Chamber and committees

Although I welcome any funding for those vital upgrades, we have just learned that the Scottish Government has increased its own staffing costs by £53 million in 2024-25. Can the cabinet secretary tell communities from Maybole to Cairnryan why Government bureaucracy costs can rise by tens of millions of pounds a year, yet the A77 still receives nowhere near the focused investment that is needed to make it safe?

The challenges that my colleague Finlay Carson has laid out are moving and troubling, and illustrate the experience of an area that faces a number of problems through no fault of its own. However, those challenges will be painfully familiar to people in other parts of rural Scotland, too.

Further north, in Ayrshire, we can empathise with all those issues, and I am sure that colleagues across the chamber who represent other areas of the country will say the same. The bottom line is this: small towns and villages have been neglected by the SNP Government, and that has been the case for almost two decades now.

Few cases sum up the issue better than the fate of the Carrick Glen national treatment centre. That project was supposed to upgrade significantly the level of care for patients across Ayrshire and Arran and provide staff with a far better environment in which to work.

However, two years ago, it was decided to hit pause on the scheme, even though around £5 million had been spent on it. The building now sits lifeless, contributing nothing, and yet sucking out millions of pounds that could have been invested elsewhere.

It would have been better if the Scottish Government had come good on its pledge to complete the project—by now, the centre would be up and running, and serving the local community well.

However, the problems in NHS Ayrshire and Arran go much further than that. The organisation is tens of millions of pounds in debt and needs huge loans simply to break even. Scotland’s public sector watchdog said that the challenges facing NHS Ayrshire and Arran were “unprecedented” and that there did not seem to be any plan to get out of the situation.

The Scottish Government needs to ask itself how things have got that bad. NHS Ayrshire and Arran is not the only health board, nor indeed the only public sector organisation, that is facing dire financial challenges, as Rhoda Grant mentioned. It is difficult to see how things will get better, especially as parts of Ayrshire have the fastest-growing elderly population in the country, which will only place additional pressure on health and social care.

The SNP Government has promised the people of Ayrshire many things, but it has delivered few. I will give members a few facts on Ayrshire. Shockingly, more than 11,000 people in Ayrshire have been waiting more than a year for an out-patient appointment—that is the second-highest number in any health board. That includes almost 2,800 people who need general surgery. NHS Ayrshire and Arran also had the longest waits for an audiology appointment, with people waiting 62 weeks on average for an appointment and 115 weeks to actually get hearing aids fitted. People are waiting on average 26 weeks for orthopaedic treatment, with one in 10 waiting more than 72 weeks.

That is on top of the trouble that people have in accessing a dental appointment. The SNP promised to scrap dental charges for everyone, but it has failed to deliver, and now 40 per cent of people in the most deprived areas in Ayrshire have had no contact with a dentist in two years, and one in four primary 7 pupils are suffering from tooth decay.

Instead of focusing on things that could make people’s lives better, nationalist ministers have obsessed about independence to the cost of everything else. The evidence is on show in almost every debate that the Parliament has. Rural Scotland might be more remote, and might happen to be in less accessible places, but it is a vital part of the country, and it deserves as much attention as everywhere else.

I fully support the motion that Finlay Carson has lodged, and I hope that those SNP members who have turned up today take the messages from the debate back to their Government ministers, whose time for acting is fast running out.

Professor Alexis Jay’s comments on the grooming gang inquiries were misrepresented. Presumably, she was keen to ensure that the cabinet secretary was aware of that as soon as possible. Will the minister set out or disclose to us what communications on that were passed between the professor and the Scottish Government and when?

Your submission also mentions cost pressures arising from the implementation of body-worn video, and says that that is “an unfunded responsibility”.

Could you tell us more about the cost pressures that you expect to face in that regard? Have you discussed extra funding for that with the Scottish Government?

Thank you.

The Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Act 2025 includes a range of provisions that might be expected to impact on resources, such as the proposed sexual offences court. What stage of planning are your organisations at in preparing for the implementation of the 2025 act? Are you able to identify when any additional resources might be needed?

Right. You have lost 1,239 firefighters and you just said that part of your budget ask is for the recruitment of 210 firefighters and 30 civilian staff. Is that right?

Does keeping our communities safe mean that we need to look at taking on more whole-time firefighters rather than retained firefighters?

You mentioned the increase in case volumes and the increasing complexity of cases. Your budget proposals include only essential funding requirements. Do they include a requirement for increased staff levels due to growth of the case load and the complexity of cases?

It is fine. Andy Watt, you may already have touched on some of this, but I was looking at the recruitment and retention of local on-call firefighters and further investment. I think that you said that you have just made an investment of £4 million.