Chamber and committees

I bid the cabinet secretary and her officials good morning. After what we have heard this morning, I feel that I should first declare that I am not a councillor.

It is now a decade since the Government accepted the Christie commission’s recommendations on a shift towards prevention. Notwithstanding Covid, can you give us some examples of where that shift has happened in practice?

Is it fair to say that there is a disconnect between the workforce that we need in local government and what our university and college sector is producing? I was struck by the comments that Ms Calder made on the 100 planners who are qualifying for both the public sector and the private sector in Scotland, with 35 per cent of the workforce being over 50. Is that something that you have considered with regard to what we will need in the future? It seems that, in the NHS, too, we have not got that national workforce planning right, even though we know that people are heading towards retirement.

I know that we have crammed a lot in this morning, but I want to ask a question about what is probably turning out to be the Government’s flagship policy: the national care service. When the consultation was published, COSLA’s president, Alison Evison, described it as “an attack on localism”. I know that there are concerns about what it will mean for local authorities’ budgets, with potentially 40 per cent of their budgets taken out of their control. What is your view on that? Are those concerns well founded? Will you ensure that local government is defended so that more is not taken off its budgets?

The SNP-Green co-operation agreement includes a point about council tax reform. What is your thinking around that? How might that affect the work of this committee? Will council tax reform be brought forward in this parliamentary session?

Thank you, convener. What is the commission’s understanding of the local governance review and how it is progressing? What are your views on the fiscal framework that will be developed between the Scottish Government and local government, and on how it will work?

One of the most pressing issues at the moment is pay settlements in local government. Going back to some of the questions about ring fencing that you have faced this morning, I would like to ask what the Scottish Government’s position is on that. When it comes to the £188 million bill for that, in the agreement that has been put forward, the Scottish Government has provided £94 million of non-ring fenced funding for councils. Do you accept that that will mean that councils will have to make cuts or eat into their reserves?

My question relates to unsuitable accommodation orders. Charities such as Shelter Scotland and Crisis hear from people day in, day out about the poor conditions that they face in temporary accommodation such as bed and breakfasts and hotels. Problems range from a lack of space or basic cooking and cleaning facilities to intimidation by staff and arbitrary curfews that limit people’s opportunities to work and live normal lives. Is the Scottish Government planning to delay the full implementation of the Homeless Persons (Unsuitable Accommodation) (Scotland) Amendment (Coronavirus) Order 2020, which will leave more families living in hotel rooms?

It is, indeed, a deeply concerning statement. I will ask about two points. When were the Scottish ministers first made aware of this serious adverse event? Given that this is not the first time, sadly, that we have heard of errors in the cervical screening programme—last year, NHS National Services Scotland had to apologise for a two-month delay to screening invitation letters for around 1,500 patients due to what it referred to as a technical fault—and given the pressures that the NHS is currently under, how are ministers working to reassure women that the screening programme is fit for purpose? Will the minister look at undertaking a review of the programme?

Throughout the pandemic, I have been engaging with the soft play sector, and the quotes that I am reading out are specifically from that sector. Soft play operators have said that they need to see support from the Government. They need access to the data, too. They are desperately seeking that action from ministers, as they have throughout the pandemic. Before the protest outside Parliament, one soft play operator wrote to me saying:

“Unfortunately, our numbers have considerably diminished from our first time of protesting in September 2020, this is mainly due to the number of our peers whose businesses have been destroyed by the Scottish Government’s experiment on our industry, and others whose mental health has had such a battering that they freely admit to having been crushed and left with no fight or strength to face the Scottish Government.”

The Scottish Government is a minority Government but, by railroading the bill through Parliament, ministers have acted this week as though they have a majority.

The economic pain from the pandemic is still to be truly realised, and it is increasingly concerning that the decisions of the First Minister and SNP ministers could lead to further economic pain and job losses in Scotland. Perhaps after the summer recess, we will see an SNP-Green coalition announced, although, from what I read in today’s newspaper, I am not sure whether the Deputy First Minister is part of the SNP’s right wing that the Green members seem so concerned about working with.

Scottish Conservatives have tried to engage constructively with ministers throughout the process to see whether the Scottish Government and Deputy First Minister would see the errors of their ways. Perhaps after this afternoon, the Deputy First Minister might wish that he had listened. As he said earlier this week,

“you can take a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink.”—[Official Report, 22 June 2021; c 14.]

Scottish Conservatives will oppose the bill at decision time.

I am not sure which meeting the member is talking about. For the past—[Interruption.]