Chamber and committees

The issue that Alex Cole-Hamilton raises will, I hope, be addressed by the provisions, of which he will be aware, that the Government has to go through to introduce legislation to Parliament. Legislation has to be considered by the Presiding Officer. Those provisions are being fulfilled and we want to publish the bill at the earliest possible opportunity, when we are able to do so, and my hope is that it will be published on 18 June.

Obviously, members of Parliament will have the opportunity to scrutinise that legislation over an extended timetable, compared to the original timetable that was in place back in early 2020. I reassure Mr Cole-Hamilton that we have now published the seventh report on the application of the provisions of the coronavirus acts, so we can see in detail how they have—or, in some cases, have not—been used, which I hope will provide Parliament with a substantial evidence base to inform the scrutiny of the legislation when it looks at that detail.

I am happy to engage in those questions. I am not in a position today to give specific commitments to Mr O’Kane, but he raises legitimate issues and highlights the fact that this bill gives us not only an opportunity to remove certain provisions that are no longer necessary but also an opportunity to maintain provisions that are necessary to protect members of the public. I will engage constructively on all those questions.

We are in a situation where we still do not have absolute clarity on whether we could extend the vaccination programme to children. The situation looks encouraging, but we do not have absolute clarity and authorisation to do so. Indeed, there will be many individuals over the age of 18, at the very least, who will still require the second dose of the vaccination, and they will not get that until later in the year.

The provisions that we are discussing are not new ones that have been introduced. To reiterate the point that I have made a number of times already, we are simply extending certain provisions to ensure that we have the capacity and the capability to manage the public health emergency if we need to do so.

I would certainly be very happy to look at that question and explore whether the provisions that we have already extended are satisfying the needs and requirements of individuals who have to self-isolate. I think that Mr Ruskell will accept that this is an area where we have to make sure that provisions are appropriate to the need in society. The Government accepts that principle and will use that as the guide for the analysis that we will undertake on the question that he raises.

The Government takes advice on that question from the advisory sub-group on education and children’s issues. The Covid-19 safety guidance that emerged after the taking of that advice seeks to minimise the number of contacts that children and staff in early learning and childcare settings have, by limiting adult visitors to those who are strictly necessary. The application of that guidance would mean that such events, which involve parents attending the nursery or its grounds, would generally currently not be permitted. Obviously, that advice is available to local authorities and through the work that is undertaken in the education recovery group.

Of course, a number of early learning and childcare settings are bringing forward alternative ways in which they can celebrate those landmark moments, which do not involve groups of parents gathering at settings. The Government will certainly be happy to share information on the different alternatives that are being taken forward by a variety of ELC settings to inform wider discussion on that question.

Anyone who has listened to any media interview or exchange in the Parliament in which I have been involved will have heard me say all of that. My point is that, when it comes to agreeing the budget that this Parliament has to put in place to fund our public services, and when it comes to voting for the provisions to be put in place, the Conservatives are posted missing. Miles Briggs is shaking his head, but I am factually correct here. When I was the finance minister, I managed to nudge the Conservatives into voting for our budgets, but they have not done that in recent years because of the posturing that goes on.

Pauline McNeill can perhaps bring some beneficial good will to the process, because she rightly talked about what can be achieved when we work together across the political spectrum with a common purpose. She paid tribute to the work of Mr Griffin, Jeane Freeman and Aileen Campbell, and she talked about engagement with the cabinet secretary. I make it crystal clear on the Government’s behalf that, despite my rather blunt remarks to the Conservative Party this afternoon, we are committed to working across the political spectrum to make advances on the issues that we are talking about.

One such issue is the minimum income guarantee, on which we want to establish cross-party dialogue, with expert representation to assist us in the process. The cabinet secretary has secured the participation of Bill Scott, the chair of Scotland’s Poverty and Inequality Commission, who has confirmed that the commission will be happy to be a member of the discussion forum, to ensure that its insights are incorporated into that important and ambitious work. All parties will, of course, be invited to be part of that process.

That will be the case. I said that the group will have expert representation, and many of the organisations to which Pam Duncan-Glancy is referring are experts in the field. It is vital that we hear their voices and truly learn from all their input. In that atmosphere of cross-party co-operation, the Government will be an active and willing player.

Nevertheless, some hard truths lie at the heart of the debate about poverty, which the Parliament cannot escape if we are genuinely to address a subject of such seriousness. The Parliament was assisted in its consideration of the issue by the excellent first speeches of my colleagues Natalie Don and Marie McNair. Natalie Don’s speech was spirited, graceful and forceful in equal measure, and she brought out the hard truth that what we give out in the child payment Westminster takes away in cuts to universal credit. That is a hard and inescapable truth. The Parliament’s widely supported measures to tackle child poverty are being undermined by the steps that the Westminster Government is taking. Natalie Don made a powerful point that the Parliament cannot escape.

I hope that this institution does not feel far away from the real world, but I know from Marie McNair’s contribution that she will bring us back to the real world at all times. She made the point that on-going firefighting on these questions is not acceptable. That is why the constitutional debate is relevant and why we must not find ourselves in a position in which we take measures to tackle child poverty but the situation only gets worse because of the actions of the Westminster Government, as Natalie Don said. That is a dichotomy that Scotland has to address, which is why the constitutional issue is relevant to the debate.

The Government welcomes many aspects of the Labour Party’s amendment, which was lodged by Pam Duncan-Glancy. However, like Maggie Chapman’s amendment, the Labour Party amendment’s removal of issues would give us difficulty. There is a welcome development in the Labour Party’s position, which was in its manifesto, in that it now recognises the importance of the devolution of employment responsibilities to the Scottish Parliament. Obviously, that is a reform that we, in the Government, have long supported—I argued unsuccessfully for it in the Smith commission—because it is important that the Parliament is able to tackle the issue of fair work, the question of in-work poverty and the effects of working practices that contribute to in-work poverty for individuals. The devolution of that responsibility is vital to enabling the Parliament to fully exercise its responsibilities and to make a positive impact on the lives of individuals in our society. For those reasons, we cannot support Labour’s amendment, but we welcome many of its terms and, as the cabinet secretary has made clear, we look forward to engaging in dialogue with all parties, including the Labour Party, on these questions.

Maggie Chapman made a point about the importance of the agenda for tackling poverty being a bold one, and she called for early steps on the doubling of the child payment. I assure members that the Government is looking to undertake that development as early as we possibly can during this parliamentary session. I thought that Mr Griffin’s charge of issues being kicked into the long grass was uncharacteristically uncharitable of him, because we are seized of the need to tackle those issues.

One of the things that characterised the public sector’s response to Covid in 2020 was the speed at which public bodies moved to address the human need and the suffering of individuals. It should not take a pandemic to activate all of us to take the necessary steps to solve rough sleeping on our streets in literally a matter of days—let us not forget that that happened in March 2020. The challenge is to identify the ways in which we can emulate that and ensure that swift action is taken to protect the lives and wellbeing of individuals and to tackle poverty in our society.

The problem—or one of the many problems—with the speech that Alexander Stewart just made is that it rather ignored the outcome of the election. All of what Mr Stewart said in his contribution to the debate was peddled daily by the Conservative Party in the run-up to the election, but the Conservative Party made not a scrap of progress in the election and the SNP Government was returned with more seats than it had when we went into the election. That, I am afraid, is the blunt, hard reality that the Conservative Party must face and from which it must move on. It just got beaten in the election, and the debate has moved on.

On that note, I welcome Miles Briggs’s speech, because Mr Briggs talked about some of the important areas in which we can work together across the political spectrum. I am all for that. I am all for working together on free school meals and on the Scottish child payment, which are important reforms. However, ultimately, such reforms have to be paid for; so, when budget day comes, I will remind Miles Briggs and the Conservative Party of what has been said. I will test them on whether they have engaged substantively in a real discussion about putting in place the money to afford such reforms or whether they have simply treated us to an afternoon of posturing today. That will be the test.

It is important that our education system addresses the skills requirements of the future economy. The Government is signalling clearly the agenda of achieving net zero, and we have to configure our education system to support that. As Mr Whittle will be aware from his local connections, our college system and university community are very well connected with all those areas of activity, and those skill requirements will be reflected in the opportunities that our colleges and universities provide. Of course, those skills are perfectly able to be delivered through Scotland’s school curriculum.

Our country will be put centre stage as we play host to COP26—the 26th United Nations climate change conference of the parties—in November. Last week, the First Minister appointed a new Cabinet Secretary for Net Zero, Energy and Transport as well as ministers for youth employment and just transition.

In the Government’s first 100 days, we will launch a national campaign to raise awareness of the climate crisis and announce the locations of Scotland’s first low-carbon vertical farms.

While covering far from everything that we will do in the first 100 days, the Government’s plan touches on almost every area of policy. It will also help us to create the right conditions to build on our existing commitments to reform and renew Scotland’s public services in ways that improve the lives and experiences of our people, communities and places. With those commitments, we set the stage for a bold and ambitious programme for a better, fairer and more prosperous future for our country.

The purpose of our plan for the first 100 days is to bring energy, direction and momentum to recovery. It will also set the tone for delivery of the longer-term recovery commitments that we made in our manifesto and which the First Minister set out yesterday in her statement to Parliament on the Government’s priorities.

The delivery of the commitments that we made to the country is my immediate priority. Achieving that will require the Government to work across boundaries and across sectors. A key part of my role is to ensure that the Scottish Government’s combined efforts deliver the greatest possible impact for the people of Scotland.

In embracing the fundamental delivery challenge of working creatively and collaboratively across organisational and sectoral boundaries, I am conscious of the inspiration that can be derived from the way in which Scotland has responded to the pandemic up to this point. In responding to the shock and disruption that Covid-19 brought to all our lives, national Government, local government, businesses, third sector organisations and individual citizens found new and creative solutions to the challenges that faced us. We did it because we had to.

The national vaccination programme provides an obvious example of that, but so do the times when we were not constrained by how the system had previously worked but, instead, focused on delivering for the individual. An example of such solutions is the cash-first approach that was taken to supporting disadvantaged families, whereby national and local government worked together to ensure that the people who needed it the most received money directly into their pockets to provide meals for their children during periods of school closures or school holidays and to address financial insecurity during the winter months. That creative approach was also evident in the collaborative response from local authorities, health boards and front-line homelessness organisations, supported by funding from the Scottish Government, which has brought the number of people who are sleeping rough in Scotland to a record low—a position that we would not have believed possible before the pandemic.

I am determined to harness the spirit of solidarity, collaboration and innovation that was so evident during the toughest periods of the pandemic and to focus it on our recovery. In doing so, I am challenging my ministerial colleagues to work across their portfolios to deliver the first 100 days commitments and to ensure that cross-cutting issues, such as reaching net zero, tackling poverty, addressing inequalities, expanding digital provision and ensuring that public services are holistic and focused on the needs of individuals, are fully incorporated into recovery planning. I am also challenging our delivery partners to retain the collaboration that has guided us through our continued Covid response and to focus that on our Covid recovery.

I am confident about that. Discussions have been taking place, principally with local authorities. Essentially, the fund is split into two components: distribution to local authorities where there has been extensive engagement throughout the pre-election period; and £5 million being allocated to a range of national organisations that have submitted propositions to the Government about how the proposed support can be delivered. I think that that combination of locally configured schemes to enhance the work that has been proposed by individual authorities and national schemes that will be delivered by organisations with which we will all be familiar will provide the necessary assurance to Mr Whitfield, but we will, of course, continue to explore those issues.

Another example of collaboration is the work that the Government is doing with the Hunter Foundation, which we are partnering with to deliver the ambitious programme of mentoring and leadership that was announced in March to support those young people who have been most impacted by the pandemic.

The contribution from the Hunter Foundation of £7.5 million over the next six years will add value to the programme and, combined with our existing £19.4 million commitment, will significantly improve the life chances of the young people who participate, many of whom are young people who have been most affected by the pandemic.

When I met partners from across the public, private and voluntary sectors on Tuesday, I was struck by the common conclusion that the past 14 months have seen a step change in how we work together for the benefit of all our citizens. A number of partners stressed that Covid has shone a light on and magnified inequalities in our society. That point underlies the intervention from Mr Whitfield.

I also heard some of our small businesses express the view vividly that they feel as if they are still in the middle of the pandemic and that we need to listen to the frustrations that they have felt in their interactions with both local and national Government and to address those issues.

Our challenge now is to use recovery as an opportunity to build forward on a fairer basis. However, the Scottish Government cannot do that alone; it must be a national endeavour in which we use all the levers that we have at our disposal and work with partners and across sectors to lead the change that we want to see. That is the challenge that I address before this new Parliament today. I know that our best chances to build a legacy out of the pandemic for the generations that come after us lie in working together.

The Government is committed to bringing together people from a wide range of sectors and backgrounds in pursuit of the strongest possible recovery. I know that all parties in the Scottish Parliament are determined to support that endeavour, which is why I have established a new cross-party steering group on Covid recovery. The group met for the first time yesterday and it had a positive initial discussion. We have agreed to consider in detail some core issues in Covid recovery that need to be addressed, and we have committed to working together to make sure that that recovery is as broadly based in our society and as supported as it can be. There will, of course, be many issues for us to confront, but the more we can do that in open, honest conversation between parties, the better and stronger the reaction and response will be to the challenges that lie ahead.

I am immensely proud of and grateful for the way in which our country has come together to respond to the challenges posed by the pandemic. Everyone in this country has been impacted in some way, and that continues today. However, as we focus our energies on our recovery, we have the opportunity to come together again across organisational, sectoral and political boundaries to work with the communities that we serve to improve people’s lives. That would be a legacy of which we could all be very proud.