Chamber and committees

To ask the Scottish Government when it last met with Renfrewshire health and social care partnership. (S6O-03381)

I welcomed the news on Tuesday that the integration joint board in Renfrewshire has abandoned the proposals to close or merge the Milldale and Mirin day centres for people with additional support needs. I congratulate all service users and their families on their tireless campaign to save those services. However, it should not have taken such intense efforts or legal action to change the proposal.

Other services are not being spared, such as Montrose care home in Paisley. The underlying problem remains that the Government is chronically underfunding HSCPs and slashing their budgets. When will the minister deliver for people in Renfrewshire—especially the most vulnerable—with proper funding to avoid cuts and by taking action to end residential care charges and bring people who have a learning disability home to their areas, as has been promised by the Government for years?

I welcome this debate, and I take the opportunity to join colleagues in saying to the First Minister that I wish him well after the past week. Indeed, it is nice to debate with him again. It is possible that we last did so when he was the health secretary and I was a shadow health minister. Perhaps we will have more time in the future to debate issues across the chamber.

I note what he said in his speech about this being a gendered issue. I also note what Douglas Ross said about the timetabling of the debate being quite rushed. I hope that we will soon have time to debate toxic masculinity, which was intended to happen in this slot. Those issues are important to women and girls, and they are important to men across the country, who can reflect on their responsibilities.

As I often do in debates, I will begin by pointing to the consensus in the chamber. We have already heard about the experiences of our constituents who are WASPI women. Scottish Labour welcomes the publication of the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman’s report. The PHSO has produced an incredibly detailed and serious piece of work. It fully merits and must be given thoughtful and purposeful consideration, and action is required.

The report lays out clearly that there were failings in communications about changes to the state pension age. Labour opposed it when George Osborne took the decision to accelerate increases in the state pension age without giving sufficient notice to the women who were affected—an action that has, rightly, angered them.

On behalf of my party, I say to all WASPI women, including those who are in the gallery today and whom we represent, that we thank them for their efforts and congratulate them, as the Government’s motion does, on the work that they have done to bring the report to this point. Indeed, I have had the opportunity to talk to many impacted constituents and WASPI campaigners, including recently at the drop-in event that the First Minister referred to, which I thank Clare Haughey for arranging.

The PHSO has been clear that it is now for Government to respond, and that it must do so at pace. WASPI women have been waiting long enough, so the current UK Government must set out how it will take forward the recommendations and next steps. I have to say that the current UK Government has been slow to act on a range of injustices, whether that be the Post Office scandal or the infected blood scandal, which members will know are serious concerns of injustice at this time.

Although we appreciate that there is a process to be gone through and detailed work to be done, it is clear that the work and pensions secretary and the Government must respond with speed, because people have waited too long. Very often, on other issues, as I have mentioned, that slowness to act can cross the line into what feels like apathy and a lack of feeling towards those who are victims of those injustices.

It is crucial that we listen to the experience of those women who have fought and campaigned over many years and who have been seriously impacted by these issues. The Government needs to take the responsibility to engage with them and other stakeholders on how it will address the findings.

Let me be absolutely clear—[Interruption.] Labour supports the delivery of justice for WASPI women, but we have also been absolutely clear—[Interruption.]

The First Minister’s photo has appeared on the screens in the chamber. I assume that that means that he wishes to intervene. I am not sure when that photo was taken, but he certainly does not look like that at the end of the week that he has had—he may in the future. [Laughter.] I will give way.

Good morning to the panel. The committee has been interested in the progress of the MAT standards and has sought to scrutinise and track them. It is fair to say that the most recent benchmarking data that we have from Public Health Scotland found implementation to be patchy, and there has been slippage in the timescales for full delivery in community and justice settings, with 66 per cent of standards 1 to 5 being fully implemented and 88 per cent of standards 6 to 10 being partially implemented.

We are keen to get a sense of where the barriers are. We have read in written submissions about the challenges around what has been described as “a postcode lottery” and around some infrastructure not being in place. Does Dr Fletcher want to reflect on progress and on her views on the barriers to full implementation?

My final question in the context of the MAT standards is about the timescale that the minister has offered, which is April 2025 for full implementation. Given the challenges and opportunities that you outlined, are we essentially on track to have meaningful delivery by that date? I know that it is hard to say, but it would be good to get a view, because we have the minister before the committee in the next session.

Minister, you might have heard the evidence on MAT standards. I am keen to know your position on the implementation of the MAT standards to the timescales that have been set out. They should be implemented by 2025 and embedded by 2026. We heard quite a bit of evidence this morning about what is happening on the ground when it comes to the challenges that exist, particularly as regards needing a more holistic approach, perhaps, and going beyond opioids and looking at wider issues. Will you comment on that?

I had that conversation with WASPI women in this very Parliament at the event that I spoke about, and Labour is very clear that we support the principles contained in the PHSO report, which includes the principle that we must compensate those women. The First Minister says that we do not need to talk about the level of compensation, but his motion speaks quite specifically about the level, so we have to reflect on that as well. [Interruption.] I think that I have been clear that we are in support of the principle of compensation, so I am not quite sure—[Interruption.]

Thank you.

It was important that the WASPI women who are listening in the gallery could hear what I just said, instead of the barracking that we had from the back benchers, who clearly want to make this a political issue about the Labour Party.

As I have said, Labour supports the delivery of justice for WASPI women, but we are very clear that we need to ensure that WASPI women are part of that process and that any system of compensation is designed with those women in mind and that they are around the table when those decisions are made, because the ombudsman has made a number of recommendations about how any such system might work. Of course, it could involve blanket compensation or it could be about looking at individual cases, and I know that there is a variance of views among women on what should be done.

I am conscious that the Deputy Presiding Officer is looking at me to wrap up. There have been a number of exchanges. However, as I said at the outset, I am clear that Labour will support the WASPI women, support the outcomes of the recommendation in the report and support pensioners more widely, through the triple lock and other measures that we will seek to take.

I move amendment S6M-13041.1, to insert at end:

“notes the work of UK Parliament Select Committees to scrutinise the UK Government in response to the report; reiterates calls for the UK Government to publish its response to the findings of the report without delay; acknowledges the current dire state of the UK Government’s finances, due to the unfunded spending commitments of Liz Truss; notes the lack of action by the UK Government regarding compensation that is still owed to individuals as a result of other scandals, such as the infected blood and Windrush scandals; believes that there must be clarity on how any compensation scheme would operate; acknowledges the need for any credible government to only make spending promises that it knows it can deliver and pay for, in order to maintain wider economic stability; endorses the Labour Party’s calls for a clear system for notifications about any future changes to pensions, and supports the commitments from any incoming UK Labour administration to give pensioners greater security and stability through committing to the pension triple lock.”

Now that we have made progress on the infrastructure in place, are you concerned that on-going resourcing might become the more substantive issue?

Do you recognise that there is a significant challenge in those additional services that are tangential to the work of delivering the MAT standards, such as social work, advice on rights and all the support that sits around that? I take from your answer that we need to take a holistic look at service delivery.