Chamber and committees

Public Health Scotland published the latest staging data for breast, lung and colorectal cancers in November last year. That report showed that the number of people diagnosed at the early stage is lower than would have been expected had the Covid pandemic not happened. However, more recent data shows that more patients are now being treated on an urgent suspicion of cancer pathway compared with the situation pre-Covid. Also, since the start of the pandemic, we have established the first early cancer diagnostic centres and launched public campaigns, including on lung cancer, to raise awareness of the vital importance of early diagnosis. We have also committed an additional £20 million to the detect cancer early programme.

Powers over the energy market are reserved. We have written to the United Kingdom Government calling for urgent action to support such households. In our view, such support should include a reduction to VAT, as one of the simplest short-term measures, and action on the warm home discount and the cold weather payment.

We have also taken action, within our powers and from our resources, through our £41 million winter support fund, which includes a £10 million fuel insecurity fund to help people with heating costs and provides £25 million of funding to local authorities to tackle financial insecurity. In addition, we continue to invest in making people’s homes warmer and more affordable to heat, with more than £1 billion allocated since 2009 to tackling fuel poverty and improving energy efficiency.

At least under an SNP Government, money is being allocated to businesses and will get to them. Under a Tory Government, money is not getting to businesses at all.

I am sure that, if either central Government or local government was to disburse money without basic checks to guard against fraud, for example, Douglas Ross would be one of the first to get to his feet and complain about that as well.

The nightclub closure fund, for example, is open for applications. Businesses that have previously received support are being contacted and asked to complete their application, and then payment will be made within a matter of days once that application has been received.

With the hospitality fund, for example, businesses are being asked only to complete a declaration, not to submit a new application. Businesses are being proactively contacted and councils are starting now—some have already started and some are starting today—to pay that money. I am not criticising councils. I know how hard and how quickly they are working to get that money out of the door.

I come back to the point that we all want this to be done as quickly as possible but, although businesses in every part of the United Kingdom are suffering some of the same impacts of Covid, in Scotland they will be getting financial support that businesses are not getting south of the border, where the Conservatives are in government.

This is an important issue for many businesses across the country. I said before Christmas, and I repeat today, that the Scottish Government, in partnership with local authorities, which are responsible for administering the significant bulk of the funding that we have made available, is working to get that money to businesses as quickly as possible. As I am sure that everybody will accept—including, I hope, Douglas Ross—there are some checks that councils have to make to guard against fraud and any businesses trying to claim money that they are not entitled to. I am not suggesting that many would do that. That process is on-going.

For the hospitality strand, for example, businesses that previously got support have been contacted, or the vast bulk of them have been contacted. They have been asked to complete a declaration, and then money will start to flow when those declarations have been returned. I know that many councils are in the process of making the payments. The City of Edinburgh Council and Midlothian Council, for example, have started to make payments, and Glasgow City Council is starting today on the back of that process.

The nightclub closure fund, on which I know there has been commentary this week, is also open for applications. Nightclubs are being asked to submit an application. As soon as they do so—within days—money will be allocated to them.

This is an on-going process, but everybody is working hard to get the money into the bank accounts of businesses as quickly as possible.

Finally, I remind Douglas Ross in particular that, where the Conservatives are in power—that is a touchy subject today, I know—some of this money is not being provided at all to businesses. This Government has made sure that we are providing financial support to businesses. Many businesses that are suffering the same impacts of Covid south of the border are not getting the money that businesses will get in Scotland.

First—and I say this not to be pedantic, but because it is a really important part of the context—Anas Sarwar, in his first question—as, I think, the Official Report will bear out—referred to something that I said 10 months ago and then tried to say that that was somehow after delta. Delta was identified as a variant of concern in, I think, April or May of last year. Since delta, which caused significant additional disruption to the health service and society, we have, of course, had omicron, and we have been dealing with that. None of us wants to be in this position, but any reasonable person would realise that that has seriously frustrated the attempts on the part of the NHS, just as it has frustrated attempts across wider society, to get back to normal. That is the context that we are dealing with.

When it comes to NHS Lanarkshire, I think that Anas Sarwar is mixing up two different escalation frameworks. There is the Scottish Government’s NHS board performance escalation framework, which he has cited to me before in the context of the Queen Elizabeth university hospital. However, at the start of the pandemic, the GP escalation framework was also put in place, which goes from level 0 to level 3. NHS Lanarkshire is currently at level 2, which means that practices may need to request reduced access to some services in order to focus on the most seriously ill patients. That level has been put in place in Lanarkshire for a short period, and we have asked for it to be reviewed weekly.

On waiting times more generally, we are focusing as much as possible on supporting boards to recover the position in terms of backlogs and waiting times, but key to doing that is reducing the pressure on boards and in hospitals that is being caused by Covid. Hopefully, over the next few weeks, as we start to see the omicron position ease, that will happen and those recovery efforts will escalate and accelerate.

This is a really difficult position for the NHS, but it is one that we need to support it through. The sooner that we get Covid back under control, the sooner those efforts can step up again.

The people of Scotland had the opportunity to make that choice less than a year ago, and they recorded a verdict on that.

On the impact of the pandemic, I am not suggesting for a second that all the challenges that the national health service faces are down to the pandemic. Before the pandemic, the NHS was dealing with changing demographics and the impact of technology, all of which was putting pressure on the NHS. We stood here and had exchanges on that at the time. However, Anas Sarwar seems to be trying to deny the significant effect that Covid has had—and continues to have—on the NHS. Over the most recent period, as the NHS has been dealing with omicron, there has been a 65 per cent increase in Covid-related staff absences. That is the kind of pressure that the NHS is dealing with. We need to get that under control, bring the NHS and the country out of the pandemic and get back to dealing with other challenges.

I come back to my starting point. The SNP Government has put in place the solid foundations to deal with those challenges. Health spending is at a record high level in Scotland right now. NHS staffing is at a record high, and, since the SNP Government came into office, NHS staffing has increased by 27,000 whole-time-equivalent staff members. We have put in place the foundations. We need to get through Covid and then we will support our NHS to recover in full and continue to deliver the services that patients across Scotland need and deserve.

Douglas Ross must be the only person in the entire country who, in the run-up to Christmas, did not hear the howls from hospitality businesses south of the border about the collapse in footfall, the loss of revenue and the dire straits that they were in. He is standing here trying to suggest that businesses in every part of the UK have not suffered these Covid impacts. The difference in Scotland, of course, is that the Scottish Government has responded in a much greater way than the Government south of the border has.

On the application process for hospitality—I have already said this; Douglas Ross might want to listen—businesses are being contacted and asked to complete a declaration. That process is under way and the money has started to flow. The application process for the nightclub closure fund is open, and that money will be flowing soon as well, because we take seriously our responsibilities to allocate money and get it to businesses in a way that the Tory Government is simply not doing to anywhere near the same extent.

The projections before Christmas were not wrong. What happened was that we did not just fold our arms and accept them as inevitable. We took proportionate, sensible and balanced action. The public responded—as they have done throughout the pandemic—magnificently, and we were able to change the course of those projections. Is Douglas Ross really saying that, if he had been standing here—something that I know is hard to contemplate for people in Scotland, and even harder for some people in his own party, it seems—he would not have responded to those projections in December? If that had been the case, we would have been in a seriously difficult position right now. Because we took sensible action, we are now lifting the restrictions, but we are doing so in a safe and responsible way.

Had I followed the advice of Douglas Ross over these past months, we would not have face coverings still being used in Scotland and we would not have some of the mitigations that we have in schools. We would not have taken many of the sensible actions that we have taken, and we would be in a much worse position than we are in now. I will continue to follow a sensible and responsible course to lead this country as safely as possible through the remainder of this pandemic.

To take one example of the support that we are giving to aviation businesses, I note that we extended the rates relief that leisure, hospitality and aviation businesses were entitled to for another year. If I am getting this wrong I will stand corrected, but I think that that is more than the United Kingdom Government did around aviation. We are already providing additional support.

Airports, aviation and the travel sector more generally have been very severely hit by the pandemic, not just in Scotland or the UK, but across Europe and the world. We will do everything that we can to support the sector as it gets back to normal, as it hopefully does as we come out of the omicron wave.

The workers of Hunterston B have made a really valuable contribution to our energy security over many years, and I have no doubt that they will continue to distinguish themselves through the safe decommissioning of the site.

Although that process will take time, we must plan and invest in the green transition of North Ayrshire. We have invested £103 million in the Ayrshire Growth Deal, and we are working with partners to deliver projects that I know will help to create the good green jobs that are needed in the region.

We will also publish a draft energy strategy and just transition plan this year, which will set out how we will work with businesses, trade unions and communities, to manage the economic and social impacts of a changing energy system.

People will continue to debate the issues and that is right and proper. I and my party have made clear our views on new nuclear power over many years. In summary, there are two reasons why I am behind that view: new nuclear power is not good value for money for taxpayers, to be blunt about it, and there is still the issue of what we do with the nuclear waste that comes from nuclear power, which nobody has really been able to satisfactorily resolve.

Scotland has an abundance of renewable energy potential. In the not-too-distant future we will, for example, hear the outcome of the ScotWind leasing round, which is about ensuring that we maximise our offshore wind potential. We are focused on making sure, both for our energy needs and for the jobs and economic needs of the country, that we maximise the vast renewable low-carbon potential that we have and that is what we will continue to do.