Chamber and committees

The First Minister has betrayed communities in the north of Scotland with her broken promise to dual the A9. It is clear that the work required to fulfil that promise has never been done, and her Government seeks to blame events that should never have impacted the timetable.

Will she now give us a date for completion of the dualling of the A9, or is she really telling us that the Greens are running her Government?

Thank you, convener. I appreciate your allowing me to speak again on the petition. It is really disappointing that, since Mary Ramsay started her campaign, there is still no nationally recognised treatment centre for focused ultrasound in Scotland. In England, there are already two centres offering treatment on the NHS. Since Mary started her petition, we now have the facilities here, in Dundee, but we appear to have made little progress on making the treatment universally available on the NHS.

Scottish patients are being sent south and treated in England, which is difficult for them given the travel involved. It adds to their distress and their time away from home. It also adds a cost to the Scottish NHS. Some health boards are sending their patients to Dundee, because they know that the facility is there, but it would be much better if all health boards had a clear pathway to send people to Dundee.

I understand that an application has been submitted to the national services division—it has obviously crossed with its information to the committee—from NHS Tayside, which is looking to have the treatment adopted nationally. I am not clear when that will be considered and what the timeframe for it is, so could the committee raise that matter with the national services division and the Scottish Government? It would be good if we could pin them down as to when that will be considered, what the stages will be and a likely timeframe for them to reach a decision. It would also be useful to try to find out why the treatment has been assessed as useful and is available in the rest of the UK but not here in Scotland.

Mary Ramsay asked me to say that she stands ready to give evidence to the committee. She believes that the committee should hear directly from people who are affected by essential tremor and the impact that it has on their lives.

We hope to have a drop-in event on 16 March at 1 pm in committee room 3. That is a plug, but I would like to extend an invitation to committee members, because Mary Ramsay will be there, along with other campaigners and people who have been treated for essential tremor by both treatments available and clinicians. That should be very informative, and you will be very welcome.

Yes.

This is a total betrayal of the Highlands. It is a broken promise—I wonder whether the Government ever intended to keep it.

The scale of the project is exactly the same as it was 16 years ago—sadly so, given the lack of progress and the lives that are being lost on that dangerous road.

This is an issue of the minister’s Government’s making. Had it even attempted to adhere to its own timescales, contracts would have been awarded by now. It is also shameful that, on the day that Volodymyr Zelensky is addressing the UK Parliament, SNP ministers are trying to blame the war in Ukraine for their failures to deliver a manifesto pledge from 2007.

Will the minister now come clean on the estimated timescale for dualling the A9 to Inverness? If she cannot answer that, can she at least give an indication of when the routes between Inverness and Dalwhinnie and between Perth and Ballinluig will be fully dualled? Further, will she now apologise to the people of the Highlands for this gross betrayal?

That speech finished, again, with a call for more powers, but when the Scottish Government gets such powers, it hands them straight back. It is truly unbelievable that, today, we are again hearing about further delays in the implementation of the Scottish social security system, which was devolved in 2018. We will now wait until at least 2026 for it to be fully delivered by the Scottish Government. That is almost a decade late.

The winter heating payment, which the Scottish Government claims is “imminent”, was intended to be rolled out for 2022-23. We are in February 2023. The worst of winter is, we hope, behind us, but people are still waiting for that payment. That new benefit will pay a fixed sum of £50 instead of paying out £25 for every week of cold weather, which was the amount that was paid out by the benefit that it replaces.

I am particularly concerned about the effect that that policy will have on rural areas. We know that the rate of fuel poverty is significantly higher in rural areas, which are largely off gas grid, compared with more urban areas of Scotland.

Those are the very areas that are going to lose out under the new payment. Whereas they would have received £25 for each week of cold weather, they are going to receive £50 as a whole, regardless of the weather.

Even before the cost of living crisis, people who lived in rural areas faced up to 30 per cent higher costs of living. That figure will be much greater now, because of heating costs; it was based on the situation back in 2021, when 40 per cent of people in the Western Isles lived in fuel poverty, compared with 13 per cent in East Renfrewshire.

An average of 24 per cent of all households in Scotland suffer fuel poverty. When we compare the figure of 40 per cent in the Western Isles with that of 24 per cent in the rest of Scotland, we can see the difference, yet under the new policy, everyone will receive £50 towards their fuel bill. That policy will cost my constituents, who are the people who are most in need, hundreds of pounds a year. Our weather is inclement and temperatures drop lower in the north of Scotland, so the very places that have the highest fuel poverty will lose the most.

Energy Action Scotland has warned that “lives will be lost” due to the inadequate level of support that is provided. We have already experienced a period of unseasonably early snow and ice over a number of weeks. My constituents are already losing out in the face of soaring fuel prices. As Pam Duncan-Glancy said, Energy Action Scotland also raised the concern that the new payment will have less impact on fuel poverty than the benefit that it replaces. It is desperately sad that the Tories’ cold weather payment is more socially just than the SNP-Green Government’s low-income winter heating assistance.

In addition, it is ridiculous that the SNP-Green Scottish Government took money from the home insulation schemes to cover the cost of a social security system that is failing to deliver adequate winter heating payments to those in fuel poverty. Again, that is down to incompetence. The only scheme that the Scottish Government has ever been able to devise is based on one simple tick box. It is incapable of developing schemes that work.

We look back at the agricultural payments scheme and shake our heads at the mess that the Scottish Government made of that, yet it has learned nothing. The poor design of its social security system has led to a 400 per cent increase in complaints from the public. Due to the Scottish Government’s incompetence, it has had to hand back numerous benefits to the UK Government to run on its behalf, but it has no say in how those benefits will be delivered. In this brave new world of the SNP-Green Government, our disabled people are still left with the discredited 20m test under the Scottish Government’s agency agreement, which will run until 2025.

I am not blaming the civil servants; I am blaming the Government for its mismanagement. It seems very unfair that the Government points the finger at others. If the civil servants are winning prizes in the face of the Government, I can only pay tribute to them.

Of course, the costs are out of control. The Government cannot build a ferry on budget, so how could we expect it to deliver a social security system on budget? That should not be a surprise. Its track record speaks for itself. For example, the fiscal framework, which does not work for Scotland, was negotiated by the SNP. The health service has record waiting times. Under this Government, our world educational rankings are toppling. The Government is failing Scotland and it is doubly failing our most vulnerable people.

It is long past time that the Government focused on the needs of the Scottish people but, sadly, it is letting down the most vulnerable.

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will conduct an independent review into the maternity model in Caithness. (S6O-01860)

The cabinet secretary has carried out independent reviews of Moray maternity services, and he has now commenced a review in Dumfries and Galloway. The review that was carried out by NHS Highland was not independent of NHS Highland, and concerns about maternity services have been on-going since the change was made back in 2016, when obstetric cover was removed. Women have to travel over 100 miles to give birth. That is like asking a woman from Edinburgh to travel to Newcastle to give birth. It is absolutely unacceptable.

Will the cabinet secretary stop the centralisation of maternity services away from Caithness, admit that that was a mistake and commit to having a full, independent review as soon as possible?

Orkney ferries are old and in need of replacement. The council has been asking for assistance from the Scottish Government for many years but is yet to receive it. Will the Scottish Government agree to run those services now or, at the very least, to provide access for CMAL to replace the ferries and lease them back to the council?