Chamber and committees

We move to petition PE2078, which was lodged by Ryan McNaughton and calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to create a new body to be responsible for the inspection, assessment and licensing of private ambulance service providers, or to encompass the clinical governance management of service companies in Scotland into Healthcare Improvement Scotland. We last considered the petition at our meeting on 1 May 2024, when we agreed to write to the Cabinet Secretary for NHS Recovery, Health and Social Care.

Members will recall that we heard that, although the Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act 2010 covers independent ambulance services, Healthcare Improvement Scotland confirmed that regulation of those services had not yet commenced, which means that HIS is unable to undertake any regulatory activity in relation to them. The Scottish Government’s initial response to the petition stated that it would prioritise the commencement of HIS’s functions in relation to the regulation of independent ambulance service provision.

In his written submission to the committee, the cabinet secretary recognises that, although private ambulance services must comply with Health and Safety Executive responsibilities, the broader regulatory framework does not currently offer adequate assurance. The cabinet secretary states that officials are engaging with HIS on regulation of independent ambulances and that the next steps include stakeholder engagement and a public consultation, but he is unable to confirm a timeline for when provisions will be in place.

Do colleagues have any suggestions about how we might proceed?

To be clear, what will that do?

Am I correct to say that, in support of the Government’s view that separate legislation is not needed, the initiative is designed to illustrate how individuals would navigate the current process, which the Government believes ought to be satisfactory to meet the issue of dismissal?

It was a Conservative Government that transferred taxation powers to this Parliament, which is now able to diverge from the rest of the United Kingdom in the tax policies that it implements. Is the member completely oblivious to that?

The Deputy First Minister’s point might be more effective if the Government paid attention to divisions in this Parliament when it loses a vote. Instead, it carries on regardless and completely ignores the fact that it does not have the support of Parliament for the actions that it is taking.

I am coming to the end of my speech, and I want to be constructive, in as much as I can be. In response to Kate Forbes’s question to the Labour Party, Neil Bibby replied that it takes two to tango. Well, I think that Labour is well and truly Tangoed, frankly, in respect of the position that it took. Why did it make the commitment that it did? It is because fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

How do we hope to proceed in the next session of Parliament? Given that this session has had the Calman and Smith commissions, which, as far as I am concerned, resulted in an extension of powers—the Parliament simply did not have those powers in 2007—I say to the Presiding Officer and party leaders that in the next session, Parliament needs to think very carefully. The more mature we have become in age, the less mature we have become in performance in this Parliament. It is a watershed: the galleries are empty at First Minister’s questions and the ratings for Scottish Parliament television have absolutely collapsed. The public are falling out of love with this institution because it is not delivering. In the next session of Parliament, we will have to work collectively to pull together in a way that actually delivers for Scotland, and not just have rhetorical, empty debate.

Will the member take an intervention?

It is, I suppose, always a pleasure to follow George Adam. He said that the UK Government seeks to protect the British state, and I might observe that that is, in fact, what the people of Scotland voted for in 2014.

This debate is something of a pretty kettle of fish. When Kate Forbes stood to speak, I was reflecting that, when I first came to the Parliament, Ms Forbes was 17, had just left school and was off to the University of Cambridge. Of course, she has been the repository of a great deal of hope among many that she will bring a more enlightened view to the Parliament.

Angus Robertson and I were both fiery redheads in those days. He now has a slightly depressing grey look, but I have maintained a slightly strawberry blonde colour. Notwithstanding that, at that time, he was at Westminster, aggressively campaigning for a referendum on Europe, as I recall.

However, neither Kate Forbes nor Angus Robertson was here in what was, I think, the SNP’s best parliamentary session—the one from 2007 to 2011. I will characterise why I think that, why things went wrong after that and why I think the focus of this debate is so wrong.

In those days, the business manager, Bruce Crawford, and the late Brian Adam—for whom many of us had a great deal of affection and respect—worked the corridors of this Parliament and engaged with all the other parties, because the Government was a minority Government. That Government recognised that the chamber is shaped like a horseshoe—there is not a divide as there is in Westminster—and it understood that, in order to deliver policy, it required to achieve agreement across the parties. The 2007 to 2011 parliamentary session was all the more effective for that.

Alex Salmond, the First Minister, Jim Mather, the business secretary, and John Swinney, the finance secretary, all engaged with other parties to achieve policies, some of which are still the longest-lasting and best-remembered policy achievements. When SNP members list their achievements, they are often the achievements of that first Administration.

That is a fair point, and let me address it. What has changed? I think that, since then, in effect, the electoral system—which is what sends us all here—has not produced the same proportionality in the Parliament that encouraged engagement and agreement between the parties in order to achieve policy. The system has produced a Parliament that has allowed one party to be much more dogmatic and definitive in the way in which it has progressed legislation, without having a record of achievement.

Unarguably, all our public services are now in a position of which none of us can be proud, because they are less effective and less successful than they were back at that time. When the Parliament passed my colleague Margaret Mitchell’s no-fault public apologies bill, I do not think that we thought that it would be the Scottish Government that took the greatest advantage of it. How many times do ministers stand up and apologise but then say, “It’s nae my fault”?

Next, we have the “Let’s thank our public services but actually do nothing to improve them” bill. Our public services are fed up with being thanked without there being policy changes to improve those services. That is our central failure.

I will in a second.

I looked at waiting times this week. In 2011, when there was a majority Government, a total of 784 people waited more than 12 hours in emergency departments. By last year, that number had risen to 76,346. Who in the Parliament can be proud of our collective achievement if that is the end result? What is the Deputy First Minister’s response? She has fallen into the habit of every one of her predecessors of saying that the real threat is that the Tories or those at Westminster are set to privatise the NHS in Scotland. For goodness’ sake—is that really the level of our debate? How much more effective would things be if the parties in this Parliament operated more effectively, as we did during the first SNP-led Administration, and sought to find a workable and collective solution to the problems in Scotland’s NHS, rather than using childish and simplistic slogans?

I welcome the First Minister’s participation in tonight’s event, which I will co-host with my Labour colleague Paul O’Kane.

I commend the First Minister and the Scottish Government on their work to ensure that Holocaust education schemes across Scotland are second to none in comparison with those available in the rest of the United Kingdom. It is a real tribute to the efforts of the Scottish Parliament, and the various Governments that have presided within it, that Holocaust education in Scotland is as remarkable as it is. If this year’s theme is “For a Better Future”, we must surely realise that that future depends not on us but on the generation that follows. Fundamentally, such education programmes are critical to the understanding of the next generation. Will the First Minister commit to ensuring that the funding of such programmes continues in perpetuity?