Although the Scottish Government has spent £400,000 on advertising its new hate crime legislation, the public and the police still lack clarity on the definition of a hate crime. That is why a 74-year-old woman in Troon was arrested recently for an incident with a hate crime element but then released without charge. Does the Scottish Government believe that a two-hour training module, which some officers are still to complete, is enough to enable officers to enforce the legislation without arresting innocent people?

You mentioned responsible dog owners. Are there any circumstances that you can think of in which someone would not be given an exemption?

Do we know how much the insurance will cost for the dog owners concerned?

The financial memorandum does not come with any money in it. Who is going to administer the scheme? If there are any issues, will the police investigate or are we going to invest more money in dog wardens?

I have one final point that is more of a concern than a question. I go back to the exemption certificate, which I have a concern about. I take the point that it is a “deed, not breed” approach. We are talking about whether we have responsible dog owners. I asked whether there are any circumstances in which someone would not get an exemption. I have a concern about safety: if someone has a criminal record or we do not think that they are capable of looking after a dog, especially that type of dog, why would we grant them an exemption certificate that would allow them to keep that dog?

The exemption certificate seems to be a formality. Dog wardens, police or neighbours may think that a person should not have a dog, as there may be concerns about how that person controls a dog. It seems to me that the current legislation would allow those people to have an exemption certificate and keep their dog.

I think that the minister has answered my questions in her opening statement, as they were about how people will be granted an exemption certificate. Originally, I had intended to ask the following questions. Will the Scottish Government publish exemption information soon to maximise the amount of time that dog owners will have to apply for an exemption and consider their next steps? Under what circumstances will the Scottish Government grant a certificate of exemption? What information is required? In your opening statement, you said that anyone who wants to keep their XL bully dog will be able to do so. Is that simply a formality, or will there be people who will not be allowed to keep an XL bully dog? Is it the dog or the person who is being exempted?

To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on the cost and impact of the transfer of HMP Kilmarnock into public ownership. (S6T-01878)

I point out that that was not my characterisation of the prison service, it was that of His Majesty’s chief inspector of prisons.

The chief executive of the Scottish Prison Service has said that the service is committed to ensuring the transition of HMP Kilmarnock into public ownership while maintaining the high standards that the prison displays. However, during that transfer, staff have lost the security of 56 body-worn cameras. The prison now needs to recruit a further 70 staff and there is also the question of whether four drug-detection dogs, which have proved to be an important asset in preventing drugs worth around £1.2 million from entering HMP Kilmarnock, will be retained.

Can the cabinet secretary confirm that the existing level of safety and security will be maintained at HMP Kilmarnock despite the loss of those cameras? Can she provide us with an update on the drug-detection dogs? Can she also confirm that there will be no further overcrowding until all the staff are recruited?

His Majesty’s chief inspector of prisons recently raised serious concerns about some prisons already in the estate. She said that HMP Greenock needs bulldozed and that HMP Barlinnie is close to catastrophic failure. Meanwhile, the replacement for HMP Barlinnie is already overdue and over budget, as is the HMP Highland project.

It is evident that the service is already struggling with significant financial constraints, although HMP Kilmarnock was praised for its successful performance under private control. A recently released report also raised a number of concerns about the HMP Kilmarnock transition. Can the cabinet secretary assure us that plans have been put in place to ensure that that prison will not fall into disrepute as others have done?

I start by thanking all staff who work throughout the NHS.

The debate is on an issue that MSPs probably hear about the most from our constituents. Whatever constituency MSPs represent, the dire and depressing problems in our NHS are having a terrible impact on people across Scotland. Our NHS has been in a constant state of crisis for many years under the SNP, and that sorry situation is getting worse, not better.

I will briefly reiterate some of the shocking statistics that others have highlighted in the debate, in the hope that the Government will finally take notice. More than 820,000 people are on NHS waiting lists in Scotland; January 2024 was the worst month on record for long A and E waits; and one in 10 patients are waiting nearly a year for appointments. It was hard to imagine those statistics getting any worse—then Humza Yousaf introduced his recovery plan and, somehow, it did get worse. His recovery plan did not improve treatment times; instead, it let them spiral further. He made big bold promises when he launched that plan, but almost none of them has been delivered.

That is the really damning thing about the SNP’s handling of our health service. It is bad enough that it presides over repeated failures, but it is a real slap in the face to patients that it keeps making promises that it does not keep. It promised to increase the number of GPs by 800 by 2027, but, so far, GP numbers have decreased by 26. In rural areas, getting an in-person GP appointment can now be a nightmare. The SNP also promised to end delayed discharge and free up hospital beds, but the problem is as bad as ever and is costing Scotland’s NHS a fortune.

Today, I want to focus on one particular broken promise to people in Ayrshire: the promise to deliver a national treatment centre at Carrick Glen. The centre has been delayed for years, and, judging by the SNP’s track record, who knows whether it will ever happen. A network of national treatment centres across the country was originally an SNP election pledge not this year, nor in 2022, 2021, 2019, 2017 or even 2016—a national network was promised way back in 2015. At the time, the SNP’s then First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said:

“If we don’t act to prepare now for 10 and 20 years ahead, our NHS will be overwhelmed by the demand.”

Well, she got one thing right. Nearly 10 years on, the NHS is now “overwhelmed by ... demand”, because the SNP did not act.

Humza Yousaf doubled down on Nicola Sturgeon’s grand promises before the 2022 election, when he came to Ayr for a photo op to announce the Carrick Glen centre. On that day, he said:

“the network of National Treatment Centres will ... be central to NHS recovery.”

Just like his photo ops with the doomed ferries, that one was clearly all for show. He later added that

“The National Treatment Centre ... Programme will deliver the single biggest increase in protected planned care capacity ever created in NHS Scotland.”—[Written Answers, 12 May 2022; S6W-08250.]

However, that

“single biggest increase in ... care”

has turned into the single biggest let-down for patients across Ayrshire. Local people are seeing waiting times for treatment rise; they are seeing intensive care unit beds moved away from Ayr hospital to Crosshouse, because the former cannot recruit staff; and they are seeing long waits for a GP appointment. As it is an election year, however, there is no doubt that they will soon, once again, be seeing Humza Yousaf, in a pair of scrubs, making another big promise that he will not deliver.

The problem for the SNP is that local people also see right through that charade. They deserve a lot better than another batch of soon-to-be-broken promises.