Chamber and committees

Before I ask my question, I put it on the record that I hold a bank nurse contract with NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde.

Can you clarify, cabinet secretary, whether you are talking about training costs for medical staff or for all healthcare staff? We anticipate that there would be pharmacists involved, and nursing staff, and perhaps other allied health professionals.

Thank you very much for that clarity.

In the United Kingdom, around 3,200 women are diagnosed with cervical cancer each year, with more than 800 of those losing their lives. This week marks cervical cancer prevention week, which is a week-long campaign that raises awareness about cervical cancer screening and prevention, encouraging uptake of both. Will the First Minister provide an update on the success of the human papillomavirus vaccine programme in reducing cervical cancer rates in Scotland?

This year alone, South Lanarkshire Council is having to pay back more than £40 million due to Labour’s disastrous private finance initiative contracts. Those funds are hiking up the profits of the private sector when, instead, they should be going towards local priorities.

Despite additional Scottish Government funding, I am concerned about the impact of those debt repayments when the Labour administration at the council, which is cutting free school transport provision and divesting interest in community halls, sets its budget for next year. Can the cabinet secretary assure me that this Scottish National Party Government and future SNP Governments will never follow in Labour’s PFI footsteps, which have left a damaging legacy across all our local authorities?

The Health, Social Care and Sport Committee has heard from numerous third sector organisations, stakeholders and, importantly, people who access care services about the need for radical reform of the care system. Can the minister advise how the amendments that she is proposing to the bill will ensure that their concerns are addressed?

I welcome the cabinet secretary’s comments on shifting the balance to justice in the community and her point that that is not soft justice. Does she agree that we need to ensure that penal reform is not a political football? Does she also agree that we need grown-up and sensible debate and discussion to find the solutions to reduce our prison population and to have safe alternatives to custody in the community that sheriffs can use?

To ask the Scottish Government how it plans to support South Lanarkshire Council as part of the local government settlement for 2025-26. (S6O-04235)

In that case, I thank the panel for coming in and answering our questions so thoroughly this morning. It is much appreciated.

I briefly suspend the meeting for a changeover of witnesses.

Just before Christmas, dozens of WASPI women from across Scotland gathered outside Parliament in protest. I was pleased to host them when they met the First Minister, the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, and numerous MSPs. That meeting took place only two days after the shock announcement that the UK Labour Government was to ignore the PHSO’s recommendations and fail to provide them with compensation.

In my Rutherglen constituency, alarm bells started to ring at the end of the summer when it was revealed that our local MP, a UK Government minister, had written to a constituent to say that he did not believe that universal compensation would be right. He was one of the scores of Labour MPs and Labour parliamentary candidates right across the country who appeared to support the WASPI Scotland campaign before the general election.

Alongside Keir Starmer, the Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, pensions secretary Liz Kendall and Scottish secretary Ian Murray, Labour MPs and MSPs had merrily posed for photographs for years, even signing WASPI pledges to state that they supported fair and fast compensation.

My constituent, Anne Potter, who is the co-ordinator of WASPI Glasgow and Lanarkshire, did not mince her words when she appeared live on the BBC the day after the UK Government’s announcement. Anne said that she was “absolutely disgusted” and that the decision was

“a slap in the face”.

She went on to say that she felt that Labour had led WASPI women up the garden path, noting:

“They signed our pledges. They showed interest. When I heard that announcement yesterday, which came out of the blue, I was absolutely flabbergasted.”

Let us be clear that the UK Government has made an unprecedented political choice. It has ignored the clear recommendations of an independent watchdog, which will of course leave many asking what the point of an ombudsman is, if ministers can simply ignore decisions. However, for the WASPI campaigners who came to Parliament last month, and for the WASPI women across Scotland and the UK, it is much more than a hypothetical exercise.

When I have met constituents who have been affected by changes to their pensions, they have told me deeply personal and sensitive stories. They have told me about the financial and emotional distress that they have suffered, how they have been forced to work past their expected retirement age or live on significantly less income than they had planned for, and how that has intersected with their family life, caring responsibilities and health and wellbeing.

Labour back-bench MPs and the Scottish Labour leader are lining up to say that they are disappointed with the UK Government’s decision, but WASPI women do not need their words of disappointment—they need justice. Despite the initial shock of the UK Government’s sudden announcement, it is clear that those women who visited Parliament in December are not taking it lying down. The fact that many of the women affected will be digesting the news while also coping with the same Government ripping away their winter fuel payment this year must only intensify their sense of injustice. They are not going anywhere, and Keir Starmer’s Government has not heard the last of the issue.

The UK Government is also feeling the pressure from charities and third sector organisations. The charity director of Age UK has said that it simply

“isn’t credible for the Government to contradict the Ombudsman’s painstaking report”.

More than 21,000 women in South Lanarkshire have lost out on pension payments, completely upending their lives. They deserve so much better than the Labour Government’s betrayal of their trust. I am proud to be in a party that has shown them unwavering support, and that will continue to do so. The SNP will keep to our principled position and concrete commitment in support of the WASPI women. We will continue to hold the Labour Government to account until those women receive the justice that they deserve.

My constituent Bayile Adeoti is the founder and managing director of the social enterprise Dechomai Ltd, which recently published a report, funded by the Scottish Government’s ecosystem fund, that looked at key barriers that prevent ethnic minority social entrepreneurs, including women, from accessing investment. What consideration has the Scottish Government given to the report’s recommendations?