Chamber and committees

As I said in my answer to Maurice Golden, the Government is focused on working with public authorities to ensure that the terms of the landfill ban are delivered and secured. That is what ministers are working with the sector to ensure is the case, and that is what will dominate our approach in the weeks to come.

The most recent data that I have available shows that 16.7 per cent of full-time first-degree entrants come from Scotland’s most deprived areas, which is an increase on 16.3 per cent in the previous year.

Since we embarked on the work to widen access, we have taken a number of steps to ensure that young people from the most deprived areas are able to access university courses. That is exactly at the heart of the Government’s commitment, and I am pleased to reaffirm that today.

Since 2019, there has been a 42 per cent increase in 18-year-olds from the most deprived areas entering university, which demonstrates the progress that has been made on widening access to our higher education institutions.

I will explore the point about compulsory purchase, but it has been indicated to me that we would not have the basis on which to do that. I assure Katy Clark, as I assured Mr Gibson, that the Government is actively engaged in dialogue to acquire Ardrossan harbour to enable the long-term commitment that Katy Clark seeks. I give that long-term commitment; I understand the challenges about access to the port and the necessity of redevelopment. The Government has concluded, after years of engagement, that the only way to progress that is acquisition. That is what the Government intends to do, and we are taking every step to enable that to be the case.

I do not think for a moment that Mr Findlay’s presentation of the guidance is in any way, shape or form representative of what is actually there. The guidance is trying to ensure that situations in which there is violence in our schools are addressed and that problems are de-escalated and resolved.

We have to ensure that every young person who engages with our education system is able to be well supported to fulfil their potential. For some young people that involves addressing disruptive behaviour, and that is precisely what the guidance assists the teaching profession to try to do, with the assistance of other resources that the Government has put in place in our schools to address the underlying causes of unacceptable behaviour by young people.

The guidance is designed to de-escalate situations in our schools to ensure that young people can participate in their education. If young people are unable to participate in their education, they are unlikely to go on to good outcomes in our society, which will mean that we will simply repeat the difficulties that we have seen for many years in relation to young people who do not go on to positive destinations. Of course, I note that, this week, we saw that another very high level of positive destinations has been achieved by young people in Scotland.

The guidance is crystal clear that exclusions are part of the approach that can be taken, but I am making it clear today that exclusions can have negative consequences for young people.

Russell Findlay says that exclusions work. However, if a young person is excluded from school, they are not in the safe environment of school and are therefore likely to be out on the streets and, potentially, able to become involved in some of the criminal activity that Mr Findlay has put to me—in the past fortnight at First Minister’s question time—as being a risk to which young people are exposed. I simply point out to Parliament the inherent contradiction in what has been put to me. Two weeks ago, Mr Findlay said that we must make sure that young people are not exposed to criminal activity and, today, he is demanding that we exclude more young people from schools and put them at risk of being exposed to that criminal activity.

The most recent figure that I have available is for 2022-23, when 11,676 exclusions were recorded in Scottish education. I accept that that figure is lower than it was in 2018-19, but it is still a very high level of exclusion of young people from our schools. We have to consider the implications of not getting our approach to inclusion correct in our schools, because there can be long-term damage to young people and our society as a consequence.

The points that Michelle Thomson puts to the Parliament are absolutely valid. The warning from the CBI should not be ignored. When the decision was taken to apply employer national insurance contribution increases, I said that I thought that it was an illogical move, given the focus on growth in the United Kingdom Government’s agenda. I reiterate that point: employer national insurance contribution increases will stifle growth and they will inhibit our ability to grow the economy.

The survey from the CBI comes in a week in which EY has confirmed that Scotland is the best-performing part of the United Kingdom for inward investment, outside London, for the 10th year in a row. Despite all the obstacles put in our way by a Labour United Kingdom Government that does not act in relation to growth and opportunity in our economy, the decisions of this SNP Government are delivering prosperity and opportunity for people in Scotland. That record on investment—10 years in a row of being the most successful part of the United Kingdom for inward investment, outside of London—is a testament to the efforts of this Government.

Secondly, last week, after First Minister’s question time, the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs and I convened a discussion at which Sharon Dowey, the Conservative spokesperson on justice issues, was present. Among the range of stakeholders in that discussion was a variety of people who are involved in violence reduction, such as Medics Against Violence and all those organisations that are doing really good work to avoid violence in our society and to de-escalate exactly the situations that I am talking about. In that conversation, not one of those people said to me that I should increase the level of exclusion from schools.

What we are getting from Russell Findlay today is a demonisation of young people and a failure to address the mechanisms and interventions that are required to solve a difficult issue in our society. It is simplistic nonsense and Parliament should ignore it.

If Mr Sarwar was to look carefully at what the company has said, he would see that it has expressed its appreciation of the engagement that it has had with the Scottish Government on all those questions. The company’s workforce are the only people I am interested in here. The company has expressed its appreciation of the Scottish Government’s sustained engagement in supporting its operations.

Since 2020, the Scottish Government has provided £58 million of funding for zero-emission buses through the Scottish ultra-low-emission bus scheme and the Scottish zero-emission bus challenge fund. That fundamentally holes Mr Sarwar’s argument. Those funds have contributed to a situation in which, through its funding programmes, the Scottish Government has allocated 360 bus orders to Alexander Dennis—[Interruption.]

I will tell Mr Sarwar what I have been doing this week. I have been presiding over a Government that has put Scotland, for the 10th year in a row, at the top of the list for inward investment successes in the United Kingdom, after London and the south-east. We have been in that position for 10 years in a row under the SNP Government. [Interruption.]

The Government has taken forward our agenda, which is about eradicating child poverty. I have just cited one example of our actions: taking measures to lift the two-child limit, which will lift children out of poverty. That is in stark contrast to the prevailing attitude of the United Kingdom Government.

We have been working with different groups to make a rational argument for an approach to immigration that will boost our working-age population, because we recognise that, unless we do that, we will suffer extreme economic harm and have real difficulty in sustaining our public services.

We have taken the steps that were announced this morning on carbon budgets. We are following the Climate Change Committee’s advice on the setting of budget limits and are deploying a programme that will tackle climate change.

Those are some of the measures that the Scottish Government is taking to address the substance of our agenda—I agree with Mr Harvie that there are real concerns about that—in order to ensure that we address the real concerns and priorities of people in Scotland and the threat to our democracy from the far right.