Chamber and committees

I would indeed welcome more detail and a meeting. Of particular concern is in-patient care, especially in trauma. One example is orthopaedics, where delays in treatment can obviously have consequences for bone growth and so on. Are there concerns in particular areas of in-patient care, and would the cabinet secretary be able to elaborate on what action is being taken to remove those issues?

I say thank you—not just the customary thank you, as I am incredibly grateful—to Pam Duncan-Glancy for securing the debate and to one other member in the chamber: Jeremy Balfour. I am a disabled person; I have attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder. I would not have been comfortable saying that if it had not been for the support of Pam—my apologies, Presiding Officer; I mean Pam Duncan-Glancy—and Jeremy Balfour.

I will never forget the conversation that I had with Jeremy in the garden lobby after I stated that I had ADHD. He said that I had to tell Parliament that I have a disability. I was not sure that I was “disabled enough”, but Jeremy told me, “It’s important that you tell Parliament, because everyone who has a disability has to be matter-of-fact and confident in discussing it. Unless you do, you will make it harder for all of us.” That was an important contribution. Likewise, Pam was encouraging and reassuring, and she embraced the fact that I had a disability.

Importantly, that has given me ownership of my own identity: you cannot understand me if you do not understand my ADHD. It is a vital part of how I think, behave and see the world. Sometimes, that is not terribly easy, but it is easier if I explain what I have and who I am. That is perhaps particularly the case when I am blurting something out in the chamber when I should perhaps be sitting and staying quiet—I thank you for your patience, Presiding Officer.

It is critical that we talk about the disabilities that are not immediately obvious—disabilities that are invisible. Beyond that need to have confidence, we must acknowledge that, although we have made huge progress in talking about disability and breaking down prejudices, there is still huge prejudice against those with disabilities, especially when those disabilities are invisible.

It is still acceptable to make jokes about poor spelling in which dyslexia is used as the punchline. Social awkwardness is still dismissed as someone being “a bit on the spectrum”, and an inability to concentrate is still described as someone being “a bit ADHD”. We are one of the groups in society that it is still acceptable to make the butt of a joke or to be casually dismissive of or prejudiced against. That must stop.

We need better understanding. Just today, we heard about people being stigmatised for taking medication. I took my medication this morning, and I will not apologise for that. We need understanding that some people need medication to overcome and help them with their disability. I am thankful that I have that possibility, because my brothers and sisters with autism do not have a prescription for medication that they can take to help them with their invisible disability.

To give members an understanding of the stark reality of such disabilities, I note that every one of the groups that are considered to have a neurodevelopmental disorder is overrepresented in prison. People with ADHD are five times more likely than the general population to be in prison, people with autism are twice as likely to be in prison and people with dyslexia are three times as likely to be in prison. There is no greater sign of the injustice that is happening to people with neurodevelopmental disorders than those statistics.

We cannot go back to the old normal. Pam Duncan-Glancy is absolutely right about that. We need better understanding, we need to break down barriers and we need to break down the prejudices that still exist.

Will the member give way?

Will the cabinet secretary take an intervention?

I think that it is safe to say that, from the point of view of transparency, the Government has been less than forthcoming on the matter. At its heart, this was a deal involving a £500 million guarantee—given by the Scottish Government and underwritten by Scottish taxpayers—between Sanjeev Gupta and his father’s firm. How on earth did that get through Scottish Government due diligence? Was it signed off by the Cabinet?

I am not saying that it is not right; I am just saying that the money is not enough. That is the point.

By contrast, we have heard members on the SNP benches obsess about process without once asking what is being delivered. I agree that process matters, but ultimately what people care about is whether their towns, cities and localities are getting investment.

The great tragedy of this debate is that we heard a speech from Ben Macpherson—again, someone I have a great deal of time and respect for—and, in the entirety of the 12 minutes that he had, he did not mention poverty or inequality once. He spoke purely about the destabilisation of the devolution settlement. If our devolution settlement is so weak and precarious that £173 million upsets it, we really are in a very sorry state indeed.

Taking what he has just said on board, would the minister agree that we need new targets on regional inequality for Scotland?

The minister is right that this is about principles and fairness, but would he not be better arguing that £173 million is inconsequential in terms of tackling fairness rather than turning the debate into a constitutional grievance match?

I should congratulate Willie Rennie on his clairvoyance—he was able to listen to my speech before I actually gave it. Nevertheless, he is quite correct to agree with me, because I agree with a great deal of what he has just said.

The reality is that the debate has suited the SNP and the Conservatives. Both of those parties are very comfortable arguing about flags, boundaries and borders. The real dividing line in the debate—the one that actually matters—is between parties that believe in outcomes, making things work and how we build things better and those that want to have a constitutional tussle and see who can wave the bigger flag.

I say very gently to those members that they should think very carefully about their words. I have grown to have a great deal of respect for Douglas Lumsden since he came to Parliament, but the fact that he said, without irony, that the levelling up fund was devolution personified, or the greatest example of devolution, was quite incredible. He knows as well as I do, because he has seen the evidence from local authorities, that they are unclear about precisely how the money will be divvied out and about what purpose it is meant to serve. They have had to fire in applications without that context. He knows the deficiencies in what is being delivered, so he cannot possibly think that £173 million will deliver the change or the levelling up that Conservative members’ rhetoric seems to suggest.

Does Graham Simpson recognise that there is a bit of a gap between the rhetoric and the reality? A few spruced-up roundabouts and shopping centres are all well and good, but that is hardly the strategic levelling up that the rhetoric from his party seems to suggest, is it?