Chamber and committees

Yes, it is, First Minister. One in six Scots is on an NHS waiting list on the First Minister’s watch. There are 100,000 Scots waiting more than a year for treatment, fewer operations and people languishing in pain.—[Interruption.]

Members are laughing about the state of the NHS in Scotland. That is, quite frankly, appalling. It is clear that a botched national care service has not delivered—

The Government spent months shadow-boxing on those issues. We were threatened with the breakdown of public services, with the rise of Elon Musk and with all manner of issues. The reality is that the budget does not provide a new direction in our public services on which we could build a consensus in Scotland. It does not change the direction of the Government or the country.

I will close for the Scottish Labour Party in this stage 1 debate on the budget.

Throughout the budget process, a number of things have become clear, and those have been further clarified this afternoon. First, as we have heard, this budget is possible only because the UK Labour Government delivered record investment—the largest block grant in the history of devolution, which added £5.2 billion to Scotland’s budget.

We have heard much commentary on that this afternoon, and there seems to be a disagreement between the back and front benches of the SNP in this chamber. We heard a cautious welcome of that money from the Scottish Government; the finance secretary said that it is a step in the right direction. However, from the back benches, we heard it tutted at and called “charity” or “handouts”. We have had no answers from members on the SNP back benches about what decisions they would have taken in the UK budget in order to deliver that settlement for Scotland. Indeed, SNP MPs did not even go to vote for that budget. It is important to put that on the record as we begin our conclusions this evening.

The second point that it is important to take from this process and from this debate is that the budget was always going to pass. There has been a huge effort on the part of the First Minister and Government ministers to pretend otherwise. At times they have engaged in a level of amateur dramatics that would have rivalled a pantomime—I am glad that Mr Cole-Hamilton got his wish for pantomime season to be extended—and we have seen that repeated in the chamber this afternoon. Indeed, the patter about being always the bridesmaid, never the bride would be more at home in the Pavilion than here in the debating chamber of the Scottish Parliament. It was always clear that the Greens and the Liberal Democrats would sign up to help the Government pass the budget.

Instead of that political intrigue—for which the First Minister and the Government were so desperate in order to distract from the fundamental question how the Government would reform the public sector in Scotland—we have sought to focus on that very question.

No, I will not. I want to make progress.

That brings me to the point that I want to make about the budget. This is not year 1 of a new Government. It is not the first budget that this Government has delivered. It is the 18th budget under the SNP and the 17th budget of a Government with John Swinney at its heart. There are members here who had just left school when the First Minister began to deliver budgets in Scotland.

Instead of this budget being an opportunity taken to transform public services, it is a correction of some of the worst mistakes that the Government has made, which have been 18 years in the making by the SNP. It is a missed-opportunity budget delivered by a tired Government that has lost its way.

This afternoon, my colleagues have outlined where the problems are in our public services. Michael Marra—[Interruption.]

The Government would do well to listen to this point, because it is very serious and very stark.

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on its stated commitment to end charges for non-residential care by the end of the current parliamentary session. (S6O-04268)

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s report is, of course, serious and sobering, as it is every year. It shows that the child poverty rate in Scotland is static at 24 per cent, which means that 250,000 children are in poverty. The First Minister and I have previously had constructive debates on the matter, and it will not be lost on him or members across the chamber that the current rate means that we are seriously off course with regard to meeting the statutory child poverty targets that are set by the Parliament.

The report also highlights that a higher than average proportion of working-age adults are unemployed or economically inactive and that households in Scotland in which someone is in work took home a lower level of earnings than the UK average.

Does the First Minister recognise the importance of supporting people into secure, well-paid work? Given the cuts to employability services over recent years, what is his Government doing to reverse the trends that are outlined in the report?

With less than 18 months of parliamentary time left in this session, it sounds to me that that is another promise made by the Scottish National Party in its manifesto that will not be met. Broken promises have consequences, particularly for people in many local authorities across Scotland who are looking at having to introduce care charges for the first time for people who have physical and learning disabilities.

It also sits on the back of a litany of promises that were made to disabled people, including access to a changing places toilet fund; annual health checks for people with learning disabilities; the proposed learning disabilities, autism and neurodivergence bill; the human rights bill; and the ditched national care service. We have also learned today that £20 million of the community living change fund has been wasted or is unaccounted for. When will the minister and her Government finally deliver on the pledge to end non-residential care charges and rectify a long list of broken promises to Scotland’s disabled community?

I thank Jackson Carlaw for securing this annual debate, and for the partnership working that he has undertaken with me in helping to organise Holocaust memorial day commemorations in the Parliament this week. I urge members to attend the commemoration event on Thursday evening.

I know that it is important to many people across Scotland that we mark Holocaust memorial day, but, in particular, I know how important it is to the Jewish community, the majority of whom live in East Renfrewshire—as I do and as Jackson Carlaw does. It really is an honour to represent them, along with Jackson Carlaw.

As we have heard, this year, we mark 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. It was the largest of the Nazi death camps, where murder was carried out on an industrial scale simply because people were different. Millions of Jewish people, Roma and Sinti people, LGBT people, disabled people and others were murdered. As we have also heard this evening, when you stand in the watchtower at Birkenau, it is hard not to be absolutely horrified by the sheer scale of a place that was designed by human beings for the systematic murder of other human beings.

Over many years, I have had the great honour of meeting people who are survivors of Auschwitz-Birkenau and survivors of the Holocaust. As Jackson Carlaw alluded to, many of them came to Scotland after the horrors of the war ended and lived their lives just down the road from where I am sitting this evening. They went about their lives and made a huge contribution to post-war Britain. Many of them gave themselves in public service and helped to build up our communities. For a long time, many of them did not speak of their experiences in the Holocaust, but, later in life, many of them chose to do that. They chose to tell their story, as they have told me, so that future generations would know about the horrors and the inhumanity but also about the amazing stories of the resilience, the resistance and the righteousness of others.

I pay tribute to the many organisations that support and have supported survivors to keep those stories alive and to ensure that education continues. Those organisations include the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, the Holocaust Educational Trust, Gathering the Voices, vision schools Scotland, the Anne Frank Trust and many others; I know that many colleagues will speak of their work this evening.

Tonight, we also remember the subsequent genocides that have occurred in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur and all those who give testimony and who support the commemoration of those genocides. Tonight, we reflect on the 30th anniversary of the genocide in Bosnia, and I want to pay particular tribute to Beyond Srebrenica, the organisation that does so much work to educate people about what happened in Bosnia, what happened in Srebrenica and how we learn from that and move forward.

As we have heard, and as I am sure that we will hear in further contributions from members this evening, all this work is vital, particularly as survivors of the Holocaust pass away and it falls to all of us to help to tell those stories. Antisemitism, Holocaust denial and the distortion of fact are on the rise. That has been brought into sharp focus recently by many research studies that show that too many young people in our country cannot name Auschwitz or any other death camp and do not have a grasp of what happened in the Holocaust.

The theme for this year’s Holocaust memorial day is “take action for a better future”. For me and for many others, that must be a future in which the horrors of the Holocaust and subsequent genocides are taught and are known by all, so that the words “never again” have a chance of having meaning. I agree with Jackson Carlaw about paying tribute to the work that is done across Parliaments and Governments to ensure that that happens.

The future must be guided by us but it must be in the hands of young people, so, in closing my speech, I will give space to words that I heard at the Glasgow reform synagogue on Saturday from a young man called Ben Bland, who I think summed up the challenge of the present age but also the hope for a better future. He said:

“The future nowadays seems bleak, the news and social media are playing an important part in this, creating division and sowing the seeds of hatred, directed at those least deserving of it whilst lauding praise to those who deserve it even less. So, here today, I want to make the effort to turn away from it, looking inward for my vision, my hope for the future. In it, I see barriers of prejudice built between themselves and taken down, with olive branches extended. Walls of prejudice like homophobia, racism, sectarianism, xenophobia should be cast aside. I see people in the future being more kind and understanding to each other, understanding of themselves and what they can do to help those around them. I want the people around me to have a better understanding of what it means to be open-minded. I hope that people can display more empathy and sympathy for each other. I hope that people can begin to understand that, with a little bit more consideration of others, we can start to make our collective experience of life a little bit easier and more pleasant.”

Yes.

My amendments in this group seek to retain the current preliminary steps that the commission must take in respect of a complaint, specifically to determine whether it is

“frivolous, vexatious or without merit”,

and to reject it if so.

I will be clear at the outset that at this stage my amendments are largely probing, although I reserve the right to press them, depending on how our debate proceeds this morning. It is important that we have this debate, and I thank the SLCC and the Law Society of Scotland for their engagement on the issues and on my amendments.

The rationale behind my amendments relates to the efficiency of the complaints process and the system, in which, I think that we would all agree, we do not want there to be complaints that are not going to go anywhere. To speak plainly, complaints that are, by definition, vexatious or frivolous will jam up the system. Members will be aware that many complaints that are submitted fit that definition, and many of us would recognise that, from time to time, so are some of the messages in our inboxes.

It is important that such complaints are dealt with as early as possible and, if they meet the criteria, that they are disregarded to avoid causing an unnecessary backlog, additional work and bottlenecks downstream in the complaints process. That means that such complaints should be dealt with when they first hit the desk of the SLCC, rather than making their way through a longer process. I believe that it would be fairer to complainers and all parties involved in the complaints process to dismiss a complaint that is frivolous, vexatious or without merit at an earlier stage, rather than dragging it through a further onerous process, only for it to be dismissed for those reasons later.

If we accept the premise that we should keep the system efficient and deal with such complaints, the question becomes what test we should use to do that. I note the SLCC’s intent to achieve that aim by bringing forward its own criteria through the powers that it will be granted under the bill. However, I have some concerns that we have not seen the proposed rules and criteria, although I understand that they would largely replicate the current tests for establishing whether a complaint is frivolous, vexatious or without merit.

I have heard concerns about the legalistic nature of the terms that are used in the amendments, and have also heard that some people may find them offensive. I will deal with those criticisms in turn.

That the terms used are legalistic nature in nature can be a benefit, because they are well established and understood, backed up by case law and clear examples. Any new set of rules that used different terminology may not be backed up by case law and could be subject to legal challenge and, indeed, judicial review. That could be unnecessarily onerous on the commission and those who are involved in complaints.

I understand the concern that the terms are offensive. I also understand that, through the bill, we are trying to make the process more user friendly and to support the administration of natural justice. However, I suggest that individuals who are upset when they hear that their complaint has been determined to be without merit are likely to be upset anyway, regardless of what terminology is used at that point in the process, because their case has been dismissed. I again point to the well-established meanings of those terms. We should perhaps try to expand and explain those meanings rather than change them at the first stage.

From my engagement with the SLCC, it appears that it understands that argument and is leaning towards using the test for its own rules, for many of the reasons that I have outlined, although I am happy to stand corrected on that if I have misunderstood. If that is the case, it would be beneficial to keep the current rules in statute to give them backing in law as part of the complaints process.

I welcome the contributions of other committee members and the minister on the issue. As I said, depending on whether there are assurances and commitments to examine the issue further prior to stage 3, I might not press my amendments. However, changing the preliminary steps in the manner that is set out in the bill could have significant risks and unintended consequences, so there might be merit in keeping much of the preliminary tests as they are.

I move amendment 557.