 The next item of business is consideration of business motion 2650, in the name of George Adam on behalf of the parliamentary bureau, on a change to today's business. Any member who wishes to speak against the motion should press their request to speak button now. I call on George Adam to move the motion. Thank you, Presiding Officer, and moved. Thank you, minister. No member has asked to speak against the motion. Therefore, the question is that motion 2650 be agreed. Are we all agreed? The motion is therefore agreed. The next item of business is topical questions, and in order to get in as many people as possible, I'd appreciate short and succinct questions and responses. I call it question number one, Neil Bibby. Explain its decision to increase peak and off-peak regulated fares by 3.8%. Minister Graham Day. Presiding Officer, I can assure members that the decision was not taking a tall, light-wave significant analysis that was carried out both by ScotRail and Transport Scotland to look at various options for rail fares. The cost of delivering rail services must be met at a time when passenger numbers remain well below pre-Covid levels. Fiscal prudence makes an inflation rate fair increase unfortunately necessary. I hear calls from others about fair freezes or offering free travel to entice people back to rail. Unfortunately, none of those suggestions come up with any recommendations on how to fund them. Neil Bibby. Presiding Officer, Scotland faces a climate crisis, so what impact will fair hikes have on passenger growth and modal shift? Scotland faces a cost of living crisis, so why rule out a fair freeze to keep costs down for commuters and why hike fares in January when even the Tories are waiting until March? After months of industrial unrest with the rail unions and now with the fair hikes about to hammer passengers, our railways face a leadership crisis under the transport minister. Will he explain how his fair hikes are compatible with action on the climate emergency and the soaring costs of living face by commuters? Minister. Presiding Officer, as I made clear, this is a regrettable situation, but a necessary one that we find ourselves in just to outline for the chamber. Applying no increase or an increase below RPI was considered, but with a cost of between £6.5 million and £9.1 million involved, those options could not be taken forward, especially as such a decision would have had a cumulative impact, the impact recurring annually in future years. We have to ensure that rail fares are affordable for the taxpayer as well as passengers. We need to have a rail services financially sustainable, and while the Government covers the majority of the cost of rail passenger services, fares do have to contribute to overall funding. I recognise the point about trying to encourage people back on to rail as part of tackling the climate emergency. It is an important one, but we also have to make rail sustainable from a financial perspective. We are in difficult situations at the moment. Neil Bibby Scotland's railways do face a leadership crisis under this Government. The transport minister in a written parliamentary answer to me issued on Thursday said that his fair strategy remained under consideration. On Friday, a matter of hours later, the minister announced to the nation that his brutal 3.8 per cent fare hike. When was the decision actually taken to increase fares? Does the minister really expect the travelling public to believe that the answer that he gave to me on Thursday is remotely credible? I have made clear that a very great deal of consideration was being given over an extended period to the necessity to introduce a fare increase. As I said earlier, I wish it was not necessary, but I am afraid that it is. Minister, ScotRail's current range of discounts on the cost of travel for passengers has been working to promote travel by train before the arrival of Omicron. How does the SNP's record in government of supporting affordable travel compare with the rest of the UK? Given that we still need trains to run over the festive period and go forward, what advice can the minister give to encourage safe travelling? It is a fact that the Scottish Government's approach to rail fare costs has ensured that the average fare remains 20 per cent cheaper than across the rest of the UK. I want to pick up particularly Bill Kidd's point about the current situation. ScotRail is doing all it can to manage cancellations, although affected staff follow isolation rules. Unfortunately, that situation changes by the hour. We would encourage passengers to plan their journeys, taking account of the latest operator updates and Scottish Government guidance. I would also appeal to passengers to please follow all the basic Covid protection measures to protect both themselves, fellow passengers and staff. I want to put to the minister that he might want to re-look at how we do fare increases and have a look at the ticketing settlement agreement. Perhaps PEG increases to the consumer price index rather than the retail price index, because we cannot go on like this. I could point out that the agreement is an almost identical rise to the one that has been introduced in England by the Conservatives, but I do not want to do that. I want to accept that Mr Simpson is trying to engage constructively on the issue. In that spirit, I would be happy to meet him and discuss his matters. To ask the Scottish Government what actions it will take in response to the 2020-2021 audit of its consolidated accounts by the Auditor General for Scotland. I welcome the Auditor General's opinion on the accounts. This is the 16th consecutive year that the accounts have received an unqualified opinion, demonstrating the Scottish Government's sound and transparent management of the country's finances. The financial position reported in the accounts has been taken into account in the subsequent budget process. There are aspects where action has already been taken and is in progress. However, the Scottish Government will of course consider and respond to all audits recommendations and reports on agreed actions. The report will, I understand, be considered by the Public Audit Committee in January, and the Scottish Government will respond to the committee's interest in any aspect of the report, which is wide-ranging. Describing the Auditor General in Audit Scotland as the Opposition is not a good look for the Cabinet Secretary for Finance or the Deputy First Minister. The cabinet secretary seems to have been busy in claiming that the rest of us just do not understand the numbers. I am more than satisfied that the Auditor General understands the numbers, and I hope that she does too. He says that there are £580 million of an underspend for the 2020-21 year. Will the minister tell us straight, because it should be an easy answer, what specific amounts of funding and which specific departments and projects the £580 million has now been allocated to? In short, where is the money? First of all, what I would say to Stephen Kerr is that I do not recognise the remarks that he attributes to the Deputy First Minister or the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Economy. I would assure the member and Parliament that this Government has absolute respect for all of the work that Audit Scotland carries out. In regard to the second question, I would refer him to the statement that I gave to Parliament six months ago on the provisional outturn or to the budget document that was published for this current financial year, where the majority of that underspend was carried forward. If he takes further guidance on the matter, I suggest that he looks to hand him to Liz Smith, who I wrote to following the provisional outturn statement and provided further detail following that statement in the summer. Stephen Kerr. I know that he was not able to answer that specific question. What else do we learn from this report? That £45 million of EU funds have been lost due to Scottish Government failures and are having to be paid from the Scottish Government accounts. That hundreds of millions of taxpayers' pounds have been wasted by the SNP on bail-out projects, which, quote, have not delivered expected outcomes and are, quote, unlikely to achieve value from money. The Auditor General said that it was essential that the Scottish Government learned lessons from those significant failures. So will the minister tell the chamber what lessons he has learned? Minister. Of course, we listen closely and study close to all recommendations made by the Auditor General. As I stated in my answer to Mr Kerr's original question, my understanding is that the Public Audit Committee will consider this report early in the new year. Of course, we will monitor closely and study closely and listen closely to what the Public Audit Committee has to say. With regard to where funds have been allocated, I appreciate that Mr Kerr is relatively new to this Parliament, but I would reset again that the underspend, the majority of it, was anticipated. Of course, we have a process of autumn budget revisions and spring budget revisions where that for money is allocated. Indeed, with regard to aspects of the underspend to which he refers, that was further detailed to the Public Finance Administration Committee last month by myself when moving the autumn budget revision. He will find full details in the official report and the documents that will be published in the Scottish Government website, which I am sure will provide some very stimulating and engaging and informative reading from Mr Kerr over the Christmas period. To ask the Scottish Government what action it has taken to address any workforce issues in social care in light of comments from the chief executive of Scottish Care that the social care sector is facing the biggest workforce crisis that it has ever experienced. The Scottish Government is fully committed to improving the experience of the social care workforce as we recognise and value the work that it does. As part of the £300 million NHS care winter package, we announced an increase in wages for our adult social care workforce, delivering direct care to £10.2 per hour from 1 December 2021, and we will increase it again next year. An announcement made as part of the Scottish budget is the minimum early rate of £10.50 per hour. That represents an increase of 12.9 per cent for lower-paid workers in the course of a year. In collaboration with partners, we are working to attract more people to the sector, and we launched a national marketing campaign on 8 November. The campaign is doing things differently to previous campaigns, focusing on social media, a younger target audience and working with schools and colleges. The campaign links to other work that we are doing with the Scottish Social Services Council and NHS Education for Scotland on career pathways and learning and development. We have also funded the My Job Scotland recruitment website so that all social care vacancies can be advertised in one place and at no additional cost to all third and independent sector organisations. I would like to put on record my thanks for the remarkable job that those working in social care have done throughout the pandemic, and I have no doubt that they will continue to do that over the course of this winter. Alex Rowley I thank Mr Stewart for the answer, and I think that we would also want to join him in putting on record our sincere thanks to everybody who is working on the front line in this sector just now. Donald McCaskill, the chief executive of Scottish Care, warned a committee of this Parliament recently. He said that the sector is now hemorrhaging staff to better paid and less successful jobs and retail, stressful jobs and retail and hospitality. The coming months will see more and more providers going to the wall. Although I welcome the £10.50 that was announced, does he accept that that is not enough? Unless we tackle low pay in this sector and increase it substantially, we will not tackle the problems that we are facing in social care. Alex Rowley Minister Well, the Government takes all of this very seriously, and that is why we have funded two-wage increases in a very short period of time. However, let me compare the situation now compared to when Labour was in power. At that point, the minimum pay for care workers was £5.35 an hour. That is now £10.50 from April under this Government. It is not as much as we like, but it is still 96.2 per cent more than under the previous Labour administration. I have to say that Mr Rowley should take cognisance of that fact and ask himself why Labour did not do more to increase the pay of social care workers while they were in power. Alex Rowley I have already welcomed the increase that has taken place, but I have made clear that I do not believe that it is enough. I think that people will be dismayed to see Mr Stewart try to play party party politics on such a serious issue. Can I quote from Dr Andrew Buse, the BMA Scotland GP, committee chair? He said that we must do something to support the social care workforce, otherwise the burden that they will create on the rest of the system will take down anything else that we try to do. Will he accept that, while massive progress is being made, it is not enough if we do not tackle the low pay within social care? We cannot tackle the problem, and will he therefore make representations direct to the finance secretary to bring forward a further increase to tackle this issue? I am glad that Mr Rowley recognises that there has been a massive change here in an improvement. This Government will continue to do all that it can to ensure that we are paying people fairly. We have our fair work group looking at pay across the social care sector, and we have said in our national care service consultation that not only will we look at pay, but we will look at conditions in the sector. Of course, we want to ensure that there is care progression so that we can attract new people to enter the care profession. As for discussions with the cabinet secretary for finance, I know that Mr Rowley often does not have much faith in the negotiations that there is with the cabinet secretary with finance from his own colleagues, but I would suggest that he may wish to ask his finance spokesperson to discuss with the cabinet secretary what further ways there are forward in this front. I think that carers and vulnerable people listening to the minister will be severely disappointed with his partisan tone this afternoon. Carers in my constituency tell me directly that they are at breaking point. They tell me that vulnerable people right now are going without visits whatsoever, without medication, without food and without showering. That is not a situation that we should have in a modern Scotland. What practical steps is the minister going to take today to deal with the crisis that we face right now? No partisan politics, just practical steps. The Government is taking practical steps every single day of the week to try and help health and social care partnerships and local authorities to get that right for people, because Mr Rowley is right in the fact that it is all about people and the care that they need and deserve. That is why the cabinet secretary for health and I are in regular discussions with health and social care partnerships, health boards and local authorities across the country in order to see what we can do to help alleviate any difficulties that they experience. I was on to five health and social care partnerships, council and health boards only last week to discuss those issues around about delayed discharge and also to make sure that we get care right for people. The cabinet secretary and I will continue to have those discussions and do all that we possibly can to improve the situation for people across the country. That concludes topical questions.