Chamber and committees

The Government remains committed to its investment programme. We will take the action to support road safety measures that I set out in my earlier answer. The transport secretary is actively involved in dealing with many of those questions, and she hosted a road safety summit in February this year to review all current road safety measures. That will remain a very focused part of the agenda that the transport secretary and the Government take forward.

I recognise the seriousness and significance of the issue. The incident to which Mr Ewing refers took place in my parliamentary constituency, just to the south of Ballinluig. The Government has already invested in dualling a number of stretches of the A9. When I was travelling on the A9 on Monday, I saw the beginnings of the work that is under way on the next stretch of the road to be dualled, which is the Moy to Tomatin stretch.

As I indicated to Parliament in June, the Government will keep the programme under review to identify whether there is any way that we can move at a faster rate. Officials are in the process of considering the implications of resequencing or accelerating completion of the A9 dualling programme. The Cabinet Secretary for Transport has asked that a report on the findings of that work be published when it is complete.

I take the opportunity to extend my sympathies to the family of the individual who lost their life on the A9 on Tuesday, and to all those who were affected by the incident.

Mr Findlay might be in a slightly stronger position to provide analytical support to the Parliament if he had not been the person who argued that I should follow the example of Liz Truss. If I had followed the example of Liz Truss, we would have acute problems in the balancing of our budget this year, because Liz Truss and her loyal Scottish ally Russell Findlay would have taken us to the economic and fiscal disaster that she inflicted on the United Kingdom. All I can say is, thank goodness I never inflicted that on Scotland.

I point out to Lorna Slater that the Government already has in place higher business taxes on larger retailers. That is a source of great controversy, but we have it in place already, which takes into account some of the issues that Lorna Slater raises with me.

Lorna Slater also has to accept that I cannot disclose today the contents of a Government budget that has not yet been finalised. It will be finalised a week on Wednesday. It will be set out to Parliament and there will then be an opportunity for Parliament to debate those issues.

I do not think that Ash Regan has listened to a word that I have said in response to Michelle Thomson or Stephen Kerr, because I said that I am actively pursuing an option to maintain the refining capacity at Grangemouth. If that needs to be stated again, I will state it again to Parliament so that it is clearly understood.

Economic damage will be done if there is no intervention to prolong the life of the refinery at Grangemouth. If we do that, we will have the opportunity to secure carbon capture and storage and to take forward the other projects through the project willow exercise. That will provide a secure future for the Grangemouth site. Let there be no doubt about it: the Scottish Government is actively pursuing these opportunities to protect the workers at Grangemouth.

The Government works closely with Brake to provide support to victims of road crashes. Officials last met the organisation earlier this month, on 1 November. In addition, the Government hosted a road safety summit in February 2024 to review all current road safety measures and to help to identify new strategies to support action towards our 2030 casualty reduction targets.

We will work constructively with different organisations that represent victims of road traffic incidents to ensure that they are well supported in addressing the points that Claire Baker puts to me.

As I said in my first answer, the Government has lived within the resources that are available to us. We have balanced the budget. Is that not evidence enough for Mr Findlay that this Government is able to manage the public finances whenever we have the opportunity to do so?

On 4 December, the Government will set out a budget to Parliament, which will be the accumulation of the choices that we have made about how we invest in our public services and what we ask people to pay to support those public services. That is the honest conversation that this Government has with the people of Scotland. That is what we have done in the past, and that is what we will do again on 4 December.

As ever, Mr Sarwar skates past some of the evidence on all those issues. Let us take housing, for example. Mr Sarwar knows full well that the Government’s record is that we have built more affordable houses per head of population than in any other part of the United Kingdom in recent years, in the face of the unbridled austerity of the Conservatives. We have seen increases in activity in the national health service in operations and in the number of day cases that are being undertaken to erode the waiting lists that have accumulated as a consequence of Covid.

Of course, there are challenges with public finances. On almost every occasion since I took office in May, I have rehearsed to the Parliament in my answers to First Minister’s questions the challenges in respect of the public finances. Mr Sarwar has taken issue with the challenges that I have outlined in that respect.

However, let us look at the budget issues with which we are wrestling now. Yesterday in Parliament, we debated employers’ national insurance contributions where we find that, while the Labour Government is offering increases in funding that amount to 1 per cent in our budget—£400 million—once inflation is taken into account, we are, on the other hand, facing an increase in employers’ national insurance contributions of £600 million.

What we have, therefore, is a Labour Government in London giving with the one hand and taking away with the other. That is austerity by the back door, and that is what Labour is delivering to Scotland.

On the question of investment and reform in our criminal justice system, I will give Mr Sarwar some facts. We have increased investment in justice through a 10 per cent increase in the prison services resource budget for this year alone. In relation to community justice, which is another issue that Mr Sarwar raised, we expanded the investment in community justice this year by £14 million, to a total of £148 million, in order to further strengthen the alternatives to custody, which is exactly the direction of travel that Mr Sarwar is trying to suggest that we should pursue. In addition, we have increased the use of electronically monitored bail, which is one of the key issues in relation to remand. As a consequence of the reforms that we enacted in the Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Act 2024, we have been able to free up accommodation in HM Young Offenders Institution Polmont to accommodate more prisoners.

The Government is taking the action on reform that is required to address a situation that is affecting all jurisdictions, which is the post-Covid increase in the number of prisoners. Parliament has had discussions about the steps being taken, including approaches to the advice on the pursuit of remand, which the Lord Advocate set out to the Parliament. That is just one of a number of interventions that are being made to address the significant issue that Mr Sarwar raises with me.

I express my sympathies to everyone who has been affected by the loss of a loved one and to anyone who has been injured on our roads. The published finalised road casualty statistics for 2023 showed that the number of people killed on Scotland’s roads fell to 155. That is the fourth-lowest annual figure and the second-lowest figure recorded in a non-pandemic year.

However, the Cabinet Secretary for Transport has previously highlighted the significant road challenges that we face in 2024. Road safety remains a top priority for the Scottish Government, which is why we are investing £36 million this financial year in a broad range of initiatives that are aimed at improving driver behaviour and reducing road casualties.