Chamber and committees

I acknowledge the contents of the letter from the UK Statistics Authority.

I have used one particular measure of the attainment gap—I could use others. The poverty-related attainment gap between young people from the most and least-deprived areas meeting standards in literacy is at a record low in primary schools, and the attainment gap has reached record lows between secondary pupils achieving third level in literacy and numeracy. Those are some of the points.

I accept that there remains an attainment gap in Scottish education. This morning, I visited Brunstane primary school in east Edinburgh and saw at first hand the effect of the Scottish attainment challenge programme, which has supported the development of leadership in the school, enhanced the curriculum and led to greater engagement with families and a rise in the attendance of young people at our school. That is a consequence of the investment that we, as a Government, are able to make available.

Nothing will detract me from focusing on improving the life chances of children, whether or not they are living in poverty, and ensuring that we tackle the issues around household income and engagement with schools. That will lie at the heart of the steps that we are taking in relation to our attainment agenda.

I am simply being straight with the Parliament about the realities that we have to face. That is what I am doing.

I understand the issues that Miles Briggs is raising with me. I am totally familiar with them and I understand the importance of them. I have just answered Mr Whittle about the importance of a focus on preventative interventions, and many of the interventions that Mr Briggs is talking about are preventative interventions.

However, the point that I am making to the Parliament is that investment in those services does not happen by accident. It happens by political choice. Mr Briggs was one of those who voted against the Government’s budget and he argued in favour, as his leader did, of £1 billion of cuts in public expenditure. How does Mr Briggs think that it would be possible to invest in local services with £1 billion of swingeing cuts from the Conservatives?

I am honoured to open the debate on behalf of the Scottish Government and to share my reflections on the 80th anniversary of victory in Europe day. Today, we give thanks to every individual who fought and sacrificed to ensure victory over fascism during the second world war.

Presiding Officer, 8 May 1945 was a day of great celebrations across the country and the world as news spread of the allied victory in Europe. The end of the war in Europe brought with it an enormous sense of relief, as memories of bombings and U-boat attacks could finally begin to fade, and hope for the future grew instead—especially for the safe return of family and friends overseas. We must not forget, however, that the fighting continued in Japan and Myanmar. There were another three long months of suffering before the surrender of Japan brought the second world war to its ultimate conclusion.

There are few milestones more significant in our modern history than the one that we celebrate today. Today, we enjoy our freedom thanks to our armed forces, which served during the second world war. During six years of conflict, 380,000 members of the British armed forces lost their lives, as well as more than 67,000 civilians. Memorials to the 57,000 Scottish soldiers who died can be found far and wide, from Albania to Greece and from Hungary to Zimbabwe. For every soldier killed, many broken hearts were left behind to suffer the grief as parents, as children and as friends. I am forever grateful to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission for caring for its many cemeteries here at home and abroad, which offer families peaceful moments to come together and pay their respects to loved ones who have been lost.

I join Pam Gosal in that point of remembrance. It is significant that that point was made at the VE day 80 commemoration event in the Usher hall in Edinburgh, which I thought demonstrated the scale of the involvement of so many peoples from around the world in the effort to defeat fascism. I happily associate myself with the point made by Pam Gosal.

Before I leave the point that I was making on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, I note that it will always be a point of significant remembrance for me that I was able to visit the site of my uncle’s grave in Argenta, in Italy, and to stand on a spot that had been visited some 30 years before by my grandmother on her only trip out of the United Kingdom to pay her respects at the grave of her beloved son. The decades that have passed dampen neither the memory and the loss nor our gratitude and pride.

Each of us now lives in freedom because of the sacrifices of the men and women who overcame fascism.

It does not matter how much I get barracked in this Parliament—I will point out the hard realities and implications of the Conservative Party’s decisions in the United Kingdom Government.

One of the things that I think would help enormously in this whole area of policy is for the current United Kingdom Government to do something that the previous Conservative Government did not do, which is to commit urgently and swiftly to the Acorn carbon capture and storage project. That would help us enormously. The Conservatives never lifted a finger to make that happen—not one finger. I hope that the Labour Party will not do the same.

The Government is committed to supporting individuals who face challenges in the cost of living crisis that we are experiencing. The steps that the Government announced on Tuesday will support commuters. For example, an individual who commutes each working day between Edinburgh and Glasgow could expect to save almost £4,000 over the course of the year, from September, which is a formidable saving to assist individuals in their lives. That is just another example of the cost of living guarantee. People can be assured by a Government that is prepared to put a budget to the Parliament to support that, and to make sure that we help hard-pressed householders the length and breadth of Scotland.

What I decided to do about ministerial pay was to apply the approach that pertained when Mr Ross was a minister in the United Kingdom Government—

—which is that ministers are entitled to take their full pay as members of the Scottish Parliament, but that their ministerial pay remains frozen at 2008-09 levels. Actually, I do not think that that was the position when Mr Ross was a minister.

Ministers in the Scottish Government are getting the same pay, as MSPs, as everybody else, apart from—[Interruption.]

The Government is committed to delivering an infrastructure solution to address the landslip risk at the Rest and Be Thankful as soon as possible. Delivery of a permanent solution is a priority.

In December, we published draft orders for both the long-term solution and future stages of the medium-term improvements. Construction can commence only if it is approved under the relevant statutory authorisation process. Therefore, a timetable for construction can be determined only at that time.

What an absolutely miserable contribution to parliamentary discourse—completely and utterly. That is all that the Conservatives have left. They are in such a—[Interruption.]

I do not know why Rachael Hamilton is laughing—[Interruption.]