Chamber and committees

I, too, start by thanking Stuart McMillan for his work, and I congratulate him on securing tonight’s excellent debate. I agree with the praise that he has rightly given to RNIB Scotland and Optometry Scotland, and I, too, thank Sight Scotland for the fantastic work that it is doing across the country.

I am very keen to support eye health for my constituents in the Lothians, whether at a very local level or in getting access to emergency services. Over the past year, as Miles Briggs has said, the situation has been brought to the forefront, first by the cancellation of the new eye pavilion and then by the very welcome U-turn, with a commitment that we will get that new eye pavilion. As Miles Briggs has said, however, it is five years off, even though a huge amount of work has been done on it by NHS Lothian.

Stuart McMillan’s motion rightly highlights how vital it is for people to book their eye check every two years—and it is free. The impact of the pandemic has made many people not do that, and it is understandable that people are nervous about going back to clinical settings. The briefing that we received from RNIB Scotland outlined just some of the fantastic steps that clinicians are taking to ensure that the service is safe, so that people do not need to be worried and can get their eyes checked.

Emma Harper and Miles Briggs highlighted the work that is being done by optometrists, which was very important during the pandemic and will be crucial going forward. I hope, therefore, that the minister will tell us what her response will be to Optometry Scotland’s request not only for a fee increase this year, but for an agreement on reviewing fees so that optometrists can plan ahead.

As Miles Briggs has said, the announcement of the new eye pavilion in Edinburgh really lifted people’s spirits. It was a welcome U-turn, although it took a lot of campaigning to get there, and the issue certainly came up at a lot of hustings before the election. I was also struck by the series of Edinburgh Evening News articles about people’s real-life experiences, highlighting the importance of all our eye services. In that respect, I am talking not just about services at community level and at the eye pavilion, but the clinical expertise and excellence that is needed in those emergency situations when there is only a matter of minutes to save someone’s eyes. I know from personal experience the very long hours that those clinical staff work and the 24-hour service that they provide and, indeed, have provided even through the pandemic. They have been fantastic, and we need to thank them.

I hope that progress on the new eye hospital will be rapid. As has been said, NHS Lothian has already done a lot of work on the project. We also need to think about the community services that should sit alongside that kind of emergency treatment to ensure not only that people get their eyes checked but that any diagnosis is followed up. I want to thank the NHS and third sector organisations for the awareness-raising work that they are carrying out to improve eye health outcomes for people across Scotland. Indeed, that is what this debate is all about.

I urge everyone to book an eye health check—and then book another two years from now, because it should not be a one-off. The service is accessible and free, and it is vital to everyone’s health and wellbeing, so let us get on with it.

I thank the Presiding Officer for her understanding about the fact that I will not be able to stay for the whole debate, but it has been great to be present and to see everyone’s energy and enthusiasm for this service. It is certainly important that we agree on this issue.

I previously received a response that said that a record number of people are registered with an NHS dentist, but constituents are writing to me with their concern that they are still unable to find an NHS dentist with whom they can register, and that delays in appointments are not getting shorter. I am also aware of NHS dentists who have gone private. Is the minister not concerned about that state of affairs, and what action is the Scottish Government taking to fix it?

On a point of order, Presiding Officer, my machine would not connect in time. I would have abstained. Thank you.

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on how it will address the backlog in national health service dentistry. (S6O-00162)

It is very welcome to hear from the cabinet secretary that the decision should not impact access to vaccines. Does that include the possibility of 12 to 15-year-olds being given vaccinations and older people getting boosters? Will it impact the surplus that the cabinet secretary referred to and the possibility of the Scottish Government supporting people from low-income countries who are coming to the 26th UN climate change conference of the parties—COP26—to access vaccinations?

It has been an interesting debate. Scottish Labour will welcome some elements of the programme for government, but we want to be a constructive Opposition party, so where we think that the Scottish Government is getting it wrong or not going far enough, we will hold the Government to account and suggest the alternative routes that it needs to take.

For example, we will support Anne’s law and the pardon for miners, which is long overdue. We will also support the principle of a good food nation, but I ask the Scottish Government to look at the work that my former colleague Elaine Smith and my current colleague Rhoda Grant have done, because it is not the headlines that matter but the detail, the ambition and the delivery.

In that spirit, I also welcome the commitment to build a new Edinburgh eye pavilion, which was a major election issue that became a cross-party issue. I am glad to see that that commitment is included in the programme for government, but it was only a one-liner. We want to know the details; we want to know that it will be properly funded by the Scottish Government and we want a timescale for the new building, because the old building is not fit for purpose and NHS Lothian has had plans to replace it for years.

It is not enough to make headline announcements, though, because we need legislation that will make the differences that our constituents need. The national care service is a case in point, because the funding will be vital in ensuring that it delivers. In the previous session of Parliament, we saw patients stuck in hospital without the opportunity to access care and step-down care, and there have been years of underinvestment in care and adaptations to people’s homes.

In addition, a top priority has to be reinvestment to ensure that we keep people who work hard as care workers, and who have been through difficult circumstances during the pandemic, supporting their families and the families with whom they work. That is why Jackie Baillie’s campaign, which the Scottish Labour Party strongly supports, for increased pay and national terms and conditions for all our care workers is vital. Those are the first actions that are needed; we want a detailed commitment to the value of our care workers and to ensuring that they can develop their skills.

We must also ensure that we reverse the increases that we have seen recently in delayed discharges. Those numbers rising again is bad news for patients and their families and it reinforces the need for wider care in our communities, which requires proper local planning. We do not want a centralised national care service; we want our councils to be funded and empowered to work together so that the future demand that will need to be addressed will be met. We want to see, for example, a reversing of the cuts in Edinburgh. At a time when we are seeing an increase in delayed discharges, we also see the proposal to close council care homes without proper analyses of what is needed and of people’s future needs and demands.

I am keen to hear in the Government’s closing speech how the £800 million that the First Minister has promised will be spent to make sure that the transformation in care that we need across the country happens—not just in payments for care homes and care staff, but in support for unpaid carers.

Mark Griffin rightly highlighted the need to invest in local councils so that they can deliver the investment in community services on which people rely, whether that is schools or the new housing that is needed.

It was so fascinating to hear the First Minister offer £1.5 million for libraries across Scotland, especially given the proposed cuts in her own city. Our arts and culture services are vital to the wellbeing of our recovery across Scotland. We need to invest in those services.

There is irony in the Scottish Government’s putting centre stage the demand for more powers for itself while centralising the powers of local councils. Some 14 years on from the promise to scrap what the SNP described as the “unfair council tax”, we have seen zero progress on that promise, even when there has been cross-party willingness to work with the Government to come up with better solutions to enable our councils to be properly funded. We still have no idea what the Government will propose. Again, more work needs to be done.

Pam Duncan-Glancy and Anas Sarwar spoke passionately about the need to tackle child poverty. Even with today’s announcement, children will still be living in poverty—a situation that will be exacerbated by the UK Tory Government’s dangerous cut to universal credit. We need to be clear that the pandemic has pushed our country backwards and has put people on low incomes under even more pressure.

We need to ensure that our students get a comeback plan and we need the long-awaited action on the education attainment gap to be delivered. We need new teachers to be given not just short-term commitments to appointment, but the promise of careers, with on-going support for our schools and eradication of the inequalities that our schoolchildren experience.

On poverty, it was disappointing not to hear any reference to fuel poverty in the First Minister’s statement. Fuel is another example of where the cost of living is rising. The cost of energy is rising. Mark Ruskell made important points about the importance of investing in existing homes, but there must be a joined-up strategy to invest in our communities, eradicate fuel poverty, create new jobs and create new incomes for our communities. Again, I was disappointed not to hear anything about development of community-based and community-owned heat and power networks and companies, which would not just enable the transition to low-carbon heat and power, but would reinvest the profits and create jobs in our communities.

We need to make sure that it is not a top-down plan for our country. There needs to be investment in our communities, led by our communities. There needs to be a partnership of respect between the Scottish Government and councils. That is long overdue. We did not get that in the previous parliamentary session, so it is vital that we get it in the current one.

There is irony in hearing discussion about the journey to independence when we still face major problems in the run-up to COP26. I very much welcome the First Minister’s commitment to investing in active travel. That necessary investment must be in safe dedicated routes, so that the parents of the young children who will be getting free bikes will not worry about them using those bikes. That means that we need to invest not just in existing roads, which have deteriorated in quality, with councils cutting spend on potholes, but in new dedicated routes.

Today, just as we sat down for the debate, there was irony in hearing the Minister for Transport justify cuts in ScotRail services. At a time when we want people to get into using trains, with more choice and not having to use their cars, we will see train services being removed. I know people who will have to shift from travelling by train to travelling by cars, because their community will no longer have a service that they can use. How can that make sense when we are trying to have a just transition?

If we consider buses, the situation is worse. The cuts have been going on for years. We have been losing buses; during the previous parliamentary session, bus services were reduced. Therefore, although I welcome the increase in free bus travel, including for young people, we need services that every bus user is encouraged to use, because doing so is free. We support more people getting access—everybody needs to be able to access the services.

The services need to be there for them, and they need to be locally driven and locally accountable. During the last session of Parliament, we amended the Transport (Scotland) Act 2019 to deliver powers that need to be implemented, so that we see more local community-led bus services, like Lothian Buses. That is a success that could be replicated across Scotland.

However, that needs political effort—everyday effort—and that is why it is disappointing to hear that the SNP will be diverting political energy and the work of civil servants from what should be the top priority, which is not just getting through the pandemic but recovering from it and from the steps backward that we have seen on poverty, with people losing their jobs.

Let us focus on what the Parliament was set up to deliver.

Let us make this session of Parliament successful. Let us not pull our country apart. Let us work together, because even the SNP supporters of independence have warned about the decades that it would take to recover from leaving the UK and about the fact that it would be 10 times worse than Brexit. Let us think about that.

I welcome the opportunity to debate what we can do now to support the people of Afghanistan. The debate must be about our responsibilities to the people of a country that we have been involved with for 20 years, and today we need to unite as a Parliament and show our support for humanitarian action, the civil rights of the Afghan people and women’s rights, in particular.

We do not have time to debate the wider lessons that need to be learned from the 20 years of our involvement in Afghanistan. For that reason, I welcome the call for the restoration of UK spending on international aid to be reinstated by the Tory Government in the amendment that Donald Cameron has moved today. However, that cut should never have been made. It demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding of the vital nature of international aid and support in Afghanistan and across the world.

I hope that everyone who is in the chamber is thinking about the women who are now being denied the opportunity to live their lives without fear, of all the young girls who benefited from education in the past 20 years but might never get the chance to show the world their contributions to society, of the work of our armed forces and all those who worked incredibly hard to keep those who were seeking to flee Afghanistan the best chance to get to the UK, of all those who made the ultimate sacrifice in service of their country and in the belief that they were building something better, and of those in charities and development organisations who are still in Afghanistan, helping people on the ground and putting their own lives at risk.

We now have a crisis of global proportions and one that requires a joined-up international response. As an immediate priority, people who are fleeing Afghanistan need to be able to cross the border into neighbouring countries, NATO should be called on to offer logistical assistance where that would be helpful, and western democracies must offer financial support to those nations. European countries need to support that effort by opening their borders, and we, in the UK, must play our part in that. It is especially urgent that the UK Government steps up to ensure that people who have the right to British citizenship are supported and that those who claim asylum are helped. We must honour the work of everyone who has been involved in our diplomatic and military operations in the country.

I stand with my Labour colleague Lisa Nandy MP in demanding that the UK Government does not abandon the thousands of people who have been left behind in Afghanistan and that it increases the resources that it is deploying to help refugees to reach safety in the UK. The stories from MPs about the failure to connect with people who have been getting in touch are appalling. In that respect, the Lib Dem amendment’s call for the UK Government to lift the overall cap on the number of people we should be supporting is important and needs urgent action.

I thank the Scottish Refugee Council for the work that it has done and for its excellent briefing, which highlights the need for a change of direction from the UK Government and calls on all of us to share responsibility in our actions to address the scale of the situation and the number of Afghan refugees who need our support.

The Labour councillor for Roxeth in Harrow, Peymana Assad, came to the UK as a refugee from Afghanistan at the age of three. This week, she spoke passionately about our collective sense of duty to a country that is living in fear. It is vital that refugees are given the opportunity to work when they settle in our country so that they can contribute their skills to our economy and our communities. Across the UK, we have witnessed the benefits that refugees bring to our communities when they are allowed to participate in our society. That has been evident most recently in the number of successful businesses and community groups that have been set up by Syrians who fled the civil war and persecution in their country.

In turn, we, in Scotland, need to welcome refugees and, in doing so, support local community groups such as the Welcoming Association here, in Edinburgh, which make the transition to life in Scotland successful for everyone.

It is vital that our councils are properly funded so that they can welcome those people who choose to settle here. In the past few days, I have spoken to my Labour colleagues on the City of Edinburgh Council. They have previously raised the need for funding to assist them in addressing the issue of homelessness in our city. They estimate that there is already a gap of £9.5 million, which should have been received during the Covid emergency. The Scottish Government must not short change people in Edinburgh who need help to find a home, including the people who are arriving here from Afghanistan, whom we all need to help. I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests.

I call on the Scottish Government to provide the targeted support that our councils need to ensure that refugees who arrive in Scotland are given the life and the opportunities that they deserve and not just rhetoric, however good it is. Our amendment highlights the importance of our local authorities, community organisations and individual citizens in ensuring that every refugee is given the support that they need, now and in the future, to ensure that their new lives in Scotland are successful.

Afghanistan is divided, it is suffering economic collapse and its people are living in fear. The Taliban say that they have changed, but most commentators very much doubt that. The world is watching. Aid and support that have been pledged from countries across the world need to be delivered to the people who need them instead of going into the pockets of warlords. As well as supporting people to come to Scotland and the UK, we need to play a progressive role in speaking up for humanitarian assistance and support for human rights—especially women’s rights—and for democracy.

I move amendment S6M-01003.3, to insert at end:

“, and recognises the importance of Scottish local authorities, community organisations and individual citizens in helping ensure a successful transition for every refugee.”

Does the minister accept that there is a need for increased investment in our arts and that one way in which we can provide that, which is being used in many countries around the world, is to ensure that a per cent for art regime is in place through the planning system? That will enable local authorities and communities to get the investment that they desperately need not just as they recover from the pandemic but as we see new opportunities across our communities.