Chamber and committees

We are working towards a target of increasing the number of GPs and all health boards have a duty to ensure that patients have access to general practice services. That will continue.

I hope that we get the ability, which is still dependent on the Home Office, to start to welcome significant numbers of Ukrainians to Scotland from as early as this weekend. Part of the work that we are doing is to ensure not only that we provide them with the immediate support that they need, but that we plan for their longer-term support as well.

Before we move on from the information technology issue, I say that although Jamie Greene says that

“It is all very well to say that ... ‘no public protection issues’”

were identified, that is the fundamentally important matter to address.

Jamie Greene has also asked questions about the eight individuals who were identified as having been given first grant of temporary release. I have confirmed to the Parliament today that, of the eight, seven are still behind bars—in jail, in custody. However, there has been no response at all to that, because it does not fit the narrative that Jamie Greene wants to share with Parliament.

These are important issues. Information was shared appropriately with Parliament, and that will continue to happen as the whole issue is reviewed. Being able to give an assurance to the public that there were no public protection issues is important, regardless of whether it fits the Tory narrative.

On the wider issue, it was this Government that ended the system of automatic early release—which was, I believe, introduced by a previous Tory Government. It does not bear any scrutiny to say that we in Scotland take a light-touch approach to prison. We have one of the proportionally highest prison populations, if not the highest, in western Europe, which is why we are focusing so much on doing more about rehabilitation and preventing reoffending.

Sentences are, of course, a matter for courts and judges. The important thing is that we have the right statutory legal framework in place. We continue to take steps to ensure that that is the case.

We are investing in a recovery fund, and we are investing more than £50 million to tackle the backlog that has been caused by Covid. We will continue to work with the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service and the whole justice community to do that.

I will go back to the issue of early release. I find the Tory hypocrisy on the matter utterly breathtaking. Let me set out clearly exactly why. Back in 2016, this SNP Government reformed release arrangements for prisoners who were serving long-term sentences. That meant that the most dangerous prisoners no longer received automatic early release. It ended a system that was introduced by a Tory United Kingdom Government in 1993. That is the background.

Why do I think that the Tory position today is hypocritical? It is because, when we did that in 2016, the Tories in this chamber voted against the change that scrapped automatic early release for the most dangerous long-term prisoners. That change will not be affected by the proposals on which we have consulted. We will continue to take appropriate decisions about our justice system, and we will ensure that the most dangerous serious criminals serve sentences in prison, while we also support and promote rehabilitation in order to cut reoffending.

We have one of the lowest crime rates and we still have one of the highest prison populations, so we will continue to take action. Whether the Tories support that or merely indulge in rhetoric, as they are doing today, is a matter for them.

Tuesday.

These are issues of the utmost seriousness and are treated as such by the Government. Since the Government took office, NHS funding on mental health has increased by 65 per cent and staffing has increased by 83 per cent. We take these issues extremely seriously.

Waiting times, and the proportion of young people who are not yet being seen within 18 weeks, are not good enough. Yes, the pandemic has impacted on that, but we know that we had challenges before the pandemic. However, it is important to note with regard to the statistics that were published this week—I am not trying to take away from what the member has said—that, although the proportion of those who are seen within 18 weeks has fallen, and we need to address that, the number of those who are actually seen was the second highest ever. What we face here is a situation in which we are seeing more young people but the demand for mental health services is also rising. Many countries are facing that situation, and that is what we need to address.

That is why the additional funding and the additional staffing are so important, but so too is the redesign work that we are doing. We are investing more in prevention and early intervention so that all schools now have access to counsellors—that is important. In addition, there is the continued investment that is set out in the recovery and renewal plan to continue to build that capacity.

This is a big challenge for all countries—it was big before the pandemic, and it is now even bigger given the pandemic’s mental health impacts. That is why we will continue to ensure that we have in place the funding, staffing and reform of service delivery in order to meet that challenge, both for children who are here now and for any children who might come to Scotland in the future.

I think that people were understandably concerned by the reports about Amazon, for example. When those reports surfaced, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency investigated the allegations and, although it did not find breaches of regulation, it made a number of recommendations. SEPA continues to work with Amazon so that it can comply with best practice.

The French legislation has only recently come into force. However, we will look at France’s experience and look to learn where we can, including about which products to target, how to encourage the reuse of products and how to monitor and regulate the proposal. We will also be seeking views and looking to learn from others more widely as part of the forthcoming consultation on the circular economy bill. I would encourage all members across Parliament to engage actively with that.

Yes. Recruitment is already progressing well and I can tell members that a significant number—around 200 of the 1,500 that will be required for the national treatment centres—have been recruited. The full complement will be in place once the network of 10 national treatment centres is fully operational. Of course, over the next 12 months, three of the new centres will open their doors and start treating patients. That will include the Inverness national treatment centre, which will be up and running by the end of the year. Clearly, increasing specialist recruitment on that scale is not without its challenges. That is why we have provided the national health service with targeted additional funding to develop workforce supply and international recruitment.

We have increased recruitment and intake to medical training. We will continue to take the right decisions in terms of the overall NHS workforce. However, I can tell members what else would have helped NHS Highland’s recruitment efforts over recent times: if the Tories had not taken us out of the European Union and stopped freedom of movement, because that is one of the biggest challenges that is being faced right now in recruiting people into our NHS and social care. Perhaps a bit of reflection on that point from the Conservatives would go an awfully long way.

We will publish the next tackling child poverty delivery plan for the period 2022 to 2026 a week today, and the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Housing and Local Government will make a parliamentary statement to coincide with that.

This is our second delivery plan and it will outline the transformational actions that we, together with partners across the country, will take to deliver on our national mission to tackle child poverty and meet the targets in the Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017. The plan will be underpinned by new economic modelling that sets out the anticipated impact of our actions in relation to both relative and absolute poverty, and projecting poverty levels for those measures in 2023, which is the year that our interim targets are due to be met.

The social justice secretary will set all that out when she makes a statement to the Parliament next week. The Cabinet discussed it in detail at its meeting this week. We are very focused on all those issues. It is important that we meet the targets and Pam Duncan-Glancy is right: not just because they are targets, but because we want to lift every child that we can out of poverty. However, it is simply not true, and it is not fair by any objective standard, to say that, on this issue, the Scottish Government simply tries to blame other people. We have already doubled the Scottish child payment and that has rightly been described as game changing.

The impact of the various Scottish Government initiatives on the matter was set out in “The Cost of a Child in Scotland” report that the Child Poverty Action Group published last week, which showed that the combined value of Scottish Government policies, including our lower childcare costs, will reduce the net cost of bringing up a child in Scotland by up to 31 per cent—almost £24,000—for lower-income families once the Scottish child payment is doubled and the expansion of free school meals is fully delivered. The author says that the rising

“cost of raising a child and the failure”

in recent years

“to match this with improvements in help from the state has left many families in the UK struggling to make ends meet ... In Scotland, families are significantly better off in this regard, as a result ... of Scottish government policies seeking to address the problem”.