Chamber and committees

Obviously, I am very familiar with the contents of this morning’s Audit Scotland report. The Audit Scotland report highlights the challenges that exist in the public finances. The Government is supporting the college sector with £750 million-worth of investment in the current financial year. I welcome that commitment, because it has been delivered against the backdrop of a really difficult financial climate for the public services, which was created by the economic mismanagement of the public finances by the most recent Conservative Government—[Interruption.]

Jackie Baillie, whose interest in the matter I understand, encourages me to get into specific issues that could be material to any appeal that comes to ministers. She has long enough experience in the Parliament to know that I have to be very careful not to prejudice the position of Scottish ministers. I hear what she has said, and the Government will consider all relevant issues when any matters that might come to ministers have to be addressed.

The South of Scotland Golden Eagle Project is very successful. It began in 2018, when there were only four to eight golden eagles across Dumfries and Galloway, and there are now more golden eagles in the south of Scotland than have been recorded at any time in the past 200 years.

I hear the issue that Christine Grahame has raised, and I will ask the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs, Land Reform and Islands to discuss with her what steps can be taken to secure the project’s future.

I appreciate the anxiety that will be felt because of the issues relating to the eye pavilion in Edinburgh. As we would expect it to, the health board is working to ensure that there is no diminution of the service and support that are available to patients, so that they can have their needs met.

Obviously, the Government is wrestling with capital funding pressures. Mr Briggs will be familiar with the statements that the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government has made about the reduction in our capital budget. That, combined with the significant increase in construction costs that has arisen because of sky-high inflation, has had a consequential effect on our ability to afford projects. Those are the realities that we are wrestling with.

I assure Mr Briggs that the Government is doing everything that we can to deliver that capital programme, but we cannot deliver it as timeously as we would like to because of the effect of inflation and the cuts to our capital budget. I assure him that the Government is focused on finding solutions to those challenging issues.

I will look closely at the issue that Rhoda Grant has put to me. Indeed, we touched on it at yesterday’s Conveners Group meeting, at which I was questioned by parliamentary committee conveners. The question was put to me by—I think—my colleague Karen Adam, convener of the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee, who raised the issue of the distinctive needs of island communities in accessing services when no other tangible alternative is available. Rhoda Grant’s question about those services comes directly into that territory.

I undertook to the Conveners Group yesterday to reflect on those questions about the availability of services. I will take away the point that Rhoda Grant has raised with me and I will write to her in due course.

I am absolutely stunned that the UK political consensus now seems to be an acceptance that we just have to resign ourselves to the damage of Brexit. I saw a very impactful and significant interview yesterday with former Prime Minister Sir John Major, in which he highlighted the deep and corrosive damage that Brexit has done to the economy of the United Kingdom. It has had that effect on the Scottish economy, too, where it is more challenging for our businesses to trade with Europe and for us to benefit from the positive economic effects of free movement of the population.

I agree with Mr Adam that the issue has to be addressed, because the United Kingdom has inflicted significant economic damage on Scotland, which voted to stay in the European Union. The only way of reversing that damage is through Scotland becoming an independent member of the European Union.

I am very familiar with the issue, because I have constituents who are supported by the Strathmartine centre, and, as Mr Marra well knows, I have engaged personally and directly on the question in my constituency capacity. Mr Marra’s characterisation of the response to the report by David Strang is not an appropriate one. Update reports have been given to local members of Parliament about the steps that are being taken to improve mental health services in the Tayside area as a consequence of Mr Strang’s report.

As I set out in my response to Miles Briggs on the issue of capital investment in Edinburgh, there are capital challenges in the health service. There are existing plans to relocate to a single site for learning disability services at Moray royal hospital in Perth, in my constituency, and I look to NHS Tayside to advance those proposals as sustainably as it can in the current financial context. It is not fair for Mr Marra to characterise the report and the response in the fashion that he has.

I am deeply concerned by the impact of the decision by the United Kingdom Government to abruptly end the universal provision of winter fuel payments to the pensioner population in the UK, which will result in 900,000 pensioners in Scotland losing access to their winter fuel payment. I would dearly love to be able to maintain the payment as a universal provision—[Interruption.] I am being shouted at by Conservative members saying that I can. Let me go back to where I left off with Douglas Ross. In the past couple of weeks, Conservative members have asked the Government to spend more money on colleges, more money on free school meals, more money on peak fares and more money on winter fuel payments than we will have—[Interruption.]

I would be the first to accept that there are challenges in the national health service, which are a consequence—none of us can deny this—of the pressures that now apply to it as a consequence of the Covid pandemic. As every other health system in the western world is doing, our health service is still wrestling with the challenges that come from that period.

What I can say to Mr Sarwar is that the latest figures show that there has been a 9.9 per cent increase in in-patient and day-case activity year on year and a 2.7 per cent increase in out-patient activity. In relation to planned care, there has been an increase in capacity as a consequence of the introduction of the national treatment centres, as a result of which 20,000 additional surgeries and a range of different interventions are being undertaken. On cancer treatment, which Mr Sarwar mentioned, we are treating more patients with cancer on time within the 62-day standard—3 per cent more compared with the same quarter a year ago, and 12.8 per cent more compared with the position 10 years ago.

That is a story of the national health service—and our committed staff the length and breadth of the country—doing everything that they can to ensure that we meet the needs of individuals in very difficult and challenging circumstances. That will remain the focus of the Government.

Mr Sarwar can make all the gesticulations he wants at me. Those were his words: “No austerity under Labour”, and we are getting austerity under the Labour Party as we speak. So my message to Mr Sarwar—[Interruption.]