Chamber and committees

As I explained to Russell Findlay, the Government is absolutely focused on improving waiting times, and the record financial settlement for the health service of £21 billion is a very significant contribution to enabling that to happen. Ministers will work with health boards, as I saw when I visited Forth Valley royal hospital on Monday, on initiatives to practically improve waiting times in our hospitals. Anas Sarwar has my commitment that the Government will do that.

I am interested in Mr Sarwar’s language about a “new direction”. If Mr Sarwar does not like the direction that we are taking on health service expenditure, shall I take that to mean that he does not support the increase to £21 billion? Does he want less than that? Is that the new direction that Mr Sarwar wants, with less investment in the national health service? [Interruption.]

I certainly am concerned about those issues. That is why the Government is taking forward a specific women’s health plan to address many of the issues that Dr Gulhane puts to me.

However, there is another important factor, and that is the persistence of poverty in our society. I appreciate Dr Gulhane’s commitment to the national health service, but his party presided over 14 years of punishing austerity, which has increased poverty levels in our country. To be fair, when the Labour Government left office in 2010, poverty rates were falling. They have gone up over the past 14 years—why? It is because of austerity from the Conservatives. Dr Gulhane has no strength to put those points to me. The Tories have inflicted misery and poverty on people in Scotland, and this Government is trying to repair the damage.

What now matters is whether the Labour Party will support the Government by making sure that those numbers can be put into practical reality. Will the Labour Party support the Government’s budget to make sure that we can invest £21 billion in the national health service?

If Mr Sarwar is concerned about business, he should be concerned about the impact of the changes to employer national insurance contributions. He need only look at his UK Government’s data on that—the changes to employer national insurance contributions will not improve the standard of living of people in the United Kingdom over a five-year period. That is a rather gloomy outlook that Mr Sarwar has attached himself to.

I simply say to Mr Sarwar that I am interested in making progress for Scotland—it is what I have been about all my political life—and we have delivered big progress. I told Mr Findlay about the progress on early learning and childcare. Economic performance in Scotland has improved faster than it has in the rest of the United Kingdom. I want to build on that, but it will happen only if Mr Sarwar and his colleagues support the Scottish Government’s budget, which will repair the damage from the Labour Government’s winter fuel payment cuts and erase the two-child limit. Mr Sarwar should support the Government’s budget and deliver a good outcome for the people of Scotland.

Not-for-profit social care providers play a vital role in delivering care across Scotland, and I am grateful for the hard work and dedication of everyone working in the sector. The Scottish Government firmly shares the concerns about the profound impact that the increase in national insurance will have in Scotland, which is estimated to cost the adult care sector at least £85 million per year. We have outlined that to the United Kingdom Government and asked it to reimburse the national insurance increase for charities and social care providers in Scotland. We will continue to press the UK Government to do the right thing and reimburse that cost, and I ask all other parties in Parliament to do the same.

The Scottish Government has announced its proposals to end the heinous two-child limit that is causing misery for children and families in Scotland. We will take that action because the United Kingdom Labour Government has, to date, failed to do so.

I am grateful for the support of a range of organisations that welcomed the steps that were announced by the finance secretary yesterday. I will certainly use every opportunity that I have to persuade the Prime Minister to take similar action to relieve the burden of this particularly pernicious part of the welfare system and to stop it inflicting poverty on children and families in the United Kingdom.

Where development is proposed on peatland and carbon-rich soils or on priority peatland habitat, a detailed, site-specific assessment will be required to identify effects on peatland quality, habitats and emissions, so that mitigation can be built into project design and subsequent management. That is the obligation contained within national planning framework 4, and I would expect that to be applied by all planning authorities.

I suspect that businesses around the country will welcome the tripling of investment—[Interruption.] Mr Burnett is laughing and Mr Lumsden, as usual, is out of his seat shouting and bawling. Maybe—[Interruption.]

I say simply to Mr Sarwar that I welcome the investments that are being made in our public services and public finances as a consequence of the United Kingdom Government’s decisions. That is welcome. I have made that clear before.

This Government is 100 per cent focused on ensuring that the resources that we have decided to allocate to our public services have the effect of meeting the needs of the people of Scotland. That will happen only if this Parliament supports the Government’s budget. I invite Mr Findlay to do so.