Chamber and committees

I am not quite sure why Mr Sarwar is so agitated about this—maybe he has something to be worried about. The fair and substantial point that my friend and colleague Clare Adamson made should be heeded.

We are exploring issues on the quality of the data that we could publish. I say to Carole Mochan that I will take her question away and determine what information can be published. She will understand that I am explaining the problem. I do not have a solution to it today, because of the clinical priority that has been attached to treating cancer. I am very happy for us to be open about the challenges that we face, but we must do so on the basis of good-quality information. I will do what I can to address the point that she puts to me.

I recognise the importance of access to GP services. The Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care will be engaging on questions about improvements that can be delivered to the capital estate. I am sure that he will be happy to engage with Dr Gulhane on that question and ensure that the issues that he has put to me can be factored into the Government’s capital planning.

The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service continues to deliver a high standard of service in order to meet its commitment to keep people in Scotland safe.

In this financial year, there was an overall increase of £29.3 million to SFRS’s budget, which is a substantial increase. The budget is now £79 million higher than it was in 2017-18. I do not agree with Maggie Chapman’s characterisation of the service. It has attracted investment, and it continues to perform well and to deliver safety and security to the population.

Where I do agree with Maggie Chapman is in relation to the pressure on public finances, which comes from the austerity agenda. I hope that the austerity agenda will come to an end, because, as the member knows, we have to live within the resources that are available to us. However, we should have confidence in a fire service that has more firefighters per head of population than any other in the United Kingdom, and that is well supported by the Government’s financial commitments.

If we were to follow the logic of what Mr Findlay said in his question to me and the Conservative position that he articulated from 2015, it would result in a much higher prison population than we have today: it would result in prisoners serving longer than is the case, and we would have an even more congested and, I would say, unsafe prison estate.

We must take the appropriate measures to ensure the sustainability of our prison system. The reality that we face in the prison system today is not one that we are alone in facing, because it has been faced in other parts of the United Kingdom. Significant action was taken by Mr Findlay’s colleagues in Government before the general election—and has been taken by the new Labour Government after the general election—to address the fact that there is significant pressure on prison populations throughout the United Kingdom.

We will take a responsible approach, which will be subject to parliamentary scrutiny, and we will always take into account the perspectives and views of victims and address the concerns that they legitimately have about these difficult issues.

We welcome the new legal framework, which will ensure that tipping practices are fair, transparent and for the benefit of hospitality, leisure and service workers, who do a great job, every day, in serving our communities across Scotland. The legislation is a step in the right direction for improving pay and conditions for workers.

The Scottish Government is committed to fair work as a key driver for achieving sustainable and inclusive economic growth and a wellbeing economy. Through our fair work first policy, we are using the Scottish Government’s financial powers to drive fair work practice and enable Scotland to be a fair work nation by 2025. We will continue to work in partnership with business to ensure that the measures enhance those important economic sectors.

I am acutely aware that there are patients who have waited too long for reconstructive breast surgery. I sincerely apologise to them for that. Reconstructive surgeries are generally highly specialised and can be performed only in certain specialist centres across Scotland, which are currently concentrating their efforts on treating patients with trauma or active cancers. Regrettably, that means that some patients are waiting longer for reconstruction.

As part of this year’s £30 million additional investment to address backlogs, we have allocated funding to several health boards to treat patients who are awaiting risk-reducing mastectomy and immediate reconstruction. Building on that work, officials are now engaging with health boards to develop and progress the plan for patients with delayed reconstruction.

That is patently untrue. Over the past decade, the average length of prison sentences has increased by 32 per cent. That statistic alone demonstrates that Russell Findlay is putting complete nonsense to me at First Minister’s question time. Ninety-eight per cent of all those who were convicted of rape and attempted rape between 2019 and 2022 received a custodial sentence. That is another fact that refutes what Russell Findlay has put to me today.

We have an obligation to ensure that we run a stable and safe prison system. Given the level of the prison population that we have just now, it is a challenge for ministers to fulfil our obligations in that respect, so ministers must act. The Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs will give full and transparent information to Parliament in her statement this afternoon, and the Government will take the steps that have to be taken, but it will require the consent of Parliament to do so.

I acknowledge the challenges that Mr Sarwar puts to me. He knows from our exchanges in previous weeks that the issue of delayed discharge occupies a significant proportion of my time and the attention of the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care, because it is at too high a level and is too high for the start of winter. I am deeply concerned about that issue.

We are working with individual partnerships to reduce the level of delayed discharge in different parts of the country. There is significant variation around the country: some parts of the country have very low numbers of patients who are in hospital but who could be in other care settings or at home, whereas those numbers are too high in other parts of the country.

I assure Mr Sarwar that deep and intense work is going on with individual partnerships to reduce levels of delayed discharge and to ensure that the objective that he puts to me, which is one that I want to deliver, can be achieved as we approach winter.

Michelle Thomson puts a very fair point to me. We have had 14 years of the austerity experiment, and it has been a complete disaster. Our public services are under acute pressure and productivity in the economy has not strengthened because we have not had the sustained investment that is required.

The Scottish Government’s capital budget is facing a cut of about 9 per cent, and we are experiencing increases in costs because of multiple factors with construction cost inflation, which in some circumstances exceeds 35 per cent of costs. Those are the realities and they require investment in our economy.

In light of the question from Michelle Thomson, I would appeal to the United Kingdom Government to use the budget on 30 October to end austerity and to start investing in the economy. That is what we need in order to fuel growth. Austerity has failed, and Labour will fail Scotland if it does not end austerity.