Chamber and committees

First, I agree that no one wants to see—I certainly do not want to see—any further disruption to children’s education. Alex Cole-Hamilton is right to point to the disruption that Covid caused to children and young people. I also share and echo the respect that he expressed for teachers.

I very much hope that we will reach a resolution and a pay agreement soon that avoids further disruption, but it is important that that continues to be discussed and negotiated through the mechanisms that are in place.

The final thing that I will say—I have said this before—is that the Government is not simply digging its heels in. Any resolution has to be fair and has to be affordable. On the point that we do not simply dig our heels in, we can point to other pay negotiations through which we have managed to reach resolutions that have avoided industrial action in other public services.

We will continue to seek a fair and affordable resolution with teachers that continues to reward them for the excellent work that they do.

The problem for Anas Sarwar is that it is the verdict of the Scottish people that matters, which is why I am standing here and he is sitting over there.

Anas Sarwar has just demonstrated that he does not yet deserve to be taken seriously in these exchanges. He is absolutely correct to say that these are really difficult times for local government, as they are for central Government, when it comes to the allocation of resources. We have put a draft budget before Parliament. I stress the word “draft”. Parliament is about to debate that budget.

All the resources that we have are allocated within that draft budget. If it is Anas Sarwar’s proposition that he would like more money to go to local government, that is a legitimate proposal to make, but he has to say where he wants us to take that money from, because it would have to come from the national health service, from the police or from other budgets. Anas Sarwar has that opportunity, and I will wait to hear whether a proposition comes from Labour this afternoon. If he wants us to increase the allocation to local government, he has to say that we should reduce the allocation to some other part of our budget. He must let us know where he thinks that money should come from, and then we can perhaps have a proper, grown-up discussion, rather than the one that he has just made us have.

That is not the case.

I repeat the offer that I made to Anas Sarwar. As a Parliament, we will debate the budget for next year in this afternoon’s stage 1 debate on the Budget (Scotland) (No 2) Bill. The budget proposals will then go through the other stages before the budget is passed by Parliament as a whole.

We have put forward a balanced budget. We have allocated all the resources that we have at our disposal. Within that budget, we are increasing local government resources by more than £0.5 billion. If Anas Sarwar is saying that he thinks that local government should get more money than that, let him bring forward that proposal but also tell us—because there is no unallocated pot of cash—where we should take the extra money from. Should it be from the national health service? Should it be from the police? Should it be from the central Government education budget? Those are real questions.

If Anas Sarwar is standing here arguing for a bigger increase for local government—which is legitimate and which he has a right to do—and if he wants to be taken seriously, he must also say where that money should come from. I am waiting for, and am open to, any suggestion that Anas Sarwar wants to make.

That individual claims to be a woman; I said that I do not have information about whether those claims have validity. I do not think that Douglas Ross and I are disagreeing here. What is relevant in this case is not whether the individual is a man or claims to be a woman or is trans; what is relevant is that the individual is a rapist. That is how the individual should be described and that is what should be the main consideration in deciding how the individual is dealt with—that is why the individual is in a male prison and not a female one. Those are the issues that matter.

Douglas Ross talked about current policy. I accept that he has not done so today, but I have read many things in recent days that have tried to conflate the situation in prisons with the legislation that Parliament passed overwhelmingly before Christmas. The two are, of course, not connected and would not be connected even if that legislation was in force, which it is not. The current policy, which is, in my understanding, broadly similar to the approaches that are taken in other jurisdictions, has been in place in the Scottish Prison Service since 2014. As the chair of the Prison Officers Association Scotland said himself this week, the prison service has been taking risk-based decisions about transgender prisoners for many years and it has been doing that safely and effectively. That is what it should continue to do, albeit with the presumptions that were set out for clarity at the weekend.

The Cabinet will meet on Tuesday.

I also take the opportunity to convey my deepest condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of firefighter Barry Martin. He typifies the bravery and courage of all our emergency service workers, particularly our firefighters. I have written to Firefighter Martin’s family. The thoughts of everyone, from across the chamber, are very much with them at this time. I hope that, at this horrendously sad time for them, they will take some comfort from the love that has been expressed by all who knew and worked with Barry.

Christine Grahame is absolutely correct. The discomfort among Conservatives was palpable while she was speaking. I also detected a bit of discomfort among Labour members, although I am not quite so sure why that should be the case.

The fact of the matter is that the budget that this Government works within is constrained by decisions that are taken by UK Governments, which still hold most of the financial levers, but within that we are doing everything that we can do to protect public services and secure the fairest possible pay deals for the people who work in them.

However, Christine Grahame is right: the Parliament—and the Government—would be able to do so much more if Rishi Sunak loosened the purse strings, started to negotiate fair pay deals with public sector workers in England and increased funding to the devolved Administrations. Surely, all of us, across the chamber, should unite to call for that.

I am happy to ask the relevant minister to take part in such a meeting, and we would be happy to discuss what more the Scottish Government can do.

I agree with Jeremy Balfour about the impact of sky-high energy costs, which is why I think that the UK Government, which holds the levers, has to do much more to help people with the impact of those costs. This Government is doing everything that we can do within our powers and resources. I have pointed to the range of disability benefits that we provide and, in particular, to the doubling of the fuel insecurity fund to £20 million, which will help some of those who are dealing with the kinds of impacts that Jeremy Balfour has set out.

We will continue to look at what more we can do, but in this case the UK Government needs to act to deal with the root causes of rising energy prices and to take action now to help those who are dealing with the impact of them.

The commitment that we gave on that recommendation, which I agree is important, was to achieve that over the course of this parliamentary session. We are currently looking to see how quickly that might be possible within the financial constraints that we are talking about. I absolutely recognise how important the issue is, but we have to deal with it within the budgets that we have.

I will repeat what I said to Anas Sarwar earlier in the context of the budget for next year. Any member who wants to propose additional funding for any line in the budget is, of course, entitled to do so, but they have to accompany that with an explanation of where they think the additional resources should come from. That is the hard part of setting budgets; Opposition members who want to propose extra money for parts of the budget really cannot escape that responsibility.

Natalie Don is absolutely right. There is, perhaps unsurprisingly, real discomfort on the Tory benches. Perhaps Tory members have just seen that another consequence of Tory economic and financial incompetence and mismanagement is that interest rates have been increased yet again by the Bank of England, which has real implications for people.

The IMF’s forecast is deeply worrying, but it should come as no surprise. The Scottish Government and others in Scotland have repeatedly warned that Brexit, particularly the hard Brexit that was chosen by the UK Government, would be devastating to Scotland’s economy and the UK as a whole. The economic impacts are already being felt. Britain’s gross domestic product was 5.5 per cent lower by the second quarter of 2022 than it would have been had Brexit not occurred. The consequences of that economic incompetence are devastating for businesses and individuals alike. Thanks to Brexit, the UK is facing a worse cost of living crisis than elsewhere.

Yes I will—I am happy to give my support to that campaign. I welcome the British Heart Foundation to Parliament today and commend the organisation for the excellent work that it does, which has an impact on families across Scotland—we are very grateful to it for that. It is important that we work to raise awareness of education and training in CPR. I understand that the British Heart Foundation has an online tool called RevivR, which is about CPR. That is important, but there is more work that we can all do collectively. I am happy to give my support to that and to consider what more the Scottish Government can do to support those efforts.