Chamber and committees

The member raises a really important issue. The difficulties that people are having feeding their children right now is perhaps one of the most important issues that any politician and any Government has to address.

The expansion of free childcare is very relevant here. It is worth up to almost £5,000—£4,900—each year for eligible children, so it is one of the significant interventions that the Government has made. In addition, there are five family benefits, including the Scottish child payment, which is now £20 per week and is set to be extended to under-16s and rise to £25 per week by the end of this year.

We continue to engage with the childcare sector in open and constructive discussions as we develop a new strategic plan for our childcare commitments for the remainder of this parliamentary session.

Providers in the private, third and childminding sectors are playing a crucial role in the successful delivery of the transformational 1,140 hours offer, through which more than 111,000 children are accessing high-quality, funded early learning and childcare.

Scotland has the highest ELC funding rates across the United Kingdom. As a result of the expansion, the average rates that are paid to providers—for three to five-year-olds who receive funded ELC—have increased by 48 per cent between 2017 and 2021. We continue to work closely with partners in local government to ensure that providers are paid sustainable rates that reflect the cost of delivery.

Those comments were despicable and disgusting. It seems to me that every time a Tory MP opens their mouth right now, they demonstrate how out of touch they are with the suffering of too many people across Scotland and the entire United Kingdom.

People have to go to food banks not because they cannot cook but because they do not have enough money to feed themselves and their children. My Government is doing and will continue to do everything that we can to get money into the pockets of the lowest-income families across the country, and the Scottish child payment is the chief example of that. However, it is well past time that the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and the UK Government stood up, stepped up and took action to get money into the pockets of those who need it, to stop people having to decide whether to heat their homes or feed their children.

Midwives play a key role in making sure that women receive the care that they need when they need it, and we value the role that the RCM and its members have played in our on-going response to the pandemic. The Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care met with the RCM this week to discuss that report and its recommendations, and we will continue to work with the RCM and midwives generally to address the pressures that they and other health professionals work under.

Overall, nursing and midwifery staffing in Scotland is at a record high; it has increased by 14.5 per cent since this Government took office. That is the fact of the matter. All our health professionals are working under extreme pressure, and through our investment, support and reforms, we will continue to support them in the invaluable job that they do.

Yes, we will do all that. I certainly have a lot of sympathy with the points that have been made. I, too, represent a constituency—albeit that it is in a different city—that has a high number of tenement properties.

The £300 million heat network fund will support large networks that are suited to urban environments as well as supporting small rural and community-led heat networks and communal systems.

The issues are complex, as I acknowledged in my response to Kenny Gibson. We are working through those issues in partnership with industry. It is important that all those points are borne in mind as we continue to do that.

I think that all that Douglas Ross is displaying right now is his own utter desperation, which perhaps is not surprising given events since we last all gathered here for First Minister’s questions in the chamber.

Let me read from the emails that were published yesterday. On the important one, people who have listened to this will remember that I said that I thought that, if this email could be found, it would be a one-line email saying that the minister was content with the proposal. Here is the email from Derek Mackay’s office:

“The Minister is content with the proposals and would like”

it

“to be moved on as quickly as possible”.

That was the decision to proceed with the contract.

The email from the official who had briefed the Deputy First Minister then says that the Deputy First Minister

“now understands ... that Mr McKay has cleared the proposal.”

It seems pretty obvious to anybody who is looking at this that the Deputy First Minister did not take the decision. He was not even copied in to the advice of 8 October that was the basis of that decision. He was simply briefed on the decision after it was taken, not even at his request, but on the initiative of an official.

It is really not unusual for finance secretaries to be briefed on all sorts of decisions that involve the spending of money. It does not mean that the finance secretary actually took the decision. I would say that Douglas Ross should know that that is how Government works, but of course Douglas Ross does not know how Government works, and on recent evidence Douglas Ross is unlikely to ever know how Government works.

As the email makes clear, he was briefed on the decision after the Minister for Transport and Islands had taken it.

Secondly, on the issues of legal challenge, ministers are briefed on many issues on which decisions could be subject to legal challenge. On the minority of occasions, such a challenge comes to pass; on most occasions, it does not. Ministers have to weigh up such issues in reaching decisions. However, where Douglas Ross undermines his own case is that it did not come to pass that the contract was legally challenged. Ministers weigh up all such issues and come to decisions.

What is now beyond any doubt—I suspect that this is what is really annoying Douglas Ross—is that the minister who took that decision was Derek Mackay. That is now clear from the email chain.

I agree with all that Monica Lennon has said. I will address each of her points briefly.

First, I agree that it is important to show solidarity on such issues. The attack on abortion rights that we are seeing—chiefly in the United States, as a result of the concern about the overturning of Roe v Wade, but also in other countries—is deeply concerning. Let us call it what it is: an attack on the right of women to control our own bodies. I believe in a woman’s right to choose, and that those of us who hold that view have a duty to show solidarity with those in other parts of the world where that right is coming under most significant attack.

On police powers, of course those are operational matters for the police. It would be wrong for me to say how the police should use those powers, but there are powers under antisocial behaviour legislation that are there for the police, should they judge that it is appropriate to use them.

Finally, everybody, without exception, should have the right to access healthcare without fear and intimidation. That applies to any woman—no woman does this lightly—who is seeking to access abortion services completely within the law. I say again to those who want to protest: in a democracy there is absolutely a right to protest, but come to Parliament and protest against lawmakers. Do not cause women to feel fear, anxiety and intimidation.

No—that would not be on the agenda of the summit that I have agreed to convene. I do not support a reduction in the current time limit for abortion. On the contrary, the challenge in Scotland is to ensure that women—and I repeat that this is something that no woman does lightly—who need to access that right can do so in a safe and timely manner.

I have been asked this question by journalists over the past few days, and, as I made clear to them, I am not in a position to get into the issues because I am bound by very considerable legal data protection issues.

Governments have a duty of transparency, but they also have a duty to abide by the law on privacy and data protection. By its nature, a complaint includes personal details and data relating both to the complainer and the person complained about. That personal information can be made available outwith the narrow confines of the complaint only if there is a lawful basis to do so in the general data protection regulation. The law governing that is United Kingdom legislation, not legislation that was passed by this Parliament. Yes, there is a duty of transparency, but there is also a duty to abide by the law.

Anas Sarwar should perhaps confer with his deputy, Jackie Baillie, because she was one of the co-authors of a report that was published by a committee of this Parliament last year into complaints about another former minister. The report says:

“The Committee believes that the fundamental principle of any complaints process is that confidentiality must be observed ... The Scottish Government has a duty to ensure the confidentiality of the process”

and says that the

“Confidentiality of an investigation is of paramount importance.”

That is what the committee of this Parliament said, and those are the constraints within which I answer those questions.