Chamber and committees

There has been a very welcome and sudden U-turn from the Scottish Government in response to the court case that was decided on Friday about the presence of transgender male prisoners in the female prison estate. Although that was welcome, it was shocking that the Scottish Prison Service seemed to indicate initially that it would not be complying with the law and would continue to allow male-bodied prisoners in female prisons, putting females at risk.

I welcome the U-turn, but can the First Minister tell us how much taxpayer money has been spent on defending the indefensible with regard to this issue? Will he now finally agree to meet For Women Scotland to hear its concerns on behalf of vulnerable women?

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will reconsider its plan to reorganise neonatal care across Scotland, in light of reports that it could result in the downgrading of essential units, including the service at Ninewells hospital. (S7O-00081)

Last week, I received correspondence from Lauren Bruce, a mum from Blairgowrie, whose daughter, Grace, suffered a rare stroke shortly after birth at Ninewells hospital. Her concern is that, under the current plan to downgrade the neonatal intensive care unit there, a baby with that condition would be moved two hours away from their family—a journey that Lauren fears that her daughter would not have survived.

This week, Lauren wrote to the First Minister, saying:

“What concerns me most is the number of parents who have shared their stories, pleading with you and the Scottish Government to withdraw this proposal. Families have laid bare some of the most frightening, personal and traumatic moments of their lives in the hope that their voices will finally be heard. Yet there is a growing fear that these experiences will simply be acknowledged and ignored.”

What assurance can the minister give to my constituent that her concern will not be realised?

There was a suspicion that that was because those organisations did not want to bite the hand that feeds them.

There are many more points that I would make, Presiding Officer, but my time is up.

I move amendment S7M-00356.4, to leave out from “a Third Sector Partnership” to end and insert:

“Scotland’s third sector requires sustainable, long-term funding settlements, including greater use of multi-year funding arrangements, to provide the certainty needed to plan services, retain staff and support communities, and calls on the Scottish Government to undertake a review of organisations registered as charities that are substantially dependent on public funding and whose primary activities include lobbying or campaigning, to ensure transparency, accountability and public confidence in the use of taxpayers’ money.”

16:16

I welcome the debate and I pay tribute, as others across the parties have done, to all who work in the third sector. It is a reality that, without the third sector and its organisations, Scottish society and our economy would be much poorer. Indeed, across many parts of the public sector—particularly in areas such as health, social care or education—were it not for the contribution of third sector organisations, the Government would not be able to deliver many of its policy objectives.

I could namecheck many organisations, but I will restrict myself to one, because I visited it very recently: the Strathmore Centre for Youth Development in Blairgowrie—SCYD—which does so much good work for youngsters who need support. It celebrated its 25th birthday just last month, and I had the privilege of attending to see, once again, the excellent work that it does.

As has already been said in the debate, the third sector is full of individuals who are working hard with very limited resources. Many organisations depend on volunteers, whom we should salute for giving up their spare time to help others. That is a contribution of incalculable benefit to the Scottish economy.

However, the reality is that the third sector is in crisis, as anyone who engages with it will testify. According to Third Force News, 81 per cent of charities and voluntary organisations face financial challenges, while the Scottish third sector tracker has found that charities face a triple threat of rising demand, falling income and rising costs. In the meantime, the Scottish National Party Government has cut third sector funding in real terms. The amount of cash has fallen by £177 million in real terms—5 per cent of the total—between 2021 and 2023.

Today, the cabinet secretary has talked about a new third sector partnership agreement, and we look forward to hearing more about the detail of that, as will those in the sector. There is certainly a case for a reset and a new approach in respect of a number of different issues.

First, I will address the question of funding. The overall quantum of funding is important, but it is only part of the story. The number 1 issue that we hear from organisations—we have heard it already in this debate—is the issue of security of multiyear funding. Over the years, I have met too many bodies that complain of a hand-to-mouth existence and rely on year-to-year financial settlements. I can quote examples of organisations that are already well into the new financial year before they even know how much cash they will get in funding. That makes life extremely difficult for managers, those who organise financial projections and staff who are working without any ongoing job security. That means that those organisations regularly have to issue redundancy notices. Inevitably, that leads to experienced and valuable staff looking for jobs elsewhere, to try to get job security, while they await decisions from the Government, local authorities or other public agencies.

I heard with great interest what the cabinet secretary has had to say today about multiyear funding. However, we have been hearing that for more than a decade, and it has not been delivered. The SNP had a previous commitment to deliver fairer funding by 2026—by this year—but, so far, all we have seen is a pilot scheme worth £130 million over two years. That is the biggest single change that would make a real difference to the sector. Holly Bruce made an important point about the amount of money that the sector would save if that multiyear funding was put in place, because the sector would not have the administrative cost of issuing redundancy notices and potentially losing staff as a result.

In her response to my earlier intervention, the cabinet secretary said that the Scottish Government does not get multiyear funding from the UK Government. Undoubtedly, that is usually the case, but we know the Scottish Government’s budget—we know, overwhelmingly, what the value of it will be—and, although there are in-year revisions, inevitably those in-year revisions put the budget up, not down, so I think that there is much more flexibility in relation to the solutions that the Government could find.

We also need to ensure that third sector groups that are in receipt of Government funds do not then feel bound to support Government policy—a point that is referenced in the Liberal Democrat amendment. I am sure that members will recall when my former colleague Douglas Ross introduced the Right to Recovery (Scotland) Bill, which was supported by many working in the drug and alcohol sector. However, some leading organisations that were heavily dependent on Scottish Government funding came out and opposed the bill.

The cabinet secretary will know that multiyear funding is the third sector’s number 1 ask. Although she is technically correct in saying that the Scottish Government does not receive multiyear funding from Westminster through the block grant, we can predict 95 per cent or more of the quantum from year to year, so surely there is more scope to give the third sector greater clarity through multiyear funding.

I will happily give way again if I get the time back.

[Made a request to intervene.]

We will come on to waste in a moment—I have some suggestions to make in that regard—but I refer Mr McKee to today’s Accounts Commission report on local government, which highlights the scale of the cuts that the Scottish Government has passed down to councils over the 19 years that it has been in power. I hope that that is not a model that the Government intends to follow.

Looking at this whole agenda, we cannot ignore the fact that the SNP has now been in power for almost two decades, so it has had 19 years to start addressing the issue. As my colleague Meghan Gallacher reminded members just a few moments ago, the Christie commission reported on it in 2011. Fifteen years on, we are still hearing about the need to make progress on the same themes of prevention, joined-up services and efficiency, but little progress has been made. The Government can talk a good game, but it needs to start actually delivering.

The SNP has promised before now to shrink the state, but instead it has grown bigger and more expensive. In June 2025, the then finance secretary, Shona Robison, set a target to reduce the public sector workforce by 0.5 per cent a year, but, by the fourth quarter of 2025, the head count, at 601,600, was higher than it had been in the previous year. She had already pledged to reduce the public sector workforce in 2023, but it has continuously increased. The devolved civil service alone has grown by almost 60 per cent since just 2018-19.

What should the Scottish Government do? In the spirit of being helpful, let me give the cabinet secretary some practical suggestions as to the way forward. First—and this is in line with the comments made by Michael Marra and other members—there needs to be a comprehensive assessment of the number of public bodies in Scotland and whether there is any duplication or room for rationalisation. Even the Information Commissioner has said that he is astonished at the number of public bodies in Scotland and that he keeps finding new ones that he did not know about. Whatever the value of their work, each one of those independent bodies needs to have its own board, chief executive, finance director, human resources functions, audit and reporting. When we produced our manifesto just a few weeks ago, we identified that, in the field of economy alone, there were more than 100 different organisations offering business advice. Therefore, we need a simplification and rationalisation of the landscape, and considerable savings could be made if we went down that route.

Secondly, the Scottish Government needs to reconsider its policy on no compulsory redundancies, because relying solely on voluntary severance means that the public sector could be left employing people whose jobs have effectively disappeared and cannot be redeployed elsewhere into valuable roles.

Thirdly, we need to look at the whole public sector estate and assess whether there can be much better sharing of resources. We want to see more public servants back in the office, working on a hybrid model, rather than the default being just working from home. However, even with that, we have substantial buildings sitting underutilised, and we could see significant rationalisation and cost saving through sharing. That sharing should not just be done at a Scottish Government level—it could also be done with local authorities or, indeed, UK Government bodies and agencies. We could start with international offices, for example.

Perhaps the cabinet secretary could respond to that point in his winding-up speech. I will cover a couple of other points quickly.

Fourthly, we need to focus on front-line services. Do we really need an army of diversity, equality and inclusion managers in every organisation?

Fifthly, we need to end the practice of funding supposed arm’s-length charities through Government. These so-called charities depend almost entirely on Government funding for support and they use that money to lobby the Government for policy change. I am thinking of the Equality Network as a very good example. If people want to lobby the Government, they should do it with their own money, not at taxpayers’ expense.

Presiding Officer, we want to see—