Chamber and committees

Does Mr Harvie accept that the proposal has been costed by his civil servants? I have been in a meeting where they took me through the numbers. Will he support the amendment? I am not asking him to be as ambitious as to support implementing £15 an hour for care workers but to support a plan for implementing it. Will he vote for it?

One of my concerns is that people may look at the increase in vacancies and think that there are no issues with unemployment. Does the cabinet secretary acknowledge that it is possible to have both increasing unemployment and increasing vacancies, because there is not an efficient interaction between those two factors?

In 2016, within weeks of the election, the newly appointed education secretary published a plan for education that set out a number of detailed milestones backed by detailed analysis of where we needed to improve our schools. Five years on, we have that minister now in charge of Covid recovery, a job in every way more important, urgent and profound, but the plan took months to publish and, in my view and that of other Labour members, it is less specific and, in some ways, less ambitious. As Mr Fraser pointed out, many of the initiatives in the plan are simply repeats from not just the election but before the election.

I profoundly believe that Mr Swinney is a serious politician and that the mission that he has been charged with is a serious one, but I believe that by his own yardstick, the plan is not ambitious enough and nor does it contain the detail that the recovery requires. Further, I do not believe that we have recovery plans of sufficient detail within portfolio areas. So far, we have had an education recovery plan that seems to commit to little more than glacial implementation of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development report and a health recovery plan that is already in tatters.

We need a recovery plan that reflects the time that the recovery will take, the ambition required and the complexity of the potentially permanent impact that Covid has wrought in Scotland. That is what, fundamentally, our amendment proposes. Like the Conservatives, we do not fundamentally disagree with the Covid recovery strategy as set out, but it does not go far enough. It does not have the concrete milestones or the concrete analysis that is required if we are to recover from the consequences of the pandemic. Without those specific targeted actions being set out, the Government motion is largely meaningless.

Even by the standards of our own Government, the plan does not go far enough. It contains the same level of ambition as the one set out for education in the previous session of Parliament. The budget is coming up in a matter of weeks and we will have consideration of the processes around the fiscal framework. I am happy to have the debates on those issues, but there is scope within the envelope of the Scottish Government to go further. Funds were announced in the budget just yesterday that have yet to be allocated. There is sufficient scope to go much further and be much more ambitious than the plan set out by the Government.

I will set out three elements whereby Labour would seek to go further. First, as is suggested in our amendment, we need to do much more to contain and suppress the virus. Throughout the autumn, Scotland had one of the highest infection rates in the whole of Europe. We must stop using the benchmark of the hopeless Conservative Government in Westminster. We know what works, and we should be comparing ourselves to what other countries, such as Germany, have been doing. Germany’s excess death rate has been roughly half that of Scotland, because it invested properly in testing and in track and trace. We must contain the virus by resourcing such systems to stop it in its tracks.

Likewise, the vaccination programme has done an amazing job, but we must now redouble our efforts to complete it, taking jabs to where people are—in schools, colleges and universities. What is most important, as has been alluded to by Murdo Fraser, is that we must recognise the severe challenges and issues in the booster and flu vaccination programmes. I have constituents who were vaccinated more than six months ago and who have no idea when their booster is meant to take place. Likewise, constituents are being asked to make two-hour round trips to get their flu shots. Quite simply, not only is that not good enough, but it represents a failure to learn the lessons of the first vaccination programme.

Secondly, we must address the issues that are faced more broadly in our public services, because they are on the front line in dealing with the pandemic and for delivering that recovery. However, the challenges that are faced by the health service are profound. As has been pointed out by NHS Lothian, and as we know from other areas, that is being exacerbated by a lack of capacity. That is why, in our amendment, we have put forward the call for a plan for £15 per hour for care workers—raising their pay immediately to £12 an hour and working in short order towards that £15 an hour mark. That would boost recruitment, improve pay and secure the conditions of care workers. It is a disgrace that those who are doing such an important job are being paid little more than pennies above the minimum wage.

Thirdly, it is important to realise what the economic impacts of the pandemic are. As I stated in my intervention, they are complicated, in that we can have vacancies and unemployment. Indeed, 93,900 people were still on furlough when that scheme ended, yet the programmes that have been announced by the Government for reskilling and retraining address little more than a third of those people. We need to literally double our efforts to reskill and redeploy people. Entire sectors have changed permanently. Those people and industries need action from Government in order to transition. That is why we need to increase our provision for job creation schemes and retraining.

We need to stop name checking recovery and start taking steps to deliver it. We need a clear analysis of what recovery requires, clear targets to track our progress and a defined timetable for delivery. We need a recovery that focuses on jobs and that reinforces our public services.

I move amendment S6M-01803.1, to insert at end:

“; considers that failure to contain and suppress the virus will risk undermining Scotland’s recovery; insists that the Covid Recovery Strategy be backed up by interventions to prevent long-term economic scarring, and so calls on the Scottish Government to bring forward a plan to increase pay for social care workers to £15/hr, and to increase access to the national transition training fund and jobs guarantee scheme to ensure that places are available for all those impacted by the end of furlough to find employment.”

Will the member take an intervention?

I thank the minister for early sight of his statement. I also point members to my entry in the register of members’ interests, given my interest in the retail sector and my membership of USDAW.

My fellow members of USDAW will feel let down and betrayed by the Scottish Government’s failure to act on new year’s day trading. Does the minister recognise that the Government entirely fails to grasp the point by referring to website, administration and stockroom staff? It is the shop-floor staff in the very large stores, on which he says that the legislation does allow him to act, who are affected by unpredictable and antisocial hours and who would get a day off if the Government chose to act. Does he think that it is fair to force shop workers to work on new year’s day, given the work that they have done through the pandemic?

Does the minister also recognise that this is a missed opportunity? Although a 10-year strategy will undoubtedly be welcome when it arrives, with footfall down by a fifth and supply chain costs up by a third, many retailers will simply not survive long enough to see the benefits of such a strategy. Retail requires a recovery and survival plan, and it needs one now. Will he commit to come back to the chamber with something substantive and meaningful in order to allow retailers to survive into the new year?

Yesterday, an employment tribunal upheld former police officer Rhona Malone’s claims of victimisation against Police Scotland. The judgment was damning. It found that the firearms unit in which she served was an “absolute boys’ club” and that the culture was “horrific”. It also found that evidence that had been provided by officers from the professional standards department—the department that is responsible for investigating complaints within the police—to be “implausible” and “wholly unsatisfactory”.

I am sure that the First Minister has, as I do, huge respect for the work that the police do locally and nationally. However, I am concerned that the experience of Ms Malone is not unique. In recent years, I have been approached by female officers who have raised issues regarding culture, out-of-hours behaviour, deployment rotas and equipment. Their complaints are often lost in a system that is difficult and stressful to navigate, which has ultimately led to officers resigning from the force rather than pursuing their complaints.

I know Rhona Malone and have spoken to her. Will the First Minister join me in commending her for her bravery in pursuing her complaint? In the light of the Sarah Everard case, does the First Minister feel that there is a need for fuller investigation of and inquiry into the culture and practice in Police Scotland in relation to sexism and misogyny?

I, too, thank the cabinet secretary for advance sight of his statement. Recovery must be our enduring focus throughout this session of Parliament.

As the cabinet secretary said, it is important to consider what is new money. On the issue of upskilling and reskilling, is the £200 million that was announced in the statement essentially for pre-existing programmes, including the ones that he referred to, such as the national transition training fund, or was there additional or new money in the statement?

I very much welcome the focus on family wellbeing in the statement but, again, can I clarify how much of the £500 million fund is additional money over and above current local authority spend on social services and care?

Most important, perhaps, the cabinet secretary will be aware that, in order to meet the Government’s legal targets on child poverty, the child payment will need to not just double but quadruple. Many people expected that the Scottish Government was ready to bring forward the doubling this coming financial year, but they will be disappointed, because it appears that the Government is falling short of that interim measure. Can we get clarity on when the doubling of the child payment will take place?

Does the member not think that it is somewhat ironic that he berates the SNP Government without reflecting on any of the consequences of Brexit or engaging with the complexities of the labour market or the underlying issues that might be resulting?

Just a moment.

SNP members believe that the prescription for the disease is more of the disease. They identify a mistake, and then they want to repeat it. That is simply incoherent.

It does my Conservative friends across the chamber a great disservice when they say that they thought Brexit was going to be a bad idea, which is why they argued against it, but that now they think that it will be okay, because these are just temporary inconveniences, which we will get through, and there will be wonderful opportunities. Indeed, there was a great deal of irony in Liam Kerr’s plea for the Government to focus and look at the issues in detail, while his party ignores the issues that Brexit is creating.

This afternoon, there has been gross oversimplification on both sides of the chamber, but Richard Leonard was absolutely right, and Ross Greer, again, highlighted the complexities of the issues that are at hand. Absolutely—Brexit has exacerbated the issues with HGV drivers but, in the words of Richard Leonard, we must look at what they have to put up with. The wages for the job have declined against median wages for the past decade; that is why a third of HGV drivers are looking to retire, and it is why their average age is 55 and less than 1 per cent are under the age of 25. It is not just Brexit that caused that issue but poor terms and conditions, and focusing on training and support will solve those issues. In addition, it is not just a problem in this country: Poland is short of 120,000 HGV drivers and Germany is short of 60,000 HGV drivers. The USA is also short of HGV drivers, and the USA’s shortages are not caused by Brexit.