Chamber and committees

Okay. That is fair enough.

I will ask one more question about transport. The report says that the commission thinks that there should be

“an overhaul of regional and local public transport provision and infrastructure”.

Did you go into any detail on that? What did you mean by that?

I read the section in the report that focuses on the rural parts of Scotland and how poorly served they are in many respects. The report mentions ferry services. Obviously, you have been out to an island. It cannot all be about money, can it? Do you have any thoughts about how we might restructure the transport system? That is a big question, of course.

Okay. I will leave it there.

I thank Labour for bringing the debate to the chamber. The only time that we get to hold the Government to account on health is during Opposition time. Even then, we know that we and Labour will lose the vote, because the SNP and the Greens will band together to defiantly say that we have somehow got this all wrong.

Humza Yousaf often talks about challenges and recovery from the pandemic while forgetting that, under the SNP, the NHS was creaking before the pandemic.

Of course, as we have already heard, the background to the debate is the leaked discussion among health chiefs at which various ideas were floated, including charging people who can afford to pay. We already have a two-tier health service under the SNP. Constituents who cannot even get to speak to a GP have contacted me to say that they have gone private. One case, in particular, stands out: it is of a person who ended up paying thousands to see a GP privately, then paid for a minor procedure. That is just not acceptable. Quite apart from the “Thinking the unthinkable” leaked discussion, we already have a health service in which people who can pay get health treatment and those who cannot, or will not, do not.

We are all proud of our national health service, but, under the SNP, it is becoming the national have-not service. That is the reality on the ground. What happens in general practice affects what happens elsewhere in the health service. If people cannot see a doctor, they might well end up at an A and E department instead, or get sicker and go to hospital when that could have been avoided.

We need to know what is happening on the ground. However, we currently have no idea which GP practices are offering phone calls, no calls or face-to-face appointments. That would not be acceptable at the best of times, because data is needed in order to plan, and it is certainly not acceptable now.

In my area of Lanarkshire, things are particularly bad.

I thank Monica Lennon for her intervention. She is absolutely right that NHS Lanarkshire is in a state of crisis, as it has been for too long. We need to see an action plan to get our area out of that completely unacceptable situation.

We have all been inundated with constituents who are desperate for help. I have a couple of personal testimonies. One is from an East Kilbride resident who said that they found themselves requiring support from a GP. They went to their medical practice and requested an appointment for a painful foot. They were told that there were no appointments available that day and that there were no pre-booked appointments available. That kind of thing is commonplace.

I have other examples, but I will not go through them because I am aware of the time. The situation that we face is not good enough—not just in Lanarkshire, but across Scotland. Frankly, the buck stops with the cabinet secretary and no one else. He should do something about it, or fall on his sword.

I am glad that the Minister for Transport recognises the value of car clubs, but they are a bit patchy across the country. Will she commit to doing an audit of all car clubs to see where they are and what their range is?

I will come to Helen Martin in a moment, but I just want to jump in here. You are right—you have produced reports, including a recent one on the construction industry, which I have just flicked through. It is very interesting, and it raises issues that many of us have heard many times before, but my concern is that although this might well be fascinating stuff, what is going to come of it? You have sat down with people in the construction industry and have produced a report, but how are we going to monitor change? Will the report lead to anything, and are you going to be the driver of change? If not, what is the point of it all?

It seems to me that it is a collaborative thing, and there is probably a role for the committee. You are here today, and we can work closely together in monitoring this stuff.

My next question is my final one, because I know that others want to come in. I think that it was Mary Alexander who mentioned that you receive some Government funding. How much is that?

Patricia Findlay, if you answer this, could you keep your answer a bit shorter, if that is okay? The question is for whoever wants to answer it.

I have been looking at the convention’s website, because I wanted a definition of what we mean by “fair work” which can mean different things to different people. The definition on your website is 76 pages long. That is quite a lot. How on earth are employers meant to take all that in?

Regardless of what Patricia Findlay just said, what has the fair work convention achieved so far? Have there been any tangible outcomes?

I do not know who wants to respond—maybe Mary Alexander or Helen Martin wants to come in.

Cabinet secretary, I am interested in what you are saying. Can you spell out some of the “numerous” other examples?