Chamber and committees

I do not need Mr Marra to shout at me about taking responsibility. I take my responsibilities deadly seriously.

I am calling for a serious conversation about what lies ahead. The health service is a product of the investment that we can make through the public finances. As I have just explained in replying to Mr Ross, when we came to office, the health service occupied 33 per cent of our budget, and it now occupies nearly 50 per cent of it. We have taken the hard decisions, including to increase tax on higher earners in order to invest more in the health service, which Mr Marra and Mr Sarwar want us to reverse.

To look ahead, the Labour Party is proposing an extra £134 million of investment in the health service in Scotland as a consequence of its election victory. That is what it is offering. The last spring budget health consequentials that we got from the awful Tories were £237 million. I invite Anas Sarwar to do the maths. We cannot prolong austerity, and that is what the Labour Party is offering. Until the Labour Party offers a sensible way out of austerity, people in Scotland will not take it seriously.

The report shows the scale of the impact of the two-child limit. An extra 250,000 children in the United Kingdom will be affected by it next year and an extra 670,000 will be affected by the end of the next session of the UK Parliament. Those households will be an average of £4,300 worse off, which represents 10 per cent of their income. The evidence is overwhelmingly clear that scrapping the Westminster policy will immediately lift children out of poverty. It is frankly breathtaking that the Labour Party has committed to keeping the two-child benefit cap in place, offering no change to the Tories’ austerity agenda.

I associate myself very much with the sentiments behind Mr Bibby’s question. As a consequence of his incredibly successful career, Sir Andy Murray has given exceptional and demonstrable leadership in encouragement of participation in sport. He has been a great ambassador for Scotland and for tennis and sport.

The answer to the question lies in some of the points that Mr Bibby has put to me—it will be through partnership that we make the greatest success. We are already working with Tennis Scotland, the Lawn Tennis Association and sportscotland to support delivery of tennis activity around the country. There is a £15 million transforming Scottish indoor tennis fund, which is a capital investment programme that has been brought together by that partnership to enable greater use of tennis facilities and to encourage greater participation in tennis.

I assure Mr Bibby of the Government’s willing engagement to work with partners to deliver that increased participation.

I understand that this is a significant and sensitive issue in the Lanarkshire area. However, the conclusions have been arrived at after a very detailed and comprehensive process of evidence gathering. They are based on clinical advice that it would be impossible for the Government to ignore. The information that has been gathered points to the changes that are being proposed, and that approach is based on evidence.

The issue involves babies who are at an extreme level of vulnerability. As a logical consequence, and as the evidence points to, there is a need for very sophisticated intervention to maximise the possibility of sustaining life. It would be difficult for ministers to ignore the compelling evidence on that need. I understand the strength of feeling on the question, but ministers need to act with responsibility in relation to the evidence that is put in front of us.

First, the decisions of the City of Edinburgh Council are a matter for the City of Edinburgh Council. Ministers do not have any direction-making powers over local authorities on such matters, although there are some issues on which we have—actually, I am not sure whether we have any direction-making powers over local authorities, because they are independent corporate bodies. Therefore, that question just does not arise.

I certainly do not think that it is appropriate for any threats to be issued to public bodies. Public bodies should be free to make their own judgments and come to their conclusions. I do not agree with such threats in any shape or form.

It is not surprising that the cabinet secretary for external affairs should meet the Chinese consul general, because Mr Robertson has an obligation to meet the consular community regularly—indeed, I will meet the American consul general this evening to mark his moving on from his posting in Edinburgh. Such discussions are routine, but any decisions that the City of Edinburgh Council makes are a matter for it.

When this Government came to office in 2007, the health service occupied about 33 per cent of the Government’s budget. Today, it is closer to 50 per cent. Those are the decisions that this Government has taken, and that has ensured that there is more funding to deal with the increased demand on the national health service.

Last year, with the allocation of consequential funding from the United Kingdom Government, we faced a choice. Consequentials came to us for business rates support for the hospitality industry. When that money came here, Douglas Ross wanted us to spend it on the hospitality sector, and we chose to spend it on the health service. We are prepared to make the tough choices; Douglas Ross ducks them. [Applause.]

I think that my colleagues are pretty happy that I am here just now, believe you me. [Interruption.]

Let me tell Douglas Ross why independence matters. People in this country are suffering because of the—[Interruption.]

I have set out what we are doing in considerable detail. The Presiding Officer has asked me to keep my remarks limited, so I will not repeat all that I have just put on the record. What I said in my answer is a demonstration of two things: one, the investment that we have made in specialist capacity to enable us to treat cancer patients, and two, that we are prepared to put in the resources to enable that to happen. That has not happened by accident. It has happened because ministers in the Government took a decision to increase taxes for higher earners so that we could spend more on health than was provided by the United Kingdom Government in consequentials. Secondly, it happened because we decided not to pass on a Barnett consequential to the hospitality sector, but to invest it instead in the national health service.

I am contributing to the debate by acknowledging the significant pressures on the national health service as well as the significant burden that has been created by prolonged austerity. What I worry about—and I worry about it deeply—is that I do not hear a willingness from the Labour Party to take a different course of direction and to invest more in our national health service to ensure that we can deliver the care that people require. I want to ensure that that is well understood by people in the course of the next week, so that they are fully informed about the limitations of the position that has been offered by the Labour Party. I want to demonstrate the commitments that we have given to put our money where our mouth is, to put taxes up, to increase investment in the national health service and to deliver for the people of this country.

In addition to Emma Harper’s point about the impact of the carer support payment on young people, from Monday we extended eligibility for that payment to 16 to 19-year-olds who are in full-time secondary education and are in exceptional circumstances. I hope that that will help to address some of the issues that the member raises.

The Government is committing a record £6.3 billion to benefits expenditure, which is £1.1 billion more than we receive from the United Kingdom Government for social security through the block grant. That demonstrates our commitment to tackling poverty. The investment will support more than one in five people in Scotland—in particular, disabled people. It will assist them to live full and independent lives and it will enable older people to heat their homes in winter. It recognises unpaid carers’ valuable contribution to our communities around the country.