Seòmar agus comataidhean

Cabinet secretary, I understand the risk that we now face on public service cuts. I think that you and I will stand shoulder to shoulder with millions of people across the country in opposing such cuts if that is the route that is taken. Regardless of that, our services are in crisis right now. You seem to be confirming that the millions of pounds of reserves that are sitting in IJBs across the country will now be clawed back into the centre. That would be one-off spend, and it is important to know how it would be spent.

Crucially, there does not seem to be a joined-up plan at the local level to deal with the crisis in health and social care. It is okay to say that councils can start to put some of the provision for home care back into the public sector, but the only reason that they put that provision out to the private sector in the first place was because it was cheaper, and the only reason that it was cheaper was because of the pay and terms and conditions of the workers. It is because the workers have been treated so appallingly that we cannot get carers now.

You cannae just pin a bit of it on to the council. We have the IJBs, the councils and the NHS boards. Somehow, you need to instruct them to come together in a totally transparent way and produce local plans that show us how they are going to tackle the crisis in health and social care, which is running into a crisis in our hospitals, which, in turn, is running into a crisis in accident and emergency departments, where we have people queued up for hours and hours in ambulances. We can no longer ignore that. We somehow need to instruct those bodies to come together and produce a plan that tells us how they are going to tackle that. Do you not agree?

NHS Fife’s board met on Tuesday. The finance director reported that the Scottish Government was in discussions with the board to claw back Brexit—not Brexit, but Covid funding that had been allocated; I have Brexit on the brain.

I am talking about the Covid funding that had been allocated earlier this calendar year. Integration joint boards, for example, are sitting with millions of pounds in reserves. Can the cabinet secretary confirm that the Scottish Government has notified health boards that it wants that money back? What is the thinking around that? What will the money be used for?

Just very quickly—

Thank you.

I want to focus on how robust the Covid strategy is for a fairer future. This morning, Audit Scotland published a report on child poverty, which basically says that Holyrood needs to be far better at long-term planning to address the problems, including preventing more children from falling into poverty in the first place. We are seeing the levels of child poverty rising and there are the cost of living pressures that we have talked about. How robust is the strategy? Is it the right strategy to be working to, given all those factors?

Last week or the week before, the Deputy First Minister announced that, as a result of the pay awards and the money that the Government has put in, there will be cuts. Given that, as I assume, most councils will not have budgeted for the levels that have been put in, what will be the knock-on effect?

Another issue that has come up in evidence relates to the third sector, which we rely on heavily across Scotland. What will be the impact on that sector of the cut in its resources? I assume that it will be struggling to meet the pay awards that the local authorities are now having to meet.

That brings me to my final question, which others might want to come in on, too.

We seem to be having strategy after strategy after strategy. These days, if you ask youngsters what they want to do when they are older, they will probably say that they want to write strategies for the Scottish Government—there are cupboards fu o them. What do they actually achieve?

Two weeks ago, Shelter Scotland wrote to the First Minister, putting forward its Scottish housing emergency action plan and calling for action. I just want to highlight a couple of the points that have been highlighted in that plan. More than 250,000 people living in poverty are trapped in the private rented sector, unable to access social housing, and 130,000 people are on housing waiting lists for social homes. I could go on—umpteen things are mentioned, and it is just horrific. For example, the number of children stuck in temporary accommodation is up 17 per cent, which is

“the highest since records began and a doubling since 2014”.

As a result, when I hear about strategies to tackle poverty and strategies for this, that and the next thing, I, as quite a practical person, think to myself, “Why are we not addressing this issue?” Are there too many strategies and not enough clarity on what we need to do to tackle these big issues?

The question whether every hospital needs an emergency department is, perhaps, a theoretical one. Most people would think to themselves that emergency departments are struggling to cope as it is. People are being left in ambulances that are sitting outside emergency departments for hours, and hospitals seem to be completely run off their feet and struggling to cope. That seems to be the reality of the situation.

My question is whether the current year’s budget is adequate to get us through and to meet any challenges that might come. Audit Scotland said:

“Public services faced financial pressures before the pandemic. Covid-19 funding was used to ensure the financial sustainability of councils and other public bodies. But now Covid-19 specific funding from the UK Government has ended, pre-existing pressures must be balanced alongside continuing spending demands related to the Covid-19 response and recovery.”

Is the budget adequate to do that? One part of the recovery is that we have massive waiting times, like nothing we have ever seen in my lifetime. People are waiting for hip and other replacements. That, to me, needs recovery. Although Audit Scotland points out that public services faced massive financial pressures before the pandemic, those pressures must now be much greater. Is the budget for the NHS in Scotland adequate to fund recovery of those services?

With that in mind, and within current budgets, is your organisation in a position to deal with potential winter spikes in Covid, flu and goodness knows what else, or is the expectation that you would need emergency funding to deal with major spikes in any of those areas?