of this unprecedented situation. The Scottish Government has promised to introduce carers assistance, the new benefit that will replace carers allowance, by 2025, which means that Scotland’s unpaid carers will have to wait years.

Thank you, Presiding Officer.

I thank the minister for that clarification. I am sure that carers will welcome it and will want to engage with it fully.

Overnight, 392,000 people have become carers because of the pandemic. We are now 18 months in, and unpaid carers are exhausted and overworked, and they feel underappreciated. This afternoon, we have heard a lot about people not being able to access respite services in the normal way and feeling that they do not have the right support at the right time.

Pam Duncan-Glancy and Willie Rennie stated that although the bill provides a one-off increase and includes a power to make future payments of the supplement, further increases are not guaranteed; Pam Duncan-Glancy’s intervention to the minister showed that we do not yet have confirmation of what further increases will look like. She highlighted constraints relating to the bill, including in relation to our ability to amend it, to the time that has been allowed for scrutiny and to consultation of the wider group of carers that we all want. That is why Scottish Labour will seek to lodge amendments at stage 2, as has been outlined, and will continue to engage with carers on the issues that are important to them. I welcome Willie Rennie’s support for that.

Although the measure is positive, it is temporary, so we must look at how we more widely support carers who are stressed, burned out and feel undervalued and who are—sadly, as we have heard all too often—ignored. It has been the most unimaginable 18 months for them. Many have had little or no access to respite services, many are still battling to have day services and support packages restarted, and many feel that they simply have not had a break. Some carers have even said that the only respite that they have had is when they have been hospitalised themselves. That is completely unacceptable.

As we debate measures such as the bill, and as the Government consults on the national care service, we must hear what carers tell us will make a real and meaningful difference. Carers want a plan for how services will be reinstated to pre-pandemic levels. They want assurances that, where they exist, smaller and targeted specialist services will be protected and supported, and that where such services have closed, alternatives will be provided.

As we heard from Miles Briggs and others, young carers want to know how they will be supported to return to learning, having juggled online learning and caring responsibilities, and how they will be supported financially to return to university, college or school.

In closing, I say that although the bill is a welcome step that will put more money into the pockets of carers, there is much more to do, so Scottish Labour looks forward to working with carers to get them the right support at the right time in the right place, because that is what they deserve.

Will the member take an intervention?

The member acknowledges, I think, the scale of the crisis and the issues that existed before the pandemic. He made a point about ice, but would he accept that cutting local government funding and budgets contributes to our wider problems in the health service, and that it has a knock-on effect? We have to fund local government properly if it is to deliver services.

Certainly. As Gillian Mackay said, we need to ensure that we have better support for staff who are working on the front line. The reality is that we must put staff and patients first. They deserve better. I support the motion in Jackie Baillie’s name.

There can be no doubt that the Ambulance Service in Scotland—and, more widely, our NHS—is in crisis. Each member in the chamber today will have had correspondence from constituents about having to wait hours for help to come, and a number of members have spoken very powerfully of those cases today. We have seen ambulances queueing at our hospitals and we know that waiting times at A and E are at their worst levels since records began. Tragically, people have died. We heard today from Jackie Baillie about Susan Donald and her father from Aberdeenshire, and we have all heard about Gerard Brown from Glasgow, who passed away after waiting 40 hours for an ambulance.

Families are broken-hearted and they are asking why, because it did not have to happen. We have heard the calls from paramedics, doctors, nurses and other healthcare staff for immediate help to support a workforce that is “exhausted, undervalued and overwhelmed”. Those are the words of a whistleblowing paramedic, who does not want to be identified, because she fears for her job. She goes on to say:

“In all the years I have been a paramedic I have never seen the job as bad as I do now.”

Nobody denies that we are living through unprecedented times, but we know that things had been worsening for years before the pandemic. Services were struggling to keep up with demand and there was a growing backlog of care. The pandemic has exacerbated a bad situation.

Although we have heard it before, it is important to hear it again. Another paramedic whistleblower, who is based in Glasgow, said:

“I am fed up reading and hearing in the news that the pandemic is causing the problems with delays. It’s true that it’s a contributing factor but this has been a disaster in the making for years.”

That is not me, Jackie Baillie or any other politician saying that; it is a paramedic who is working on the front line, and the cabinet secretary and the Government cannot ignore those words. As much as James Dornan might want to make it about the hard-working staff versus Opposition politicians, those words cannot be ignored. [Interruption.] The cabinet secretary must listen to my point and explain to hard-working staff and bereaved families why he was missing in action—as my colleagues Jackie Baillie and Carol Mochan pointed out—until he went to the Daily Record to give that interview.

The reality is that the crisis did not start 18 months ago with a global pandemic. It has been consistently building, and the warning signs have been there year after year. In 2019, compared with 2014, there was a shocking increase of 634.4 per cent in long turnarounds, which impact on the availability of ambulances to respond to emergency calls. Those trends continued into 2021. Last week, Unite the union claimed that lives

“are being put at risk”,

as the average 999 ambulance waiting time across Scotland has increased to six hours.

In the debate today, other members have spoken about the problems with acute bed capacity, staffing and retention, as well as delayed discharge. The Scottish Government has been forced to take remedial action to alleviate the pressures that our Ambulance Service is facing, as has been evidenced in the debate, and the Government finds itself playing catch-up.

Scottish Labour’s priority is to give our Ambulance Service the urgent support that it needs in order to save lives. As such, we welcome the Government’s decision to request help from the Army, but the Government must go further and explore the potential of calling on recently retired ambulance staff to help during the crisis. We must acknowledge what the trade unions are saying to us about how much help the Army will be in practical, front-line roles.

Scottish Labour also supports the call from Unite for the introduction of a 30-minute maximum turnaround time for ambulances from arrival at hospital, which will release paramedics to answer other calls. As Jackie Baillie outlined, that is not a random request and we did not make it up; we spoke to Unite, which represents the staff on the ground, and they say that that would make a real difference.

In addition, temporary wards and field hospitals must be looked at. I appreciate what the cabinet secretary has said, but I ask him to work closely with the Royal College of Emergency Medicine and others to look at those options thoroughly.

We also recognise issues that Dr Sandesh Gulhane raised around reporting. We are in agreement that more regular reporting on response times has to happen, and I note what the cabinet secretary has said about improving the data that is available. We will therefore support Dr Gulhane’s amendment.

We have heard a lot of chat this afternoon about warm words and I want to point out some of the words that have been used by the Government in the past about the NHS. It has said that the NHS is

“Our most cherished public service”,

that it will “protect” and “nurture” it, and that

“shorter waiting times and treatment that continues to improve”

are the Government’s core priorities for it. Those are all quotes from SNP manifestos over the years. The reality is that patients and the hard-working staff of the Ambulance Service and the wider NHS are facing the consequences of 14 years of Government inaction on those issues.

Staff are upset, distressed and angry, and they fear for the winter ahead. That is why I want to speak about staff wellbeing, which is fundamentally important to supporting the workforce on the front line. I acknowledge what the cabinet secretary said about the wellbeing fund, but it needs to go further and deeper to make a difference. That is what the unions and the Royal College of Emergency Medicine are telling us, and the BMA told us that yesterday in committee.

That is key. Retention has been identified across the board as being important, and successfully encouraging people to stay in the professions is about culture. Does the Royal College of Nursing want to add anything, particularly on the comments about burn-out in the nursing profession? [Interruption.]

My questions are on Covid-19 and its wide-ranging impacts. Every day, we see the direct impacts of the disease in terms of the number of hospitalisations and deaths, but I am interested in the longer-term indirect effects on health and in the impact that long Covid might have, particularly on people who already suffer from poor health or live in areas of deprivation.

If we take long Covid first, I am keen to understand its impact. We obviously do not have a lot of data and information on it yet. That is emerging, and there is still a long way to go in terms of interventions, but I am looking to get a sense from the panel of the impact that long Covid will have and what interventions it might require.