Chamber and committees

During the election campaign, my party promised to focus on steering Scotland through the Covid crisis, we set out an ambitious programme to drive recovery and we pledged to give people in Scotland a choice over our future when the crisis has passed. We were elected on a clear mandate, with a record number of votes, to deliver on those commitments, and that is what we intend to do.

We have already started that work. Our most immediate priority is to lead Scotland safely through and out of the pandemic. To that end, we will steer a careful course back to normality. We will support our test and protect teams, we will implement enhanced public health measures when outbreaks arise and we will deliver vaccinations as quickly as supplies allow. We will also work with the business sector, to provide as much clarity and support as possible.

We recognise that, as we come out of the pandemic, there will be bumps in the road, as we are experiencing in Glasgow just now. However, the vaccine roll-out gives us firm hope that we are on the right track. Therefore, over the next three weeks, we will set out our expectations for the stage beyond level 0, as—we hope—we return to a much greater degree of normality.

We will also act now to learn lessons for the future. We have already committed to there being a comprehensive public inquiry and, within our first 100 days, we will establish a standing committee on pandemics. We will also lead a wider mission of national recovery and renewal. I have appointed the Deputy First Minister as Cabinet Secretary for Covid Recovery, and today he will convene the first meeting of the new cross-party steering group on Covid recovery.

A central part of the Government’s programme is to support our national health service. In our first 100 days, we will publish an NHS recovery plan setting out how we will achieve a 10 per cent increase in activity in key services. We are already implementing a 4 per cent average pay increase this year for NHS agenda for change staff. That increase, backdated to December, will be in payslips from next month.

Further, we are on course to open the first three rapid diagnostic centres for cancer. The Dumfries and Galloway centre opened last week and saw its first patient on Monday. Centres in Fife and in Ayrshire and Arran will open in the next few weeks.

As part of our 100-day plan, we are taking steps to permanently end charges in private finance initiative hospital car parks. We will prepare legislation to remove dental charges for care leavers, as the first step towards abolishing dental charges altogether. We will also publish a women’s health plan.

During the course of this parliamentary session, we will increase spending on the NHS in Scotland by at least 20 per cent. We will complete construction of the new elective treatment centres and, by 2025, recruit an additional 1,500 staff to work in them.

Over the next decade, we will invest £10 billion in the NHS estate to support the renewal and replacement of health facilities across the country, including the Edinburgh eye pavilion here in our capital city.

One important investment that I can announce today is the £12 million that we are providing to take East Ayrshire community hospital into full NHS ownership, bringing its PFI contract to an early close. We will also increase direct investment in mental health services by 25 per cent over the course of this session, and we will deliver on action to reduce the unacceptable toll of drug deaths in our country.

The pandemic has brought home to all of us just how much we rely on care services and carers. I can therefore confirm that in our first 100 days we will legislate to ensure that all those who receive the carers allowance supplement will in December receive a double payment, worth £460.

Moreover, in our first 100 days we will begin the consultation on legislation to establish a national care service. We intend to introduce that legislation during the first year of this session and expect the service to be operational by the end of it. It will, in my view, be the most important public sector innovation since the establishment of our national health service.

We will also during the first 100 days complete one of the previous Parliament’s major legacies. From August, all three and four-year-olds, and two-year-olds who need it most, will be eligible for more than 1,100 hours of free early learning and childcare each year. In this session, we will expand childcare further by developing the provision of wraparound care and after-school clubs.

We will also continue our work to close the school attainment gap. In our first 100 days, we will publish the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development report on Scottish education and start to implement its recommendations. We will provide local authorities with the first instalment of our expanded £1 billion Scottish attainment fund.

We will fund councils for the first phase of our commitment to recruit 3,500 more teachers and classroom assistants. We will begin work to ensure that all children have access to a laptop or tablet and will take steps to remove charges for core curriculum activities and for music and arts education, including those for instrumental music tuition.

We will fund a special £20 million programme of support and activities this summer for children and young people. We will make free breakfasts and lunches available to all primary 4 children in Scotland as the next step towards extending those meals to all primary school children, all year round.

We will increase the school clothing grant and the best start food grant and—before we formally expand the Scottish child payment next year and prepare to double its value—we will provide interim support for eligible children, which will include a £100 payment near the start of the summer holidays.

To support young adults we will, during this session, raise the age at which people become liable for council tax from 18 to 22. We will establish a new grant of £200 a year for care-experienced young people as part of our promise to those with experience of care. We will continue to develop the young persons guarantee, ensuring that every young person has the opportunity of education, training or work. We will fund colleges to deliver 5,000 short, industry-focused courses for young people and we will establish a green jobs academy and set out the next phase of our national transition training fund.

That support for skills and young people is part of our wider mission to create a fairer Scotland. During our first 100 days, we will provide 40,000 digital devices to the households that need them most. We will develop a plan to tackle social isolation and loneliness. We will begin longer-term work to develop a minimum income guarantee. We will also invest the first part of our multiyear £100 million commitment to support specialist front-line organisations tackling domestic abuse and sexual violence.

Throughout this session, we will also support safer communities by investing in our police and fire services and will continue to support good quality affordable housing. In our first 100 days, we will begin work on a new strategy for the rented sector and a review of student accommodation. We will invest a total of £3.5 billion during this session to support our pledge to deliver 100,000 new affordable homes by 2032. We will continue our work to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping. We will invest a further £1.6 billion and introduce new housing standards to support the decarbonisation of heating.

We will also work with councils, businesses and third sector organisations to improve local neighbourhoods. That will include legislation to support community wealth building and steps to ensure more local procurement. In our first 100 days, we will launch the Scotland loves local campaign to encourage more support for local businesses.

That is just one of the ways in which we will promote economic recovery. During our first 100 days, we will establish a new council for economic transformation. We will support specific business sectors, including food and drink and tourism. We will publish a plan for the safe reopening of cultural venues and performances and we will work with the events sector to support its full resumption.

We will continue to support our digital ambitions. In our first 100 days, we will restart the digital boost scheme and open a new 5G innovation centre in Dundee. We will fully implement the Logan review during this session. We will also complete our investment in the National Manufacturing Institute, continue to promote our vision for trade and increase infrastructure spending. We will also capitalise the Scottish National Investment Bank with a further £1 billion.

We will work to ensure that our recovery is fair. We will promote fair work, including through public sector procurement. We will support women entrepreneurs with £50 million of funding for a women’s business centre. We will boost our rural economy through, for example, a rural entrepreneur fund. Over the course of this session, we will help willing companies to pilot a four-day working week as we explore whether the changes in working practices that have been brought about by the pandemic can improve wellbeing and productivity in the long term.

We will also ensure that our recovery is a green one. In less than six months’ time, Glasgow is due to host the 26th UN climate change conference of the parties—COP26—the most important discussions to take place in the world this year, so in our first 100 days we will publish an indicative national defined contribution, setting out how Scotland will become a net zero nation by 2045.

We will take further steps to decarbonise our transport network, including, in our first 100 days, beginning the process of taking ScotRail into public ownership. We will work with local authorities to resume low-emission zones in our cities and we will encourage active travel, which will include a scheme to provide bikes for children. We will also introduce legislation to make bus travel free for young people under the age of 22 and convene a bus decarbonisation task force to remove the majority of fossil-fuel buses from public transport by the end of 2023.

Over the parliamentary session, we will protect and enhance our natural habitats and reduce waste. We will increase woodland creation from 12,000 hectares a year to 18,000 hectares a year. Over this decade, we will invest more than £250 million in peatland restoration. We will ban single-use plastic cutlery, launch a deposit return scheme for single-use drinks containers and introduce a bill to promote the circular economy.

Finally, we will work to seize the economic opportunities that a move to net zero will create. In our first 100 days, we will set out a strategic investment assessment, as we seek to support the offshore wind supply chain. Over the parliamentary session, we will invest £100 million to support the development of hydrogen technologies. We will help companies in high-carbon sectors transition to low-carbon technologies and services. As we do all that, we will stay true to the principle of a just transition, both here in Scotland and around the world.

As I very much hope is obvious from the policy initiatives that I have just set out, the Government is focused on steering Scotland through the Covid crisis and building a sustainable and fair recovery from it.

There are many elements of our vision and our programme that I hope will command support across the chamber. Having talked about what we intend to do, however, I will say a few words about how we aim to do it.

It is often said—and I think that it is broadly true—that among at least some of the parties in the chamber there is more, in a policy sense, that unites us than divides us. Indeed, when the Parliament was established, the hope was that a more consensual and constructive way of working would take root. The promise back then was that the old ways of Westminster would not simply be transplanted here to Holyrood. We may not always have lived up to that, but if there was ever a time to renew that promise, it is surely now.

In Scotland—and right across our world—we have massive challenges to confront and overcome: a global pandemic, the climate emergency, and the need to build an economic recovery that is strong, sustainable and fair. In the face of all that, people across Scotland expect—indeed, I suspect that they demand—a grown-up and co-operative approach to politics that puts the interests of the country first.

Without any doubt, my party won a substantial mandate in the election. As I have just set out in summary, we have an ambitious policy programme to take forward, but we do not claim a monopoly of wisdom. We want to reach out and find the best solutions to the toughest of problems. Our duty is to co-operate, not in order to find the lowest common denominator, but as a way of raising the bar ever higher.

That is how I will seek to govern in this new session of the Parliament. Indeed, shortly after the election, I met Anas Sarwar to discuss areas where the Scottish National Party and Labour might work together. I am keen to develop those discussions further and I extend a similar offer to other parties across the chamber.

Most significantly, I can share with the Parliament that, since the election, I have had a series of exploratory discussions with the Scottish Green Party about how we might work together more formally in the future. Initially, even though we were not negotiating a coalition, the discussions were supported through the formation of Government facility that is available to all parties during and immediately after an election. Since the new Government was appointed last week, the discussions have been supported by the civil service, at my direction.

I am pleased to advise the Parliament that, at a meeting in Bute house last night, I agreed with the Scottish Green Party that we will move the informal discussions to the next stage. I confirm that the Scottish Government and the Scottish Green Party will enter structured talks, supported by the civil service, with a view to reaching a formal co-operation agreement, if we can.

The talks will focus on exactly what the content, extent and scope of any agreement will be. Any agreement that emerges from the talks will be subject to the necessary approval processes of the Cabinet and each of our parties.

What we hope to achieve is potentially groundbreaking. In the coming weeks, we will seek to agree policy areas in which we would formally co-operate and, within each, identify the shared objectives and policy initiatives that we would agree to work together on. I am confident that those policy areas will include the climate emergency and how we can accelerate our progress to net zero. However, we are keen to identify other issues, too—not just those on which we have a similar outlook but those on which co-operation would be more challenging for both of us.

We will seek to agree a model of joint working in government to support progress in the areas of co-operation. That could include formal processes of consultation and, in our agreed areas of co-operation, the Green Party’s involvement in Scottish Government policy development and delivery. It would also include details of any reciprocal support that the Greens would give to aspects of the Government’s legislative, policy and budgetary programmes.

We need to see how much progress the talks can make, and we should not get too far ahead of ourselves today but, as we embark on the process, we set no limits on our ambition. In that vein, let me be clear that, although the outcome is not guaranteed or pre-agreed, it is not inconceivable that a co-operation agreement could lead in the future to a Green minister or ministers being part of the Government.

The key point for today is that we are both agreeing to come out of our comfort zones to find new ways of working for the common good—to change the dynamic of our politics for the better and give meaning to our Parliament’s founding principles. What we are embarking on will require compromise on both sides, but it will also require us to be bold. Given the challenges that we face, that is a good thing, and it is also the whole point.

It is worth noting that neither of us does this because we need to; it is not being forced on us by parliamentary arithmetic—indeed, we are taking a risk that the talks will not succeed. However, we are prepared to do this because, if we succeed, the benefits to the country could be significant. By working together, we can help to build a better future for Scotland.

As we look to Scotland’s future, one obvious point of agreement between us is that that future should be in Scotland’s hands. As we emerge from crisis, a fundamental question must be addressed—who has the right to decide the kind of country that Scotland will become after the crisis is over?

There is a choice of two very different futures. There is the Westminster choice of a hard Brexit that costs jobs, hits living standards and holds back recovery; trade deals that threaten our rural communities; social security cuts that put children into poverty; callous dawn raids; and an increase in nuclear warheads while overseas aid is cut. All of that is against the wishes of most people who live here. Or there is the alternative—not a panacea, but a future in which this Parliament has the full range of powers to shape and build a fairer and more prosperous country. In that future, we are an equal partner with our friends in the rest of the United Kingdom and across Europe.

The path that Scotland takes should not be the choice of any single politician or party; it must be a decision of the people. That is why, once the crisis is over, people in Scotland should have the right to make that choice. The election result delivered a substantial majority in the Parliament for an independence referendum in the current parliamentary session. There is no justification for the UK Government to seek to block that mandate—to do so would suggest that the Tories no longer consider the UK to be a voluntary union of nations, and it would be profoundly undemocratic.

The question of what powers the Parliament should have will always be debated passionately, but our different opinions on that should not obscure our common desire to make the most of the powers that we have. That task is more urgent than ever. This session of Parliament will be the most important in our devolved history.

The past 15 months have been full of sadness and heartbreak, but they have also reminded us of the human capacity for ingenuity, compassion and solidarity. New vaccines were developed from a standing start, testing infrastructure was established from scratch and people pulled together in ways that would once have been unimaginable. There are fewer changes now that seem unimaginable or unachievable.

The plans that I have set out are unashamedly ambitious. We will tackle the Covid crisis as our immediate priority. We will lead by example in addressing the climate crisis. We will create a national care service to match the post-war national health service. We will widen opportunities for young people. We will build a modern, high-tech economy while staying true to enduring values of fairness and compassion. We will seek a better politics and we will put Scotland’s future in Scotland’s hands.

Our programme is rooted in today’s reality, but it also shows the way to a brighter tomorrow. I look forward to working across the chamber as we get on with the job of delivering it.

In summary answer to the question that Douglas Ross ended on, I say that, yes, I am happy, as I said in my statement, to discuss all those ideas and suggestions as we finalise—as we will do later this year—our programme for government for the first full year of this new parliamentary session. That invitation is there and the door is open. I hope that we will see parties across the chamber walk through it and work with us. We should not pretend that we do not have differences of opinion—after all, we live in a democracy. Instead, we should be prepared to rise above those differences to work together for the common good. I think that I have made clear today my willingness to do that.

My more general response to Douglas Ross is that we have, of course, just had an election—that wonderful expression of democracy. In that election, I said to the Scottish people that if I was re-elected as First Minister, I would prioritise first and foremost leading us through the Covid recovery and would put forward an ambitious policy programme to drive our economic recovery, and then, when the crisis was over, I would propose that the people of Scotland got the opportunity to choose our long-term future. My party won that election, and I have set out today how I intend to deliver on the commitments that I made in it, which were so thoroughly endorsed in the mandate that the Scottish people gave us.

Douglas Ross is right that most of my statement focused on what we will do just in our first 100 days, building on the progress that we have made. He mentioned teachers and childcare. Teacher numbers in our schools have been increasing ever since I became First Minister. We have been progressing plans to double childcare. That has been slightly delayed because of Covid, but that promise will be delivered in full from August and we are now moving on to the next phase. That is our focus.

I ask all parties in the chamber to stop re-fighting the election. The people of Scotland had their say and made their decision. Let us debate our differences robustly and in a spirit of civility, but let us come together where we can to work on the things on which we can agree in the interests of the people of Scotland.

If Jackie Baillie is seriously saying that a remobilisation plan that was, rightly, published in the very early stages of a global pandemic should not be updated a year into that global pandemic, I am not sure that she will find many people across the country who agree with her. The remobilisation plan, which is for the longer-term recovery of our national health service—it covers the short, the medium and the longer terms, as we seek to put the NHS on a sustainable footing for the future—is a key part of our plans. Humza Yousaf will set out more detail on it shortly.

On waiting times, before the pandemic, our £850 million waiting time improvement plan was starting to reduce the longest waits and to have a positive impact on waiting times. Unfortunately, the Covid pandemic has set back all that, and more. Therefore, the job of work and the scale of the task ahead of us are considerable. That job is partly about building capacity in our NHS—a range of plans to do that are under way—but it is also about redesigning pathways of care. The centre for sustainable delivery in the NHS, which is a relatively recent innovation, will be key to some of that work.

It is a big job of work—not just for the Scottish Government, but for Governments across the world—to get health services back on track and on to a sustainable footing. Few things that we do will be more important than that over the coming weeks and months.

We have already seen, in the previous parliamentary session, the variety of ways in which the UK Government seeks to encroach on the powers and responsibilities of the Scottish Parliament. That is undeniable and undisputable. We are starting to see the potential implications, including the potential for trade deals that will devastate our rural communities. That is not abstract or hypothetical—it is real. It brings to the fore a key issue, which is that the debate about Scotland’s future over the next period is not a debate between a benign status quo and independence, but is a debate about whether we continue to allow a UK Government to take powers away from this Parliament or decide to take more powers into our own hands, so that we can build the country that we want Scotland to be.

People in Scotland have a right to make that decision. Of course they want my focus to be on leading us through the Covid crisis; it absolutely will be, for as long as that is required. However, as we come out of the crisis, the questions about what kind of country we want to be and who makes such decisions are absolutely central to what we recover to and the values that underpin it.

Before I address the question of physical distancing, I note that Graeme Dey, the new Minister for Transport, has just answered a question in the chamber on ferry provision. We recognise how unacceptable the recent disruption has been, and everyone is working hard to address and resolve that as quickly as possible.

On physical distancing, we need to take care as we come out of the crisis, because we do not want to set ourselves back. We are already seeing—as I described them earlier—bumps in the road in Glasgow, and we want to minimise any potential to set our progress back. However, as I announced a few weeks ago, after the election, we are carrying out a more fundamental review of physical distancing, and we will set out the outcome of that review as soon as possible.

That work is about looking in the longer term to the time when we will restore a greater degree of normality and considering whether it is possible to have shorter distances in different environments—or, in some environments, ultimately, perhaps, no distance at all. It is important that we get that work right. It has relevance for ferries, of course, but it has wider relevance, too, and we will publish the outcome as soon as possible.

We respond to all Audit Scotland reports and we set out the steps that we will take in response to recommendations that are made, which will be the case for that report. Scrutiny of the Government is a key part of the responsibilities of the Parliament. We are, even given the resounding election victory that we have just enjoyed, a minority Government. It is, therefore, incumbent on all of us to work together to make sure that scrutiny is robust. We all have a job to do—the committees of the Parliament, the Opposition parties in the Parliament and us, as a Government—to make sure that we aid that transparency.

On that, as on everything else, I note that the election is over. We all had our say and had the arguments during the election, and the people have decided. In many ways, this is the opportunity for a fresh start to respect the differences between us. I say again: my door is open, and the door of the Government is open, to anybody who wants to come to us with good ideas about how we can make life better for the people of Scotland. I am ready to listen—the question is whether other parties in the Parliament are ready to work in that way.

I welcome Collette Stevenson to Parliament. I am delighted to see her here.

The commitment that we made during the election to make available funding to refurbish all play parks across Scotland was, as I very quickly realised, one of those election commitments that penetrates beyond the political bubble. On the—I think—one day of good weather that we had during the whole election campaign, I was in Queen’s park, in my constituency, where many young people were talking about that commitment. That illustrates that, during the pandemic, people have realised how important it is that they get outdoors and that children have good, safe places in which to play. The commitment that we have made is really special and one that we are determined to take forward as quickly as possible.

I will respond to the two questions. We will discuss the allocation of the funding with local authorities, and we will seek to start to make the funding available within the Government’s first 100 days. We will ensure that the importance of sensory play parks is recognised. I remember, a few years ago, opening a sensory play park for children with disabilities in Fife. It was an absolutely wonderful place. We want to ensure that play parks are fully accessible to all children. The point that has been raised is really important.

Next week in Parliament—certainly in the next couple of weeks—we will set out our plans to remobilise the NHS and get waiting times not just back to where they were pre-pandemic but to where we want them to be. We will also set out more of our plans on closing the educational attainment gap. Everything that I said to the Scottish public in the election is what we now seek to take forward and deliver.

Willie Rennie and I disagree on Scottish independence. However, although we will not pursue a referendum until we are out of the Covid crisis, it is nevertheless the case that the powers and levers that we have in this Parliament and the issues of recovery and what we are recovering to are interlinked—they cannot be separated. In his heart, Willie Rennie does not want Scotland’s recovery to be guided and steered by Boris Johnson any more than I do. If we are to avoid that in the long term, we have to take decisions into our own hands.

Fundamentally, Willie Rennie and I can disagree on independence, but it should not be for us to decide—it should be for the people of Scotland to decide. That is the proposition that we put before people in the election and it is the proposition on which we were overwhelmingly elected.

I will briefly respond to some of the comments that have been made.

First, I turn to Alex Cole-Hamilton and the amendment in his name. The appointments to Government absolutely reflect, as any objective observer would see, the priority that is attached to Covid recovery and to tackling the climate emergency.

I will make a couple of points on the constitution portfolio. First, it is not a new portfolio; it existed in the previous parliamentary session. As Patrick Harvie said, the constitution is not about just independence; it is also about ensuring that Scotland’s voice is heard in the face of the damaging implications of Brexit, and that Scotland is defended in the face of the Tory power grab on this Parliament and this Government.

On the question of independence, the priority that I give to Covid recovery is clear. I reiterate that today. However, the fact is that independence and, after Covid has passed, giving the people of Scotland the opportunity to choose independence, if that is their wish, is a policy of the Government that I lead. The Liberal Democrats might disagree with that—that is their right—but that does not change the facts that the SNP won the election on that manifesto and that the Liberal Democrats went from having five MSPs to having just four. Perhaps some honest reflection on that on their part might serve them well for their future prospects.

Turning to Jackson Carlaw, I have to say that his talk of—I think that I noted this down correctly—sudden “swerves” in other people’s careers serves only to suggest that he has not come back from the election having increased his stock of self-awareness. Jackson Carlaw, having been ousted in a rather undignified way—[Interruption.] I hear Douglas Ross muttering from a sedentary position. He was the person who ousted Jackson Carlaw in such an undignified way.

I am very pleased to see and hear that Jackson Carlaw has held on to his much-valued role as in-house comedian for the Conservative Party, although I say, with his best interests at heart, that the jokes about other people being sacked from their posts might need to be updated in light of his recent personal experience.

Patrick Harvie said that he was glad not be to following Jackson Carlaw. I guess that there were points during the election campaign when Douglas Ross wished that he had not followed Jackson Carlaw, but that is another matter altogether. [Interruption.] Douglas Ross’s mutterings from a sedentary position suggest that he might need to develop a sense of humour, if he is to flourish in any way in this Parliament. This shows, of course, that my stock of self-awareness is in a perfectly healthy condition.

To become a tad serious, I note that Anas Sarwar raised some good points—in particular, about the need to address reform in justice and in women’s justice. That is something to which I have asked Ash Denham to pay particular attention.

I thank members for their comments and ask Parliament to approve the appointments. This Government has a big job of work to do, and it is a Government that is ready and eager to get on with that job, on behalf of the country.