Chamber and committees

The proposed upgrade of the roundabout was included for delivery as part of the Edinburgh and south-east Scotland city region deal, which was signed back in 2018. As the Deputy First Minister said, £120 million of funding was allocated to that. We are now halfway through the 15-year period of the deal, but we have still not seen any movement towards delivery of the project. Given the delays in progressing it, what are the estimated delivery costs of the upgrade now? Does the cabinet secretary believe that permission for that much-needed piece of infrastructure for my Lothian region will be granted before the end of the current parliamentary session?

I thank the cabinet secretary for providing advance sight of her statement. It is interesting that the statement was scheduled to take place today, after the publication of some shocking statistics that show that the number of teachers in Scotland has gone down by 621 and that one in three pupils are persistently absent from our schools.

The issue that I want to ask the cabinet secretary about today is literacy. Improving literacy levels in primary and secondary education must be our number 1 priority, and the national improvement framework must embed that if we want to improve literacy outcomes for all our children. We need to see improvements in that regard.

Will ministers take on board the calls to reintroduce the Scottish survey of literacy and numeracy? That would benchmark the ABC work that the cabinet secretary outlined in her statement, and it would enable us to know whether children are ready before primary and secondary school. We have seen reductions in literacy across Scotland, and we need to acknowledge that in order to move forward.

What proposed reforms will the Government seek to bring forward to support employers to develop part-time apprenticeship opportunities, especially given last year’s budget, in which the Scottish Government removed the flexible workforce development fund, which provided £7 million for employers to develop such pathways?

Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. My mic is working, which is good.

I pay tribute to Paul Sweeney for bringing the debate to the chamber. I also pay tribute to Marie Curie for the amazing work that it does in all our communities to support people who are at the end of life and for the research partnership that it has developed with Loughborough University. We know the stark figures that that work has presented. It suggests that, in my region, 20 per cent of working-age people with a terminal illness are dying in fuel poverty.

The statistics in the report are human beings—they are people who are dying. We need to remember that when we throw the statistics around in the chamber. However, we can do something about it. That is why I want to introduce a right to palliative care bill, which a number of members have mentioned.

I launched the consultation on my proposals back in March and received substantial feedback from many organisations and very much so from the hospice sector. The national health service, which was established some 76 years ago, and the founding principle of that service—providing care from the cradle to the grave—underpin the social fabric of our society. However, a number of members, including Fergus Ewing, have highlighted the unrecognised reality that palliative and end-of-life care are predominantly provided by the charitable sector. That is right in many cases, because it provides the quality of care and the wraparound care for family and friends that we want.

We do not have a legal right to palliative care; that does not currently exist. Under current contracts, GPs are obliged to support patients with generalist palliative care. However, far too many patients do not receive such care and do not have their needs met. As we all know, GP resources are completely overstretched. The integration of health and social care, which the Parliament passed legislation on, has not corrected that and has not delivered the change that we all want. Marie Curie’s dying in the margins research brings to light the financial hardship that many people from the most deprived communities in our country face, especially those who face terminal illness.

My proposed bill would establish a legal right to palliative care, but we also need to have conversations about wraparound support. Debates are progressing through Parliament on the national care service. The proposed human rights bill could have been an opportunity to take forward some such debates. The Housing (Scotland) Bill, which is before the Parliament, provides that opportunity, too. However, we need to look towards a better opportunity to solve some of those problems and find solutions that the Government, business and industry can be part of.

I mentioned business and industry. Later today, I will meet Alasdair Allan, the Acting Minister for Climate Action, alongside the fuel poverty campaigner Carolynne Hunter, to discuss progress on the development, along with industry, of a social tariff. The First Minister announced that the Scottish Government is looking to take that forward. I hope that it can be progressed UK-wide and that industry will be part of ensuring that that happens. We would all welcome that, because it is beyond time that a social tariff was developed, and it could present a solution for many individuals in our country.

In its briefing ahead of the debate, Marie Curie made a number of positive suggestions about how terminally ill people could be directly supported with their energy bills. The suggestions included extending eligibility for the winter heating payment to terminally ill people and reinvesting in the fuel insecurity fund. Together, the UK and Scottish Governments can take forward opportunities for us to find solutions that can turn the situation around.

No one should die in fuel poverty—no one in the chamber has raised any question about that—but we need to deliver workable solutions. Early intervention is one of the keys. Many people are not aware of the support that is available and do not seek it when they are at their lowest ebb and are dying. We need to ensure that our systems, especially our welfare systems, can work to change that.

What would the trigger be? If a teacher contacts you tomorrow to say—

Cabinet secretary, current history teachers who marked the exam said that they were “confused and demoralised” and that those who were in charge of assessments have “effectively destroyed the subject”, and your colleague Fergus Ewing has said that the process has been “fatally flawed”.

I note where we are today and what has been investigated. You have a power to regulate procedures in the SQA. You said that you are happy enough and that we need to move on, but do you not consider that the questions have not been answered, that a lot of people will not want to be markers any longer and that a lot of people will not have confidence in the next history exam? What is angering pupils and parents is the fact that people who are going to sit the next exam will not have confidence in it. Do we actually need a new, independent investigation to look at the issue, and not an internal process?

I take on board what you said about the Welsh being involved, but the report has not cleared things up. I am not sure whether you think that time will mean that things move on and people will just have to live with it, but does this not show that there is a problem at the heart of the SQA? Are you taking advice from your colleagues who are not happy with the process?

I am hearing mixed opinions about whether we are stuck in a vacuum until the legislation is sorted. The Government might decide that legislation to establish a national social work agency could be part of the Promise bill. However, I looked at the Government’s web page on that today, and there are just a couple of photos about what it will look like and what work will be done.

The national social work agency is what is meant to be driving change. It is meant to set standards and then monitor how councils take forward the work. Are you saying that we do not really need that agency and that that work has been happening, or has it not been happening?

I thank the witnesses for joining us this afternoon. Confidence and trust in the exam system really matters, and the internal investigation has not restored that trust—we all need to admit that. In fact, I think that it has undermined trust even more. We see it all online—that the SQA is marking its own homework and the investigation is a whitewash. How do you move on from that? I put that question to the cabinet secretary first.

You have answered a lot of the questions that I was going to ask about workforce planning and so on, but I want to return to some of the issues that Jackie Dunbar raised in her line of questioning. Ben, you touched on the principles of good transition. In your opinion, how much of the Promise—you might want to give a percentage—is now being delivered?

I ask that because, as Willie Rennie said in the previous evidence session, we met young people back in 2020 who thought that it was a really good piece of work. We are now halfway through the time and they are becoming cynical about what it means. I am concerned that lessons have not been learned. For example, we have heard from young people about the removal of compulsory supervision orders at 16 to manage casework, which is still happening today. There still seem to be bad decisions and a lack of advocacy in the system. In relation to the Promise and the transition, how much is, in reality, now being delivered on the ground?

Ben, as I mentioned you, I will bring you in first. I know that it is a difficult question, but it is an important one.

I will continue on the same theme. Back in 2003, Angela Constance, the minister at the time, told the Scottish Association of Social Work conference that the Government aimed to establish a national agency and that it would be operational by 2025. Fraser McKinlay, you have said that you think that systemic barriers are getting in the way of delivery. If we are being completely honest, halfway through delivering the Promise, the necessary scaffolding of the workforce is not there, is it?