Official Report 966KB pdf
The next item of business is a statement by John Swinney on the programme for government 2024-25. The statement will then be debated, so there should be no interventions or interruptions.
14:57
This year, Parliament marks the 25th anniversary of its opening, and I have witnessed every previous programme for government being announced, albeit from different places across the parliamentary chamber. Today, however, is the first time that I present a programme for government. It is an extraordinary privilege to do so and to have the opportunity to further shape the direction of our country.
I do so in a spirit that recognises that we all come from different political traditions. I believe that Scotland would best be able to progress as an independent country, where the issues that we address in this programme can be more effectively resolved. Others take the opposite view. We have a range of priorities and perspectives, but fundamentally we are all here to contribute to creating the best future that we can for Scotland.
My Government does not command a majority in this Parliament: we have to work with others to make progress on our agenda. I therefore set out this programme for government with a commitment to work across the chamber to seek common ground with others. I extend the invitation to colleagues to work together to find that common ground.
A quarter of a century after its creation, the Parliament faces some of its toughest tests. We are all aware of the problems and difficulties that have been caused by 14 years of austerity, driven by the United Kingdom Government. We are all aware of the acute challenges that are faced due to the impact of sky-high inflation and the failure of the United Kingdom Government to adequately address increases in the budget to deal with that fact. We know that that is the case, because we can all see the pressure on our public services and because the Chancellor of the Exchequer has made that very point clear to the House of Commons.
The Scottish Government has set out to Parliament the difficult decisions that we have to take to address those circumstances. Today, I set out how, within that challenging situation, my Government will deliver for the people of Scotland.
This programme for government sets out, simply and clearly, our intentions for the next 12 months. Its purpose is to ensure that Government spends every day delivering for the people of Scotland. The commitments in it are practical, not partisan. They are affordable, impactful and deliverable. Together, they reflect my optimism that, even though we face an incredibly challenging set of circumstances at this moment, the inherent strengths of Scotland, our people and our communities can create great possibilities for our country.
When I became the First Minister, I made it clear that my Government would focus on four priorities: eradicating child poverty, building prosperity, improving our public services and protecting the planet. Child poverty is first and foremost in those priorities. No child should have their opportunities, development, health and wellbeing and future curtailed by the material wealth of their family—not ever, and certainly not today, in a modern and prosperous society such as Scotland. That is not only the moral compass of my Government; it is the greatest investment in our country’s future that we can possibly make. It is the route to enabling greater participation in our economy and society and to enabling more people to fulfil their potential and be contributors to our country.
We have dedicated roughly £3 billion a year to eradicating poverty and mitigating the impacts of the cost of living crisis. We have established and increased our widely praised Scottish child payment, expanded funded early learning and childcare, and committed around £1.2 billion to mitigate the impacts of 14 years of UK welfare policy. Those measures, which are key to increasing family incomes and enabling greater levels of participation in our economy, are central to our programme for government.
The Child Poverty Action Group estimates that low-income families in Scotland will be around £28,000 better off by the time their child turns 18, when compared with families across the UK. Analysis by the Scottish Government estimates that around 100,000 children will be kept out of relative poverty this year. Those achievements are significant and show the difference that we are making, but our goal is not only to keep some children out of poverty, or only to make child poverty less acute; our goal is to lift every child in Scotland who is in poverty out of it, so we must do more.
We know that we cannot address child poverty without addressing family poverty. We know that families thrive when they are supported by co-ordinated holistic services that meet their needs and are easy to access. Many amazing and dedicated practitioners are already working tirelessly to connect services and adapt them to the needs of the families whom they support. We must create a system of whole-family support that is available across the country. We must ensure that the system is easy to access, well connected and responsive to families’ needs.
Over the coming year, we will work with partners to enable greater local flexibility so that services can be more easily tailored to the needs of the families whom they support. We will look at what budgets can be pooled and what reporting can be streamlined. That will involve working closely with our local authority partners, other public services and the third sector to align services and ensure that there is a focus across our public services on meeting the needs and supporting the resilience of families.
We will consider where greater investment is needed, and we will use the learning from what is already working in our pilot areas. Some of that evidence comes from, for example, the early adopter community project in Dundee. In that project, key workers have been engaging with members of the public who face obstacles to entering the labour market. Through provision of focused childcare support, advice on eligibility for benefit provision and employability support, individuals are being supported into the labour market. Those individuals are sustaining employment and experiencing a number of benefits to their financial and mental wellbeing.
The key objective of the approach that we will take will be to deliver significant reform of the work of public services to deliver whole-family support extensively across the country. That will create the conditions that support more parents into employment and reinforce our work to eradicate child poverty. Key to the work on whole-family support will be a focus on prevention and early intervention—the small supports early on that can pay big dividends down the line. That includes during pregnancy and the first years of a child’s life.
Addressing risks and problems at this stage can have positive impacts that last through to adulthood. It can support healthy development, prevent illness and ease future pressures on services, thereby making the entire system more sustainable. Therefore, in the coming year, we will ensure that more women get to know, and receive care and support from, the same midwifery team from pregnancy through to birth.
We will invest nearly £1 billion a year in affordable, high-quality and funded early learning and childcare, and we commit to supporting early development and reducing developmental concerns at 27 to 30 months by a quarter by 2030.
We will support schools to reduce the poverty-related attainment gap across every local authority area each year between now and 2026. We will ensure that, when young people are ready to enter the workplace, they have the learning, skills and opportunities to succeed. We will invest in community-based youth work and improve careers support so that there is better information on career choices.
For households that are struggling now, boosting financial security and cutting costs is one of the most direct things that we can do to support them out of poverty. Therefore, we will expand advice in accessible settings, including community centres and hospitals. That will expand a programme that, in its first year, helped more than 5,500 people to access financial gains of more than £7.5 million to support their families.
We will also complete the national roll-out of our carer support payment, which will support more than 100,000 carers this financial year, including, for the first time ever, some who are in full-time education. The effect of that provision will be to enable much greater participation in education for those with caring responsibilities, which will greatly increase the opportunities for those individuals to make an economic contribution to our society. That effort to stimulate greater economic participation lies at the heart of the measures in this programme for government.
Another key aspect of our programme to support families is to ensure that we take effective action to enable people to have a safe and secure place to call their home. The tragic Grenfell tower fire emphasised how important building and fire safety is. Keeping residents and home owners safe is our priority, and we are taking action to protect lives by ensuring that the assessment and remediation of buildings with potentially unsafe cladding is carried out.
We will also carefully consider all the recommendations in the Grenfell tower inquiry’s report. This year, we will invest nearly £600 million in affordable housing, including an additional £40 million to bring existing homes into affordable use. There will be a strong focus on working with partners to enable existing accommodation that is not in use to be made available as swiftly as possible to meet the need for housing, thereby ensuring that we take every step that we can to boost the availability of housing as quickly as we can.
We will provide a further £100 million to support the construction of around 2,800 mid-market rent homes. In progressing our proposals for rent controls, we will introduce amendments at stage 2 of the Housing (Scotland) Bill to ensure that tenants have the protection that they need, and that Scotland is able to attract more investment to supplement the investment that we are making through the public finances. Those commitments are central to our efforts to tackle poverty, but they are also inextricably linked to our efforts to increase national prosperity with a strong, green wellbeing economy.
It takes thriving businesses, large and small, to sustain our families and our communities. We are already making significant progress in that area. Since 2007, gross domestic product per person in Scotland has grown by 11 per cent, compared with the UK’s 6 per cent. Productivity has grown at an average rate that is more than double that of the United Kingdom. Last year, earnings in Scotland grew more quickly than they did in any other part of the UK, including London and the south-east.
However, again, we must go further. It is not enough to simply have a strong economy. True prosperity goes beyond pounds and pence. It means an economy that is inclusive, supports people into work, attracts investment, promotes entrepreneurs and innovators and furthers our work on our path to net zero. Key to that will be increasing the levels of infrastructure investment and creating the right conditions for business investment.
For the past nine years, we have been the UK’s top destination outside of London for foreign direct investment. This Government will be focused on delivering investment-friendly policies and support, such as the Scottish National Investment Bank, which will help to build on the strong performance that we have built to date.
Last year, the bank supported 1,850 jobs by investing in companies with more than £92 million of supply chain spend in Scotland. Its £60 million investment in the Thriving Investments mid-market rent fund will help to deliver affordable, quality rental homes. Put simply, that means that tenants who benefit from the scheme will pay lower rents, but the economy will be boosted by the development activity involved.
To ensure that Scotland remains a premier location for investment, we will align Government and public bodies behind a co-ordinated programme to attract investment in priority areas such as net zero, housing and infrastructure. We will build on recent successes such as the Sumitomo and Ardersier projects to promote our national project pipeline of investment opportunities. We will develop two green freeports and establish two new investment zones, and, through our commitment of up to £500 million of investment, we will seek to generate at least £1.5 billion in private investment to support the offshore wind sector.
A critical element of ensuring that Scotland is attractive to investors is intensifying the provision of support to Scotland’s innovators and entrepreneurs as part of our work to become a start-up and scale-up nation. So, this year, we will maximise the impact of our national network of start-up support—our Techscaler programme, which has already supported start-ups to raise £70 million in investment. We will also work with organisations such as Scottish Enterprise, the National Manufacturing Institute Scotland and the National Robotarium to create new opportunities for our most promising deep-tech companies.
We will ensure that our universities can contribute to internationally leading research and economic growth and support the development of business clusters in areas such as digital and artificial intelligence, life sciences and the energy transition.
Small and medium-sized businesses are the backbone of our economy, so we will deliver the commitments that are set out in the new deal for business, and we will empower decision making through regional economic partnerships and will sign the Falkirk and Grangemouth and Argyll and Bute regional growth deals.
We will tackle economic inactivity and skills shortages in our workforce and remove barriers to employment. That will include leading a new, national approach to skills planning and introducing the post-school education reform bill to simplify the post-school funding body landscape.
Specialist support for disabled people will be enhanced across all local authorities by the summer of 2025.
We will expand Scotland’s migration service and will continue to make the case for tailored migration routes, including through a rural visa pilot to support rural employers to recruit the people they need.
We will support Scotland’s culture sector and creative industries, which are key to our economy, our culture and our national identity, and we recognise the need for the artistic and creative community to be well supported for the future. A review of Creative Scotland will be undertaken to ensure that the appropriate approach is in place to meet the needs of the sector, and I am pleased to confirm to the Parliament that the resources that are required to enable Creative Scotland to continue the work of the open fund are now available for it to distribute.
We will continue to invest in our national infrastructure—the transport and digital networks that enable our economy to thrive. This year, more than 20,000 premises will be connected to gigabit-capable broadband across Scotland in areas of market failure.
We will progress the dualling of the A9; construction is expected to start on the Tomatin to Moy stretch before the end of the year, and the procurement process for the Tay crossing to Ballinluig stretch is already under way.
We will deliver three of the six major new ferries that are presently under construction, and we will progress the procurement of seven new electric ferries as part of the small vessel programme.
We will also continue to invest in our rail network and will upgrade and reconfigure power supplies to support further electrification of our railways.
All of that will improve access to and from our rural and island communities; improve transportation safety, journey times and reliability; and generate economic growth. It will also enable delivery of our valuable public services and will ensure that people in every corner of Scotland have access to the high-quality services that they need, when they need them.
Public services touch every aspect of our day-to-day lives; they support our families and enable our economy to grow and thrive. Key to public services is ensuring that everyone has access to high-quality services that are right for them. Those services must be easy to access and navigate.
Nowhere is that more notable than with our national health service. We have seen terrific successes in our NHS, including the best performing core accident and emergency departments anywhere in the United Kingdom.
We need to ensure that our NHS has the resources that it needs, both for today and for years to come. We will increase boards’ baseline funding to reduce waiting list backlogs, deliver around 20,000 more orthopaedic, ophthalmology and general surgery procedures each year in our new national treatment centres, and free up 210,000 planned-care outpatient appointments through our centre for sustainable delivery programmes, thus eliminating unnecessary hospital attendances.
We will reform primary care, increasing capacity and access to general practice, community pharmacy, dental and community eyecare services by the end of 2026. Backed by £120 million of additional funding for NHS boards, we will support continued improvements across a range of mental health services and treatments, which include meeting the child and adolescent mental health services waiting times standard nationally and clearing backlogs by December 2025.
We will intensify our work to tackle delayed discharge. No one should remain in hospital any longer than they need to, so we will standardise best practice and an integrated approach, from the time a person enters hospital through to their timely discharge. That will ensure that everyone can recover in the least intensive and best setting for them, while making room in hospital for those people who need it.
However, in this challenging fiscal environment, we cannot deliver public services as we did in years past. We must change the model of service delivery to promote positive outcomes, prioritise prevention and reduce demand for future services.
Once again, intelligent investment and innovation will be key. For example, the Scottish Government invested £4 million to pilot rapid cancer diagnostic services across five NHS boards. That service works through primary care to provide a quicker diagnosis to people who are experiencing non-specific symptoms. Impressively, an evaluation of the pilot in NHS Fife and NHS Dumfries and Galloway found that the estimated time to diagnosis was roughly 65 days faster than via the more usual route of a general surgery clinic. Earlier diagnosis means better outcomes, less intensive treatment and less strain on the system. It means that Scotland, as a whole, is healthier.
We have similar ambitions for all our public services as part of our 10-year public service reform programme, which will guide our approach. Every area of the Government is committed to delivering reform consistent with its principles.
As part of that ambitious programme, we will work with local authorities to boost school standards, with a focus on attendance, behaviour and the curriculum. We will implement the curriculum improvement cycle and progress with qualifications reform. We will reform our national education bodies to drive improvement, raise standards and ensure that the needs of learners are always at the forefront of our work.
We attach the greatest significance to the safety of our communities, so we will work with Police Scotland to ensure that our communities remain safe.
Our public services are only as strong as the people who deliver them, so we will continue to award fair pay settlements, reduce workloads and improve conditions for our public service employees. We will review and reform the junior doctor and dentist contract, progress towards a 36-hour working week for agenda for change staff and provide local authorities with £145 million to protect teacher numbers.
However, every one of those important actions—indeed, everything that I have mentioned so far—will be rendered ineffective if we do not also address the greatest existential threat of our times. We must take effective action to tackle the twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss. It is absolutely essential that we protect our planet by reducing emissions, restoring our natural environment and investing in adaptations that will protect us from the impacts of climate change.
Although we are decarbonising at a faster rate than the rest of the UK, the most difficult part of the journey lies ahead. The world’s global temperature has now pushed past the internationally agreed 1.5°C. Ten of our hottest years have come in the past 20 years, and the increased frequency of storms and floods is already having a real impact on communities and key sectors. In addition, the 2023 “State of Nature Scotland” report found that monitored species have declined by 15 per cent over the past 30 years.
We are already making real progress on protecting our environment and helping it to recover. Seventy-five per cent of all new UK woodlands are here in Scotland, but we must adapt to the changes in our environment. That is why we will take forward our national adaptation plan. We will work with Scottish Water to improve the resilience of our water and sewage systems to intense rainfall and drought, and we will restore at least 10,000 hectares of degraded peatland and create at least 10,000 acres of woodlands.
We will also bring forward a natural environment bill to support delivery of our net zero and biodiversity goals. Climate change legislation that will enable five-year carbon budgets to be set and delivered will be introduced. That, along with our climate change plan and our sectoral just transition plans, will chart the course to net zero by 2045.
The climate emergency is not only a danger that must be recognised and managed, but an imperative that should motivate us to change. Scotland is a land of remarkable innovation and abundant natural resources. We can tackle climate change while growing our economy; indeed, we have been doing that for decades.
Between 1990 and 2022, Scotland’s economy grew by 67 per cent in real terms. In that same time, we cut our greenhouse gas emissions in half. Last year, the Scottish National Investment Bank, in the course of investing in businesses and projects that support our economy, avoided, reduced or removed more than 52,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent across its portfolio.
In 2022, renewable technologies generated the equivalent of 113 per cent of Scotland’s overall electricity consumption. In 2024, our capacity for renewable energy generation increased to 15.4GW, and with the projects that are currently in the planning pipeline, we have the potential to produce more than three times that.
We will shortly publish our energy strategy and just transition plan. By delivering the commitments in it, we will again double our ambitions for renewable energy generation. As part of that, we are acting to speed up the planning and consenting regime for renewable energy generation in order to provide certainty to the market and to stimulate private investment.
We will invest £9 million in supporting Scotland’s manufacturing industries to invest in energy efficiency and decarbonisation projects. We will work with the UK Government to deliver the infrastructure required for a net zero emissions energy system, including providing £2 million to support the Acorn carbon transport and storage project, as part of the promised support of up to £80 million for carbon capture, and securing a positive future for Grangemouth.
We need to take forward careful stewardship of our oil and gas sector to ensure that a sector that contributes significantly to the economic health of Scotland at this moment is able to make the transition effectively to net zero. The expertise of the sector will be vital to the future of the industry and to our transition to net zero. We need to keep those skills in Scotland as we move towards a green economy, because we are in the midst of a renewables revolution in Scotland.
Alongside our investment in renewables, we will support households and communities to reduce emissions. More than a third of the population already benefit from our offer of free bus travel. We have some of the most generous grants and loans in the UK to support the move to clean heating, and we are within reach of 6,000 electric vehicle charging points in 2024, two years ahead of schedule.
This year, we will conclude the review of our new-build heat standard and bring forward a heat in buildings bill. That bill will set a long-term direction of travel that is deliverable and affordable to households and businesses. It will also provide certainty to building owners and the supply chain. Through the work of Home Energy Scotland and the support available through our warmer homes Scotland scheme, we will take forward measures to ensure that we offer practical solutions to encourage energy efficiency and enable families to stay warm. The purpose of the heat in buildings bill must be to enable practical assistance to be made available to households and businesses to support energy efficiency and to improve the quality of heating systems.
We will also set a clear timetable for the delivery of roughly 24,000 additional electric vehicle charge points by 2030, and we will make it easier for people to walk, wheel or cycle through our active travel infrastructure fund, the national cycle network and our people and place programme. Those commitments are good for our communities and good for our environment. Plain and simple, they are good for Scotland.
Beyond the question of my Government’s priorities and the specifics of the programme, there is one further question that I want to address. My ministers are in public service. I want my Government to set the highest standard of propriety and integrity, and I want trust to be at the heart of our relationship with the people of Scotland.
That is why I intend to make changes to strengthen the Scottish ministerial code. Investigations into alleged breaches of the code will no longer happen only at the instruction of the First Minister. Independent advisers will be able to launch their own investigations whenever they feel that it is warranted. Where there has been a breach, they will be able to advise on appropriate sanctions. Those changes will significantly strengthen the role of the independent advisers, whose terms of reference will also be published. I expect to publish the new code by the end of the calendar year.
Scotland is a country of many strengths. Our economy is founded on industries of global reach in energy, financial services, food and drink, tourism, life sciences and advanced manufacturing. Our education system is high performing and includes a number of world-class universities. Our natural environment is of the highest quality and provides the basis for so many of our economic strengths. Our talented and creative population is our greatest asset, enhanced by those who choose to make their future here. Our society is bound together by a strong sense of social justice and of acting together to build the common good and ensure that everyone in our country is able to fulfil their potential.
Yes, we face challenges, but I am optimistic and confident that, if properly focused and motivated, the inherent strengths of our country will help us overcome those challenges. I believe that, with good will and a relentless focus on delivering for the people of Scotland, the resources that are available to us can be used to help us eradicate child poverty, build prosperity, improve our public services and play our part in protecting the planet. That is the focus of this programme for government, and I commend it to Parliament.
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