To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on its commitment to deliver superfast broadband to 100 per cent of premises by 2021. (S6O-02076)

Yes, I asked exactly the same question as last time, and that is exactly the same insulting answer that I got last time. R100 has not been delivered, and the minister fine well knows that. My home still does not have superfast broadband, despite numerous attempts to get it. Thousands of other homes across the country do not have it either, and many of them are not going to get it until 2028. That is seven years late.

The First Minister said that he wants to reach across the chamber and bring transparency to Government. Rather than read out the official answer, will the minister tell me exactly what he really thinks?

The minister said that no final decision has been made about future funding, which is a little bit more positive, but it leaves those staff in limbo. I hope that the minister will act with a little bit more haste and make a quicker decision on that, because the mental health counsellors have provided an invaluable service for vulnerable students across the college and university sector. How much longer will they have to wait?

I am sure that everybody will get a bit teary this afternoon because this is John Swinney’s last speech as Deputy First Minister. Could I entice him to give his views on the various candidates for his party’s leadership and their contribution on the issue of taxation? I have seen a variety of views, and I am sure that the candidates will be keen to hear the Deputy First Minister’s advice about what future taxation policy should be.

I commend the member for his glorious attempt to build consensus across the chamber this afternoon. He is talking about education. I am a strong believer in early years education and the opportunity that that provides to turn young people’s lives around and give them a good foundation. What more could the two Governments—the UK Government and the Scottish Government—do to try to make that more of a reality today?

—about whether we have the right approach to all that.

I commend John Swinney for his contribution to Parliament, and I wish him well for the future.

There is probably not sufficient time this afternoon for me to pay full tribute to John Swinney and list all his achievements in office, so I am not going to do that. Nor is there time for me to list his catastrophic failures, and I am not going to do that either, for fear that he might list my catastrophic failures during my time in office.

I have been jealous of John Swinney in his time as a minister, because he is so effective at his job; I regard him as the Government’s sweeper. I do not know how many interviews I have heard on Radio Scotland where I have been none the wiser about the Government’s position at the end of the interview than I was at the start. [Laughter.]

That is a tribute, because sometimes it was better that people did not know the Government’s actual position.

John Swinney has been generous and kind, but equally he could be utterly savage to those who got out of step. He has been confident, but never arrogant. We should all recognise the talent that John Swinney is, and the contribution that he has made to this Parliament over such a long period of time. I think that those on the Government benches will miss him, and I know that the whole Parliament will miss him. I wish him well in whatever comes next.

However, he could not resist putting a little sting in the tail of his motion this afternoon by injecting a reference to independence. Although he did not talk about it an awful lot in his opening contribution, I am sure that he will make up for it in his closing speech.

For me, the debate has highlighted one of the challenges that this Government has faced. Throughout its term in office, it has been attracted to things such as the wellbeing monitor and the wellbeing economy. It attaches itself to wider movements. Some people might say that that is done only to advance the cause of independence, but there seems to be an attraction to process issues, theories and beliefs, if I can put it that way, rather than a focus on delivery.

In Government, it is important that we deliver, and the reason why I am attracted to the whole wellbeing movement is because it is important. In some ways, it is a bit of a frustrating debate because, of course, both are necessary. We need economic strength, good GDP and excellent productivity, but in order for people to have a good life and be happy, well and fit to go to work, we need a fantastic foundation. Therefore, they go together. It is not one or the other—it is not a chicken-and-egg situation. The reality is that we need both.

We have also seen—it has probably been a more common feature of the past couple of decades—that people’s quality of life and their local environment are also really important, which is why Scotland has been attractive to many people who have perhaps come to our universities but also come to enjoy our fantastic environment and our great heritage. All that is in one mixed bag, so it is important not to get fixated on one half of the argument or the other.

However, I get a bit frustrated with the wellbeing monitor aspect, because the judgments on whether some of the measures have been met in the latest report from December are really quite subjective. There is a big debate about whether we are closing the poverty-related attainment gap. If we look at one part of the school population, we can see that we are certainly not doing that, because the gap is just as wide as it has ever been. In other parts, perhaps the gap is closing a little bit, and the situation for school leavers might be slightly better than it was. However, to claim that, as the sum of all that, we are making improvements is a bit challenging.

Equally, the share of GDP investment is classed as being at the maintenance or middle level in performance terms, but it has actually fallen since 2017, so I am not sure how that could be described as a steady state. My point is that you could make an argument on both sides as to whether or not things have improved, but that lends strength to the argument that we need some kind of independent assessment of those measures.

Of course, there is debate about GDP and productivity, why that has fallen and whether it is the fault of Westminster or the Scottish Parliament or whether it is because of other factors. There will always be debate around those issues, but we need an independent element to make a judgment to give us more robustness and confidence that these measures accurately reflect our progress on these areas. However, it is not one of the other—it is both.

The work that the Carnegie Trust has done has helped the debate. Many other organisations have also latched on to it. It is important that we have good measures, because, if we do not measure it often, it does not count.

I want to mention, briefly, the immigration debate. I think that, through the Brexit process, we will probably learn the real value of having an open society that attracts people from across the globe to come here to live and work and to contribute to our public services and our strong economy. Perhaps being deprived of many of those people through the Brexit process will shift public opinion to being a little more in favour of a more open immigration policy—something that I would strongly welcome.

However, there is no doubt that the Scottish economy is in trouble partly because we have not been able to attract enough people. Stephen Kerr makes a not unreasonable point that reasonable numbers of people have been coming into the UK as a whole but that Scotland has not attracted a disproportionate number of those or even perhaps our population share. That must force us to ask questions—

No—I am sorry.

Those apprenticeships are not available in all schools, and only pitifully small numbers of pupils take up those options in schools.

Not just now—I will come back to Mr Ewing in a second.

The construction industry reckons that we require an extra 19,550 workers. The industry recognises that 22,500 people will have to be trained and given new roles in order to meet our net zero obligations. That is an enormous number, but so few are taking up those opportunities in schools.

We would think that there is nothing wrong with Scottish education with how the cabinet secretary has started her contribution. To take one example, does she not reflect on the massive shortage of science, technology, engineering and mathematics teachers, which feeds right into vocational education and training? Does she not recognise that that is a real problem in our education system?