Chamber and committees

The Scottish National Party Government has its priorities all wrong, because short-term lets such as self-catering generate £34 million and support 1,100 people in the Borders alone, while having a negligible impact on housing markets. In contrast, empty homes, of which there are almost 2,000 in the Borders, outnumber self-catering properties and offer no economic benefit.

Does the minister agree that the Scottish Government must do more to support Scotland’s £1 billion self-catering industry and should refocus its efforts on tackling economically inactive empty homes to get more people into them?

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to the report, “Economic Impacts of Short-term Lets in Scotland”, specifically in relation to the Scottish Borders. (S6O-04246)

A number of concerns have been raised about the procedures in the Scottish Prison Service. Unannounced inspections are practically non-existent. The inspections that do take place are announced in advance and only happen every several years. Will the cabinet secretary work with HMIPS to ensure that more unannounced inspections take place?

Our colleague Finlay Carson quoted from “Willie Wastle”, whose

“wife was dour and din”.

Would Mr Kerr also say that Robert Burns was slightly rude about women?

Douglas Lumsden talks about standing up for communities such as my community in the Borders. Communities are beset with hundreds of applications for renewables that are walking us into a nightmare, as they will destroy farmland, businesses and landscapes. Does he agree?

Will the member take an intervention?

Will the member take an intervention?

The queue for an energy grid connection is vastly oversubscribed. Communities that I and others represent are angry—and they are angry because there are so many applications. The reforms will not address that. There are hundreds of planning applications in the process. Surely we should be halting those and reviewing the situation.

I am very grateful to Neil Gray for that response and will certainly write to him. I have also written to him in the past couple of days to invite him to come to the Borders to thank the hard-working front-line staff and to see what more can be done to improve the terrible outcomes that we are seeing in the Borders, an issue that was covered last night on the “Representing Border” programme on ITV Borders.

Only 58 per cent of patients are seen within the four-hour target. Those figures are the worst on record since 2007 and the third worst in Scotland, and Neil Gray knows that. I put on the record that that is not caused by the influx of flu patients, because those figures are from November and so are not about that.

In the brief time that I have, I will cover the financial situation of health boards across Scotland. We received an email earlier saying that NHS Grampian is going into stage 3 of the intervention framework. In my constituency, the financial situation of NHS Borders is critical, and the cabinet secretary knows that. In just two years, the deficit has doubled to £33.6 million. The board has been at level 3 since 2021, but what support has the SNP Government offered? In my opinion, it has put the board under further strain by asking it not only to balance the books but to make cuts at the same time. Ironically, one of the cuts that has been outlined is a 10 per cent reduction to a workforce that is already struggling to cope with demand.

Wait until you hear these figures. In the past four years, NHS Borders has lost 10,000 working days every year to staff absences related to mental health. I have brought that figure to the chamber before—it is unbelievable. The staff who are carrying the burden

“are running out of goodwill.”

That is a direct quote from the chief executive, Peter Moore. Even when NHS Borders manages to achieve financial balance, it will still have to pay back outstanding brokerage, which may have reached a staggering £100 million by March 2027.

I realise that we are short of time. There is so much more that we need to do, and I would like the cabinet secretary to come to the Borders to meet the hard-working staff.

I agree completely with what the cabinet secretary said. There is a risk that Scottish Borders Council will be bankrolling that funding for a feasibility study project manager. Would it be helpful for us to work in a cross-party manner so that we can put pressure on the Labour Government to release the £5 million in funding that has already been promised in the budget?