Scottish Parliament, 17 May 2012

346 contributions from 77 members. The official report.

Civilian Police Staff

Tricia Marwick (None, Mid Fife and Glenrothes)

The first item of business is a debate on motion S4M-02906, in name of Lewis Macdonald, on justice. Members who wish to take part in the debate should press their request-to-speak buttons now. I will wait until Mr Macdonald puts his card in the slot.

Lewis Macdonald (Labour, North East Scotland)

It is a week since we debated the Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Bill and it completed stage 1 of its passage through Parliament. We in the Labour Party supported the general principles of the bill, but the debate was disappointing in some respects. Labour members and others expressed concerns about the on-going process of reducing police staff numbers that would result from the bill, and it was disappointing that those concerns were not shared by members of the Government back benches. Humza Yousaf claimed that:

“the myth that ... police officers will be taken away from patrolling the streets to fill out paperwork all day in a back office was firmly knocked on its head.”—[Official Report, 10 May 2012; c 8799.]

Roderick Campbell noted that Strathclyde Police has a lower proportion of civilian staff and appeared to imply that the problem is that other forces have too many civilian staff in the first place.

Even more concerning, however, was the ministers’ approach, which is reflected in their amendment to my motion. Last week, the Cabinet Secretary for Justice applauded a decision by Lothian and Borders Police to get rid of civilian custody support officers by putting police constables back into stations to look after custody suites, on the basis that a junior police officer costs less and offers flexibility. In responding to the debate, the minister did not address the concerns that had been raised about the impact of reducing civilian posts in the police service. It might be that Ms Cunningham meant to respond to that, but ran out of time do so; I acknowledge that it is not always possible to respond to every point that is made during a debate.

However, we in the Labour Party made it very clear that our concern about civilian posts and about police officers being diverted to do civilian jobs was critical to our view of the bill as a whole. Labour entered the last election with a manifesto commitment to support a single force, but we also had a manifesto commitment to oppose diversion of police officers to civilian jobs. It is not, for us, just one more non-bill issue that was raised while debating the bill; it is fundamental to how we get the most effective police service, just as much with a single service in the future as with the existing forces and agencies of the recent past.

I want to say why I think that it is wrong to suggest that the problem is that there are too many civilian staff in some forces. The process of civilianisation of police roles was carried out over a period of years with broad political support. The ratio of staff to officers varies from force to force, as was pointed out during last week’s debate, but for most of its first term in office, the Scottish National Party seemed to share the general view that there being more, rather than fewer, civilian posts tends to provide a better service to communities and better value for money for the taxpayer. Civilianisation was seen as being better for policing, better for communities and better for the police service itself. For example, the policy was lauded for increasing diversity by improving recruitment and retention from among groups that have traditionally been underrepresented in the police service, including women and people from ethnic minority backgrounds.

The process was piloted by forces in England and Wales, and in Scotland, with reports of savings in money and in police time for forces ranging from the Metropolitan Police in London to Dyfed-Powys Police in rural Wales. As recently as April 2008, Kenny MacAskill was providing Central Scotland Police with extra funding to deploy civilian staff to help with routine enquiries in Falkirk in the expectation that doing so would free up 10 per cent of front-line police officers to go and do things that only a police officer could do.

Of course, not every initiative to civilianise police posts was an unqualified success. Besides tasks that require the power of arrest, other police tasks are so closely related to the work of an officer that it makes most sense for them to be done by police officers. However, until relatively recently, the direction of travel was to see what more and what else could be done by civilian staff; it was not to find plausible explanations for taking police officers away from policing duties to get them to look after suspects who are already in custody.

Last week, the cabinet secretary conceded that, ultimately, his support for a single police force is down to financial pressures and the need to mitigate the impact of budget cuts, so that must be what lies behind his U-turn on civilian staff in the police service, who were once a desirable commodity but are now an expendable luxury.

The savings that have undoubtedly been made from extending the roles of civilian staff have been trumped by the £100 million of costs that ministers have promised will be cut as a result of the Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Bill. The desirable objective of modernised mixed teams of officers and staff has disappeared in the face of the political imperative of delivering very large savings in a very short time without cutting police officer numbers, and without any effective steps being taken to avoid handing over an additional £22 million in the form of unrecoverable VAT.

We know that job cuts are already under way. Full-time equivalent police staff numbers passed the 7,000 mark on the way up in 2005, peaked at 7,862 in 2010 and passed the 7,000 mark again on the way down in the final quarter of last year. The Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland currently estimates that a total of 1,000 posts have been lost since the change in direction of Government policy, which agrees with the results of Unison’s survey of its members who are employed by Scottish police forces in February of this year.

The risk is that things will only get worse under the Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Bill. ACPOS reckons that the only way to meet the savings in the outline business case for a single Scottish police force is to shed civilian jobs. At least 2,054 will have to go by the time of the next Scottish Parliament election, and most of the rest of the civilian staff will have reduced terms and conditions. If they were to resist reductions in terms and conditions, ACPOS believes that some 2,400 posts would be lost and, if ministers make no progress on the VAT issue, it estimates that some 3,200 jobs would have to go.

Those are not small numbers and they will not be accounted for by the reduction in the number of posts that directly support the eight chief constables, as Mr MacAskill appeared to imply would be the case last week. This is not simply about ending unnecessary duplication or trimming at the edges; it represents a fundamental recasting of how the police service is delivered. As Unison has said, it takes us back to the policing model that existed before civilianisation began. Other staff unions are also concerned.

Kenny MacAskill (Scottish National Party, Edinburgh Eastern)

Is Lewis Macdonald implying that this should not be an operational matter for the chief constable, who is accountable to the board? Is he really suggesting that the Government should direct how many police officers and how many civilian staff there should be in any force?

Lewis Macdonald (Labour, North East Scotland)

It is not a question of whether or not I think ministers should direct chief constables; the cabinet secretary has said that he will direct the chief constable of the new force on how many police officers he should have. He cannot do that without, by implication, directing the chief constable on how much of his budget should be spent on civilian staff. In other words, the cabinet secretary has made a political decision to tell the police force, when it becomes a single service, what the balance between police officers and police staff should be. For him to suggest that we are departing from the principle that the police should have operational independence simply beggars belief and is not credible, given the decisions that he has made.

In my part of Scotland, Unite the Union represents traffic wardens in Moray, in Aberdeenshire and at Aberdeen airport who are employed by Grampian Police and who work with other service providers. They have raised their concerns with me directly because they, too, fear that they are about to lose their jobs.

It is not only trade unions that have concerns. In its submission to the Justice Committee, the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland said:

“The scale and phasing of police staff voluntary redundancies, if it can be achieved, carries a risk that police officers will be drawn into non police roles.”

The Scottish Police Services Authority said that the service has achieved

“a healthy and efficient balance of police officer and staff roles”

over recent years, but that there is

“a significant danger that this balance and inherent efficiency will be degraded under current constraints.”

Christine Grahame (Scottish National Party, Midlothian South, Tweeddale and Lauderdale)

For the sake of balance, I point out that, in evidence, Chief Constable Kevin Smith said:

“There is a notion that for every member of support staff that goes out, we put a cop in, but we have not done that. In the past two or three years, we have reduced our support staff by about 1,000 people, and that has not been followed by cops simply migrating in.”—[Official Report, Justice Committee, 28 February 2012; c 983.]

Lewis Macdonald (Labour, North East Scotland)

Thank you, Presiding Officer.

That is certainly ACPOS’s intention in its approach to the process, but it would not have told the Justice Committee that there is a risk of failure to achieve that unless it believed that the risk exists. We have heard the same from the SPSA and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, which represents the local authority employers. They warn that cops will have to take up the slack. That is the risk.

Such a prospect does not seem sensible at all; indeed, it is not sensible, but it is not too late for the Government to think again, which is why we have brought the motion before Parliament to ask ministers to examine properly what is happening in individual forces and to report back to members.

Unison has collected, through its members, plenty of evidence not only of the loss of posts, but of police officers doing civilian jobs. Members will hear from my colleagues on that this morning. If all sides are to understand and recognise the seriousness of the threat, Government should take on the responsibility for auditing and assessing the impact at the front line. A proper audit of cuts that have already been made or that are planned would sit well with the Justice Committee’s call for local councils to be given details of current police expenditure in their areas so that they can track changes in resources and funding after the creation of the single police force.

Ministers are asking that a good deal of power over the police service be concentrated in their hands. If they want to keep public trust in the creation of a single police service, they must deliver transparency in return. That is what we are asking them to do today. If ministers want to retain trust and confidence in the process, they should accept our proposal and allow Parliament to know the full facts about the process that is under way.

I move,

That the Parliament recognises the key role played by civilian staff in Scotland’s police forces in helping to protect communities; believes that the role they play is essential to ensuring that police officers can perform their main role of keeping Scotland’s communities safe; shares the growing concern that cuts to civilian posts are taking police officers off the front line to perform tasks better suited to civilian staff; notes that the number of civilian staff is now at its lowest level across Scotland since 2005 and believes that such cuts are detrimental to the ability of the police service to protect the public, and in the interests of the future of policing in Scotland, calls on the Scottish Government to undertake an independent audit of cuts implemented or planned to civilian posts and report the outcome to the Parliament.

Kenny MacAskill (Scottish National Party, Edinburgh Eastern)

I welcome the debate and the opportunity that it offers to consider an important issue. I say at the outset that the Government recognises and values the enormous contribution that support staff make every day in the police service. We are building a safer and stronger Scotland, with crime figures at a 35-year low. I welcome the opportunity to acknowledge the important contribution that police support staff have made, and will continue to make, to reducing crime across Scotland and helping to protect communities.

Graeme Pearson (Labour, South Scotland)

Would the cabinet secretary be good enough to acknowledge that crime rates have fallen across Europe and that, in America, they are approaching a 50-year low? Does he agree that, therefore, to claim that the situation in Scotland is entirely down to the additional 1,000 officers is less than candid?

Kenny MacAskill (Scottish National Party, Edinburgh Eastern)

The situation is down to splendid work by the wider police family. I have commented that other factors are involved, but I believe that there is, particularly in Scotland, a clear correlation between the figures and the visible police presence, along with the outstanding work of constables—from the newest constable to the most senior chief constable—and support staff in a variety of tasks. That is fundamental and it contrasts with matters south of the border. Scotland would not have the world-class police service that it has without the dedication and commitment from everyone in the police family, whether they are support staff or police officers. I am sure that I speak for all members when I say how proud I am of everyone who works in the police service.

I agree with Lewis Macdonald on the key role of civilian staff, but I reject other elements of his motion. I make no apologies for delivering more than 1,000 extra officers since 2007, and I am happy to reaffirm that we will continue to honour that pledge. Compare that to the situation in England and Wales, where the latest figures show a decrease of 4.2 per cent—more than 6,000 officers—in just a year. A report from Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary predicts that officer numbers in England and Wales will have decreased by 16,200 by the end of the United Kingdom Government’s comprehensive spending review period.

Lewis Macdonald (Labour, North East Scotland)

Will the cabinet secretary nonetheless acknowledge that his current approach to civilian staff taking on roles that were formerly done by police officers is different from the approach that he took when he first took office?

Kenny MacAskill (Scottish National Party, Edinburgh Eastern)

That takes me back to the point that that is an operational matter for the chief constable. It is not appropriate for me to intervene in Lothian and Borders or in any other area. Those are matters of balance on which the chief constable decides and, ultimately, is held to account by the police board.

That, of course, contrasts with Scottish Labour’s position and, certainly, with the Labour position south of the border. Earlier this week, Yvette Cooper reiterated in her address to the Police Federation of England and Wales annual conference that the Labour Party would have implemented 12 per cent cuts to police budgets in England and Wales—cuts that could have resulted in a reduction by as many as 10,000 officers. That is some gross hypocrisy, when Labour comes to the chamber to complain about redundancies in civilian staff but goes to the Police Federation in England and Wales and says that it would make 10,000 officer posts redundant. This Government will not let that happen in Scotland.

Police reform and the work that we are undertaking to deliver a single service will ensure that Scotland continues to enjoy world-class policing. Reform is needed to protect against Westminster budget cuts the local policing that communities value and depend on. As I said last week, we are making a virtue out of necessity. Yes—the reform is driven by finance, but at the same time it is about ensuring that we get the best possible police service. That is what we are doing.

Lewis Macdonald (Labour, North East Scotland)

What percentage cut will be made to the police budget as a result of the plans?

Kenny MacAskill (Scottish National Party, Edinburgh Eastern)

We are protecting police budgets and police numbers. That contrasts with Yvette Cooper’s position, which is why I got a standing ovation at the Scottish Police Federation, while Ms Cooper was met with stony silence and cheers of derision because her position is simply opportunistic and oppositionist.

Reform is not about doing what we do now—which is to do things eight times over—but about doing things differently. Reform will ensure that policing responds to 21st century challenges, and will create equal access to specialist and national services such as murder investigation and firearms teams, while strengthening the connections between the service and the communities that are served. All Scotland needs to have access to, and to be protected by, those specialist services.

I appreciate that the transition from the current eight-force structure to a single police service of Scotland brings uncertainty for police officers and civilian support staff alike. I fully understand that, but I assure Parliament that we are working closely with the service to ensure the smoothest possible transition, including the early appointment of the chief constable and the chair of the police authority, so that key decisions about the new service can be taken.

We will continue to work closely with trade unions, staff associations, local authorities and the service on the workforce issues. Ministers will create the broad framework and provide the finance in which the new service will operate, but it will be for the chief constable to decide what the balance of officers and staff should be.

We currently have eight chief constables: the new single service will need only one. We will no longer need the administrative support staff that are required for eight chiefs. Just as we will no longer need eight chiefs, we will no longer need eight heads of human resources or eight heads of finance. The people of Scotland expect us to employ no more people than are required to deliver effective policing.

Just as some jobs will change, many jobs will stay the same: support staff will continue to play a vital role in the new service; we will still need forensics staff at scenes of crime; we will still need experienced staff in communications centres to ensure that vital 999 calls are answered and dealt with; and we will still need specialist information and communications technology staff to keep systems up and running. All of them are fundamental. Support staff will remain central to the success of the new service, but yes—fewer support staff than we have at present will be needed at the end of the reform journey, just as fewer chief constables will be required.

This Government will act responsibly to protect front-line services. Lewis Macdonald’s motion advocates an irresponsible policy of protecting duplicated functions and services that will not be required in the new single service. Reform offers a unique opportunity to do things better and to reshape policing to reflect the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century. Ultimately, it will be more effective and efficient, and better for all communities.

I reiterate my recognition of the vital role that civilian support staff play and I commit to involving them and the trade unions fully as we move forward.

I move amendment S4M-02906.2, to leave out from first “believes” to end and insert:

“recognises and values the dedication and hard work of police staff and police officers in Scotland, which have resulted in a 35-year low in recorded crime; agrees that reform is essential to protect policing from UK Government budget cuts and that police reform will protect local services, create more equal access to specialist support and national services and strengthen the connection between services and communities while removing costly duplication; notes the strong progress being made to deliver a single police service of Scotland; recognises that civilian support staff will continue to play an important role in the new police service of Scotland, and supports the Scottish Government’s commitment to continue to work closely with staff associations and unions to ensure a smooth transition to the new police service of Scotland.”

Alison McInnes (Liberal Democrat, North East Scotland)

In the context of the current events—the largest reform of Scotland’s policing for more than a generation—this morning’s debate is important and I thank the Labour Party for bringing it to the chamber.

The role that civilian staff play in supporting our police forces is vital but frequently overlooked. It is all too easy to think of civilian staff as sitting in a back office doing paperwork when the fact is that they carry out a myriad of vital roles as intelligence analysts, custody officers and community wardens, to name but a few. The Government frequently mentions the success of its pledge on 1,000 extra police officers. The Scottish Liberal Democrats welcome there being more police officers working to keep Scotland’s communities safe, but the fact is that without civilian staff supporting them, any benefit from those extra officers is negated as they are inevitably forced to spend more and more time away from their primary roles.

Joe FitzPatrick (Scottish National Party, Dundee City West)

How many civilian staff have lost their jobs through compulsory redundancy as a result of the Liberal Democrat-Conservative Government at Westminster?

Alison McInnes (Liberal Democrat, North East Scotland)

Mr FitzPatrick would do well to focus on what we are here to focus on, which is the running of the service in this country, for which responsibility sits with the Scottish Government.

The motive behind the Government’s plans for a single national police force appears to be the cost savings that it believes can be made. However, as has been pointed out in the chamber and by expert witnesses in committee, the push for efficiency savings in our police forces has already begun. I am concerned that the majority of the additional savings seem to be destined to be made by further cutting the number of civilian staff who are employed by the police. I say “further cutting” because—as we heard from Lewis Macdonald—the number of civilian staff has already fallen dramatically in recent years. It is not for me or for any of us to quantify how many civilian staff our police need to employ, but the fact is that shedding more than 1,000 staff in just a couple of years cannot fail to have an impact on how our forces operate.

ACPOS has estimated that, in order to meet the Government’s pie-in-the-sky savings targets for the new single force, a further 2,000 civilian staff will have to be cut. Some of that number might be accounted for through rationalisation of certain functions, but with potential redundancies on such a massive scale it is inevitable that in order to fill the gaps police officers will have to be taken off front-line duties to fill other roles. I have many concerns about the Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Bill that are, by now, fairly well documented, but it is this headlong rush—the need to hurry through the changes with little regard for the consequences—that I find really objectionable.

Chief Constable Kevin Smith—the man at ACPOS who is responsible for overseeing implementation of the new force—explained to the Finance Committee the situation in which he finds himself. I will quote him at length, because it is important to put this on the record.

“The Government’s outline business case does not quantify job cuts. However ... If we are to make the savings that have been set out in our budget for the next three years—and into the next spending review, in fact—the main focus will be on police staff.”

He continued:

“Although there will not be an automatic assumption that we will have to put ... a police officer”

into support roles,

“if we are to get to the numbers on which the savings are based, it is a distinct possibility that that will happen. That will not be a good thing professionally or politically, and I do not think that the public will think it a good thing, either. It is a real risk.”—[Official Report, Finance Committee, 22 February 2012; c 670-671.]

He also said:

“The danger now is that we will be so focused on making cuts in financial budgets for next year and the following one that we do not get into what the exercise should be about, which is developing the best model of policing for the benefit of the people of Scotland.”—[Official Report, Finance Committee, 22 February 2012; c 669.]

Although Chief Constable Smith was talking about the hypothetical situation when the new force comes in, his comments are equally relevant in considering the situation that already exists. Staff are being lost to make savings, but the jobs that they performed still need to be done. In the year to July 2011, Grampian Police reduced its civilian staff by 14 per cent. They lost, among others, a camera enforcement officer, two community wardens, an early intervention worker, an intelligence manager, a welfare officer, a wildlife crime education officer and three road safety advisors. Those jobs still need to be done; the only difference is that they will now have to be done by officers who might otherwise be out on the beat. The more civilian staff who are lost, the more officers will be taken off front-line duties to cover their responsibilities.

There can only be one result, as another chief constable told me last year:

“De-civilianisation, which will occur if whole scale civilian job losses take place, will result in the current community focus model of policing reverting to a crime fighting/call response model of policing where officers run around answering calls for crimes that have occurred because they are no longer able to prevent them.”

That is the danger of losing civilian staff, and it is the danger of the Government’s ill-advised police reform bill.

I move amendment S4M-02906.1, after “public” to insert:

“; is concerned that the Scottish Government’s rushed timetable for the implementation of a national police force, along with unrealistic savings targets, will serve to exacerbate the problem and lead to significant further redundancies among civilian staff”.

David McLetchie (Conservative, Lothian)

I welcome the opportunity to debate the future of civilian staff in Scotland’s police forces, which touches on topics that we discussed last week during the stage 1 debate on the Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Bill. During the Justice Committee’s consideration of that bill, it was made clear that there is concern about the projected losses of civilian staff.

I start with a comment on the terminology that has been used in this debate. We must be careful not to take as black and white the distinction between front-line and back-office staff. A bobby on the beat can easily be seen as front line, whereas a member of the human resources staff is clearly back office, but in between, the distinction is much less clear cut. Much valuable investigative work can be done while sitting at a desk. I am sure that most of us would not consider people with roles such as forensic scientist, information technology expert or money laundering specialist to be back-office staff. The conclusion that we must draw is that it is dangerous to label all non police officers as carrying out administrative functions and to treat them all in the same way.

Let us not forget that the reason why we are having this debate is that the Scottish Government is looking at how the public sector can be reformed to enable it to deliver better value for money. When public finances are under such extreme pressure, it is appropriate that we look to cut duplication and unnecessary costs across Scotland’s police forces. Nevertheless, the Government has set a target of £88 million of savings as part of its plans for a single police force and it plans to save £50.3 million in staff costs. Those cuts are certainly challenging, and it remains to be seen whether they can be delivered without adversely affecting front-line services.

The priority of the Scottish Conservatives is to provide an effective, visible and local police service and to do so by sustaining in service the extra 1,000 police officers whom we have secured over the past five years. As I have mentioned before, civilian staff can and do play a key role in Scotland’s forces and, in many instances, civilian staff find themselves with a direct role in policing. There is a need for a balanced workforce, and both police officers and police staff have a role to play in that. The

“right people with the right skills must be doing the right jobs.”—[Official Report, Justice Committee, 28 February 2012; c 972.]

It would be madness if we were to get into a situation in which police officers did not do their jobs but instead fulfilled back-office functions.

During the Justice Committee’s consideration of the Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Bill, Calum Steele, who is secretary of the Scottish Police Federation, asserted that there has historically been a considerable rise in civilian posts in Scotland. He said:

“That is undoubtedly a consequence in some ways of how the police service has evolved, but it would be beyond the pale to suggest that those levels of growth were a consequence of essential civilianisation where it took place. I am sure that many roles were undertaken and created not because they were essential, but because they were desirable or nice to have.”—[Official Report, Justice Committee, 28 February 2012; c 1009.]

The historical statistics show that, since 1997, police staff levels have risen by 51 per cent compared with a rise in the number of police officers that amounts to 14 per cent. Civilianisation peaked in 2007, when 32 per cent of those who were employed by the police were civilian staff. That has now fallen to 28 per cent, which is the 2004 level. Arguably, therefore, recent reductions in civilian staff represent a sensible decrease in staff levels, which had become bloated since 2007. Mr Steele cited a number of existing civilian positions, including change manager, business manager and performance manager, and said that he was unclear whether they are essential to the delivery of policing.

If we have to choose between such postholders and front-line police officers, I know which I would prefer, but let us not forget that there is an irreducible minimum below which we must not fall. That is the issue that is before us today. That is why we accept the basic proposition in the amendment that the Government has lodged, but we believe that we must keep the overall staff reduction picture under review.

Christine Grahame (Scottish National Party, Midlothian South, Tweeddale and Lauderdale)

Obviously, we have to say that these are not times of plenty. Let us begin at the beginning. I repeat the cabinet secretary’s words:

“we are making a virtue out of necessity.”

Repeating certain facts can be wearisome, but they have to be drummed into not only members, but the public at large. Some £1,300 million was cut from the Scottish budget last year. It is, of course, a fixed budget, because we have no borrowing powers. Under the plans that the United Kingdom Government has announced, by 2014-15, the Scottish Government’s budget will have been cut by 9.2 per cent and capital will have been cut by 36.7 per cent. On 25 April this year, the UK went back into recession—into a double-dip recession. The UK economy contracted by 0.2 per cent, and goodness knows what will happen to it with the current activities in Greece, Italy and, indeed, France on the euro. We are in very difficult times.

Most significant of all is that the construction industry is in very difficult times. If we could advance construction projects, we would help the UK and Scottish economies at least to stand still, if not to go forward. They would not go backwards. I think that members of other parties—although not the Conservatives and Liberals—share our views on that. Why is that relevant? First, I return to making a virtue out of necessity. Policing and its structure in Scotland needed to be reviewed. I think that it is generally accepted that that is long overdue. It has simply been put to the top of the agenda.

Secondly, the Government has pledged that, where budgets are within its control, there will be no compulsory redundancies. That is important to give security to those who are in work and might not even be under consideration for redundancy, but are concerned that they might be. Unison has accepted that position. Of course, some jobs will be redundant; replacing eight constabularies with one means that some jobs will not exist any more. The cabinet secretary referred to support staff jobs—clerical, human resources, equal opportunities and procurement jobs across eight constabularies—that will not exist. That is partly a good idea for its own sake and partly a necessity because of where we are now financially.

Lewis Macdonald (Labour, North East Scotland)

Will the member give way?

Christine Grahame (Scottish National Party, Midlothian South, Tweeddale and Lauderdale)

I am sorry, but I have only four minutes, and I have things that I want to say.

Thirdly, it is of course appropriate for two reasons that Opposition parties and back benchers highlight concerns that civilian jobs will, or may be, undertaken by police officers. Obviously, those officers would not then be available for front-line duty, and civilian jobs involve a different skills set. David McLetchie referred to that and made the considered point that whether something is front line or back room is not black and white or obvious.

I note that the chief constable together with the divisional commanders will determine the new staffing requirements. The chief constable will not just be accountable to the Scottish police authority, and the divisional commander will not just be accountable to local boards. Ultimately, there will be accountability for the quality of policing across civilian provision and the front line to the Parliament, whether under the scrutiny of the Justice Committee or—if Graeme Pearson has his way and convinces us—a commission that will watch the delivery of policing and the activities of the chief constable.

Christine Grahame (Scottish National Party, Midlothian South, Tweeddale and Lauderdale)

I say to Alison McInnes that crime figures and the fear of crime are falling notwithstanding civilian jobs going.

In England, Theresa May was told by the Police Federation of England and Wales that she is

“on the precipice of destroying”

the police service. Paul McKeever said of the Scottish Government:

“they have no Winsor, they have no professional body and no loss in police officers—”

Graeme Pearson (Labour, South Scotland)

The effective delivery of policing requires, among other things, the Government to provide confidence to police and police staff about their future in respect of employment and support, and it needs the Government to acknowledge that the principles of public service, integrity, team ethos and vocation are vital ingredients in ensuring that staff act in the spirit of public service. It also needs the recognition that value for money means paying the going rate for the jobs that are undertaken, and it needs efficiencies to ensure that the person with the required skills is engaged on the appropriate duties. Underlying those concepts is the additional responsibility on Government to respond to staff by showing exemplary fairness and loyalty to those who are currently employed across the police service, to leave all staff in no doubt that decisions about their future will be made on the basis of what is best for the future of policing across Scotland and not on the basis of a one-sided political commitment to maintaining police numbers while eliminating less visible support jobs.

Had the Government candidly admitted that 1,000 additional constables would result in at least 1,000 back-office jobs going—according to the unions, the figure is up to 3,000—I think that MSPs would have been less gushing in their support. No one would argue that the maintenance of police numbers is not a good result, but the fairytale that lies behind that fact is the loss of many more jobs behind the scene.

The sleight of hand involved would play well as merely a confidence trick if it were not for the fact that so many valuable staff are being let go and others demotivated by the very processes that should be enthusing staff as they move towards a single police force. Members should be in no doubt that these are staff cuts—and cuts they are, no matter what variation of the English language people try to use. They are directly linked to the savings targeted by this Government; they are not demanded by the creation of a single police force.

We have heard members quote eminent witnesses who provided the Justice Committee with evidence.

The most accurate staff numbers that I can uncover are for the period up to December 2011—unfortunately, the most recent figures will not be released until next month. The figures reveal that we have lost 905 posts. In Central Scotland, the area policed by Kevin Smith, a third of staff have been lost. The complement has fallen to 299 people.

Surely we cannot continue with the delusion that the work done by 905 people can be done by the remaining back-office staff. Surely the claims of efficiency made by this Government in relation to the management of staff over the years mean something—surely they mean that, across policing, current staff were and are fully utilised in their own work and are not available to soak up new duties.

The evidence gained from staff across the forces indicates that they are losing staff involved in warrants, intelligence analysis, football monitoring duties, custody, HR support, media services duties and firearms certification. We need to show support and to have a balanced police service. The service needs effective staff to support police officers, who should be out on the street fighting crime, not fighting paperwork and answering phones.

Roderick Campbell (Scottish National Party, North East Fife)

There is a strong sense of déjà vu about the debate. Last week, during the stage 1 debate on the Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Bill, I reminded the chamber of Calum Steele’s comments to the Justice Committee. He said:

“We must look at the jobs that we do and ask ourselves not who does them, but whether they need doing in the first place.”

That must be the first port of call in any review of staffing. We must then, of course, look at issues of duplication. If we have a national service, do we need quite as many staff in IT, HR or finance—or as many chief constables, for that matter?

Calum Steele also said that

“we should never get into a situation in which we talk about the value of a police officer versus the value of a support member of staff.”—[Official Report, Justice Committee, 28 February 2012; c 1009 and 1008.]

This is about balance—balance in the context of a commitment to an additional 1,000 police officers, which was given in 2007; in the context of a substantial growth in the number of support staff between 1997 and 2000; and in the light of the budget that is now available. Of course, the figures for support staff have been reduced, but if we take as an example not 2005 but quarter 3 in 2003, there were more support staff back then than at quarter 4 in 2011. Therefore, we can be selective about the dates or periods that we choose.

The Labour motion refers to concerns that

“cuts to civilian posts are taking police officers off the front line to perform tasks better suited to civilian staff”.

However, we know that police support staff numbers vary enormously between Strathclyde and Lothian as a proportion of total staff, and that, in Fife, there is a tradition of a significant number of police officers being office based for at least 75 per cent of the working week. We know that resolving a crime might involve officers in front-line tasks and in what others might think of as backroom staff tasks—and certainly in tasks that take officers off the streets for a while.

Traditions and cultures vary, and the new service must take all such issues into account operationally, within the budgetary constraints under which we operate. Why would an independent audit help? Can a uniform standard be established for a support staff role? I doubt it. Do we want to become embroiled in what Andrea Quinn of the Scottish Police Services Authority described as the “disingenuous” distinction between front-line and back-office tasks?

Would we prefer police numbers to drop, as in England and Wales—the number of police will drop by 700 in Devon and Cornwall alone—and to have a Government that loses its police force’s confidence? Unison argues that large numbers of police officers in one force do what are essentially civilian roles in other forces but, contrary to what some politicians suggest, there is no agreed optimum balance between civilian staff and police officers.

Chief Constable Smith made it clear in relation to the approximately 1,000 staff who have gone to date that, as a matter of policy, police officers have never been put in support staff roles. I say in the interests of balance that he conceded that some police officers are still in roles that it would be more appropriate for support staff to do.

In some parts of Scotland, it will be difficult to reduce the number of support staff through people leaving naturally and through voluntary severance. However, we should remember that ACPOS’s figures for redundancies are cumulative over the period until 2015-16.

Jenny Marra (Labour, North East Scotland)

Will the member take an intervention?

Roderick Campbell (Scottish National Party, North East Fife)

As the cabinet secretary acknowledged, support staff have made and will continue to make an important contribution to reducing crime and making Scotland safer. We need to ensure a proper framework for the operation of the new police force.

Labour’s motion says that cuts to support staff

“are detrimental to the ability of the police service to protect the public”,

but we have not heard much about that—perhaps the closing Labour speaker will refer to it. Is it not the case that cutting police numbers instead would be far more damaging to the police service’s ability to protect the public?

John Finnie (Scottish National Party, Highlands and Islands)

I apologise to you, Presiding Officer, and to Mr Macdonald for not being present for his opening speech.

The motion refers to recognising

“the key role played by civilian staff in Scotland’s police forces in helping to protect communities”.

I have first-hand knowledge of that through my police service and I have a great number of friends who are support staff. No one takes issue with the statement in the motion, but the debate should not be about police officers versus support staff. There is not some bizarre numeric equation that can be worked out; the debate is about what constitutes an effective and efficient police force that will build on and enhance the 35-year low in crime.

Jenny Marra (Labour, North East Scotland)

If we are talking about an effective and efficient police force, does John Finnie agree that it is not effective or efficient in this time of financial savings to replace civilian staff in Tayside Police control room with police officers, who are paid at a much higher grade?

John Finnie (Scottish National Party, Highlands and Islands)

I will come on to that point.

Improvements will not come about through unnecessary duplication, which we must stop and prevent from recurring in the new structure. Chief Superintendent David O’Connor advised the Justice Committee that staff costs form 84 per cent of the police budget and, as was quoted by Mr McLetchie, Chief Superintendent O’Connor said:

“the right people with the right skills must be doing the right jobs.”—[Official Report, Justice Committee, 28 February 2012; c 972.]

The motion talks about an independent audit. I argue that such an audit is already done by Her Majesty’s inspector of constabulary, who is obliged to certify whether each constabulary and all other component parts of the police service are effective and efficient, which we know is the case.

Graeme Pearson talked about a “political commitment”. The commitment to 17,234 officers is non-negotiable and is welcomed by the public. It has made a noticeable difference, not least in the visible police presence.

Graeme Pearson (Labour, South Scotland)

I am obliged to the member for giving way, as I know that time is tight for him. Would he be more comfortable with his position if he had confidence and knew that the Government and ACPOS were focusing on saving the kind of money that has been spent on projects such as the performance management platform, on which The Scotsman reported this week almost £7 million has been spent but which has not been delivered?

John Finnie (Scottish National Party, Highlands and Islands)

Indeed. The member is well aware that I have concerns about a greater sum of money that relates to an IT project. All resources should be directed to the front line.

The public will not be reassured by the presence of several procurement departments. It could be argued that, if those departments were effective, they would procure a single procurement department.

The debate is about not personalities or geography but what is effective and efficient, so there is no suggestion of taking “vital roles” out of the equation, as Alison McInnes said.

I mentioned the Christie commission’s work in last week’s debate. There are functions that are undertaken centrally, which might—in small measure, I acknowledge—go some way towards explaining the reduced figures. For example, there is centralisation of recruitment and the ever-present training.

The issue must be seen against the background of the Westminster cuts.

Unison said in its e-mail that

“Taking trained operational police officers off the streets to perform administrative or specialist tasks, at greater cost, makes no … sense.”

What are those tasks? Who are those trained police officers who can go in at a higher rate of pay? It makes no sense at all—who would disagree with that? In any case, Kevin Smith told us that it does not happen.

John Finnie (Scottish National Party, Highlands and Islands)

Calum Steele, the secretary of the Scottish Police Federation, told us that the point of some roles is not immediately obvious to him.

Another weak point in Labour’s argument is the reference to England, where the loss of police officers compared with support staff obviously tilts the equation—if we want to make bizarre numeric equations.

The cabinet secretary has given an assurance that there will be no compulsory redundancy and that there will be transfer to the new service on the same terms and conditions—

Michael McMahon (Labour, Uddingston and Bellshill)

I am sure that the cabinet secretary would prefer it if we all had short memories, but I clearly recall that in 2007 one of the first promises—among many—that the Government tried to ditch was its commitment to deliver 1,000 extra police officers, and that only pressure from the Tories, who were using the issue as a bargaining chip in relation to their support for the Government’s budget, forced the justice secretary to find money, which he knew was not there, to pay for the 1,000 officers that he had promised.

The Government subsequently had to force local authorities to commit to deliver on the policy, under threat of financial penalties if they did not agree to do so. As with most of this Government’s political choices, a snappy headline is the prize for which some other area of public spending has had to pay the price. As ever, what the headline giveth, the small print taketh away. We have 1,000 more police officers, but as Unison told us and as ACPOS recently confirmed in evidence to the Finance Committee, we have lost 1,000 full-time-equivalent civilian staff. Police staff are being sacrificed on the altar of SNP populism.

It is unfortunate that the carnage is due to continue unabated, because the Government stubbornly refuses to listen to the legitimate concerns of people who have identified flaws in the financial provisions in the outline business case for the new single police force. Given the significant financial implications of potential VAT liability for the new police and fire services, the police and public would be better served if Mr MacAskill spent more time pursuing the issue instead of praising himself for delivering 1,000 new police officers during the past five years.

ACPOS predicts that more than 2,000 police staff posts will be lost in the next three to four years, on a best-case scenario, and that more than 3,000 jobs might be lost if pay and conditions are not further reduced and the exemption from VAT is not attained. That is not a good policy to pursue.

Unison is right to point out that the Government’s

“aim should be to ensure the maximum number of police officers ‘on the street’,”—

in operational roles—

“not substituting for police staff roles.”

However, that truth cannot be fitted into a smart headline, which is what always matters most to the populist Scottish Government. The Government can deny all it wants that decivilianisation is taking place, but the people who have been affected and—this is important—the trade union that represents them know where the truth lies.

I say to Mr Finnie and other members who made the same point that the fact that someone does not ask for the evidence does not mean that the evidence does not exist. Mr Finnie made clear that he had read the e-mail from Unison. He must therefore know about the survey that the union conducted and he must have seen the examples that it gave of jobs that have been transferred and are now being done by higher-paid police officers, who are no longer on the front line delivering policing services. That cannot be the way forward.

John Finnie (Scottish National Party, Highlands and Islands)

Will the member give way?

John Scott (Conservative, Ayr)

The member is in his final minute.

John Finnie (Scottish National Party, Highlands and Islands)

Does the member accept that the Unison representative who gave evidence acknowledged that rehabilitative and protective duties all explain the filling of some of those roles?

Michael McMahon (Labour, Uddingston and Bellshill)

I accept that there is an explanation for the filling of some of those roles. However, the fact is that jobs are being lost and are being filled by police officers who are no longer doing policing.

When budgets are tight—as I concede they are—we cannot pay police officers, at a higher cost to the public, to do jobs that they were not recruited to do. The police service does not need headline-grabbing policies; it needs a properly funded, realistically assessed and balanced workforce.

Jamie Hepburn (Scottish National Party, Cumbernauld and Kilsyth)

I welcome today’s debate. I understand that police support staff play an important role in ensuring an effective police force. The cabinet secretary clearly set out his admiration for their work.

The debate is set against the backdrop of a direction of travel in policing in Scotland that is clearly different from that south of the border. The Scottish Government is ensuring that the front line is protected. As of the end of last year, there are 17,343 full-time-equivalent officers in Scotland—an increase of 1,109 from the position that we inherited in March 2007.

It has been interesting to hear, as members have just heard, Michael McMahon suggest that that is populism, and Graeme Pearson question whether it is a good thing. The question that Labour members have to answer is whether they want to cut police numbers. The inference to be taken from their suggestions is that they do. I look forward to hearing Mr Macdonald or Ms Marra respond to that later.

Lewis Macdonald rose—

Mr Macdonald can respond now.

Lewis Macdonald (Labour, North East Scotland)

Of course we are not, by any means, calling for any change in police numbers. We simply ask that when the Government is presiding over a reduction in police staff, it tells us which posts are going and which roles are no longer being done by civilian staff.

Jamie Hepburn (Scottish National Party, Cumbernauld and Kilsyth)

So it is populism when the SNP increases police numbers, but it is sound policy when the Labour Party wants to protect those numbers. That is an interesting perspective.

Let us face it: the 1,000 additional police officers have directly contributed to a 35-year low in recorded crime. I accept that Graeme Pearson has long experience in policing matters, but it was a little mean-spirited of him to suggest, just because there has been a recorded drop in levels of crime in other countries, that the police here have somehow not contributed to the reduced rate of crime in this country. I wonder how his former colleagues would respond to that.

Graeme Pearson (Labour, South Scotland)

There is no mean spirit intended. I ask Jamie Hepburn to deal with the reality outside the chamber and not to make a soundbite out of it. To connect those two statistics is just wrong. We need to deal with reality as it is.

Jamie Hepburn (Scottish National Party, Cumbernauld and Kilsyth)

That was a restatement of the position: a mean-spirited approach that suggests there is no recognition that the police have played a role—as indeed those who support them have played a role—in the reduction in the level of crime.

I do not have the time to compare front-line police numbers in England and Wales with the situation in Scotland, but there is clearly a different direction of travel south of the border.

It is important to place in context the specific matter of the number of police support staff employed in Scotland. In the first instance, the numbers are reducing mainly because people are retiring and there have been voluntary severance schemes. That is clearly different from what is happening in England. Alison McInnes was reticent about wanting to discuss what her party is doing in government with compulsory redundancies. Of course, such issues are operational matters for the chief constables of the various police forces. If the Government sought to intervene directly we would probably be having a debate about the political direction of police forces—

Jenny Marra rose—

I doubt that I have time, Ms Marra. I apologise.

I wonder if that is the debate that we would be having—although perhaps that is mean-spirited of me.

It is clear that the number of police support staff has gone down a little. There are, as at the end of 2011, 6,957 police support staff. However, that figure is higher than it was in nine of the 16 quarters from 2003 to 2007, so if it is a problem now, it must have been a problem then. I do not remember Lewis Macdonald saying so at the time, though.

Alison McInnes (Liberal Democrat, North East Scotland)

Rather unsurprisingly—this is increasingly the case—the debate has been a case of fingers in the ears from members on the Government benches. Lewis Macdonald’s motion is entirely reasonable and certainly worthy of serious debate. The fact that civilian staff play a vital role in allowing our police forces to operate at their most effective is not in question; neither is the fact that over the past few years there has been a dramatic and alarming reduction in the number of support staff.

This is a major reform, heavy with risk. Currently, we have an efficient, effective and trusted police force across Scotland. The Government is determined to proceed with a single police force, so its responsibility is clear. It must ensure that reform does not irretrievably damage our police service.

Opposition speakers this morning have rightly pointed out the dangers that are inherent in one strand of the reform. Sadly, we have not heard the same from SNP back benchers. Instead, we have had the usual cheerleading for the Government rather than any sticking up for communities.

In my opening speech, I mentioned the thought that was floated by a senior officer that the Government’s reforms risk losing the community focus that is the cornerstone of our current police service—a point that I think is well worth repeating. Continuing with large-scale reductions in the number of civilian staff will mean that the way that our police service works will change, and not for the better. It will inevitably return to being less about preventing crime and more about reacting to crime. Sadly, the Government seems determined to ignore that concern.

The Government may trot out its rhetoric on protecting services and creating better ties with communities, but the clear fact is that the reforms are simply not concerned with developing the best model for policing in Scotland. Rather, they are all about justifying unsubstantiated savings claims in an unachievable timeframe.

Throughout the Justice Committee’s consideration of the Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Bill, we heard numerous concerns about the questionable practice of using the outline business case as a blueprint for the actual savings that are demanded of the new force. What is worse, the Government is now demanding that those dubious savings targets be reached in double-quick time.

John Finnie said that the matter is not an equation. Indeed it is not. However, in that case, the cabinet secretary should not define one half of the equation, which is the number of police officers that we have.

Our civilian police staff are an absolutely vital part of Scotland’s community policing. They are the people who have helped us to reach the current 35-year low in recorded crime. The Government is quick to laud that figure but is all too slow to recognise the role that police support staff have played in achieving it.

As I said earlier, our intelligence analysts, custody officers and community wardens let our officers spend the maximum time possible out on the beat in the community, keeping our towns safe. With their numbers already on the decline, we can ill afford to lose the 2,000 or more staff who, it seems, are about to be among the first casualties of the Government’s damaging reforms.

David McLetchie (Conservative, Lothian)

This morning’s debate has highlighted the challenges that face us in light of the current pressures on the public finances.

Making the necessary savings will involve difficult decisions and, with 86 per cent of the policing budget going on staffing costs, posts will have to be lost. However, we must ensure that the police service that emerges is effective, is focused on tackling crime and is made up of the correct skill set.

The Scottish Government asserts that a single police force could achieve savings of £130 million within a year, with a total saving over 15 years of £1.7 billion. However, alongside that assertion is the Government's commitment to maintain the 1,000 extra police officers that were secured during the previous session of Parliament, and the protection of those police officer numbers means ring fencing a large proportion of total police spending and preventing its use to make savings.

The Scottish Government has already set savings targets of £88 million by 2014-15, of which more than £50 million must be saved through police staff reductions. That has been calculated to represent more than 2,000 full-time posts. It will clearly be a challenge to achieve that reduction in staff numbers through voluntary redundancy alone. The ACPOS president, Chief Constable Smith, has questioned whether those savings can be achieved in that manner. He said that, in his personal and professional view, he was clear that

“the savings that have been set out in the bill will not be achieved”.—[Official Report, Justice Committee, 28 February 2012; c 972.]

One also has to question whether 2,000 posts can be lost without a detrimental loss of skills. Chief Superintendent O’Connor from the Association of Scottish Police Superintendents warned the Justice Committee that the Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Bill risked throwing the baby out with the bath water. He explained:

“We have a lot of very loyal, competent and experienced police staff with a lot of corporate knowledge, skills and expertise. I fear that at some point down the line it may dawn on us that we still need those skills and, indeed, that we may have to buy them back.”—[Official Report, Justice Committee, 28 February 2012; c 977.]

Clearly, therefore, a balance must be struck between protecting posts that contribute to policing in Scotland and addressing any duplication and inefficiencies in our police service.

One thing is clear: the Scottish Government must present Parliament with the necessary information surrounding its proposal for a single police force. The current savings that a single force might bring are based on an outline business case produced in July 2011—a document that Chief Constable Smith said was

“never intended by the police officers who were party to it, or by the consultants, to be a document that contained sufficient detail on which to base significant decisions about investment and savings.”—[Official Report, Justice Committee, 28 February 2012; c 971-2.]

Lewis Macdonald (Labour, North East Scotland)

Does the member therefore agree that in order to achieve that clarity and certainty about the impact of the changes, it would make a major contribution if ministers were to do an audit and report on it to Parliament, as Labour has called for today?

David McLetchie (Conservative, Lothian)

It would certainly make a contribution, but I would prefer the full business case to be submitted.

No one in the chamber is clear about how much money will be saved by a move to a single police force. Accordingly, and because police officer numbers are to be protected, we can only guess how many civilian posts will have to be shed in the years to come. The Scottish Government’s position is that a full business case will not be produced until a single police service is established. That is too little, too late. This morning’s debate further highlights the need for those figures.

Kenny MacAskill (Scottish National Party, Edinburgh Eastern)

Yet again, I put on record how proud we are as a Government that crime is at a 35-year low, and I reiterate our praise for those who have contributed to that. Whether they are civilian staff or police constables of whatever rank, we pay tribute to them for their service, given the dangers that they often face. Those who denigrate that do a disservice to those whom they should be praising, and they should think again.

I have listened with some amusement to Mr Macdonald. As in most debates, Labour has come to the chamber making claims, but offering no increase in budget or suggestions about where money should come from. The Labour position seems to be that there should be a single service—that has always been its position. However, there is to be no loss in support staff or police numbers. I look forward to Mr Macdonald going along to the ACPOS conference that is coming up shortly and saying, “There’ll be no loss in chief constables. Hang on to your pips and braid—Labour’s going to look after you.”

Lewis Macdonald (Labour, North East Scotland)

I, too, am amused, but by the cabinet secretary’s interpretation of the debate. If he read the motion, he would see that we are not asking for a major increase in budget. We are simply asking the Government to assess which posts have been and are about to be lost and to report on that to Parliament. That will not require much additional resource; it requires only some political will.

Kenny MacAskill (Scottish National Party, Edinburgh Eastern)

I was at a dinner yesterday in the company of a chief constable. That chief constable may apply to become, and may become, the chief constable of the new force. If he does, I will be delighted to congratulate him. If he does not, I will pay tribute to him for his service. I noticed that there was a vehicle and driver waiting to collect him. If the chief constable is unsuccessful, his driver may also be out of a job. Sadly, that is a fact of life. We have no compulsory redundancies—that remains the case. However, we cannot make jobs up. If we go from eight chief constables to one, we cannot have drivers for eight chief constables. That remains the position.

Labour’s position is totally hypocritical and fraudulent. There are to be no cuts in back-office staff, no cuts in police numbers, doubtless no cuts in the senior staff ranks, and no variation in the budget available.

Yvette Cooper has indicated that Labour south of the border would cut police numbers by 12 per cent.

Jenny Marra (Labour, North East Scotland)

Does the cabinet secretary accept that we are saying that when civilian staff retire early or are made voluntarily redundant, they are being replaced not by civilian staff but by police officers on much higher salaries?

Kenny MacAskill (Scottish National Party, Edinburgh Eastern)

I do not normally agree with Mr McLetchie in these debates—which can be quite rumbustious—but he made a valid point that such things are about balance.

Jenny Marra intervened on John Finnie with regard to Tayside. I am not aware of the on-going situation there, as it is a matter for the chief constable. However, I attended—along with Jenny Marra and Lewis Macdonald—the reception that the Scottish Police Federation hosted last week, at which I spoke to Inspector Hamilton from the Police Federation ranks in Tayside, and he raised no issues of concern with me.

Jenny Marra raised the subject of civilianisation and police officers going into control rooms, which seems to be an issue in Tayside. I recall—as might Mr McLetchie—being lobbied by the Police Federation in Lothian and Borders a few years back. The issue was that police officers were being taken out, and civilians were going in, when the force control centre in Bilston opened. Such issues are a matter of balance: Mr McLetchie was right to say that it is ultimately for the police to decide whether a post should be filled by an officer. We will give the police our full support in that regard.

I say to Alison McInnes that I would have some sympathy with her if the coalition Government was adopting the same position. However, I remind her once again of the debates that we have had in the chamber not only in the current session of Parliament but in previous sessions about the situation that is playing out south of the border with regard to civilian staff. The coalition Government is privatising the forensic medicine department south of the border: lock, stock and laboratory. That is not about making redundancies where there is duplication, but about wholesale privatisation, which this Government will never countenance.

I appreciate that my time is almost up. This Government is delighted by our track record, and I can only remind Labour colleagues of the stony reception accorded to the Labour shadow home secretary. This Government is doing the right thing for the police service, which is why it is supported by the Scottish Police Federation. We welcome the contribution that is made by all those who serve in the police family, and the record to which they have contributed should not be denigrated by anyone or by any political party.

Jenny Marra (Labour, North East Scotland)

I pay tribute to the men and women of Scotland’s eight police forces, who, through their skill and dedication, work tirelessly to keep Scotland’s streets safe.

When Scottish Labour first outlined its commitment to a single police force, we envisaged a single force that championed the diversity of functions and skills that we know it takes to police effectively and to keep our communities safe.

Joe FitzPatrick (Scottish National Party, Dundee City West)

Will the member take an intervention?

Jenny Marra (Labour, North East Scotland)

No thank you—not just now.

We recognised that, to do the best that we can for communities throughout Scotland, we had to build a force that was entrenched in the areas that it served, with the right people doing the right jobs at the right time. We did that by committing to a force in which police officers would not be taken off the beat to cover the jobs of police staff.

However, we are here today because the SNP thinks otherwise. Instead of maintaining police officers within our communities, we have the lowest number of civilian police staff in Scotland since 2005. Almost 1,000 posts have gone in the past two years alone, and 3,000 are projected to go in the future.

As we move through a period of transition, it is likely that those figures will only get worse. That is because the SNP has based its business case for a single force on the imperative to save money—as the cabinet secretary admitted last week—and not to create the world-class police force that Scotland deserves.

Jamie Hepburn (Scottish National Party, Cumbernauld and Kilsyth)

Will the member give way?

Jenny Marra (Labour, North East Scotland)

No, thank you.

Our motion does not demand that every existing post is retained, as the cabinet secretary interpreted it in his opening remarks, but simply asks the Government to undertake an audit of planned cuts.

The debate is not about civilian staff versus police officers, as the SNP back benchers characterise it, but about finding the most cost-efficient and operationally efficient balance. That is why we have called for an audit.

Mr MacAskill tells us that numbers of police officers and police staff are an “operational matter”. If that is an operational matter in which the cabinet secretary does not interfere, why does he demand that the arbitrary number of 17,234 police officers remains in Scotland? Is that not, by his own definition, an operational matter?

John Finnie told us that the cabinet secretary has given a commitment to 1,000 extra officers, a static 17,234 police officers and no compulsory redundancies. However, 20 minutes earlier, the cabinet secretary told us that such numbers are “operational matters”. Can the SNP make up its mind?

Kenny MacAskill (Scottish National Party, Edinburgh Eastern)

Does the member not recognise that political parties have the right—as the Conservatives had—to seek election on a number of platforms, one of which might be to increase police visibility by 1,000 officers, and that, if the electorate supports that, the party in question has the mandate and authority to introduce such measures? However, it is then up to the chief constable to decide how those officers are deployed and the balance between police and civilian staff. Is Ms Marra now going down the Yvette Cooper route?

Jenny Marra (Labour, North East Scotland)

The cabinet secretary is being slightly disingenuous. If Labour had made a commitment to provide 1,000 extra police officers, we would have ensured that they were on the streets of our communities, not backfilling civilian posts in control rooms across the country.

Tayside Police’s deputy chief constable has been running a roadshow for police staff to explain the reform and allay fears. The following extract has been taken from an official police document:

“We have been successful in previous civilianisation programmes where police staff have been employed in posts previously occupied inappropriately by police officers. Due to the requirement on us to make savings and maintain police officer numbers it is inevitable that we have had to take a temporary step back in this regard and some police officers are having to temporarily cover some aspects of police staff posts in order to maintain service delivery.”

I want to take the cabinet secretary through some examples of how that has been happening in Tayside. With regard to firearms inquiry officers, three civilian staff went under voluntary redundancy and police officers have had to divvy up their 110 working hours at higher cost. In media services, one civilian member of staff went through the early retirement and voluntary redundancy scheme and was replaced by another civilian and an additional constable. I will let the cabinet secretary add up how much more that costs. Moreover, four police constables transferred into Tayside’s force control room to backfill a civilian dispatcher. More civilian dispatchers will go in the next month or so and the force executive has already agreed to transfer more cops into that room for cover.

Let us not pretend that that is not happening or disrespect the civilian workers in the police force by saying, as some SNP members said last week, that backfilling is simply an assumption that Labour is making. It is not an assumption—it is a reality in police forces up and down Scotland.

The SNP Government made a political commitment to put 1,000 extra police officers on our streets—

Kenny MacAskill (Scottish National Party, Edinburgh Eastern)

If this was such an issue for police officers, why was it not raised last week by Inspector Hamilton of the Tayside police federation or, indeed, by Calum Steele of the Scottish Police Federation in the evidence to the Justice Committee that Mr McLetchie quoted?

Jenny Marra (Labour, North East Scotland)

The Justice Committee took very strong evidence from Unison on behalf of its members that this was happening.

The SNP Government made a political commitment to put 1,000 extra police officers on our streets. However, over the past two years, 1,000 civilians have left the police through either early retirement or voluntary redundancy, and their jobs are being done by police officers.

The fact is that the SNP has not put 1,000 extra police officers on our streets; instead, at a time when the Government is making cuts and saying that it is trying to save money by creating a new single police force, it has given us 1,000 backroom bobbies who are being paid significantly more money to do the backroom jobs that civilian staff were doing just as efficiently. If the new single police force is a cost-saving exercise, why are police officers being paid more to do jobs that civilians were doing very well at a lower pay grade?

The reality is that the SNP is prepared to pay inflated police salaries for civilian jobs just to save face on its promise to provide 1,000 extra police officers. However, it is being disingenuous, and the Government should face up to the situation and admit that 1,000 extra police officers on the beat is a fallacy. Instead, it has given us 1,000 backroom bobbies.

Waiting Times

John Scott (Conservative, Ayr)

The next item of business is a debate on motion S4M-02905, in the name of Jackie Baillie, on health.

Neil Findlay (Labour, Lothian)

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. I wonder whether you can help me and other concerned members.

Two weeks ago tomorrow, the appalling report into the management culture at NHS Lothian was passed to the cabinet secretary. She sat on the report for a week before releasing it last Friday morning, when MSPs were safely out of the way back in their constituencies. Since then, there has been no statement from the Government, and no opportunity for constituency and regional members to raise points. Yesterday in the Parliament, members had to endure a non-debate on a parenting strategy that does not exist. Why did the Government not use that time to allow questions or a debate on the dreadful situation at NHS Lothian? Why has it taken Opposition time and an Opposition motion to drag the cabinet secretary to the chamber to break her uncharacteristic silence? Presiding Officer, members are supposed to hold ministers to account on behalf of our constituents. Can you please help us to carry out our duties?

Jackie Baillie (Labour, Dumbarton)

I welcome the opportunity to debate waiting times. We all know that if someone is ill, it can be an extremely worrying time. Getting a diagnosis and then getting treatment are, of course, essential to their recovery and wellbeing. We all appreciate that. We have family and friends who have waited anxiously for treatment, and we have constituents who are coping with that stress right now.

Anything that reduces waiting times is very welcome indeed and, like many other members, I am sure, I commend national health service staff for their unstinting efforts and hard work to minimise waiting times and provide the best possible treatment for patients. Progress has been made.

Members will be aware of the scandal of hidden waiting lists that has been exposed at NHS Lothian in recent weeks. Patients appear to have been offered treatment in England rather than in NHS Lothian as a means of removing them entirely from the waiting time guarantee. If the offer of treatment in England was refused, the patient was deemed to be unavailable and therefore exempt from the guarantee. Those patients were simply removed from the waiting list.

Not content with that sleight of hand, which denied people their rights, NHS Lothian went further. It adjusted the data retrospectively to make it appear that it was meeting waiting time targets. As many as 1,417 patients were wiped off the list in that way. If anyone is in any doubt about whether that was deliberate, they need only look at the situation now. In the space of just a couple of months, NHS Lothian has gone from no people breaching the waiting time guarantee to 3,500 people breaching the waiting time guarantee. That is simply extraordinary.

Just last week, we saw the publication of a damning report exposing the bullying and intimidation of staff in NHS Lothian with regard to achieving waiting time targets. I do not believe, unfortunately, that the deliberate distortion of waiting times or the culture of bullying and intimidation is confined to NHS Lothian.

If we take even the most cursory look at the numbers of those patients who were deemed to be unavailable for social reasons and were therefore dropped from the waiting time guarantee, there is a dramatic and unexplained rise since 2008 across Scotland. In 2008, the number of patients in that category was 4,967. As of last December, it was 15,824. The high point was in June 2011, when 20,662 patients were removed from the waiting time guarantee. That represents a fourfold increase in just a few years.

Nicola Sturgeon (Scottish National Party, Glasgow Southside)

Will the member take an intervention?

Jackie Baillie (Labour, Dumbarton)

In a minute.

I welcome the fact that the figures are now going down, but if we are honest, that has happened only since the problem at NHS Lothian was exposed.

The same is true across the country, not just in Lothian. We need only look at the local pictures to see the truth of that. In NHS Ayrshire and Arran, the number of people who were removed from the waiting time guarantee was up threefold. In NHS Fife, the figure was also up threefold. NHS Grampian’s figure was up fivefold, and NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde and NHS Lanarkshire’s figures saw a fourfold increase.

Nicola Sturgeon (Scottish National Party, Glasgow Southside)

I have a genuine and very simple point, which I make in the interests of accuracy. Jackie Baillie just said something that I am sure she will concede was inaccurate. Would she care to correct what she said and concede that patients who have a period of social unavailability do not have their waiting time guarantee removed?

Jackie Baillie (Labour, Dumbarton)

I think that the cabinet secretary is dancing on the head of a pin. Patients in those circumstances do not have a waiting time guarantee. This is far too important a matter for us to divide on issues of semantics; it is incredibly important. People outside the Parliament will not understand the cabinet secretary’s intervention.

The cabinet secretary’s amendment, which I studied closely, recognises that waiting times need to be monitored—and so say all of us—but the practice in question has been going on for the past four years. Was the situation monitored at any time over that period? Was the cabinet secretary told about the increases? Has she been let down by her civil servants, or did she know? Why has no action been taken before now?

There were warning signs. ISD Scotland—the people in Government who are responsible for collecting the waiting time statistics—takes great pains to ensure the validity of its data. It is quoted in The Sunday Times as saying that

“several health boards over the last few years”

had been warned about the

“high levels of social unavailability”.

Again, I must ask whether the cabinet secretary knew and, if she did, what she did about it. Did her officials simply not tell her?

In 2010, Audit Scotland produced and published a report that highlighted concerns about the way in which patients and their waiting times were recorded. At the time, Audit Scotland said:

“NHS boards vary in how they deal with patients who do not or cannot attend appointments and this may not always be appropriate.”

It went on to say:

“The report also finds that the NHS is not accurately recording all relevant information about patient waits which makes it difficult to demonstrate that it is managing all patients correctly in line with the new guidance.”

That is too true. Here is an early warning sign, if ever I saw one. It was a matter of public record.

What did the cabinet secretary do to address those concerns? My fear is that the early warning signs were not heeded. After all, just days before the publication of the Audit Scotland report in 2010, the cabinet secretary addressed the annual Scottish National Party conference. On waiting times, she promised that

“All patients are now covered by the guarantee and no one—no one—is on a hidden waiting list.”

We know now that that is simply not true. What we have with the unavailable for social reasons category is nothing short of the SNP’s hidden waiting list. More than 20,000 people have no waiting time guarantee because they have been removed from the list to massage the figures.

It would be bad enough if that were the culture in just one health board, but there is mounting evidence that the use of the social unavailability category is much wider. Frankly, it is not good enough for health boards to inspect themselves, which is the option that the cabinet secretary favours. I believe that the people of Scotland deserve much greater openness and transparency, so I was delighted that Audit Scotland responded positively to our request for a Scotland-wide independent review. In its letter to me, it said:

“We share the widespread concern that there is evidence pointing to an inappropriate use of this code (describing patients as unavailable for ‘social reasons’ so they are removed from waiting lists)”.

Despite that, the cabinet secretary continues to deny that there is a problem, other than in NHS Lothian.

I turn to the culture of bullying and intimidation. It is shameful that any member of staff in the NHS should be treated in the way that was described in the NHS Lothian report. When shouting at clinicians and nurses in general surgery to move people on before it is clinically appropriate to do so becomes routine, we should all rightly be concerned. Such behaviour is unacceptable, but such was the pressure on achieving targets, both internally and externally, that a perverse incentive was created to distort waiting time figures.

The report makes for uncomfortable reading. Staff were afraid to report their concerns for fear of reprisal. In a recent freedom of information request by my colleague Richard Simpson, we asked all health boards how many cases there had been of whistleblowing or of concern. The response from NHS Lothian was that there had been none—there was not one recorded case of any concern having being raised about anything at all. If ever something underlined the case for a whistleblowing hotline, that response alone does.

There is a hotline in England and Wales, but the cabinet secretary resists having one in Scotland. One would be forgiven for thinking that she has something to fear from such an approach, given the level of resistance. However, whatever the reason, there can be no excuse for delaying any longer. I hope that the cabinet secretary heeds that call.

The cabinet secretary believes that the issue is just about NHS Lothian and that there is no problem anywhere else in the NHS. Again, I say that she is in denial. The British Medical Association has said that feedback from its members—the very doctors who deliver for patients on a daily basis—shows that the culture is not isolated to NHS Lothian and is more widespread.

I do not have a problem with the principle of setting targets, as they help people to focus minds and concentrate on what matters, but there must always be a balance between speed and clinical priorities. I fear that we are distorting clinical priorities in a way that is unhelpful to patients.

The SNP amendment is revealing. The approach is to deny that there is a problem and, if that does not work, to blame somebody else. If that, too, fails, the approach is to adopt the view that attack is the best form of defence. The amendment attacks the previous Labour-Liberal Democrat Administration. I regret the approach that health boards adopted that resulted in too many people being placed on availability status codes, thereby removing their waiting time guarantee. That was well over seven years ago. It was not acceptable then and it is certainly not acceptable now. There were fundamental differences, but I am running out of time, so I will not be able to explore them all.

We should compare that previous situation with the cynical manipulation of figures by the SNP, involving the use of social unavailability codes and offering patients operations that they could not possibly attend. There is no excuse for that sleight of hand and distortion of statistics, or for the wholesale removal of 20,000 people from their waiting time guarantee. The cabinet secretary must act now to stop the figures being fiddled.

I move,

That the Parliament welcomes the progress on waiting times since 1999 underpinned by the hard work of NHS staff, however notes that recent progress has been in a context of declining staff numbers; also welcomes the principle of the New Ways waiting times system initiated by the previous Labour-Liberal Democrat administration and implemented by the current SNP administration; however believes that, for waiting times guarantees to be meaningful, the public must have confidence that published statistics are a true reflection of actual waiting times; therefore expresses concern at reports identifying the misuse of social unavailability codes in NHS Lothian as well as allegations of a culture of bullying and intimidation in relation to meeting targets, particularly given that an internal investigation failed to fully uncover such problems; also notes that the NHS Information Services Division (ISD) figures show that the number of patients across Scotland being removed from normal waiting time guarantees for so-called social reasons increased from below 5,000 to as many as 20,662 for inpatient or day-case admissions between 2008 and 2011; is alarmed by newspaper reports that the ISD has raised concerns about high levels of social unavailability with a number of NHS boards in recent years; also notes the comments of Audit Scotland that it shares widespread concern that there is evidence pointing to the inappropriate use of this code and therefore welcomes the decision by the Auditor General for Scotland to carry out an independent examination of the use of social unavailability codes by NHS boards across Scotland, and believes that this is a necessary step if confidence is to begin to be restored in the integrity of published waiting times statistics and to properly establish that there are no hidden waiting lists.

Nicola Sturgeon (Scottish National Party, Glasgow Southside)

I welcome the debate. I know how important waiting times are to the public and I am proud of the Government’s record on waiting times. I pay an unequivocal tribute to NHS staff. I know how challenging their jobs are, particularly in the current climate. They do a fantastic job and they deserve our thanks—not thanks with a “but” at the end, but our unqualified thanks, which is what they get from SNP members.

Before I turn to the staff’s progress on waiting times, I take the opportunity to thank staff for another extremely important achievement. Yesterday’s annual report from Health Protection Scotland confirmed the dramatic reduction in healthcare associated infection in recent years. There will always be more to do on that agenda, but we should not underestimate the amount of work that has been involved in reducing Clostridium difficile by 35 per cent and MRSA by 40 per cent in the past year alone. I am grateful to everyone who has been involved in that and I put on record my thanks to them.

Neil Findlay (Labour, Lothian)

That is all very well, but the staff do not want the cabinet secretary’s thanks; they want a safe working environment in which they are respected and in which they can perform the caring role that they engage in every day. They do not want the cabinet secretary’s thanks; they want action.

Nicola Sturgeon (Scottish National Party, Glasgow Southside)

That is what they will get for as long as this Government is in charge.

If anything, progress on waiting times is even more impressive than progress on healthcare associated infection. Waiting times for in-patients and out-patients, and now for the whole patient journey, are at record lows. On cancer, the 62-day guarantee, which was set by the previous Labour Government but never even nearly delivered during its entire term of office, is now being consistently met, as is the newer 31-day target. As of October this year, we will for the first time have enshrined in statute a new 12-week treatment time guarantee.

Richard Simpson (Labour, Mid Scotland and Fife)

Will the minister give way?

Nicola Sturgeon (Scottish National Party, Glasgow Southside)

I will make some progress and give way shortly.

All that progress is the result of the hard work and the commitment of tens of thousands of NHS staff, whose hard work is delivering better, quicker treatment for hundreds of thousands of patients. What happened in NHS Lothian was completely unacceptable, and it is of paramount importance that there is trust in, and transparency around, waiting times. I will return to both points in a few moments.

To imply, without evidence, that the massive achievement of staff, under this and previous Administrations, is somehow not real, is to do a massive disservice not to me or the Government but to every member of NHS staff whose hard work has delivered record low waiting times.

I say, genuinely and sincerely, to Labour, or indeed to anyone else, that if anyone has evidence that waiting time rules are not being applied properly in any board, bring it forward and it will be thoroughly investigated. If the evidence is found to have any substance whatsoever, the matter will be dealt with immediately and appropriately. Let me make clear again that I will not tolerate the manipulation of waiting times. However, suggestion and insinuation should not be used to undermine the efforts of staff, because, frankly, they deserve much better than that.

Richard Simpson (Labour, Mid Scotland and Fife)

Let me be quite clear: the cabinet secretary is saying that she will not ask questions when she sees variation. The NHS Lothian figures were in the public domain, and there are many more figures in which there is substantial variation. However, the cabinet secretary says that she will not bother asking questions.

Nicola Sturgeon (Scottish National Party, Glasgow Southside)

That is not what I am saying, and Dr Simpson knows that. I will come on in a second to exactly the questions that I am asking.

As I said, what happened in NHS Lothian was completely unacceptable. It is beyond the pale that any patient was made to wait longer than they should have done as a result of manipulation of waiting time figures. The culture that resulted in those malpractices—described in the report that I received last Thursday and that was published on Friday—is equally unacceptable.

The fact is that as soon as the practices came to light, they were investigated, exposed and dealt with. That is as it should be, and that is how it will always be under this Government. Let us remember that it was this Government that finally implemented the new ways waiting time system, and that it was this Government that abolished the hidden waiting lists officially known as availability status codes.

Let us remind ourselves of exactly how Labour’s ASCs worked. Patients who were given a code lost their waiting time guarantee altogether and were dumped on a list and forgotten about—Labour ministers used to deny their very existence. That list of Labour’s forgotten patients had peaked at 35,000 by the time that we took office. I take waiting times very seriously, but I will take no lessons from Labour on the transparency of our waiting time statistics.

Sarah Boyack (Labour, Lothian)

Will the minister take an intervention on that point?

Nicola Sturgeon (Scottish National Party, Glasgow Southside)

No. I want to make progress.

The social unavailability aspect of the new system is nothing like the old, discredited system of Labour. The new system gives patients more choice in their treatment times to accommodate personal circumstances or deal with other underlying medical conditions. The fact is that that becomes all the more important the shorter that waiting times get. Unlike the situation with Labour’s system and contrary to what Jackie Baillie has told members in the chamber today, patients who have a period of social unavailability do not lose their waiting time guarantee.

Richard Simpson (Labour, Mid Scotland and Fife)

Some do.

Nicola Sturgeon (Scottish National Party, Glasgow Southside)

Their waiting time clock stops for the time that they are unavailable and, for 75 per cent of patients who have a period of social unavailability, it is a period of less than three weeks—those are the facts.

We have a transparent system, but we must always ensure that it operates as it should and that the public have confidence in it. That is why I have asked all boards to conduct a detailed internal review into their waiting time management. Audit Scotland has approved the remit. Its objectives are to ensure that individual patient records are accurate; that systems are in place to ensure that patient management systems cannot be inappropriately changed; that reporting on waiting times is accurate and consistent; and that local guidance is consistent with national guidance.

Sarah Boyack (Labour, Lothian)

Will the minister take an intervention on that point?

Nicola Sturgeon (Scottish National Party, Glasgow Southside)

We will ensure that the findings of those investigations are made available not just to the Government, but to Audit Scotland. I welcome Audit Scotland’s announcement that it is carrying out a separate, further audit.

This Government will never ever shirk its responsibilities to patients: it will immediately expose any issues that arise and move swiftly to resolve them. However, we will also stand up for the record and achievements of staff who deliver so well for patients and who, thanks to the support and investment of this Government, are delivering record low waiting times for the benefit of patients all over Scotland

I move amendment S4M-02905.1, to leave out from first “welcomes” to end and insert:

“recognises the substantial progress made in reducing waiting times under both this and previous administrations; recognises that this is due to the hard work of all NHS staff in delivering shorter waiting times for patients across Scotland and in particular commends staff for continuing to achieve the 62-day cancer time target that was missed during the last Labour-led administration; welcomes the Patient Rights (Scotland) Act 2011 and the introduction of the treatment time guarantee later this year, which will help ensure that there is no return to the hidden waiting lists of the last Labour-led administration under which over 35,000 patients were denied their treatment guarantee; recognises that waiting times targets need to be properly monitored and therefore welcomes the forthcoming NHS boards’ reviews of their waiting times practices; further welcomes the fact that Audit Scotland will conduct a separate review of waiting times to build on its 2010 review, and believes that, taken together, these reviews will provide assurance about the transparency of waiting times across Scotland.”

Jackson Carlaw (Conservative, West Scotland)

Dear, dear. It is difficult not to be depressed by the two opening speeches—not that there were not things within them that were of interest or true. The next election is in 2016 and we are having the debate only days after the publication of one of the most serious and damning reports that I have seen. If Jackie Baillie and Nicola Sturgeon want to go toe to toe, we will set up a boxing ring in the garden lobby and they can do so. Frankly, the public outside do not want to know what the previous Labour Government did or did not do, and they do not particularly want to know whether Nicola Sturgeon has done this, that or the next thing.

The failure that is identified in the report lies with Lothian NHS Board, and the report is one of the most damning indictments that I have seen. The concern of everybody in the chamber and beyond is about not only what was going on in Lothian NHS Board, but whether there is any suggestion that the practice could be more widespread and whether we should have concerns elsewhere. I accept that both sides believe that to be the case, but that should be the point around which the debate is centred and on which we are united. We are not having a hustings contest for last year’s election.

The one bright spot in all this is the clear evidence that staff at every level of Lothian NHS Board have a sincere appreciation of the job that they are doing and a profound commitment to it. Tribute has been paid to those staff, and anybody who has been involved in investigating any of this has given them nothing but credit for their effort and for the job that they have done.

The question is whether the practice is isolated or whether there are signs of concern elsewhere, beyond the scope of the report. I therefore welcome what the cabinet secretary has done in giving Audit Scotland a remit to look at other boards. Are there signs that, over time, such concerns have arisen? There are ways in which we could look at that to see whether signs have been emerging. The compensation that boards have paid has gone up from £2.7 million in 1999 to £26 million in 2009. When we have talked about compensation in the past, I have asked whether there has been a chain of accountability from that compensation back to the problem that was at its source or whether it has been used as a convenient way simply to park the issue and move on. That issue arose during the recent scandal in Ayrshire and Arran NHS Board, when it was clear that the effort all the time was to present, on behalf of the management, the best possible case without necessarily learning any lessons.

Richard Simpson (Labour, Mid Scotland and Fife)

Would the member be surprised to learn that NHS Ayrshire and Arran failed to record 26 per cent of its referral-to-treatment notifications? Twenty-six per cent of episodes were not recorded by NHS Ayrshire and Arran—the same health board that he has just referred to.

Jackson Carlaw (Conservative, West Scotland)

Naively, I am surprised. I would have thought that anybody should be surprised. Not only am I surprised, I am appalled. The situation needs to be investigated more widely.

The Bowles report paints a familiar picture of the present system of accountability sometimes giving people objectives and accountability without authority and of concern about how levels of detail often result in paralysis. I am concerned that that is what may be happening in local government, given the way in which we keep pushing things down to councils without giving them the correct level of authority. Given the issues of accountability, management practice and blame culture that the report identifies, if we are to take any lesson from the report it should be that we must stop blaming each other and focus on resolving the situation.

I am sure that, in the course of the debate, we will hear from Lothian members who have their own specific examples. I will return to them and to the report’s recommendations in my summing up.

The Government meets all the health boards annually in public session, but there is a lack of opportunity for members of the public to intervene in those proceedings. Many have complained about the small window for them to contribute, and it does need to be much greater.

I will comment on whistleblowing when I sum up. My final point at this stage is about work ethic. There is a concern that chief executives of health boards sometimes think that their role is to work less than the people who work for them. In fact, they should be working harder than the people who work for them. It is clear that, in the case that is covered by the report, the commitment was from the people who were doing the job at the coalface and not from the people who were responsible for ensuring that what they did was properly reported, that it was effective and that it put patient care first.

Elaine Smith (Labour, Coatbridge and Chryston)

We come to the open debate. We are tight for time so, unfortunately, I will not be able to give time back for interventions. Speeches should be of four minutes.

Mark McDonald (Scottish National Party, North East Scotland)

I do not think that it is helpful to cast around aspersions and innuendo as to the motivations that lie behind decisions that are taken at NHS level, of which more later.

I was interested in Neil Findlay’s point of order. Although I am by no means an anorak on standing orders, I understand that there is an opportunity for any member to speak against the business motion. However, I do not recall that Neil Findlay or indeed anybody else chose to speak against the motion that set out the chamber business for this week, which included yesterday’s constructive and interesting—for the most part—debate on the national parenting strategy. However, what is a little political posturing between friends?

I have no constituency locus in the NHS Lothian situation and I would not seek to interfere given that I do not have an acute interest in it. I know that my colleagues who represent the area will undoubtedly have things to say on the situation. Needless to say, however, I think that the cabinet secretary’s response to it has given no lie to the fact that the Government views it in the most serious of terms. Some people could seek to fault the way in which she has chosen to intervene, as Mr Findlay has done, but they would do so for entirely the wrong reasons. We believe, and I am sure that most reasonably minded members would agree, that the cabinet secretary has responded in the most appropriate fashion.

Neil Findlay (Labour, Lothian)

Will the member give way?

Mark McDonald (Scottish National Party, North East Scotland)

I am sorry, but I have only four minutes. I am sure that the intervention would have been interesting. Some other time.

As a member who represents North East Scotland, I was interested to read a press release on Jackie Baillie’s website—yes, I am the one person who visits it—-that states:

“NHS Tayside was ... dragged into the scandal.”

As a regional member for North East Scotland, I received the letter that Sandy Watson, the chairman of NHS Tayside, sent to Jackie Baillie seeking to correct her. He wrote:

“I am writing to you in response to the concerns that the Scottish Labour Party has raised about the management of waiting times lists in NHS Tayside ... The figures reported in The Sunday Times related to numbers of patients waiting for a new outpatient appointment. The example highlighted was that in November 2011 ISD said there were 21,032 patients waiting for a new outpatient appointment and this was subsequently revised to 18,815 patients. This was reported as ‘patients being removed from the waiting list’.

The reason for this revision, which we gave to both ISD and The Sunday Times prior to The Sunday Times publication, is transparent, straightforward and is entirely consistent with normal and acceptable routine working practice. It is not in any way related to the removal of patients from waiting lists ... I am sure you will agree with me when I say that in the talk of all these statistics patients are the most important thing and we will never forget that.”

Neither will the Government. I am sure that Ms Baillie did not mean to omit this matter from her opening speech—

Richard Simpson (Labour, Mid Scotland and Fife)

Will the member give way?

Mark McDonald (Scottish National Party, North East Scotland)

I am in my final 40 seconds, so I cannot.

I am sure that Ms Baillie merely ran out of time before using the opportunity to apologise to the hard-working and dedicated staff of NHS Tayside for the innuendo that she cast on them in the press in that manner.

For the benefit of other members, I will be happy to place a copy of the letter that I received in the Scottish Parliament information centre, as I am sure Jackie Baillie would have done, as she was the main recipient of it. It ill behoves any member to cast around innuendo and aspersions that do nothing to affect positively the morale of NHS staff. It would be far better if members paid attention to the matter at hand rather than seeking to score petty political points at the expense of our NHS staff.

Sarah Boyack (Labour, Lothian)

I want to focus on the NHS Lothian report, because the revelations that emerged are deeply disturbing. From an individual report that highlighted the unacceptable offer of treatment for NHS Lothian patients in England, a systematic approach to manipulating waiting time figures and a culture of bullying were exposed.

The investigation of the management culture in NHS Lothian has provided evidence of suppression of information and an oppressive management style that contributed to a situation in which information on poor performance was not passed up the management structure, there was a no-bad-news culture, and staff were pressured to find solutions without support. That culture is clearly at odds with the stated values of the health board, which place patients first and foremost but put a premium on staff motivation and organisational reputation. Therefore, the report highlights tough questions that need to be answered. I am disappointed that the cabinet secretary commented only that what the report says went on was beyond the pale.

We all agree that waiting times matter—patients value them and staff work hard to deliver them—and we all want people to have confidence in NHS Lothian and the NHS in every other part of Scotland, but the report identifies that there is clearly still a problem with hidden waiting lists. Richard Simpson’s intervention highlighted that. The management culture in NHS Lothian, which allowed the situation to persist, existed for some time and the behaviour became viewed as normal by staff. That is unacceptable.

Neil Findlay was absolutely right to say that it is not enough to acknowledge the dedication of staff. We have to look at the background of the report and the issues that were identified, and put together action. It is unacceptable for patients to be cared for by staff who are already under pressure without the additional stress of an oppressive management style. The unwillingness of staff to use whistleblowing policies due to a lack of confidence must concern every single member. Despite the clear evidence of bullying behaviour that the report identifies, the situation did not come to light for years rather than months. There are strong unions in NHS Lothian, but the staff did not go to them or whistleblow. There is a clear issue to do with staff being afraid.

The report is shocking and, having read it, I still have questions for the cabinet secretary. Did the Scottish Government allow the former chief executive to leave during the inquiry? Was that passed up to the cabinet secretary or her officials by NHS Lothian?

There is a clear governance and accountability issue in the report. As I said, I still have questions that I cannot answer even from reading such a detailed report. There is a paradox in it. NHS Lothian has won Investors in People accreditation, so it is clear that there is very good practice in it, but there is an oppressive management culture overall, and the report does not really pin that down.

We cannot just brush over matters and look to the future. We must ask what the interrelationship is between reductions in staff numbers, pressures on funding and oppressive management cultures. It is not enough to have some good workshops in the future; we must ask whether those issues are related.

It troubles me that it was patients who blew the whistle on waiting times. We would always expect staff to do that, but the staff in NHS Lothian were too afraid. Dr Richard Simpson’s proposal to establish a whistleblowers hotline is therefore crucial. There is evidence in England and Wales that that needs to be looked at. It is a clear issue on which we need to seek action.

We have the report on NHS Lothian, but there are huge pressures and significant population increases. Delivering excellence with tight funding is acknowledged to be a challenge, but there are still unanswered questions, and I would like the minister to reflect on them in summing up.

Jim Eadie (Scottish National Party, Edinburgh Southern)

I welcome this important and timely debate on waiting times in NHS Lothian following the publication of the PricewaterhouseCoopers report in March and the subsequent investigation into its management culture, which was published last Friday. There can be no doubt but that trust and public confidence in NHS Lothian have been severely undermined since it came to light that managers at the health board deliberately doctored medical records to falsely record patients as being unavailable for treatment in order to meet waiting time targets. That behaviour, which the cabinet secretary has rightly referred to as a “betrayal” of patients, is totally unacceptable, has been roundly condemned and has no place in any part of our national health service.

It is the duty of Government to take swift action wherever and whenever such behaviour comes to light. That is exactly what the cabinet secretary has done in relation to NHS Lothian. She has acted swiftly and decisively following the investigation by requiring that all territorial health boards undertake a detailed audit of local waiting times management, with Audit Scotland agreeing the remit of the audit. In March 2010, Audit Scotland stated:

“The NHS in Scotland has made big changes in how it manages waiting lists since 2008 and these have made the system fairer for patients.”

Richard Simpson (Labour, Mid Scotland and Fife)

I am slightly concerned about the fact that the published record of the spike in retrospective use of the exceptional way of dealing with social unavailability occurred in June and July 2011, yet it is only after having received the report nine months later that we are discussing the issue. Nothing was done on the basis of the published figures for months, until I raised the matter in Parliament last autumn.

Jim Eadie (Scottish National Party, Edinburgh Southern)

I accept that the member has a track record on the issue and I give him credit for that. However, the idea that the SNP Government has anything to be ashamed of is ludicrous. It is the SNP Government that has overseen the implementation of new ways of managing waiting lists.

Jackie Baillie (Labour, Dumbarton)

Will the member give way?

Jim Eadie (Scottish National Party, Edinburgh Southern)

I have just taken an intervention, so I would like to make some progress.

I agree with other members that the public need to be assured that waiting times practices throughout Scotland are completely transparent and that the experience in NHS Lothian is isolated to that board and is not typical of the wider management culture in the NHS.

As we have heard again during the debate, the PricewaterhouseCoopers report found unacceptable levels of manipulation of waiting times figures. As a result, a separate critical incident investigation is under way.

At the beginning of March, the cabinet secretary took charge by insisting that PWC report to her and not to NHS Lothian as the health board would have wished. That ensured the appropriate corporate governance and we can now see that that robust approach was the right one, despite the very public protestations from Lothian NHS Board and the chair of the board at that time.

I agree with the comments made by Sarah Boyack who, in a powerful speech, sought to address some of the serious issues in the management culture at NHS Lothian. Members have rightly been concerned to ensure the independence of the investigation, and I acknowledge David McLetchie’s contribution in that regard. I believe that the process of investigation has been independent and that the recommendations offer a clear way forward. The report suggested that there should be a change in leadership style to a more co-operative approach; that values should be embedded in the organisation that make clear the difference between bullying and firm management; that trust and confidence should be re-established through a zero tolerance bullying and harassment policy; that there should be an external helpline; and that exit interviews should be carried out when staff leave the organisation.

Along with all my parliamentary colleagues, I have been appalled at what has happened. In implementing the recommendations, we need to see swift and decisive action by NHS Lothian to match that already taken by the cabinet secretary.

Richard Lyle (Scottish National Party, Central Scotland)

Although I agree that the situation that developed in NHS Lothian was unacceptable, I note that the cabinet secretary took swift and direct action to remedy the situation. I also note the announcement on 3 May that Audit Scotland has agreed the remit for health boards to review their waiting times practice. Those measures have been introduced to provide assurance that waiting times practices throughout Scotland are completely transparent.

Further to that, all health boards will embark on a detailed audit of local waiting times management and process as indicated in their internal audit programme for 2012-13.

Sarah Boyack (Labour, Lothian)

Will the member take an intervention?

Richard Lyle (Scottish National Party, Central Scotland)

No. I will do a Jenny.

Those audits will give the public unprecedented confidence in the waiting times system, which is currently delivering the shortest waiting times on record. In particular, in NHS Lothian, 76.5 per cent of in-patients and day cases were waiting less than the nine-week national standard.

As for the claim that NHS boards are manipulating waiting time figures to meet targets, was it not the SNP Government that abolished Labour’s hidden waiting lists, on which up to 35,000 patients were left with no waiting time guarantee? Scottish Labour hid the figures then, so it is rich that Scottish Labour raises the issue today. Meanwhile, the SNP Government has followed through with an 18-week waiting time. In December 2011, 92 per cent of patients were seen and treated within their target period.

In the relatively short time for which the Government has been in power, the NHS has met the 62-day cancer waiting time target, which I believe Labour failed to meet for the entire time that it was in government. In addition, targets have been met ahead of schedule.

I acknowledge that the PricewaterhouseCoopers report that was published in March 2012 found unacceptable levels of manipulation of waiting time figures in NHS Lothian, but the cabinet secretary has taken direct action to solve the alleged problems, and I compliment her on that swift action. [Interruption.] Labour members never like it, do they?

Jackie Baillie (Labour, Dumbarton)

Will the member give way?

Richard Lyle (Scottish National Party, Central Scotland)

No.

NHS Lothian was required to investigate

“why such a culture exists in NHS Lothian, what the reasons for it are and what needs to be done about it”.

A steering group commissioned an independent report to investigate the allegations. That report found a blame culture caused by inappropriate management styles but found that most staff were not affected by the cultural problems. The report complimented the immense pride that many staff have in working for NHS Lothian and the excellent teamwork that is evident in many departments.

Trust and confidence should be re-established through better staff engagement; a zero tolerance bullying and harassment policy should be introduced; and exit interviews should be carried out with staff who leave. The approach should be reviewed in six to nine months through confidential interviews with managers.

I welcome the report and take on board the points that are raised in it. There is no evidence that such practices are more widespread, and the reviews that the SNP Government has commissioned will confirm that waiting time practices throughout Scotland are completely transparent.

Neil Findlay (Labour, Lothian)

I declare an interest, in that my wife is an NHS Lothian employee.

Not only did the cabinet secretary not come to the chamber to make a statement on the report but, now that we have a debate, she has been in the chamber for only a few speeches. I have no idea where she is, and she might at least have had the courtesy to remain to listen to members’ speeches.

I was shocked but not all that surprised by the findings of the report into the management culture at NHS Lothian, which exposed outrageous practices, threatening behaviour and the use of unacceptable language against staff, such as

“If you don’t reach your targets you can collect your P45”

and

“those of you with mortgages and career aspirations had better be afraid”.

Such words and tactics are those of playground bullies, not caring professionals.

All this was prompted by the blatant manipulation of the waiting time figures. We have now uncovered what was going on, and it is clear that waiting times and the management culture are inextricably linked.

In looking into the issues, we are entitled to ask when the Scottish Government was first alerted to the bullying culture at NHS Lothian. Were the actions those of a rotten few, or was there a toxic mix of unrealistic Government demands against a backdrop of staff and resource cuts? Why does such a culture exist and what is to be done about it? How has the intolerable pressure that is being placed on the remaining staff, who are striving to meet waiting time targets, impacted on patient care? We need answers to those questions and many more.

I think that Sarah Boyack referred to the Investors in People report of November 2010, which started to expose some of the issues. It highlighted how

“some senior managers bully us with constant targets targets targets shouting and relentless pressure”

and said that leadership was

“based significantly on the hierarchy and power and was often described as ‘command and control’.”

Terms such as “bullying”, “blame culture” and “fear” were littered throughout the report. Why did no one at NHS Lothian or Government level do anything about that at the time? What did the chairman and the board do? Did they inform the Scottish Government?

I am glad to see that the cabinet secretary has returned from her travels. Will she tell us when she knew about the problems at NHS Lothian? I will happily take an intervention from her if she wants to respond.

Nicola Sturgeon (Scottish National Party, Glasgow Southside)

The exact chronology and chain of events are a matter of parliamentary record, in the statement that I gave to the Parliament about the PWC report. I am more than happy to discuss the matter further with any member.

Neil Findlay (Labour, Lothian)

I am sure that we will discuss it further. Why did it take so long for the practices and the bullying culture to come to light? The practices were not carried out only by people who have now left the organisation. What will happen to the people who remain? What responsibility lies higher up, at Government level?

I have many friends, relatives and constituents who work in NHS Lothian. They tell me about an NHS that is understaffed, in which staff are afraid to speak out, in which nurses cannot take a break during a 12 and a half hour shift and cannot get basic equipment, in which patients are boarded out to other wards several times during their stay, and in which morale is low and falling and the realities that staff face day in and day out are light years away from the spin and denials of ministers.

The report talked about the suppression of bad news, through a do-not-write-it-down policy. Reports were given a gloss and a positive spin and used oblique language.

Neil Findlay (Labour, Lothian)

Okay—I will wind up, although I have much more to say. This vital issue will run and run, and I hope that we will have more time to discuss it, because four minutes is not enough.

Joe FitzPatrick (Scottish National Party, Dundee City West)

I point out that it was Labour’s decision not to concentrate on one subject this morning but to try to give everyone on its portfolio list a wee shottie in a debate. This is Labour’s debate.

Jackie Baillie (Labour, Dumbarton)

Will the member give way?

Joe FitzPatrick (Scottish National Party, Dundee City West)

I will take an intervention from Ms Baillie in a second, to give her a second chance to apologise to all the workers in NHS Tayside whom she besmirched in her press statement of 3 May. The item is still on her website and is still besmirching the hard-working staff at NHS Tayside, who have done a fantastic job to reduce waiting lists over the years. I will give Ms Baillie the opportunity to apologise to them and to make clear that she will remove the press statement from her website.

Jackie Baillie (Labour, Dumbarton)

The approach of SNP back benchers and front benchers today has been to use NHS staff as a human shield for the failings of their Government. I take to heart what Jackson Carlaw said. There is a problem now and we need action now. Will the Government take action?

Joe FitzPatrick (Scottish National Party, Dundee City West)

I am disappointed but not surprised that Ms Baillie did not apologise. I take it that she will remove the offending press statement, which attacks hard-working staff, from her website.

The motion represents an attempt to attack the SNP Government on waiting times, but the simple, irrefutable fact is that waiting times have come down under the SNP Government. The days are gone when tens of thousands languished on waiting lists without any guarantee of treatment and thousands more were on hidden waiting lists, which the Labour Party—sorry, Scottish Labour—designed specifically to fudge the figures. Politicians’ surgeries the length and breadth of the country were full of constituents protesting about long, worry-filled waits for treatment.

Right now, we have a Government that has achieved record waiting time reductions. We have the best-performing NHS in the United Kingdom. We should be proud of what our NHS has achieved. No one is suggesting that there is nothing to consider. The cabinet secretary made it clear that she takes seriously the concerns from Lothian, and the local member, Jim Eadie, made a passionate speech about his concern for his constituents. No one is trying to paper over the cracks where things are not right. However, let us put on record that our NHS is doing a fantastic job throughout the country.

In Tayside, the most recent figures show that 100 per cent of in-patients and day cases are waiting for less than nine weeks, 100 per cent of new out-patients are waiting 12 weeks or less, 97.1 per cent of patients are going from referral to treatment in under 18 weeks and 96.6 per cent of people in whom cancer is suspected are starting treatment within 62 days.

Those are fantastic results and a fantastic record, which is why NHS Tayside took the unusual step of copying all the regional and constituency members who represent Tayside into their response to Jackie Baillie, to make sure that her disingenuous press statement was put straight. It is disappointing that she has still failed to put the record straight today.

Another disappointing issue is that, when we talk about health, the Labour Party is always prepared to use health for political posturing, rather than bringing forward concrete ideas that could support our NHS workers across the country.

Jackson Carlaw (Conservative, West Scotland)

I will concentrate on issues that arose from the one substantive and positive contribution to this debate, which came from Sarah Boyack. She looked into the detail of the report and, in the time available to her, prepared an analysis that pinpointed the key issue in all of this: that the management culture in NHS Lothian is what underpinned the inability of staff to feel confident to raise, publicly or elsewhere, the issues raised by what they knew was going on.

Neil Findlay (Labour, Lothian)

Will the member take an intervention?

Jackson Carlaw (Conservative, West Scotland)

I will, in a second.

I am reminded of an old school chum of mine, who was castigated on one occasion when he answered a question by saying, “As a result of Magna Carta, no-one could be put to death without their own consent.” It seems to me that that is the issue here: who is going to whistleblow to their own executioner? As a result of the culture, the fear and suspicion of staff is that if they speak up, they will, at the end of the day, face disciplinary procedure.

That is all the more unsettling because, as a result of NHS partnership information network guidelines that we have talked about in this Parliament before, staff cannot be disciplined if they whistleblow on the ground of patient safety, but either they do not know that or they do not have confidence in that, and clearly in Lothian health board—and potentially elsewhere—there may be issues as serious and substantive as the ones that we are discussing that are not coming to the surface because the culture precludes that from happening.

We have paid tribute to the considerable efforts, the passion and the commitment of staff on the ground who are delivering the targets, but the worry has to be, why has all this been going on? What is it all about? Is it about the CVs of chief executives and managers? I have seen them come across my desk. Is it because they want to be able to say, “I reduced waiting times” in NHS whatever it is? No they did not; it was the staff underneath them and their efforts that have contributed to the reduction in waiting times. Chief executives and managers do not want anything that is bad news. Jim Eadie says that the public need to be reassured that the management practices in NHS Lothian do not exist elsewhere but, standing here, we cannot be confident that that is the case.

I was asked by Dr Simpson if I was surprised about NHS North Ayrshire and Arran and I replied,

“Not only am I surprised, I am appalled”.

Similarly, we must accept that if a practice that surprises and appals us exists in NHS Lothian, it would be foolish and irresponsible of us to suppose that it is not happening anywhere else. The presumption should not be that it is happening, but that is what the investigation that the cabinet secretary has identified with Audit Scotland must uncover.

I come back to the depressing point about this debate. It is really not an occasion for a political trade-off, but I say to Richard Lyle—actually, I was going to ask on a point of order what “doing a Jenny” is, because I was not clear about that parliamentary expression—that when he said that this Government has been in power for a relatively short period of time, I had to think about that. It has been in power longer than MacDonald, Bonar Law, Chamberlain, Churchill—National, Attlee, Churchill—Conservative, Eden, Macmillan, Douglas-Home, Heath, Callaghan and Brown. For goodness’ sake—for Richard Lyle to say that ministers have not been in office long enough to know how to do their jobs is profoundly depressing for us all, so I do not think that that helped.

I say to the cabinet secretary that although I am upset by the tone of the motion and the amendment and the conduct of the debate, the motion is underpinned by a fundamentally serious issue. Our responsibility as politicians is to resolve it.

Michael Matheson (Scottish National Party, Falkirk West)

Some of these Opposition-led health debates create more noise than light in terms of detail and substance, and today’s was no exception.

In the desperation of some to throw around as much mud as possible in relation to this issue, there is a danger that we lose sight of the significant progress that has been made by the NHS in Scotland. Unlike some, I wish to say thank you to the staff for their tremendous efforts in ensuring that they have achieved so many targets and have improved the NHS beyond recognition in recent years. I am not using them as a human shield; I am giving them genuine recognition for their hard work and achievement.

It is worth recognising that, before 1999, there were no waiting time targets in the NHS in Scotland. Look at what has happened. Over the past 12 years, this Administration and other Administrations have seen the waiting times target being met, a substantial reduction in healthcare-associated infections and an improvement in the way in which we deliver healthcare, with more people receiving day care treatment and having shorter stays in hospital. All of those things illustrate the significant progress that has been made.

We must recognise that that progress has brought benefits to patients. Of key importance to the NHS is the quality of care and treatment that it provides to patients. In the in-patient experience survey in 2011, 85 per cent of patients said that their experience of treatment was good or excellent. Again, that underscores the commitment and the dedication of our NHS staff, which I am more than happy to congratulate them on and thank them for.

We should also recognise that the NHS in Scotland is performing well compared with other parts of the NHS in the United Kingdom. That is because we are not complacent; we have been driving reform in our NHS to ensure that it performs well. Scotland’s performance in relation to seven of the 11 major procedures is the best of any region in the UK. Further, our NHS’s move from being a body that largely focused on ill health to one that does more to prevent ill health has caused mortality rates to drop and life expectancy to increase. We have a proud record of delivering healthcare improvements in Scotland, and we need to recognise that.

Sarah Boyack (Labour, Lothian)

I would not for a moment dispute the fact that, with extra resources and superb management, there has been big progress. Will the minister focus on the problems that were identified in the NHS Lothian report? The key problem is that, with less money and less staff, there are pressures. How do we get it right? What are the lessons?

Michael Matheson (Scottish National Party, Falkirk West)

I am just about to turn to those points. First, I should say that a lot of the allegations and innuendo that we have heard today have been about wider aspects of our NHS, not just NHS Lothian.

The Government has implemented the new ways guidance and has ensured that boards are taking it forward effectively. I have heard members talk about social unavailability and suggest that, in some way, a patient loses their waiting time guarantee, but they do not and it is factually incorrect to suggest otherwise. That is part of the mud slinging and does not help us to address the issue.

Jackson Carlaw, in his measured contribution, hit the nail on the head when he talked about how we can move forward from the findings in the NHS Lothian report and address the fundamental failings that it highlighted. Sarah Boyack and Jim Eadie also highlighted that, and drew attention to the serious failings in how the board handled the matter. Crucially, the report highlighted not one or two incidents of bullying and intimidation here or there, but a culture of bullying and intimidation, which the cabinet secretary has clearly said is unacceptable. That is why all 34 of the recommendations are being taken forward and the chair of NHS Lothian has been given the task of bringing forward a single integrated action plan that will address reporting, governance and culture to ensure that we can root out the unhealthy culture that has been allowed to develop in NHS Lothian.

We must also recognise that, although this report is damning in relation to the problems that were allowed to develop in NHS Lothian, the issues are confined to a small number of the 20,000 staff who work in NHS Lothian, many of whom, on a day-to-day basis, show tremendous professionalism and dedication to their work.

The report must be placed in the context of the limited number of staff who were perpetuating the culture of bullying and intimidation. However, we must ensure that the issue is addressed. As a Government, we are prepared to take the necessary action to ensure that the message is clear that bullying and intimidation will not be tolerated in any part of the NHS in Scotland.

Richard Simpson (Labour, Mid Scotland and Fife)

Waiting times have been one of the success stories of the NHS throughout Scotland since 1997, underpinned by Labour’s decision to increase NHS funding radically in 2001. I hope that the time when patients could wait for years for an operation and could lie overnight on trollies has been consigned to history, although I hear stories from England about the trollies re-emerging.

However, the progress has stressed the system. The discovery that availability status codes—which, I say to Joe FitzPatrick, were created in the 1980s—that were designed only to allow patients to be removed temporarily from waiting lists were being wrongly used led Nicola Sturgeon, the then Opposition spokesperson, to attack Labour on the subject. The response was the creation, by Andy Kerr, of the new ways waiting times guidance, which was implemented by the SNP Government.

That is fine, but as I said in 2008, this is a complex system and it is likely that people will start gaming if they are under pressure. My warnings were ignored. In a speech in 2009, I said that doctors are being bullied by management in respect of targets and that it could become a serious issue. I did not know at the time that the Investors in People report in Lothian in 2010 would indicate, as Neil Findlay has said, that bullying was occurring in that health board.

The figures for social unavailability rose inexorably over the next two years and I again questioned whether gaming was going on. In other words, were we heading for a new scandal of hidden waiting lists? I was told that I was scaremongering. I am always being told that. The SNP’s complacency, which its supine back benchers demonstrated admirably today, is utterly breathtaking.

Forced by our exposure of one form of gaming in Lothian, the cabinet secretary has finally had to intervene. Otherwise, the Lothians initial internal whitewash report would have brushed the issue under the carpet. Do we have confidence that the investigation by other health boards, which she has instigated, will not do the same?

Is all now well and are all the other health boards managing the new system so that the target data, on which the waiting times claims are based, is real? That is what the cabinet secretary believes. She has dismissed my observations on the appendix of the Pricewaterhouse report—[Interruption.] She has. The appendix shows substantial variation, month on month, in other health boards’ use of exceptional retrospective correction of the social unavailability codes, yet I am told that this is not happening in any other health board.

Let us look at the central figures on waiting times, and bring a little reality to the situation. Yes, it was a new system in 2008 and, yes, it is complex, but here we are in 2012, with a self-congratulatory cabinet secretary trumpeting achievements, yet out of 111,000 referral-to-treatment incidents in the most recent reported set of statistics, 14,000 are unrecorded and unknown. We know that there are 7,700 patients for whom the referral-to-treatment guarantee has been broken—that is reported—but we know nothing about the other 14,000. How can we say that the waiting time guarantees are reaching the figures that the cabinet secretary keeps trumpeting?

The codes used in the PWC report were “other” or “patient contact”. I spoke to a Grampian general practitioner today in Mark McDonald’s constituency who said that he had re-referred a patient to gastroenterology this morning who had been removed from the waiting list having phoned and said that they were unavailable. Do not tell me that this is not happening. My GP colleagues—I have phoned 12 of them in the past week—are telling me repeatedly that this is happening. The combination of abusing the social availability status code, using “other” and “patient contact”, and short-term cancellation of clinics is causing massive disruption and considerable distress. That is not innuendo but reality, and the Parliament needs a reality check on the issue.

I decided to undertake a reality check by carrying out a freedom of information inquiry into the health boards—[Interruption.]

Tricia Marwick (None, Mid Fife and Glenrothes)

Would Mark McDonald please stop shouting across the chamber?

Richard Simpson (Labour, Mid Scotland and Fife)

I asked the boards how many concerns have been raised. Whenever I have mentioned the new partnership information network arrangement for whistleblowing and raising concerns, the cabinet secretary has reassured me that all is well. NHS Highland and NHS Borders reported their quarterly statistics on concerns since 2010 as being excellent, and 12 other health boards had no concerns reported to them and no record of whistleblowing. Is the cabinet secretary really telling me that, despite the stress that our health service is under, no concerns are being expressed by any member of staff out there? That cannot be true.

The cabinet secretary must introduce a whistleblowers’ line, which England introduced following the Mid Staffordshire inquiry, and after the General Medical Council and the Nursing and Midwifery Council sent out their new guidance. I phoned the line and was told, “I’m sorry, but we cannot deal with concerns from Scotland, except to give general advice.”

That is not good enough and it is letting our staff down. The staff whom we value and who are doing a good job are not able to express their concerns, and there is a much more widespread culture in that regard than the cabinet secretary is prepared to admit.

In the past few months, I have carried out a detailed analysis of the figures that are being presented, but I will not talk about that today. I can tell the cabinet secretary that she was right to say that her job is not to micromanage the health service—no minister can do that, and we do not expect her to do so. However, we do expect her to ask questions. If her civil servants are not telling her about the striking variations that are occurring, they are not doing their job, and she is not doing her job in ensuring that they give her that information.

There is a potential scandal out there. I can tell the cabinet secretary that there are concerns in other areas, which I will talk about in the next few weeks once I have checked them with the local health boards.

I turn to Joe FitzPatrick’s figures for Tayside, and the letter from Sandy Watson, which I received because I cover part of that constituency. In the letter, NHS Tayside revealed something else that is very interesting: referrals that are made directly to nursing staff and to allied health professionals are not recorded in the waiting times system. It is true that the original ISD published figures included figures related to nurses and allied health professionals. However, that was a mistake, and it was corrected by the health board. If I, as a general practitioner, refer a patient to a specialist service in a hospital—for diabetes, for example, which is one of the big ones—why is that referral not subject to a waiting time guarantee?

The health service system is changing. The system of referral no longer goes from GP to consultant but concerns many different aspects of the health service. If the cabinet secretary really wants to protect patients and ensure that the system works well, and if she wants to support staff, rather than using them as a shield—as she has done blatantly today—she must ensure that staff are working in a safe situation in which they are free from bullying and are able to raise concerns. When they cannot or feel unable to do so, they should have a whistleblowing line to call for support. That will give the cabinet secretary the information that she wants.

The Government stands accused not of not trying its best, but of not asking questions and of being completely and utterly complacent.

Education (Finland)

Stewart Maxwell (Scottish National Party, West Scotland)

1. To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on Finland’s approach to education. (S4O-00999)

Michael Russell (Scottish National Party, Argyll and Bute)

I am always very pleased to learn from other countries’ experience in delivering education services. Finland’s approach is of continued interest to Scotland and, indeed, I visited Finland in March 2010 to see its system at first hand. I was pleased to meet again, on 2 May, Dr Pasi Sahlberg, who is the director general of the Centre for International Mobility and Co-operation in Helsinki, when he spoke in the Scottish Parliament about lessons from Finland. Although the Scottish education system is different from Finland’s, a number of aspects of the Finnish approach are helpful for discussion, reflection and learning across the Scottish education sector.

Stewart Maxwell (Scottish National Party, West Scotland)

As he has said, the cabinet secretary was present at the recent Nordic horizons event that I sponsored in Parliament and, in particular, at Dr Sahlberg’s presentation on the Finnish education system. During that presentation, Dr Sahlberg showed that there is a significant correlation between the level of equality in a society and the level of education attainment. What lessons does the cabinet secretary draw from that and what impact might such a finding have on Government thinking with regard to Scotland’s education system?

Michael Russell (Scottish National Party, Argyll and Bute)

Dr Sahlberg was very interesting on a range of issues, one of which Stewart Maxwell has highlighted. However, I draw attention to two things that he tweeted as he left Scotland, the first of which was to say that there should be

“More professional responsibility rather than bureaucratic accountability for schools”,

which is a very interesting reflection on the need to increase teacher performance and invest in teaching. Secondly, he tweeted that we should

“Enhance teacher professionalism by shifting inspection from external Inspectorate to schools.”

In other words, he believes that self-evaluation in schools is vital. We are moving forward with that.

As for equity, Dr Sahlberg’s presentation highlighted a finding that has been mentioned in reports by the programme for international student assessment—PISA—McKinsey & Company and Michael Fullan. Scotland has a significant problem in that it is below the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development average in relation to the equity gap between the education attainment of children and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds and that of those from advantaged socioeconomic backgrounds. The attainment group that I appointed last year and which reported earlier this year was specifically tasked not just with looking at raising attainment for all but with examining how to narrow the gap in attainment. The PISA findings also showed that 86 per cent of the variation in performance in Scottish schools is down to variation within schools. In other words, children are not generally disadvantaged by having to attend poorly performing schools. That is really important.

New Farming Entrants

Nanette Milne (Conservative, North East Scotland)

2. To ask the Scottish Executive what progress has been made on increasing the number of new farming entrants. (S4O-01000)

Stewart Stevenson (Scottish National Party, Banffshire and Buchan Coast)

The Government has always put a high priority on encouraging new entrants to farming. We were the first Administration to introduce dedicated new entrant support which, so far, has delivered £1.1 million of support to 65 new entrants. Earlier this year, the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and the Environment announced a new advice package for new entrants that is now being developed by the Scottish Agricultural College. In addition, the cabinet secretary intends to make an announcement soon on plans to hold a new entrant summit and to set up a new entrant panel to determine what can be done under the future common agricultural policy to encourage new entrants.

Nanette Milne (Conservative, North East Scotland)

I thank the minister for his response, although I am slightly puzzled by part of it. From my regular meetings with farming representatives, I know that they are very concerned at what is becoming an ageing industry and at the limited opportunities for newer young entrants into it. In the previous parliamentary session, ministers promised to introduce a £10 million year-on-year new entrant scheme; however, in reality, the Scottish National Party delivered only a £10 million programme over the course of the whole session of Parliament, which provided limited new opportunities for entrants. What steps does the Scottish Government plan to take in this session of Parliament to support new opportunities for the next generation of Scottish farmers? Will the minister agree to report back to Parliament on the number of new entrants who are being assisted as this session goes on?

Stewart Stevenson (Scottish National Party, Banffshire and Buchan Coast)

I am unhappy to share Nanette Milne’s concern and to agree that the increasing age of farmers is an issue for the industry. From 2000 to 2007, the number of farmers aged under 45 fell and the number aged over 65 rose from 22 to 27 per cent. A fundamental challenge that is in front of us is common agricultural policy reform, and the current proposals would inhibit our ability to support new entrants. It is very important that Scotland gets the support to address the issue of new entrants that it requires from the United Kingdom Government which, for the time being, has the lead in negotiating on the matter.

Claire Baker (Labour, Mid Scotland and Fife)

Does the minister agree that, although the measures that he has identified are welcome, a fundamental issue for new entrants is access to farming land and tenancies? The tenant farming forum is identified as the body that will deal with such concerns, but does the minister accept that the recent Moonzie case and the lack of clarity about its consequences add greater tension to the discussions? How will he ensure that we can be confident that the tenant farming forum’s recommendations will be fair to all parties that are involved?

Stewart Stevenson (Scottish National Party, Banffshire and Buchan Coast)

Presiding Officer, you will be aware that I cannot comment on a live case.

I am happy to say that we have been legislating to put into law the tenant farming forum’s recommendations. We will continue to work with that forum to ensure that we get increased access to new entrant opportunities. For example, Forestry Commission Scotland, for which I am responsible, has created new starter units. Right across Government, we will take every opportunity to create ways in for new entrants.

Supply Teachers

John Scott (Conservative, Ayr)

3. To ask the Scottish Executive what discussions it has had with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and local authorities about the reducing availability of supply teachers in certain areas. (S4O-01001)

Michael Russell (Scottish National Party, Argyll and Bute)

The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities is represented on the teacher workforce planning advisory group, which advises ministers on the number of student teachers that universities should enrol each year to ensure that sufficient teachers, including supply teachers, are available across Scotland. In addition, COSLA, together with the Scottish Government and the teaching unions, sits on the Scottish negotiating committee for teachers. The SNCT meets routinely throughout the year to discuss relevant matters, including those that relate to supply teachers.

John Scott (Conservative, Ayr)

The cabinet secretary will be aware that, since the introduction of the new reduced pay scales for supply teachers, some schools now have difficulty sourcing supply teachers because experienced supply teachers, who are now being paid less than probationers, are no longer prepared to travel to the more remote parts of Scotland, such as South Ayrshire, which are suffering disproportionately. What plans does the cabinet secretary have to address that growing problem?

Michael Russell (Scottish National Party, Argyll and Bute)

I will correct something that Mr Scott said. Supply teachers are paid for the first five days at the first point on the scale, which is not less than probationers are paid. We accept, however, that the negotiated agreement on supply teachers that was accepted by the trade unions was a difficult agreement. It was necessary to reach that agreement because of the resources that we had available. That said, I give John Scott the assurance, which I have given on a number of occasions, that we will keep the situation under review. We want to ensure that we are fair to everyone. We have insisted that local authorities honour the agreement in details, which means that once supply teachers move beyond the initial period, they revert to the place on the scale that they might otherwise have been at.

Hugh Henry (Labour, Renfrewshire South)

Will the cabinet secretary act to guarantee supply teachers a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work?

Michael Russell (Scottish National Party, Argyll and Bute)

That is guaranteed by the agreement that we have that was entered into willingly by COSLA—including Labour local authorities—by the teaching unions, and by the Scottish Government. Misrepresentation of that agreement is not helpful to anyone.

Housing Options Hubs

Richard Lyle (Scottish National Party, Central Scotland)

4. To ask the Scottish Executive how the recently announced additional funding of £150,000 for housing options hubs will be used best to refocus services to look at individuals’ housing options. (S4O-01002)

Keith Brown (Scottish National Party, Clackmannanshire and Dunblane)

The funding will be used by the hubs to enable the sharing of practice between local authorities and their partners, all of which is aimed at preventing homelessness.

Richard Lyle (Scottish National Party, Central Scotland)

How will the extra funding be used to prevent future homelessness? What other steps does the Government intend to take to tackle homelessness?

Keith Brown (Scottish National Party, Clackmannanshire and Dunblane)

The extra funding will support the good work that the housing options hubs have done to date. The housing options approach seeks to achieve sustainable and long-term solutions to individuals’ housing problems. Working in partnership, the hubs have done substantial publicity work around housing options services, training needs analysis and implementing housing options information technology systems. They are putting in place the necessary infrastructure. Richard Lyle will be interested to know that the homelessness statistics that were published in February showed a 20 per cent drop in applications and assessments. That is the lowest in a decade and demonstrates the impact of the prevention activity that has been led by the hubs.

Public Facilities (Transport Links)

Fiona McLeod (Scottish National Party, Strathkelvin and Bearsden)

5. To ask the Scottish Government how it promotes better transport links to public facilities. (S4O-01003)

Keith Brown (Scottish National Party, Clackmannanshire and Dunblane)

The Scottish Government promotes better public transport to connect people, places and work. Our investment is significant, such as the £0.25 billion per year on bus services, and it is wide-ranging, with new capital projects such as a £30 million programme of improvements for railway stations across Scotland and our £40 million support for Glasgow fastlink—which will be a rapid bus corridor linking the city centre with the new Glasgow Southern general hospital—and for improving transport links for the Commonwealth games.

Fiona McLeod (Scottish National Party, Strathkelvin and Bearsden)

In relation to the £0.25 billion that is spent on buses, will the minister comment on the fact that Strathclyde partnership for transport has decided that MyBus cannot be used to access hospital appointments, as opposed to hospital visits?

Keith Brown (Scottish National Party, Clackmannanshire and Dunblane)

The bulk of that support will be spent on concessionary travel, with additional funds being provided for the bus service operators grant. MyBus cannot be used for attending hospital appointments, except in exceptional circumstances, because it has been agreed that those appointments are the responsibility of the national health service. That reflects the specialist nature of the transport that is required and the lack of flexibility on arrival times. SPT’s website advises that patients should contact their general practitioner’s surgery if they have difficulty in attending hospital appointments.

Jim Hume (Liberal Democrat, South Scotland)

The minister recently repeated inaccurate claims that the cut to the BSOG and the change in the formula were not reasons for the inflation-busting fare increases and cuts in services that we have seen. Why will he not utilise the extra money that was made available by the UK Government’s budget to protect bus services in Scotland?

Keith Brown (Scottish National Party, Clackmannanshire and Dunblane)

The first reason is that Jim Hume has already asked us to spend that money on 10 or so different things; it cannot be spent more than once. It is also worth saying that we have provided £0.25 billion of support against the backdrop of the substantial cuts by the UK Government that he supports. The money is being used to ensure that we expand the services that are available. The member will, of course, know that the changes that we have made to the BSOG will help rural bus services, which the previous Administration—of which his party was a part—failed to do.

UBC Group (Administration)

Jamie McGrigor (Conservative, Highlands and Islands)

6. To ask the Scottish Executive, in light of the potential impact on the construction industry, what its position is on the UBC Group entering administration. (S4O-01004)

Fergus Ewing (Scottish National Party, Inverness and Nairn)

This will be a very difficult time for staff who work for the UBC Group, and the Scottish Government is doing absolutely everything that is possible. We are working alongside the administrator and local councils to preserve or secure by other means as many of the jobs and as much of the business as possible.

For those who face redundancy, Skills Development Scotland met staff on Monday 14 May and the partnership action for continuing employment team representatives have arranged an event for staff on 23 May.

Jamie McGrigor (Conservative, Highlands and Islands)

I thank the minister for that answer, but is he aware of the particular concerns about the loss of 90 UBC jobs in the Western Isles, which the leader of Western Isles Council, Angus Campbell, has described as being “a devastating blow” for the economy of the Western Isles? Last week, when the First Minister announced 90 new jobs for the Western Isles, he said that that number

“would equate to several thousand jobs”—[Official Report, 10 May 2012; c 8832.]

in a city the size of Edinburgh. What specific support can the minister offer the Western Isles and those 90 workers who have been made redundant?

Fergus Ewing (Scottish National Party, Inverness and Nairn)

I am acutely aware of all those matters. I have been personally engaged in the situation since the news was announced that the UBC Group was to go into administration. I am involved to a considerable extent in all the considerable work that is being done by the Scottish Government, the local council, the Hebridean partnership and people involved with UBC to secure the best possible result for all concerned. We are committed to doing that. The staff will have the opportunity to receive comprehensive and substantial support from PACE representatives, not least at the events that will be held in Stornoway and South Uist, as well as at the event in Inverness on 23 May.

Scottish Water (Consultation)

Rhoda Grant (Labour, Highlands and Islands)

7. To ask the Scottish Executive what consultations Scottish Water must hold with communities prior to making changes to their water supply. (S4O-01005)

Alex Neil (Scottish National Party, Airdrie and Shotts)

Scottish Water is required by the Water Industry (Scotland) Act 2002 to have a consultation code. The code, which is available on Scottish Water’s website, sets out how it and its representatives will work in partnership to ensure that individuals, communities and stakeholders are engaged in discussion early in the life of projects and developments. The code does not prevent Scottish Water from taking appropriate operational decisions concerning a water supply.

Rhoda Grant (Labour, Highlands and Islands)

The cabinet secretary might be aware of the change in water supply at Aviemore in Badenoch and Strathspey. Constituents are concerned about the safety of the water supply because of the taste and quality of the water. What consultation took place prior to the changes in the water supply and what action is being taken to remedy the situation?

Alex Neil (Scottish National Party, Airdrie and Shotts)

In line with the code that I described and with planning legislation, Scottish Water undertook extensive consultation of relevant stakeholders and customers in the Aviemore area prior to submitting its planning application for the new works in September 2008. I have had reassurances from the Drinking Water Quality Regulator for Scotland that the supply comfortably meets the stringent legislative standards. The regulator is continuing to monitor the quality of the supply and Scottish Water’s response in addressing any consumer concerns.

Air Passenger Duty

Kevin Stewart (Scottish National Party, Aberdeen Central)

8. To ask the Scottish Government what recent discussions it has had with the United Kingdom Government regarding devolving air passenger duty. (S4O-01006)

Alex Neil (Scottish National Party, Airdrie and Shotts)

The Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Employment and Sustainable Growth, the Minister for Housing and Transport and I have pressed our counterparts in the UK Government on a number of occasions over the past 12 months to devolve air passenger duty in quick order, but the UK Government has continued to prevaricate. That not only stifles our ambition to reform APD to better suit Scottish circumstances, but goes against the wishes of our four biggest airports and other significant interests, such as the Scottish Chambers of Commerce. We will continue to make the strong case for devolution of air passenger duty now.

Kevin Stewart (Scottish National Party, Aberdeen Central)

The managing director of Aberdeen airport, Derek Provan, has said that

“Air Passenger Duty in its current form will damage tourism and weaken Scotland’s competitiveness.

It is growing in the UK at a time when other European countries have abandoned the tax entirely because of its damaging effects.”

He continued:

“We call for the tax to be devolved to the Scottish government where we feel any revenues raised would be pushed back into helping support the aviation industry and attract new routes.”

Does the cabinet secretary agree with Mr Provan?

Alex Neil (Scottish National Party, Airdrie and Shotts)

I absolutely agree with Derek Provan’s sentiments that air passenger duty in its current form is damaging for Scotland’s aviation sector, as well as for our tourism industry and wider economy and, of course, passengers. We have repeatedly urged the UK Government to consider the impact of APD rises in Scotland, but it has not listened. The only way to ensure that Scotland gets a fair deal is for APD to be devolved now. I welcome Derek Provan’s support for the devolution of APD and the support of his counterparts from airports elsewhere in Scotland.

Early Years Change Fund (Childcare)

Bob Doris (Scottish National Party, Glasgow)

9. To ask the Scottish Government how the early years change fund improves childcare for pre-school children. (S4O-01007)

Aileen Campbell (Scottish National Party, Clydesdale)

There have been two allocations from the early years change fund that will increase the level of funded early learning and childcare provision. From 1 April 2012, £4.5 million per annum is being provided from the change fund to local authorities in their role as corporate parents to deliver additional early learning and childcare provision and to work with the parents, where appropriate. In addition, a further £4.5 million has been invested from the change fund in the communities and families fund to promote community-based solutions for support for families and childcare.

We are establishing a sub-group of the early years task force to consider how we might develop high-quality integrated and co-ordinated family centres and early learning and childcare services.

Bob Doris (Scottish National Party, Glasgow)

I thank the minister for that strong commitment. She will be aware of the recent suggestion by Children in Scotland about the possible use of future European structural funds for childcare provision. The funds could help to expand and integrate childcare with employability initiatives and work. Will the minister explore such matters with her Government colleagues in order to consider whether the area could be developed further?

Aileen Campbell (Scottish National Party, Clydesdale)

I acknowledge Bob Doris’s commitment to early years policy. We are exploring the potential of European structural funds, as part of the Scottish Government’s broader strategic approach. We are participating in European Commission working groups and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development networks on early childhood education and care. I will continue the dialogue with Bob Doris on the matter.

Tricia Marwick (None, Mid Fife and Glenrothes)

Before we come to First Minister’s question time, I am sure that members wish to join me in welcoming to the gallery the President of the Austrian state Parliament of Voralberg, Dr Bernadette Mennel. [Applause.]

I am sure that members will also join me in welcoming Margo MacDonald back to the chamber. Welcome home. [Applause.]

Engagements

Johann Lamont (Labour, Glasgow Pollok)

1. To ask the First Minister what engagements he has planned for the rest of the day. (S4F-00671)

Alex Salmond (Scottish National Party, Aberdeenshire East)

Today, Bruce Crawford, the Cabinet Secretary for Parliamentary Business and Government Strategy, is meeting Jens Stoltenberg, the Norwegian Prime Minister, to welcome him to Shetland on Norway’s national day, and to discuss plans for a deepwater quay decommissioning facility in the Shetland Islands.

I am delighted to announce to the chamber that, following discussions that I had in Oslo on Tuesday, the Scottish Government and Highlands and Islands Enterprise will together make available £10 million to support a hugely ambitious project for the northern islands.

I know that the whole chamber will wish to welcome the exciting partnership between the Norwegian company ÅF Group and Lerwick Port Authority, which looks forward to securing decommissioning work on major offshore structures in the North Sea. The project could create up to 150 jobs in the Shetland Islands and Aberdeen, and deliver a scale of industrial capacity unmatched across these islands.

Johann Lamont (Labour, Glasgow Pollok)

The Parliament debated the national parenting strategy this week. There was unanimous agreement that there had to be more support for struggling parents. That support is important because we know that some parents do not get it right, that the child is not always the priority, and that that can have tragic consequences.

Following the Declan Hainey case, the First Minister and I had constructive talks about child protection. Will the First Minister update the chamber on what progress has been made in that area?

Alex Salmond (Scottish National Party, Aberdeenshire East)

I agree that we had constructive talks on that tragic case. As we discussed in the meeting, the Government will move forward through the children and young people’s bill that is to be introduced. We will explore options on a range of areas to improve the situation so that we can get it right for every child.

Johann Lamont (Labour, Glasgow Pollok)

We welcome progress. We urge the First Minister to recognise how serious the issue is and how quickly we need to move on it, given that we now know that in March 2010, just two weeks before Declan Hainey was found dead, Renfrewshire Council received a report from another case review. The case was known as family 10. It is worrying that the review highlighted systemic failures in child protection. In that case, children were mistreated to a deeply distressing degree. The family 10 review was too late to save Declan. Two serious case reviews in Renfrewshire have found systemic failure, yet no one has been held to account. Does the First Minister believe that, after one death and two findings of systemic failure, Renfrewshire Council was best placed to investigate itself?

Alex Salmond (Scottish National Party, Aberdeenshire East)

Johann Lamont should accept that the reviews that have taken place have certainly identified failings in provision. As have other investigations in the past, those reviews inform our intent to improve and enhance child protection across Scotland. These are vital matters and I am certain that if we show good will on all sides we can take them forward together as a united Parliament. We have both a legislative framework and a forum for ensuring that we improve not just our current inspection services, but our monitoring services. I think that, on that basis, the Parliament will do itself great credit by taking things forward in that manner on behalf of Scotland’s children.

Johann Lamont (Labour, Glasgow Pollok)

Hoping for it does not make it happen. This is a really serious issue and here is the real point: in 2009 the First Minister told members in the chamber that we had the best child protection inspection system

“anywhere in these islands and perhaps anywhere in Europe.”—[Official Report, 25 June 2009; c 18904.]

Indeed, before the case of family 10 and before the death of Declan Hainey, the First Minister said in the chamber that his inspection system had found Renfrewshire Council to be one of the top five councils in Scotland. A few months after Declan Hainey was found dead, the inspectors went back to Renfrewshire Council to follow up on their first visit. This time, they concluded that Renfrewshire Council’s efforts to keep children safe were excellent. They reported:

“As a result of the very good quality of provision to protect children and meet their needs, we will make no further visits in connection with this inspection.”

In the case of family 10 there were systemic failures. In the case of Declan Hainey there were fatal systemic failures. Yet, before and after those failures, the First Minister’s inspectors provided two positive reports, the second of which claimed that the protection of children was excellent.

In light of the contrast between the First Minister’s rhetoric about child protection and the reality, does the First Minister still believe that his inspection regime is the best in Europe?

Alex Salmond (Scottish National Party, Aberdeenshire East)

Three times in that question, Johann Lamont referred to my inspection regime and my inspectors, but those people undertake vital work on behalf of the Parliament and the country. There is no doubt that the process of inspection and re-inspection has resulted in an improvement in child protection throughout Scotland. There is also no doubt that that systematic process, which I believed was supported across the chamber, has resulted in substantial improvements. As Johann Lamont must know,

“no place in the world can give a 100 per cent guarantee on the safety of all its children.”

Tam Baillie, the Scottish Commissioner for Children and Young People, said that in January.

There are always—and should be—lessons to learn from such tragic cases. The SNP Administration and, I hope, the Parliament are perfectly prepared to learn them and are capable of doing so. If we act together, in not just legislative but administrative terms, we can further improve the situation for and protection of Scotland’s children. We can do that on the basis that it is something that all politicians of all political persuasions want to do, and as a national Parliament we can take national action on child protection.

Johann Lamont (Labour, Glasgow Pollok)

The people who are carrying out the inspections are doing an important job, but they are accountable and the First Minister is responsible for the capacity of the system to deliver. The First Minister’s approach seems to be a counsel of despair. Although we cannot provide 100 per cent protection, we must do everything that we can to understand where the failures are in order to ensure that they do not happen again. Can he explain why the best child protection inspection system in Europe has failed to find the systemic failures that led to the maltreatment of children by a family and a baby’s death? Can he explain why, after those tragedies caused by systemic failures, the best child protection inspection system in Europe still says that the child protection service is excellent?

The family 10 inspection was being carried out at exactly the same time as the significant review of the Declan Hainey case was saying that there were at least 16 actions that needed to be taken. In the light of those failures, will the First Minister please order a full independent public inquiry into child protection, not just in Renfrewshire but throughout Scotland, so that the public can be confident that our systems are protecting our most vulnerable children?

Alex Salmond (Scottish National Party, Aberdeenshire East)

Let us see whether we can identify areas of agreement. Child protection measures require constant vigilance, therefore the Parliament should support our partners on the ground across Scotland to ensure that there is continual improvement. We have updated “Getting Our Priorities Right”, the good practice guidance for professionals who work with children where substance misuse is a factor. We are also piloting the risk assessment toolkit, which will help with the protection of vulnerable children throughout Scotland. The development of a multi-agency learning and development framework is crucial because, in a number of tragic cases, it has been clear that the contact between the various responsible agencies has not been as good as it could have been. The revision of the child protection guidance for Scottish health professionals—the pink book—is also moving forward, and we will introduce a children’s services bill that will ensure that all children’s services have a stronger focus on early years prevention and early intervention. Those are the actions of the Administration.

The Parliament, which is not in the slightest complacent about the tragedies that have occurred, should know two things. First, the responsibility for wrongdoing and for the most tragic cases lies with the perpetrator. The idea that individual social workers, although accountable, are responsible for the actions of others is not the way that Scotland should look at these matters. We should support our social workers and social work departments to give the best possible protection to Scotland’s children.

The second thing, which I hope will carry the entire Parliament, is that the actions that have been identified, both administrative and legislative, show no sign of complacency on the issue, but reflect an understanding that constant vigilance and continuous improvement are absolutely necessary. As we bring forward the measures, as a Government and as a Parliament, I hope that members throughout the chamber will rise to the occasion on behalf of Scotland’s children.

Prime Minister (Meetings)

Ruth Davidson (Conservative, Glasgow)

2. To ask the First Minister when he will next meet the Prime Minister. (S4F-00667)

Alex Salmond (Scottish National Party, Aberdeenshire East)

I have no plans to meet the Prime Minister in the near future. Last time I met him, he told me that he was not particularly fussed about the date of the independence referendum. It is obvious that he did not impart that information to Ruth Davidson.

Ruth Davidson (Conservative, Glasgow)

It is a topsy-turvy week when the First Minister is quoted as saying that he will have to wait 1,000 days to have even a long shot at winning a referendum.

A fortnight ago, I and other members asked the First Minister a simple question—a question that he said he would not answer because he would tell all only to the Leveson inquiry. Unfortunately for the First Minister, Lord Leveson has entered the fray, saying that he is not in any way seeking to challenge the ability of Parliaments to proceed as appropriate. So I ask the First Minister again: was he hacked?

Alex Salmond (Scottish National Party, Aberdeenshire East)

I suggest that Ruth Davidson read Lord Leveson’s statement, which is totally consistent with the view that I gave to this Parliament. She should reflect that, after Lord Leveson’s statement, Harriet Harman withdrew a range of parliamentary questions, accepting that Lord Leveson had indicated that the timetable should be perfectly satisfactory for meeting the requirements of both the judicial inquiry and parliamentary accountability.

I suggest to Ruth Davidson that she should accept the bona fides and good wishes on the issue.

Ruth Davidson (Conservative, Glasgow)

Perhaps the First Minister should accept this quotation from a Scottish parliamentary spokesman, who said this week:

“Ministers are accountable to the Scottish Parliament, and it is the role of MSPs to hold Ministers to account.”

I am doing my job, and I am asking the First Minister to do his. He is accountable to the Parliament and to the people of Scotland, but he is currently holding both of them in contempt. Therefore, I continue to ask: First Minister, were you hacked?

Alex Salmond (Scottish National Party, Aberdeenshire East)

I am certainly accountable to the people of Scotland, as are all politicians in the chamber, but Ruth Davidson’s accountability to the people of Scotland has not been working out very well, according to election results.

After Lord Leveson made his comments this week, the Opposition in the Westminster Parliament accepted that the timetable for information was perfectly satisfactory, both in terms of the provision of information to the judicial inquiry, which was established on an all-party basis, and in terms of fulfilling the absolute requirement of parliamentary accountability and responsibility.

I could go on about the revelations this week about the incredible contact between Conservative Prime Ministers and major figures such as Rebekah Brooks, but let us just take it on the basis that I am happy to go to Lord Leveson and give a full account of my actions. I think that I will be in substantially less trouble when I give that account than certain members of Ruth Davidson’s party. That is the way in which we should do things, and I will be delighted to answer Ruth Davidson’s and anybody else’s parliamentary questions.

Jackie Baillie (Labour, Dumbarton)

Although welcome reductions in Clostridium difficile and MRSA levels were reported yesterday, for which we should rightly praise national health service staff, does the First Minister share my concern that, in this week alone, we have seen six deaths at the Royal Alexandra hospital in Paisley, more than 30 wards closed and more than 100 people affected by norovirus across Scotland?

Aside from sending our condolences to the families concerned, will he agree with me that, in light of the substantial rise in norovirus, we need to consider establishing a specialist laboratory to combat that rising level of infection?

Alex Salmond (Scottish National Party, Aberdeenshire East)

I am sure that Jackie Baillie will have seen the comments from Harry Burns in relation to the arguments for such a laboratory, and the stress on clinical efficiency in combating norovirus and other hospital-acquired infections.

We send our sympathy, as a Parliament, to those who have been caught up in the latest outbreak and those whose relatives have died. They have the assurance, as I think Jackie Baillie indicated in her question, that we treat hospital-acquired infections with the utmost seriousness.

The dramatic reductions in a range of hospital-acquired infections are due in substantial part to the efforts that are being made. I know that, in the past, Jackie Baillie has suggested that Scotland is the epicentre of hospital-acquired infections. I also know that her comments were based on a 2006 survey. Given the improvements that have been made, I hope that she will accept that the clinical determination to tackle norovirus and the other hospital-acquired infections is amply demonstrated in the decline in those infections. We realise that we must do everything possible and strive to our utmost to tackle those infections because of the tragic consequences that they have for patients and, indeed, for hospital staff.

Kevin Stewart (Scottish National Party, Aberdeen Central)

There are concerns in Aberdeen, the north-east and throughout the country about the recent ditching of a Super Puma helicopter. In light of the impact on employment in the oil and gas industry, what discussions has the Scottish Government had with the United Kingdom Government and its agencies regarding the grounding of the Bond Super Puma fleet?

Alex Salmond (Scottish National Party, Aberdeenshire East)

First, I pay tribute to the pilots of the Bond helicopter that ditched last week for their excellent airmanship and quick thinking in the circumstances. [Applause.]

The decision to suspend operations of Bond’s Super Puma fleet was a matter for the operator, pending investigation into the cause of the incident. Both the air accident investigation branch and the helicopter manufacturer—Eurocopter—were quickly on the scene to investigate. In recognition of the importance of helicopter operations to the offshore industry, the AAIB disseminated the results of its initial investigation very quickly, which enabled Bond, in discussion with Eurocopter, to lift the flight suspension. The Scottish Government liaised at all times with Bond and the Department for Transport during that period, and I am satisfied that the correct action was taken in those difficult circumstances. I repeat my appreciation of the skill and human endeavour of the pilots concerned.

Sandra White (Scottish National Party, Glasgow Kelvin)

The First Minister will be aware of the BBC trust’s rubber-stamping of the BBC’s job-cutting exercise, delivering quality first, and of the grave concerns that have been expressed about the potential impact of those cuts in Scotland. Does he agree with the BBC audience council Scotland’s submission to the process, which expresses serious concerns about those proposals and believes that the implications for services in Scotland have not been fully explored? Does he believe that there is a basis for asking the BBC trust to review its decision?

Alex Salmond (Scottish National Party, Aberdeenshire East)

Yes, I do. I share Sandra White’s concern, and obviously I have discussed the matter with the BBC at some length to recognise its position as the national broadcaster in Scotland. It is difficult to reconcile the budget provision for the BBC in Scotland with its obligation in terms of not just the generality of programmes, but current affairs coverage at a particularly important time in Scotland’s history. I hope that the BBC will reconsider, and I hope that there is a case to go to the BBC trust—I believe that there is—and that something of the damaging cuts can now be reversed.

Fostering Disabled Children

Liam McArthur (Liberal Democrat, Orkney Islands)

3. To ask the First Minister what action the Scottish Government is taking to provide support to families fostering disabled children. (S4F-00675)

Alex Salmond (Scottish National Party, Aberdeenshire East)

It is important to recognise the role that foster carers play in caring for some of Scotland’s most vulnerable children. Their dedication and commitment to developing the lives of those young people is a massive undertaking.

The Government is committed to a reform of children’s services to ensure that every child gets the support that they need through embedding the principle of getting it right for every child in statute. We are committed to speeding up the change across public services and bringing forward legislation to put that into effect. Children with disabilities in foster care and other care settings will, of course, benefit in particular from the programme.

Liam McArthur (Liberal Democrat, Orkney Islands)

As the First Minister will be aware, this week’s Quarriers report provides depressing confirmation that children in Scotland with multiple disabilities and complex needs face the greatest obstacles in achieving a foster placement. Exhaustion and a lack of support were given as the main reasons for reluctance among three quarters of foster carers to take on a child with such complex needs.

Given those findings, what commitment can the First Minister give that targeted support will be available across the country to give foster carers the confidence that they can take on those more challenging roles? In particular, will he ensure that specific training and respite care are in place for foster parents across Scotland? If we accept that we are failing too many of our looked-after children, does he agree that the Quarriers report confirms that the failure with some of the most vulnerable children in our society is even more shameful?

Alex Salmond (Scottish National Party, Aberdeenshire East)

We will examine with substantial care the Quarriers report and the YouGov survey for Quarriers. We are committed to promoting and reforming foster care to meet the increasing needs of children in care, especially those with additional support needs.

As Liam McArthur will know, the current financial support depends on the age profile of the child, but it also considers intensive needs and can range from £160 to £525 per week per child. Through the children and young people’s bill that is to be introduced, we will explore options to introduce a set minimum allowance for fostering. I am sure that Liam McArthur will contribute substantially to discussions on that. He can be assured that we are very aware of and concerned about some of the aspects highlighted by the YouGov survey for Quarriers.

Alcohol Minimum Pricing (Effects)

Bob Doris (Scottish National Party, Glasgow)

4. To ask the First Minister what the findings are of the latest research on the effects of minimum pricing of alcohol. (S4F-00673)

Alex Salmond (Scottish National Party, Aberdeenshire East)

The Scottish Government announced on Monday that the minimum price would be 50p per unit, taking account of inflation levels since these matters were last discussed. Academic modelling from the University of Sheffield shows that that price will result in 60 fewer deaths, 1,600 fewer hospital admissions, 3,500 fewer crimes and 32,300 fewer days of absence from work per year.

Bob Doris (Scottish National Party, Glasgow)

Given the benefits to public health and the potential savings to the national health service, Labour’s continued opposition to minimum pricing is both opportunistic and flawed. Despite Labour, however, minimum pricing shall be delivered. Does the First Minister therefore agree that the planned independent review of the benefits of minimum pricing is crucial both to allow on-going parliamentary scrutiny in this place and to demonstrate to the wider public the significant health and social benefits that minimum pricing can deliver?

Alex Salmond (Scottish National Party, Aberdeenshire East)

I agree. NHS Health Scotland will lead on a comprehensive evaluation of the impact of minimum pricing. Consumption and harm will be closely monitored over time, and any differential impacts between different groups of the population—or, indeed, any unintended consequences—will be identified and explored.

There is now a substantial majority in this chamber in favour of minimum pricing, and I welcome that cross-party support. Members on the Labour benches should perhaps be aware that that support extends not just across the chamber but beyond this country. For example, I noted that the Labour Party’s United Kingdom shadow health minister, Diane Abbott, in response to the news from Scotland, tweeted that she believes that Westminster should match the Scottish proposal. Scottish Labour is now in the truly remarkable position of being isolated on the policy, not just in this Parliament but in its own political party.

Jackie Baillie (Labour, Dumbarton)

Can I say how delighted I am that the First Minister pays such attention to tweets from Diane Abbott? I look forward to that continuing.

The First Minister will be aware that we made it clear at stage 1 of the bill that Labour will support minimum unit pricing if the windfall to alcohol retailers is fully clawed back. The First Minister has the mechanism of the public health levy to do that, so why, at a time when his Government is cutting the alcohol treatment budget, will he not claw back the £125 million profit, rather than have it simply line the pockets of supermarket shareholders each and every year?

Alex Salmond (Scottish National Party, Aberdeenshire East)

If on this issue Labour is motivated by concern for supermarket profits, why did it vote against the health levy affecting supermarkets? Jackie Baillie goes into one debate vitally concerned about the economic position of supermarkets and then turns up at First Minister’s question time to complain that they will get a windfall.

It perhaps depends on which debate Jackie Baillie is talking in or which Parliament the debate is in but, basically, is it not the case that the Labour Party’s opposition to minimum pricing boils down to the fact that it is a Scottish National Party proposal? Never mind the benefits to Scotland, the impact on health, the lives that will be saved or the beneficial effect on the national health service: it is an SNP proposal and therefore it must be wrong. I say to Jackie Baillie that, in all conscience, that sort of attitude should be condemned to the past. It is out of step with the people of Scotland.

Margo MacDonald (Independent, Lothian)

I thank the Parliament for its welcome, although members might now not be too pleased at what they welcomed. I do not imagine that the First Minister had time when he was in Norway to ask the Norwegians how they manage their drink problem—they, too, like a drink. They come from the same sort of origin as we do and they have the same sort of history. Did he take the opportunity to discuss the possibility of Scotland becoming a member of the European Free Trade Association? Given our close relationship with Norway on energy, that seems a much better berth than the bill that would seek to absorb us in a common energy policy for the European Union.

Tricia Marwick (None, Mid Fife and Glenrothes)

I am afraid that that was very wide of the mark.

Alex Salmond (Scottish National Party, Aberdeenshire East)

The range of discussions in Norway touched on many issues, including minimum pricing of alcohol.

Care Home Patients (Prescription Drugs)

Richard Simpson (Labour, Mid Scotland and Fife)

5. Back to some reality. [Interruption.]

Richard Simpson (Labour, Mid Scotland and Fife)

To ask the First Minister what the Scottish Government’s response is to the finding in the report by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society in Scotland that care home patients are being prescribed powerful drugs for long periods of time without proper checks. (S4F-00682)

Alex Salmond (Scottish National Party, Aberdeenshire East)

I wonder whether Richard Simpson’s aside was a sign that he is not totally comfortable with the Labour Party’s stance on some health issues.

The Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s report, “Improving Pharmaceutical Care in Care Homes”, does not make the claim that Richard Simpson suggests that it makes. The report is a positive and welcome contribution to the future provision of care to the group of patients involved. The report’s main finding highlights that pharmacists, working as part of an integrated multidisciplinary team, can improve the quality and safety of care for people in care homes.

The review of pharmaceutical care for patients in the community in Scotland, which was announced in October last year, is as part of its work considering evidence about the pharmaceutical care service needs of residents in care homes and how best they should be met, with an emphasis on pharmacists’ clinical role in achieving service delivery.

Richard Simpson (Labour, Mid Scotland and Fife)

I welcome the First Minister’s response and the group that is working on the issue. Is he aware of the research that was published in The British Journal of General Practice last month, which showed that, despite a welcome reduction in the prescribing of psychoactive drugs, residents in care homes are still 22 times more likely to be on antipsychotic medication? Is he also aware of the study that the General Medical Council commissioned on errors in general practice prescribing? Both those studies reinforce the Mental Welfare Commission for Scotland’s report of 2009 called “Remember, I’m still me”.

Why is the Government denying my constituents in care homes the right, when they have capacity, to register for long-term condition monitoring by community pharmacists? Will the First Minister ensure that residents who do not have capacity have contracts with pharmacists, as in Tayside, to ensure safer and more effective prescribing for that vulnerable group and to tackle the problem of excessive psychoactive treatments?

Alex Salmond (Scottish National Party, Aberdeenshire East)

The issue is substantial and important. I was puzzled because Richard Simpson’s original question referred to a claim that the report made. As I am sure that he now realises, the report did not make that claim—it referred to the report “Remember, I’m still me” by the Mental Welfare Commission and the Scottish Commission for the Regulation of Care, to which he just referred.

My first answer was about looking at what is in the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s report, because it makes a number of extremely positive suggestions to take forward the matter. Given Richard Simpson’s expertise in such issues, I will certainly look carefully at whether his contribution can be taken into account, in addition to the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s report.