Chamber and committees

As someone with ADHD who takes medication on a daily basis, I have to take issue with some of the assertions in the statement. The minister stated that non-pharmacological support can also be helpful and that people may choose to take other forms of therapy. However, the reverse of that is also true. For many people like me, medication will make the biggest difference, but most importantly, how can we choose unless we have a diagnosis? We need that to be in place first.

The minister also misquotes the NICE guidance. Although it is true that the NICE guidance suggests that, for children, other forms of therapy should be pursued, it also states:

“If the behavioural and/or attention problems persist with at least moderate impairment, the child or young person should be referred to secondary care (that is, a child psychiatrist, paediatrician, or specialist ADHD CAMHS) for assessment.”

The minister must not partially quote the NICE guidance in that way. If CAMHS is not the right pathway for diagnosis, what is? When will that pathway be implemented and will it require co-occurring conditions? If it does, the only option will be to access diagnosis privately, which will cost thousands of pounds that many families cannot afford.

On a point of order, Presiding Officer, my app would not connect. I would have voted no.

As has already been mentioned, the fiscal sustainability delivery plan sets out that the devolved public sector workforce will fall by 0.5 per cent in each of the next five years. Given that the public sector workforce in Scotland consists of 469,000 people, I make it that that will involve a decrease of 2,300 a year, which will result in a cumulative reduction of 11,700 jobs.

Such stark action is perhaps unsurprising, given that the NHS head count has increased by just one third of that, and the numbers of police, fire, local government and college staff have all gone down over the past five years. Can the cabinet secretary confirm that we are looking at a reduction of more than 11,000 full-time equivalent posts? Will NHS and other front-line services be protected? Are those targets compatible with the policy of no compulsory redundancies?

The finance and local government line shows a £324 million underspend, which represents around 40 per cent of the total cash underspend in the statement. All members will be aware of how hard pressed local services are, the fact that there was a council tax freeze this year, and the requirement to find additional money for pay, especially for social care workers. Three hundred million pounds would have made a substantial contribution towards dealing with those issues, so why is there an underspend of such a substantial sum in that critical area, given the importance of local services?

I thank the Deputy First Minister for advance sight of her statement.

As a matter of record, last year, under those contracts, there were 252 bus awards, but only 44 went to Alexander Dennis. The figures that the Deputy First Minister quoted for Manchester are since 2022, whereas the figures that she quoted for Scotland are since 2020.

A cross-party group of MSPs met workers from Alexander Dennis. Two things are very clear from that meeting. First, the urgency of the matter is clear—if there is no action within weeks, jobs will be lost by August—and, secondly, we need orders on the book.

Will the Scottish Government undertake an urgent review of the Subsidy Control Act 2022? Based on advice from the Cabinet Office, I understand that variation can be made through a direct award in relation to social value and by disregarding non-treaty state suppliers such as China. The Scottish Government might want to consult mayoralties that have used those aspects.

What assessment has been made on overreliance on a single country of manufacture for bus supply, given that buses are critical transport infrastructure? What steps will be taken to use the Scottish Government’s convening power to convene bus operators, both private and public, in order to bring forward orders and facilitate the order book that the 400 Alexander Dennis workers so badly need?

Presiding Officer, I, too, apologise to you and members for my late arrival. I thank the minister more emphatically than usual for advance sight of his statement.

The one thing that we could not accuse the Government of is rushing into this. It is only 14 years since the Christie commission published its results. Although I welcome the overall sentiment, I fear that this is just a plan for a plan and the creation of another board. The minister said that we need an analysis of the key levers, but can he specify what they are?

Secondly, reform is, to my mind, not about shrinking the state; it is about maximising its effectiveness. We must not ignore the fact that, over the past decade, the civil service has grown at three times the rate of the NHS, while police, fire and college head counts have all fallen. What will address that and make sure that we focus investment on the front line?

Thirdly, the minister again mentioned root causes. That is an acknowledgement that we have £1 billion-worth of waste. How did that happen and what will prevent it in the future?

With that, we find out that the Conservatives have learned precisely nothing.

Let us look at public service reform. Frankly, I think that Willie Rennie was absolutely right to say that public service reform should be routine—it should be boring, measured and continual. The problem is that the Scottish Government has postponed it for 18 years. However, the Conservatives have made a critical mistake, because such reform is not about shrinking the state but about looking at where head-count increases should occur. The reality is that, over the past decade, civil service head count has increased by 71 per cent—that is three times the rate of head-count increase in the NHS and 10 times that of local government—while police head count has fallen by 6 per cent and that of further education by 10 per cent.

Will the cabinet secretary give way?

Does the member agree that the view that we should seek to defend our country should be a patriotic view, regardless of our view on the constitution? Our view on defending our people and country should be regardless of our view on what Scotland should do.

I welcome the statement that the Deputy First Minister made at the beginning of her speech underlining the importance of the defence sector. It is not the first time that she has made such a statement in the chamber, but—let us be plain—the statements that she and the First Minister have made in recent months are a change in position, and pretending otherwise is, frankly, just not being straightforward. I say that because I fear that some of the distinctions that the SNP draws in its amendment mean that it is still making some of the same mistakes. The distinction between munitions and other types of defence spending is a false one. It is also incorrect, at a time of acute and heightened global and geopolitical risk, to say that we should be divesting and diversifying away from defence industries and expenditure.

Let me explain why I think that both those points are wrong. Since the start of the Ukraine conflict—or the most recent phase of it, I should say—950,000 Russians have been wounded or have died, according to the most recent available figures. In response to that threat, the UK has afforded £12.8 billion of support. That has included tanks and air defence, including the development of the Gravehawk system, which has been carried out in conjunction with Denmark. We have provided long-range missiles and 30,000 drones and have trained 51,000 Ukrainian servicepeople.

The point is that that support has not just been systems, tanks or equipment—it has included munitions. In fact, it has depleted our stocks. Support of Ukraine and, presumably, defence of this country will require the manufacturing of munitions to take place. To make that distinction is, therefore, to make a very false and, in fact, dangerous distinction.