Chamber and committees

I have said previously and have repeated today—at least, I have given a strong indication, but am happy to say it more expressly—that I will look with an open mind at any proposals, including proposals for legislation. Douglas Ross has said that he has not yet published the draft bill. When it is published, we will look at it.

If there is consensus in Parliament about introducing legislation quickly and putting it through the process on an accelerated timescale, we will also consider that. However, we all know that even when there is consensus on the principle of legislation, there is often not—for good reasons—sufficient agreement on the detail to allow that. It is therefore important that we look closely at such things.

I am committed to doing that, but whatever route we take on legislation I will not hang back on the work that is under way. The Minister for Drugs Policy will set out the many strands of that work and give an update to Parliament this afternoon. It covers residential rehabilitation, which is the main issue that the Conservatives have pushed, as is reasonable, but there are many other aspects. The work is also about the quality of community services and access to same-day treatment, which is why the standards that Douglas Ross talked about in his first question are so important. We have a range of things to do and to get right.

Legislation might have a part to play; I am open-minded about that. However, we have to get on with the work, for the reasons that have, rightly, been set out.

No, I do not think that that is the case, although there is much scrutiny still to come of the Government’s handling of the matter. I welcome that and think that it is important.

I pay tribute to everybody who worked in our national health service in the early days of the pandemic and everybody who has worked in it up until today. People are still working hard in the face of the pandemic.

On whether Scotland ran out of PPE, I accept that this sounds like a bit of an arid political debate to somebody who works on the front of our health service, but if Anas Sarwar does not want to take my word for a simple statement of fact, I will again refer him to what the Auditor General said on the radio this morning, which was that people worked really hard to ensure that we did not run out.

I know and accept that supply was low at times. I was centrally involved in our response at that time. The Audit Scotland report says that stocks were low, but there are two other points that have to be made. First, that is a reference to centrally held stocks. As the report recognises, additional stocks were held at that time in local health board areas. Secondly, the most fundamentally important point—again, I will quote directly from the Audit Scotland report—is that supplies did not run out. The report says:

“there were always incoming orders to help manage the supply, with stock arriving and being shipped out to NHS boards on the same day at some points.”

That is down to the work of NHS National Services Scotland and people throughout the country.

When Richard Leonard was in Anas Sarwar’s place, he, too, used to raise the point about expiry dates. At the heart of Anas Sarwar’s argument, which is not an illegitimate one, is the idea that we should have bigger stockpiles. However, in relation to the stockpiles that we did have, when material that has been in a stockpile for a while is taken out of it, it often has to be revalidated because it will have passed an expiry date. Richard Leonard described that as

“Palming off out-of-date PPE”,

but that is, basically, what happens when there is a stockpile. However, we had arrangements to ensure that PPE was available.

We will continue to take steps. We have made significant changes to the supply chain and the distribution routes.

I will make a final point. Mutual aid arrangements were in place across the United Kingdom. At no point did Scotland have to make use of those mutual aid arrangements, but we provided mutual aid to England and Wales, following requests. We did not have to ask anybody else for mutual aid, because we did not run out of PPE. [Applause.]

This is a really important commitment. Having committed to removing dental charges, our first step in doing that was to remove them for care-experienced young people under the age of 26. When we considered that, we decided that our first step should be removing charges for all young people under the age of 26. That was an important step and I am delighted that we could announce it this week. Approximately 600,000 people will benefit from that commitment.

As I said, our plans are to remove dental charges completely, because for some people they can be a barrier to getting the treatment that they need. For some people, that can lead to them needing emergency treatment. Removing that barrier helps individuals and helps the national health service make sure that people get the treatment that they need as early as possible, in the setting that is most appropriate for them.

Both the Lord Advocate and the then Minister for Parliamentary Business made clear to Parliament on 10 February this year that the Scottish Government supports both parliamentary and wider public accountability when it comes to these cases. In February, the Parliament passed a motion in support of a judge-led inquiry. The Government supports and is committed to that. That inquiry can happen only when related legal proceedings are completed. Legal proceedings on the cases remain live, but there will be an inquiry once they have concluded.

Yes, I think that there is an argument for that. However, such decisions must be taken in the proper way and at the proper time. We are committed to this. Of course, in prosecution matters, the Crown Office acts entirely independently of ministers. It is important that there is a remit for the inquiry and that it is led by a judge who commands confidence. That is in the interests of everyone and we will take those decisions once the legal proceedings have concluded.

I do not want to see strike action being taken anywhere across the country and I do not want to see it being taken on rail services either. It is really important that the employer tries to resolve the situation as quickly as possible. Collective bargaining rests with the operator and the trade unions concerned. I know that the transport minister has agreed to meet with trade union representatives later this month to discuss their concerns in more detail, and I hope that we will see a resolution as quickly as possible.

Over the months to come, we will be doing work to take ScotRail into public ownership, which will bring a range of different benefits to people across the country.

I say this in relation to the current political leadership of Glasgow City Council, but also, to be fair, in relation to its last Labour leadership: Glasgow City Council is probably the last organisation that deserves to be criticised for how asylum seekers are treated. It has been one of the few areas that has welcomed asylum seekers and done everything that it can to support them.

However, there is an issue about the responsibility of taking in asylum seekers when the Home Office and the United Kingdom Government are refusing to put in place adequate provision for accommodation. These are difficult issues, but the target of our criticism—I suspect that Paul Sweeney and I agree more than we disagree on the issue—and the target of demands for change should be the UK Government, not Glasgow City Council.

I want asylum seekers to be welcomed here and I want to make sure that we have provision for asylum seekers that has dignity and support at heart, and that could not be further removed from the very punitive and heartless approach of the Home Office. I genuinely say to Labour that we should be united on the issue and should not seek to blame Glasgow City Council for a problem that is not of its making.

When it comes to individual cases, I do not know all the details and, as Douglas Ross fairly said, they are rightly kept confidential when we debate such things in Parliament. Of course I will look at the details of the case, if they can be passed on to me.

I hope that people will accept that it is not for me—as a politician who has no clinical qualifications or expertise—to decide whether an individual is, to use the term that was used, “appropriate for rehabilitation”. I think that we all accept that not everybody is “appropriate”, although perhaps that is not the best way to put it. Not everybody is deemed to be likely to benefit from residential rehabilitation.

I am very clear that, when the judgment of those who have expertise is that a person should have residential rehabilitation and will benefit from it, that person should get it. That is why we are, for example, significantly increasing investment in residential rehabilitation. The Minister for Drugs Policy has already spoken about that, and it will be part of what she sets out this afternoon.

This might be an unorthodox way of doing politics—people might be expecting me to stand here and defend everything that we have not got right in the past, but I am not going to do that. We have failed in aspects of drugs policy, so I am determined that we will get it right. I will not describe the system as being completely broken, because that would do a disservice to the many people across the country who are delivering services for people who are in need. However, I accept that the Government’s response has not always matched that need, and that we have to get that right.

We must provide the funding and the right approaches; there is absolute determination to achieve that, so many strands of work are under way. It is difficult work and there are no easy solutions—I think that we all accept that. Change will not happen overnight, but we are determined to make the change that is required. That is why Angela Constance, as Minister for Drugs Policy, reports directly to me. The issue is one of the key priorities of the Government over the coming period; we are absolutely determined to make the change that people deserve.

We acted on all those reports. I have said before and I will say again that whether it is on PPE, the response to previous exercises, or indeed many other aspects of the pandemic, the Government, in common with Governments all over the world no doubt, did not get everything right. We have lessons to learn and, as I have said many times already, I do not shy away from that.

I am sure that there will be more scrutiny in the months to come, but one of the legitimate criticisms is that many of us, particularly western Governments, rested too much of our planning and preparedness on thinking that a pandemic would be a flu pandemic. That is relevant to the Audit Scotland report, and the remarks that I heard from Auditor General on the radio this morning reflected on some of our preparations around PPE. I recognise that.

However, anybody who has read the Audit Scotland report and who listened to the Auditor General this morning will also have heard something else. I will quote the Auditor General:

“The Scottish Government and NHS National Services Scotland worked well together under extremely challenging circumstances to set up new arrangements for the supply and distribution of PPE”

across the country. At no point did we not have PPE. At no point did we run out of PPE. At times, central stocks were very low, as they would have been in many countries given the intense global demand. Again, as is reflected in the report, we worked hard on the supply to make sure that health boards across the country had supplies of PPE, often on a same-day turnaround. We now have domestic supply chains for PPE that are much better than they were before the pandemic, when about 100 per cent of all our PPE was imported. The majority is now manufactured here in Scotland.

There are lessons to learn, but I pay tribute to everybody in NHS National Services Scotland and in health boards across the country who worked hard to ensure that Scotland did not run out of PPE at any point.

I extend my deepest and sincerest condolences to Aidan’s family. Aidan was, of course, the young boy who so tragically lost his life in the Clyde last week. I cannot even begin to understand the impact on his family, his friends and the wider community. Although such incidents are thankfully rare, each and every drowning is one too many. They demonstrate the vital role of initiatives such as drowning prevention week, which is due to run from this Saturday.

We will do everything that we can to support the work of the Royal Life Saving Society and Water Safety Scotland, which work hard to prevent such tragic incidents. I encourage everyone to use the water safety resources that are freely available to ensure that everyone can enjoy water safely over the summer months.

For now, I am sure that the thoughts of us all are with Aidan’s family.