Plenary, 02 Oct 2003

Meeting date: Thursday, October 2, 2003

Official Report 610KB pdf

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First Minister's Question Time

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Prime Minister (Meetings)

To ask the First Minister when he next plans to meet the Prime Minister and what issues he intends to raise. (S2F-236)

I am in regular contact with our British Prime Minister and I look forward to seeing him again soon.

What is the First Minister's reaction to this morning's comment by the Fraser of Allander institute that Scotland's economic underperformance has clearly been more than a cyclical phenomenon?

I am pleased that the Fraser of Allander institute recognises what we have been saying for some time, which is that we have to take action to improve growth in the Scottish economy over a comprehensive range of indicators. That is exactly why the partnership has agreed that growing the Scottish economy will be our number 1 priority for the next four years and that we need to secure the improvements in productivity and competitiveness that will not only reverse the difficulties that Scotland has had in the past two or three years, but ensure that we grow more quickly in the years to come. I believe that—as the Fraser of Allander institute has said this week—we have the right strategy, that the implementation of that strategy is moving in the right direction and that, as a result of the actions that we are taking, we will see the improvements in productivity and competitiveness that Scotland so badly needs.

I welcome what the First Minister has said and I welcome the intervention of the Fraser of Allander institute, because its definition of the economic problems of Scotland as being structural rather than cyclical is of enormous significance. Now that the First Minister has accepted that low growth is a problem in the Scottish economy, will he accept that the structural problem extends to the loss of headquarters from the Scottish economy, the contraction and relocation of foreign inward investment, the low spend on research and development, low productivity and—probably most serious of all—population decline, particularly in the economically active age group? Will he accept that those are Scotland's structural economic problems or will he continue to avoid the big decisions that have to be taken to turn around the problems in economic performance that have bedevilled Scotland for 30 to 40 years?

I am delighted that Mr Swinney agrees with us on the underlying problems in the Scottish economy and on the need to improve research and development, which is primarily the responsibility of the private sector. Although the Scottish nationalist party might not think so, the private sector needs to raise its game in relation to the level of expenditure on research and development that takes place in individual companies. There is a real problem with that in the Scottish economy, as research and development expenditure is significantly lower than it is in the rest of the United Kingdom, never mind the rest of the world. That is a challenge that needs to be addressed.

It is also true that we need to address the other challenges that Mr Swinney mentioned, such as population decline, low productivity and decreasing levels of investment. We are doing that in a difficult world climate and, at the moment, we are doing it more successfully than are economies that, historically, have been much stronger. We must continue to do that. That is why we need to invest in research and to ensure that the research that goes on in our universities is turned into commercial products. We must also ensure that Scotland is promoted abroad more successfully, take action to reverse population decline and ensure that we have the right skills to allow productivity in Scotland to increase.

The Executive and the SNP do not differ on the analysis of the difficulties in the Scottish economy; we differ on the solutions. I assure Mr Swinney that the worst thing that could happen to the Scottish economy at the moment would be for it to be ripped away from its major export and import base in the south of this country and to be left stranded in a low-tax economy, in which foreign investment was encouraged to the detriment of the improvement of Scottish firms.

I think that we are getting near the dividing point in Scottish politics. We all agree on the problems; the problem is that the First Minister does not have any solutions that will deliver against the problems. That is the problem with him.

Numerous people are joining the growing consensus that the Scottish Parliament does not have the powers to deliver on the Scottish economy. Wendy Alexander, the former enterprise minister, says:

"A convincing case can be made for more flexible fiscal arrangements".

Professor MacRae of Lloyds TSB states:

"many fiscal levers remain reserved powers … reducing the range … of policies … to rectify Scotland's low economic growth."

We agree on the problems, but while the First Minister wants to ignore them, I want to tackle them by giving the Parliament the power to deliver for the people of Scotland. When will the First Minister accept the challenge and move on rather than living in the dark ages?

Mr Swinney must be careful about talking about dark ages, given some of the comments that have been made in the past seven days. I entirely agree with him that there is a fundamental divide between us on the issue. I believe that the lowest interest rates and level of inflation for decades in Scotland and the lowest level of unemployment and highest level of employment in my adult lifetime are prizes that we should not throw away.

Mr Swinney does not want to improve the Parliament's powers; he wants to replace the Parliament with an independent Parliament. He has taken several years as leader of the SNP to come to that conclusion, but I am delighted that he and his party are now united on the issue. We will expose the fallacy of that argument and ensure that Scotland uses the stability and strength of the United Kingdom economy as a platform to improve research, innovation, exports and productivity. We will use the platform to ensure that growth, based on skills and transport infrastructure, not on isolationism, is quicker in the future.

Will the First Minister comment on the fact that there is no evidence whatever that secession, as proposed by the SNP, is the key to economic success? In the second session of Parliament, Scotland has an opportunity to build a consistency and consensus around the powers of the Parliament. Does the First Minister agree that such consensus will come only if we move away from the constitutional constipation with which some members want to continue?

Of course I agree with that. The Fraser of Allander institute made the same point this week when it said that we need a strategy that improves skills and uses the power of the Parliament to ensure that we grow the Scottish economy more quickly. We should not use the Parliament as a battering ram to introduce either ridiculous policies such as cutting public expenditure in Scotland in order to cut taxes for foreign firms or the powers that would lead us to separate from the rest of the United Kingdom. We are right behind the strategy that I mentioned, which is starting to make a real difference in Scotland.

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Cabinet (Meetings)

To ask the First Minister what issues will be discussed at the next meeting of the Scottish Executive's Cabinet. (S2F-237)

Mr McLetchie will not be surprised to hear that the Cabinet will discuss our progress in delivering the partnership agreement and the legislative programme.

In that context, I hope that the Cabinet will discuss education policy. In February 2001, the First Minister, in a previous guise, told Parliament that the Executive did not publish national exam league tables, but that

"there is a publication of statistics, which every parent, pupil, community, education policy maker and elected politician with responsibility for education should welcome and use to drive up standards across Scotland's schools."—[Official Report, 15 February 2001; Vol 10, c 1314-15.]

Given the Executive's intention to abolish national tests for five to 14-year-olds, will not far less information be available in future to such people in order to raise standards in Scotland's schools?

Absolutely not. Not only will the Scottish Qualifications Authority and other bodies in Scotland continue to publish the present information about exam results in secondary 4, S5 and S6, to which my comment referred, but the information will be supplemented by better information that will allow Scottish schools to be compared accurately and parents, decision makers and pupils to make the choices that will drive up standards in Scottish education. We will ensure not only that the system of Tory tests, which needs to be replaced, is replaced, but that the system of assessment that replaces it is an improvement. We will improve the national collection of information to help parents, councils and the Government to make decisions for the long-term future of Scottish education. We will ensure that we produce more information, not less, and better information, not worse. We will also ensure that, under the system, parents and pupils come first, rather than the ideology that dominated in the past.

I am all for giving people more information about the performance of schools. Indeed, we introduced that policy. However, while the First Minister says that he wants to provide people with more information, his policy driver is to provide them with less. His intention, in scrapping national tests, is to suppress information about the relative performances of schools over the formative years of our children's education before they sit the national examinations. That is admitted in the Executive's consultation document that Mr Peacock published last week, which describes the publication of test results as a disadvantage, and it is acknowledged to be the case by Mr Dunion, the new Scottish information commissioner. Why does the First Minister prefer to keep parents and teachers in the dark, rather than providing them will all the information—including comparative information—that is necessary for them to be able to make informed judgments?

Let us be absolutely clear. I accept that the decision that was made in the 1980s to produce more information for parents and pupils about their schools was exactly the right thing to do. All political parties will have learned lessons from what was one of the few things that the Tories got right back in the 1980s. However, I also think that having national tests marked by the teacher in the classroom and never checked by anybody else, and having those tests collected and published, so that teachers have an incentive to accelerate the results and present them in the best possible manner for their schools, is not the right way in which to assess schools' relative performances or children against a national standard. I believe absolutely in assessment and in collecting information to inform parents and pupils. However, I want that information to be accurate and the assessment to be real. We will ensure that that is the case.

I nearly asked the First Minister when he next planned to meet Brian Wilson. Instead, I ask him whether he will remind local authorities that, under the Local Government in Scotland Act 2003, they have the power to advance the well-being of people in their areas. In doing so, they might be well advised to refuse planning permission to people who want to sell to young people food that is officially described as nutritionally void. When he next meets the Chancellor of the Exchequer, will he impress on him the desirability of taxing foods with a high fat, high sugar or high salt content appropriately, in much the same way as alcohol is taxed, which is according to its ability to injure health?

The second part of that question offers an interesting idea, which I am sure will engender much debate. In the first part of the question, Margo MacDonald makes a good point—we need to drive up the standards of the food that is provided in schools to young people, in hospitals and in many other public and private facilities. As part of our healthy living campaign—which is about much more than television adverts—discussions are proceeding with local authorities, private bodies and others in order to drive up the standard of food that is prepared, sold and served in Scotland and to ensure that people will want to choose that food. If we can match the provision of good-quality food with a demand for good-quality food, Scotland will be a much healthier society.

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Cabinet Sub-committee on Sustainable Scotland (Meetings)

To ask the First Minister when the Cabinet sub-committee on sustainable Scotland will next meet and what will be on the agenda. (S2F-244)

The Cabinet sub-committee on sustainable Scotland will meet again next month. The agenda will be agreed nearer the time.

As the First Minister knows, strategic environmental assessment is an important tool in delivering sustainable development. In "A Partnership for a Better Scotland", the Executive has undertaken to

"legislate to introduce strategic environmental assessment to ensure that the full environmental impacts of all new strategies, programmes and plans developed by the public sector are properly considered."

Given the importance of strategic environmental assessment and the culture change that its incorporation into the decision-making process will entail, does the First Minister agree that the introduction of strategic environmental assessment by primary rather than secondary legislation would more firmly underpin that process of culture change?

The process of strategic environmental assessment will build on what I think is one of the most successful things that the Executive has done over the past four years. We have tried to ensure that environmental assessment of our decisions is mainstreamed inside the organisation and within our budget process. Last year in particular, we had a comprehensive look at the way in which we spend our money by comparing that against the environmental assessments. We want to build on that process. Not only will we have the strategic environmental assessments required as a result of new European legislation, but we will go further, as our partnership agreement states. Ross Finnie will announce our legislative plans later this month.

I will allow Eleanor Scott a brief second question.

I understand that the Executive may be under some time pressure because of the European Union directive. Does the First Minister agree that it is more important to get the legislation right than to rush it through?

It will be important to ensure both that we meet the deadline to implement the European legislation and that we do not rush our longer-term decisions. In the longer term, we need to ensure that Scotland has a comprehensive system of environmental assessments in place that goes further than the European legislation.

Will the First Minister join me in welcoming the recent announcement of a new flood warning scheme to complement the flood prevention measures already in place in Kilmarnock and Loudoun? Does he agree that such initiatives are important to communities throughout Scotland and that the cynical and self-serving antics of some Tories and nationalists in opposing renewable energy schemes would increase flood risks and misery and cost untold millions of pounds for our economy?

The development of actions to tackle flooding in Scotland has to be more comprehensive than it has been in the past. The development of flood warning schemes is an important part of that. Prevention is not the only solution. We need to be able to alert householders and businesses that floods might be on the way so that they can take action more quickly. We also need to ensure that local authorities and others have more information about the nature of the terrain on which building might take place so that we can stop some of the nonsense that has taken place over recent decades where building has taken place on flood plains when that should clearly not have happened.

In the longer term, we need to ensure that Scotland supports the targets on renewable energy and that we make what might occasionally be tough decisions to ensure that Scotland is generating more and more renewable energy and having less and less impact on climate change.

If the First Minister believes in the sustainable development of Scotland's marine resources, does he agree with the SNP that we should use the negotiations at the intergovernmental conference that begins in Rome this Saturday to prevent Brussels from gaining exclusive competence over Scotland's fishing grounds, as is unfortunately proposed under the draft European Union constitution? Will he tell us who will represent Scotland in those negotiations alongside United Kingdom ministers to ensure that Scotland's case is heard?

Frankly, we have seen some of this before, when Mr Lochhead went to Brussels during last year's negotiations. He totally undermined the negotiating stance of Scotland and the UK by rubbishing the representatives that Scotland and the UK had there. That was a scandalous act, for which he was rightly condemned by the fishermen at that time. Frankly, that kind of party politicking on the fish issue does no justice at all—

Answer the question.

Having asked the question, the member might want to listen to the answer, however uncomfortable it may be for him to be unable to put across his view—a view that abuses the lives and the futures of Scottish fishermen for party-political ends.

Scotland and the United Kingdom will stand up for the long-term sustainable future of Scotland's fishing stocks in the negotiations when they take place later this year. In advance of that, we will work to support the fishermen's case rather than to undermine it. We will not make short-term, quick decisions that might get good headlines, but we will make the right decisions for the long term for Scotland. That is the right approach and that is the approach that we will take.

In relation to the IGC, the fact that the competencies retain the status quo might not appeal to those who are becoming increasingly anti-European, something for which they will pay the price. However, our approach is the right one in the short term because we have to concentrate on those negotiations and on winning Scotland's case.

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Digital Hearing Aids

To ask the First Minister what the Scottish Executive's timetable is for the introduction of digital hearing aids across Scotland. (S2F-239)

We are implementing the commitment in the partnership agreement to allow routine issue of digital hearing aids and support where that is the most clinically effective option. The Deputy Minister for Health and Community Care yesterday announced further resources for that and for the modernisation of services throughout Scotland.

I welcome the new cash. The First Minister will know that one in five of the adult population in Scotland is deaf or hard of hearing and that 0.5 million people could benefit from a more than 40 per cent improvement in their hearing through the use of a digital hearing aid. Will the new cash for audiology be ring fenced in investment? Past experience in the Lothians shows that new money does not always reach audiology patients or deliver the services that they deserve.

We have to ensure that the resources that have been allocated deliver for each patient who has a clinical requirement for a digital hearing aid, as opposed to those who simply want one. Those resources must be better used throughout Scotland so that they deliver the hearing aids and associated services. Without services that provide correct assessment and measurement, without the correct use of the hearing aid and without the right follow-up service, the hearing aid will not be as effective as it would otherwise be. I am absolutely behind Sarah Boyack in saying that the local health boards must ensure that their services and the provision of resources to purchase the hearing aids should match the national commitment to make the aids available in every part of Scotland.

What plans are there to recruit audiologists and hearing therapists, given the current acute shortage of such people? Moreover, given the sad lack of facilities for audiologists, are there plans for health boards to provide more such facilities?

Nanette Milne makes a good point, which reinforces what I said. The issue is not just about the hearing aids; it is about the services that should be provided in advance of the acquisition of a hearing aid and as a follow-up. That means that staff must be recruited and equipment modernised in order to ensure that services are up to the standard that we require. The resources are now available and health boards are being co-ordinated to ensure that they meet those targets and that people who have a clinical need for a digital hearing aid will get one and the back-up services that should go with it.

The investment is excellent news, especially for the new patients who need digital hearing aids. Will the First Minister say how long it might take to deal with the backlog of patients who have analogue hearing aids but are waiting to be assessed for digital hearing aids? In the Grampian area, for example, there are 600 people in that position.

The time will be different in different parts of the country, as Mr Rumbles will be aware. It is important that local health boards do all that they can to minimise the time that it takes to get from where we are now to where we want to be with the provision of digital hearing aids and full back-up services. That is why there are plans afoot to make sure that there is a local action plan in each area, co-ordinated nationally to ensure that best practice is replicated across the country and that each health board delivers on the Executive's commitment to enable people who have a clinical need for a digital hearing aid to exercise that option.

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Hepatitis C

To ask the First Minister whether he will reconsider the level of support to be given to those infected with hepatitis C through contaminated blood products in light of the recent comments by Lord Ross, chair of the expert group. (S2F-252)

The plans announced by the Minister for Health and Community Care will ensure that people who are suffering receive financial support and are not penalised if they are receiving benefits. In health service spending, there is a difficult balance to be struck and we worked hard with the UK Government to negotiate that scheme. The expert group was aware of our proposals, and of the reasons why its full recommendations would not be met, prior to the publication of its final report.

Is the First Minister aware of the recent comments by Lord Ross, who has expressed concern about the level of financial assistance on offer? Lord Ross made the point that to compensate victims adequately to the level that he recommended would take a mere fraction of the £360 million overspend on the Holyrood building or of the underspend of the Executive's budget. To give people hope, will the First Minister make a personal commitment to meet representatives of those affected to discuss further the level of financial assistance, whether payments should be made to the families of those deceased and the continuing demand for a public inquiry in the light of new evidence, including recent allegations that people were being infected with contaminated blood products as recently as 1995?

I repeat what I said about balances in the health budget. It would be easy for us to propose expenditure of £80 million on a number of different health services that people might want, but such actions always have an impact on another part of the service. We need to balance expenditure on cancer services, on services for heart disease and stroke, on audiology and on many other services that are required in our national health service against expenditure on compensation for hepatitis C. I think that we have struck the right balance between ensuring that those who are suffering have a financial payment that helps them to deal with what has happened to them and ensuring that the rest of the health service is not affected by a decline in services.

The issues that Ms Robison raises are important and they will continue to be discussed between ministers and representatives of the people affected. In fact, the Minister for Health and Community Care is meeting representatives of the Haemophilia Society next week and I am sure that he will be happy to raise those issues then.

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Government Jobs (Dispersal)

To ask the First Minister what criteria the Scottish Executive will apply in determining whether its policy of disposal—I mean dispersal—of Government jobs throughout Scotland has been effective. (S2F-235) [Laughter.]

Well, disposing of Government jobs—

Good idea!

"Good idea!" says Mr McLetchie. I hope that we will hear more about that in the years to come.

To answer the question that Mr Mundell intended to ask, we are determined to disperse Government jobs beyond the central belt to areas the length and breadth of Scotland, because the benefits include spreading the advantages of devolution and giving a jobs boost to areas that need it. I believe that the decisions that have been reached since 1999 have been effective in achieving those objectives, which is why I think that we should continue with further relocations as appropriate opportunities arise.

Does the First Minister accept that people in the south-west of Scotland do not believe that the policy has been particularly effective? This week, the convener of Dumfries and Galloway Council described the policy as a farce after the area missed out yet again. Will the First Minister concede that decisions are now being made not on any objective criteria, but on the basis of political expediency?

Where the political expediency comes in is with parties that support that policy in their manifestos and in this chamber, but that, every time there is a hard decision to be made, oppose that decision and say that the policy is wrong. The policy is right. It is right to relocate Government jobs, not just out of Edinburgh to towns the length and breadth of Scotland, but from other cities in Scotland, including from Inverness into the most sparsely populated parts of the Highlands. It is right for us to support those initiatives and to ensure that, right across Scotland, people and local communities get the benefit of public sector jobs. It is also important that communities across Scotland have direct access to people who implement Government policy and work in the public sector, because that brings those people closer to the communities.

I am on record as saying that the south-west of Scotland is not only the part of Scotland that faces the biggest economic challenges at the moment, but the area that most needs relocation of Government jobs. We will deliver on that commitment; we will do it when the time is right and when the opportunity allows.

Meeting suspended until 14:30.

On resuming—