 The next item of business is the debate on motion 11831 in the name of Shona Robison on Scotland's public service values. I would invite those members who would wish to speak in the debate to please press the request to speak buttons. I know that we do not seem to have the Government Minister's response for closing in the chamber as yet, and perhaps we could chase that up, but we will have to start the debate in his absence, which is regrettable. I call on the cabinet secretary, Shona Robison, to speak to and to move the motion around 12 minutes, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer, and I will move the motion in my name at the start. People right across Scotland, including all of us here in this chamber, rely on public services, whether that be our children and young people getting high-quality education and training, our loved ones accessing the right treatment and care when they are unwell, victims and witnesses of crime being supported through the justice system or the most vulnerable members of our community being supported through our progressive social security system. This Government is determined to maintain and improve our public services despite the most challenging financial situation since devolution. Our block grant funding, which is derived from UK Government spending, has fallen by 1.2 per cent in real terms since 2022-23, and our capital spending power is due to contract by almost 10 per cent in real terms over five years. Our approach to maintaining our public services is informed by our shared values as set out in Scotland's national performance framework to treat people with kindness, dignity and compassion. Those values are alongside our missions of equality, opportunity and community guide everything we do. We believe that everyone in Scotland should experience high-quality services that are delivered effectively and efficiently. Where people need further support for whatever reason, public services should be able to identify those needs early, build relationships with people to understand their needs and work together to support them in whatever way they need. Crucially, we also believe that those with the broadest shoulders are asked to contribute a little more. That is right and fair, and our progressive approach, our social contract, sets Scotland apart from the rest of the UK. As I have said many times now, the Chancellor's autumn statement was a worst case scenario for Scotland. The fiscal settlement from the UK Government undermines the viability of public services in Scotland and, indeed, across the whole of the UK. Responsibility for this situation lies with the UK Government, a decade of austerity, Brexit undermining living standards and the calamitous Liz Trust's mini-budget. When faced with a choice in the autumn statement on how to use the £27 billion of fiscal headroom, the Chancellor had available to him he chose to cut taxes at the expense of public services. Indeed, there are real terms cuts across a number of UK Government departments, including health. Our values and missions are at the heart of the 2024-25 Scottish budget and have informed all of the choices that we have made in response to an incredibly challenging economic environment. Importantly, we have not seen the UK Government similarly prioritised public services through its recent policy decisions, in fact, quite the reverse. Within the constraints of the current devolution settlement, we are using all of the powers available to us to maximise investment in our public services. Indeed, the Scottish Viscal Commission has estimated that our income tax policy choices since devolution will raise an additional £1.45 billion in 2024-25 compared with the UK Government policy that we had matched. Those spending decisions build on our successful legacy of investing in our public services in delivering meaningful reform that has improved outcomes for many people across Scotland. For example, the Police and Fire Reform Scotland Act 2012 underpins the most significant public service reform since devolution, which continues to deliver significant savings and improved outcomes. Police Scotland is on track to deliver cumulative savings of over £2 billion by 2026, and the creation of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service has removed around £482 million from the fire service cost base over the past 10 years. I very much agree with her about the Police and Fire Service and decluttering landscape. Does she think that there is scope for further decluttering? Yes, I do. I think that there is a lot of opportunity and scope for shared services, for public bodies working together and potentially, in some cases, merging. We just have to be careful though that, in doing so, we keep the focus on delivery rather than on organisational change, because there is a danger that sometimes that can happen. In my letter, a 48-page letter to FPAC pre-Christmas laid out some of the detail of the extensive 10-year reform programme, but I am very happy to hear suggestions of how we can go further than that. I am still a bit shocked at the cabinet secretary's line on police reform as an example of great reform by the Scottish Government. We remember that we had three chief constables in almost as many years. It cost more money than it saved. The reality was that it was a disaster, especially with the centralisation of the control rooms. Why is she using that as an example? I think that if, in terms of the outcome for victims of serious crime, particularly sexual offences, rape or murder, if you look at the results that Police Scotland has now been able to deliver consistently across Scotland, then that, for me, is the most important outcome from that reform. We have also prioritised tackling poverty, particularly child poverty, and have made significant progress by working collaboratively and creatively with partners. As a result of this Government's policy interventions, including the expansion of the Scottish child payment, it is estimated that 90,000 fewer children will live in relative and absolute poverty in 2023-24. I know that the Tories do not want to hear about child poverty, but this Government does want to talk about child poverty. I take the opportunity to interject. If members wish to raise an issue, they know that there are ways to do that, including standing up and seeking to make an intervention. Cabinet Secretary, please continue. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Just to remind members, it is estimated that 90,000 fewer children will live in relative and absolute poverty in 2023-24. Notably, poverty levels are lower in Scotland than in England. For over 75 years, our national health service has been a universal public service free for all at the point of need. We are resolutely committed to those founding principles and have a strong record of investing in our health and social care sector. For example, we have invested £193 million in our national treatment centres programme. We opened two new centres in Fife and Highland in spring last year, and two further centres will open or expand early this year. Together, those centres are planning to deliver over 20,000 additional procedures by 2024-25, which will improve patient outcomes. Alongside mitigating the impacts of UK Government decisions, the scale of the current financial challenge means that we must change the way that we deliver public services in Scotland. We know that, in the short term, we need to reduce costs and improve effectiveness further. However, as we look at the demographic projections for Scotland made worse by Brexit and the UK Government's approach to immigration, combined with the anticipated level of demand on public services, we must change the way that we deliver services in the long term to fundamentally improve people's lives and reduce their need for on-going support. Inward migration into the UK was at a record level last year, but not to Scotland. If you look at migration in relation to the rest of the UK, we have a situation where at least 10,000 people are moving from the rest of the UK, who may come from various parts of the world before that. They come from the rest of the UK to Scotland, and 7,000 of those each year are of working-age population. I would have thought that something the Tories would welcome, clearly not. No, thank you. In December I provided the Finance and Public Audit Committee with a detailed update that set out the Government's aims and principles for an ambitious 10-year programme of public service reform. That update included the actions that we need to take over the next two years to bring together a common approach for reform, to further align our policies and reform programmes, and to enable and empower our partners to act. In short, this Government's vision is for all public services to be person-centred and designed around the unique needs of individuals, focused on prevention and prioritising early intervention and support to reduce the need for crisis intervention in the future, to be place-based and designed in ways that best meet the distinctive needs of communities across Scotland and built on partnership and creative collaboration with partners. Achieving that vision will not be easy, and the Scottish Government cannot do that alone, so we want to build a consensus around the new ways of working with local government, third sector and other partners to achieve that. This Government has a clear plan to deliver reform. We are working with local government and the public to take forward reforms that enable us to change how services are delivered at a local level. We remain committed to delivering the local government's review and democracy matters alongside COSLA, exploring single authority models and to deliver on commitments to reform, funding and accountability in the Verity House agreement. We are aligning all our major policy reforms and investments around our shared vision for public services. Across our education and skills sector, we are reforming to make sure that everyone in Scotland is supported to fulfil their potential and will continue to support schools and local authorities to improve the attainment of children and young people impacted by poverty, and that is underpinned by £1 billion worth of investment in the school attainment challenge this parliamentary term. In our justice system, we are continuing to reform our justice system to prioritise victims and witnesses, protect front-line services, make better use of digital approaches and support greater collaboration between partners to keep communities safe. In health and social care, the development of the national care service is building on our strong commitment to high-quality, consistent and fair public services. Our programme of co-design is making sure that people are at the heart of these developments and human rights principles are embedded as we deliver for more than 230,000 people in Scotland who receive social care support. We are also driving innovation and making public services more efficient as set out in the resource spending review. Our single Scottish estate programme has already reduced the size, costs and emissions of the public sector estate. This has delivered savings in excess of £4 million through the co-location of services and the closure of surplus offices in Edinburgh and Dundee. Work is under way to consolidate the public sector estate in Glasgow from five premises into one new net zero carbon property to deliver associated carbon reductions alongside anticipated revenue savings in excess of £3 million per year from 2028-29. We are expanding the use of the national collaborative procurement and this approach has the potential to deliver significant efficiencies for every pound invested in Scottish Government-led collaborative procurement. Over £40 is returned in financial benefits. In 2022-23, over £130 million was saved through this approach. Digital technology and infrastructure is also a key enabler of public service reform. For example, we invested £1.8 million in a new digital dermatology service in 2023. This programme has the potential to reduce demand for outpatient appointments by up to 50 per cent and will lead to a better and quicker service for patients as well as reduce pressure on our workforce. The Scottish Government is continuing to carefully review its own workforce numbers to ensure that we are delivering for the people of Scotland as effectively and efficiently as possible. For March 2022 to the end of September 2023, the size of our contingent workforce has reduced by 27 per cent, thereby reducing reliance on temporary staff and contractors. Finally, to conclude, I have been clear that the Scottish Government cannot do this alone. Collaboration is central to how we deliver ambitious reform across the public sector. In the last year, we strengthened our collaboration with local government, public bodies, business and the third sector. We have worked effectively with the Scottish Green Party to review house agreement and I welcome continued collaboration across this chamber as we seek to deliver collectively for the people of Scotland. I now call on Dr Gohani to speak to and move amendment 11831.2. Dr Gohani. I wish to draw members' attention to my registered interests as a practicing NHS GP and move the motion in my name. We have listened to the Deputy First Minister and she is making out as though the SNP has not actually been in charge of public services for the past 16 years. Once again, this SNP Government treats the people who really matter, the public and public sector workers, as if they are fools. SNP Ministers persistently refuse to admit their failures. They expect everyone to believe they are competent, despite overwhelming evidence, and to pay for their incompetence they go all out to tax workers and businesses for working hard. The Scottish Retail Consortium says that SNP will be back for even more of your taxes next year because this SNP Government will fail to reform the public sector. The Deputy First Minister claims her party has created a legacy of successful public service reform as an improved outcomes for people and communities including health and social care. Is that true? It is as delusional as Hulmsley uses fantasy economics to our calculation that independence would lead Scottish households to being £10,000 per year better off. I will, yes. The member mentioned health and social care, which gives me an opportunity to ask him why his Government is reducing health and social care spending down by £8 billion. That is a cut of 4.7 per cent. How can he justify that? The First Minister needs to concentrate on the fact that this is not only the Scottish Parliament, but you are in charge of healthcare here in Scotland, and that is what you should be doing. In fact, it is little wonder that the Deputy First Minister— Dr Gahoney, yes. I would remind all members that we need to speak through the chair, because otherwise you are referring to me and I have no responsibility for that. It is little wonder that the Deputy First Minister on November 20 last year refused to confirm when asked whether SNP ministers always tell the truth. Today, however, we are debating Scotland's public service values. Let us start by considering the SNP's catalogue of shame and the public services of healthcare education and procurement. Lengthy A&E waiting times targets not met. Worse than in cancer treatment waiting times, with a quarter of patients waiting two months to see a specialist. Now, today, we have reports that Scotland has some of the worst cancer survival rates in the world. Wohful workforce planning, lacking ambition, while vacancy rates for nurses are at record levels and a four-year high across many other NHS professions. On public health, the SNP, by its own admission, has taken its eye off the ball. Drug and alcohol-related deaths in Scotland are higher than anywhere else in Europe. 1,300 babies were born with drug dependency since 2017. It is disgraceful. This SNP Government is all about sign-bites and promises that they consistently fail to deliver upon, telling us each time that lessons will be learned. Let us look at school-age children. The SNP failed to address educational attainment gaps, another failed promise. Sixteen years of botched SNP reforms that blew a billion pounds have ruined an education system that was once the envy of the world. According to a poll in the Scotland newspaper, just this week, the majority of Scots believe the SNP is running public services poorly. Now, when it comes to setting an example to others in Scotland, the SNP sits at a very low bar. There is a police investigation into its party finances, fueling doubts about transparency and adherence to the rule of law. Of course, we are well accustomed to the SNP blaming its failures and incompetence on others. No, I am not talking about the Scottish Greens, though some in this Chamber clearly do blame them. The SNP is also quick off the mark to make claims about others that do not stand up to scrutiny. Take the misleading post on the Scottish Government's official Twitter account claiming that the autumn statement had only resulted in an extra £10.8 million of funding for our NHS, but this is just spin because the Treasury provided a record £43 billion to fund public services in Scotland. This Scottish Government can spend the funding in any way that it wants. Just as the SNP Government decided not to spend £18 billion on Scotland's NHS that the SNP Government received by way of consequentials from NHS spending down south since coming to power—£18 billion. It is about SNP choices, like having 160 officials costing £9.77 million a year on preparations for bloated national care service, or £7 million per year on pretend overseas embassies, or millions on a failed deposit return scheme, or hundreds of millions on ferries. I could go on. While we lament the performance of the SNP Green Government, we must stress our admiration for Scotland's amazing public sector workers who deliver vital services. The trouble is that these workers are undermined by the SNP Government's mismanagement year in, year out. They are also let down by the SNP's failure to properly support local government, deliver well and stay true to public service values. We really need to do things differently. We need to recognise a reorganisation of Scotland's public sector that prioritises efficiency, preventative care and productivity. No one is saying reform is easy. The Scottish Parliament's Finance and Public Administrations Committee has been tasked with conducting an inquiry into this. It is important work. Audit Scotland has called for urgent reform and highlights that the SNP Green Scottish Government has made no progress since 2016. Reform is vital in order to develop and deliver a long-term financial deal with the pressures. The Scottish Conservatives believe that the principle of the Christie Commission on the future public services delivery is as important today as they were when published in 2011. Back then, the Scottish Government was told that unless Scotland embraces a radical new collective culture and collaboration through its public services, both budgets and provision are forecast to buckle under the strain. A fragmented, complex, opaque system hampered with collaboration between organisations. That top-down approach lacks accountability whilst failing to deliver to the needs of individuals and communities. The Scottish Government has not heeded what the Christie Commission has said. Instead, the SNP has the highest taxes in the UK, despite receiving around £2,000 per scot more from UK Treasury than people in the rest of the UK. Dr Gohani is about to conclude. I would if I could. But we need to grasp the thistle. Reform is possible. If there is a will to do so, the SNP raising of taxation to record levels in the history of devolution, while public services continue to have their capacity reduced, demonstrates that the SNP's public sector model is unsustainable. A major review of Scotland's public sector is required and must be implemented lest our services face a disastrous collapse. There is a very important discussion to be had about the urgently needed reform of our public services in Scotland in order that they are fit to meet the huge challenges that we face today, responding to climate change, demographic change and technological change. Sadly, on the basis of the motion before us today, it does not really rise to that opportunity. Mangled through the party spin machine, the Government's motion comes to us, but I think frankly from another planet, one in which the SNP has ever had a genuine interest or indeed a credible plan to reform public services in Scotland. Back in the real world, the SNP has never been invested in the hard, honest work of public service reform. It came to power in 2007 on a platform of no reform and it has spent 17 years doing just that. The single change that matters to it has come ahead of all else, so we have had populism rather than progress and party before people. Do not just take my party political word for it. In 2023, the Parliament's Finance and Public Administration Committee conducted a wide-ranging inquiry into the Scottish Government's public service reform agenda or lack of it. The committee heard an abundance of evidence, including from Audit Scotland, which laid bare the opacity of the Government's abysmal track record of reform. It said, and I quote, that there was limited evidence of any real difference in improving the quality and effectiveness of services provided to the public. On what little reform this Government has engaged in has, of course, been botched and often reversed in fairly short order. The motion that we are debating today cites health and social care partnerships as one of the Government's successes, so successful, of course, that they are to be scrapped as part of their chaotic national care service plans. Themselves, of course, are unmitigated disaster with spiralling costs, no progress after years of provocation and delay, and incompetent ministers saying proposals are, and I quote, a little bit hard to get their head around. All the while, delayed discharge soars across Scotland now, just in recent weeks, at the worst ever level. Despite the Deputy First Minister's personal commitment to end delayed discharge entirely by the end of the year, that year, of course, was 2015, not 2023. Day by day, GP access and NHS dental care are increasingly a myth for families across Scotland. Or take education reform, three years on from the SQA scandal. The SQA was, of course, rightly to be scrapped and education Scotland replaced, on the roll, unabated, unchanged, unrepentant, rolling across the forests of reports and commissions that lie now on the floor, undelivered. Any real possibility of reform is stifled by the Government. The latest Cabinet Secretary announcing just in November that the one attempt at reform from the last decade, John Swinney's useless regional improvement collaboratives, are to be wound down. What a track record of success. And so, committed our Government to not reforming education, that just last month, the Deputy First Minister slashed the education reform budget. Any programme of reform must genuinely be about improving the lives of the population. In the absence of the reform, any programme of reform of adaptation to a change in country means our services have become less efficient and ever less appropriate to the needs of our citizens. It places those services in a spiral of decline, one in six Scots languishing on an NHS waiting list, a piece of figures showing Scottish pupils a year behind their English counterparts and maths, falling life expectancy in this country. It does really matter, and we have to get reform right for the sake of the public services on which we all rely. I am afraid that the Government's reality-denying motion does little to fix the mess that it has made of our NHS or our education system. The Tory amendment this afternoon references the Christie commission principles, and we have heard a little bit about that already. I do wonder whether, if we should just not collectively acknowledge that none of this was ever implemented. Not that it was wrong that those principles were incorrect and that they were not based on sound values. Indeed, much of what Campbell Christie had to say was prophetic. It set out the consequences of inadequate government, and that has come true to the detriment of the country. All of that was 13 years ago. Frankly, I find the continued use of Campbell Christie's name to validate an approach that has been willfully ignored to be disrespectful. It is the antithesis of the call of practical reforming co-operation that his values espoused in his work in our trade union movement across Scotland. Christie called for a programme that was urgent and sustained. Nothing could be further from the truth. After 16 years of decline, Scottish Labour is clear that our public services are in desperate need of reform. However, we know by the cold reality of experience and the chaotic heat of current conduct that this Government cannot be trusted to do it. Only by getting rid of Scotland's too bad governments can any meaningful change take place. Mr Marra is seated and has concluded his remarks. What a pompous insensitive title for a debate. Lofty speeches about wars like us, when people are stuck in ambulances outside accident and emergency departments, when they wait in pain for ever longer NHS waiting lists, when children from poor backgrounds are stuck in poor educational outcomes, when people desperate for a home see the Scottish National Party Government slash their housing budget and the drug death rate remains the highest in Europe. That debate is a sign of a Government that has lost touch with the lives of ordinary people and their struggles. That debate is not about public service values. It is all about the Scottish National Party Government setting out its excuses and providing cover for what will be a savage budget ahead. It is hunting for everyone—anyone—as the cause for the financial predicament of their own making. Brexit, the Tories, the pandemic and probably somehow the Welsh Labour Government and Keir Stammer as well. They are all to blame from the SNP as the true cause of the SNP's mismanagement of the public finances and a failure to reform public services. I have a test. The more the SNP people hunt for blame, the more that we know the deeper the financial hole that they are in. I agree that the Conservatives have been a terrible Government. I agree that Brexit is damaging too, but those are not new revelations. They have not just happened. We have known this for some time. Why are the SNP suddenly surprised and panicking now? We have heard the warnings from the Christie commission, Audit Scotland, the Scottish Fiscal Commission for years. Take the Scottish Fiscal Commission. It warned in May 2018 that the Scottish Government was facing a £1.7 billion shortfall in the public finances over the following five years. Back then, five years ago, it said that reduced expectations for wage growth will result in a significant drop in income tax revenues as Scotland's economy lags behind the rest of the UK with growth remaining below 1 per cent a year until 2023 last year. The Auditor General warned, at least as far back as 2018, again five years ago, that the NHS was not in a financially sustainable position. He repeated his warnings in November 2022. Failure to make the necessary changes to how public services are delivered will likely mean further budget pressures in the future. Now Scotland's NHS boards are forecasting a deficit this year of £395 million. The Christie commission, way back in 2011, 13 years ago, warned about the need to increase preventative spend to stop demand swamping public service capacity. Despite all of those warnings, stretching back years, apparently now it's someone else's fault. The panic amongst the SNP ministers has been concerning to observe. I have never witnessed them cutting budgets to this degree in year in the way that they have this financial year. Who's suffered? Colleges and universities, twice. Farmers with the farm support. Flexible workforce development fund gone this year. Even the NHS budget wasn't safe, no. In total, that's £525 million cut in this year's budget, education down £165 million, transport £145 million cut, NHS £70 million cut, all cuts in year, and chaotic management of the public finances. There has been no substantial reform of public services during their tenure in office. Take education. John Swinney's education bill, that was stripped out, it was abandoned, and the last remnants of those measures, the regional improvement collaboratives, have just been torn up by the new education secretary. Jenny Gilruth has delayed the scrapping of the SQA and the Hayward reforms, we're going to have another debate about that in the next few weeks, delayed as well on health and social care. The big answer from the SNP was the national care service, but that's been delayed and watered down, and it will scrap their previous last supposed reforms, the health and social care partnerships. Through the education committee, we looked at colleges and their regionalisation. I found it very difficult to find any significant benefit from the changes, and the colleges are now a shadow of their former selves. Of course, there was police centralisation, which the cabinet secretary was boasting about, but that resulted in three chief constables in almost as many years, and the rushed control room centralisation. I've got to remember this. The tragic events of that crash at the side of the M9 motorway that led to the deaths of Lamarabelle and John Ewell. That was a direct result of a hasty, kamakazi approach to the centralisation of the control rooms. It was unforgivable about what happened. That was not something to boast about. That is plainly not a Government of competent reform. It too often ducks reforms, probably because when it does try reform, it mishandles those reforms, but the real proof must be in the outcomes. A yawning poverty-related attainment gap, a housing emergency declared by many councils across the country, drug deaths, the highest in Europe, record-long NHS waiting times, delayed discharge at a high rate—that's not a record to boast about. We will now move to the open debate. I would advise members that we have some time in hand this afternoon, so there is plenty of time for interventions, should members so wish. I call Ivan McKee to be followed by Stephen Kerr. I thank the Government for bringing forward this hugely important debate on a subject that is often overlooked, but it is critical to the success of our public services going forward. I also welcome the Government's openness in their motion to constructive contributions to suggestions of things that could be taken forward to move the agenda forward. The real opportunity to articulate Scotland's public service values and how they inform our approach to delivering for the people of Scotland is good, of course, when we embark. As we move through this process to have the vision, much has been said about Christie. I had a read back through Christie this afternoon and those clear four principles around empowerment, partnership, prevention and efficiency. While some reform has, of course, happened, reading Christie, now those messages still clearly resonate and inform a really solid basis in guiding principles for taking work forward. I want to address a number of issues, starting off first of all with finance. Finances will always be challenging, and that's the environment that we live in now, in the future and in the past. Indeed, when you look at Christie in the post 2008 crash, that was recognised as part of the backdrop to the environment that Christie was working in. However, I also recognise in Christie that additional funding on its own was only part of the issue and was not of itself the solution. Indeed, it identified that up to 40 per cent of spend in the public sector was on prevention, which could be reduced—sorry, it was on cure rather than prevention—with a focus on preventative measures in a much more structured way. In that sense, that number dwarfs anything else that we talk about in budget discussions and clearly gives us much to go at if that approach is in a correct and structured way. The second point that I want to raise is about the art of the possible. It is often the case that you lose sight of that in arguments about numbers and budgeting processes and so on, but it is instructive to reflect back on the Covid experience and not to lose sight of the fact that that showed for all the challenges and difficulties that we went through in the pandemic. It showed the art of the possible in terms of what partnership working could deliver, what could happen in terms of turning up the dialogue and speed in making things happen very quickly and efficiently when we had to. It is important that we do not lose sight of that in a worry that we have to a large extent in the art, as I say, of the possible. We need to accept through the culture that things can be different, and I think that culture change is absolutely central to taking forward a meaningful public sector reform agenda. Recognising that the Government's role is to enable that change but also very much to lead my example in the bits that the Government does have control of to make them as efficient and as effective as it is possible. I fear that that often is not the approach that we take. A structure change management process in a complex organisation, which is what it is, and those of us who have experience of doing that in other environments, recognises that it is not ad hoc or piecemeal. It needs to have a very clear process that is followed through. It is also not a big top-down change—it is expensive, it is time-consuming, and it also goes against the Christy principle of empowerment. I think that the Tory amendment falls into that trap of asking for a complete review of everything, something that would take many, many years, cost a lot of money and not deliver very much at the end of it. It is much more about creating that environment, simplifying the landscape and recognising that complexity is the enemy. We now have 129 public bodies on the list. I have not checked how many there were in 2011 when Christy was published. I might be instructive to have a look at that and see what the direction of travel is in that regard, whether we are making progress or going backwards in that regard. Clarity on accountability is critical. We start from a good place. We have a very effective and well-documented national performance framework that lays out what it is that we are trying to deliver and whether we are making progress on it. Without that clarity of who is responsible for what, right through the system, we fall into the trap of something that everybody's responsibility becomes. Nobody's responsibility, and if everything is a priority, nothing is a priority. Indeed, I will. Ivan McKee agreed that the issue, the point that he has raised about the cluttering, the cluttering of all those different bodies that hardly helps with clear lines of accountability, and is not just a fact of organisational life. I think that that is exactly the point that I was making. The next point is about empowerment and listening to front-line staff and, of course, the public, the service users. Recognising the power of micro-improvements, that culture of continuous improvement, because often we think that things can, as I said, be imposed from top down, taking a long period of time because the big bang is the best solution. A culture where staff feel empowered to make those changes on the ground on a daily basis and where the public feel empowered to raise those issues where they see service delivery not working effectively in a joined-up way is hugely important. Too often, unfortunately, in the public sector, in my experience, the culture is a system that is best, be it the management system or, indeed, the computer system. We have seen in recent days and weeks the damage that that can cause when something is taken forward that does not obviously pass the common sense test and people did not step in to blow the whistle on those problems with the post office. It is really important to remember that poor public service delivery makes inequality a much worse point that has already been made in the debate. Making public services excellent and more efficient is the best way to tackle inequality. The middle classes, frankly, will always find a way around poor public services. Those who are most challenged economically will fail, unfortunately, to do so, and it is important that we recognise that. Delivering effective and efficient public services, as I said, is the best way to tackle that inequality. Fester interests, of course, exist. The approach needs to be not to ignore them, identify them, align them where possible or frankly tackle them where necessary, and not to use them as an excuse for poor delivery. A few practical things in my closing remarks, Presiding Officer. Duplication exists. We recognise that, but there are not mechanisms in place to allow that to be brought together and to be driven out of the system across Government and multiple agencies working in the same environment. A mechanism to do that is hugely important. Collab, consolidation of estates, has been mentioned by the Deputy First Minister, and I welcome the focus that that is getting. Disappointing, to some extent, that Glasgow hub has been taking forward an investment that is wholly unnecessary, given the significant surplus of estates that there already is across the wider public sector in Glasgow. I think that getting the local authority, other agencies and government to bang their heads together and talk about what they actually have in terms of spare capacity means that we could probably not need that hugely expensive Glasgow hub, which is a pep project of many within the civil service, unfortunately. Digitisation, and on that regard, I see no progress or maybe the minister can let us know on the opportunity to make use of the spare capacity, 80 per cent, empty Victoria key for supporting business culture and technology development in that part of Edinburgh. Digitisation is hugely important, but really important to recognise again that it is not a big bang solution. Harking back to the post office experience, part of the solution is very important to deliver, but only part of what needs to be a wider culture and management and process change. Finally, 10 years is a long, long time. I feel that that time frame creates complacency and people can afford to kick the can down the road. The Covid response shows what is possible in short time frames. We need to be able to drive change on an on-going basis with quarterly results. I am a lot in that short time, Presiding Officer, and I am always very happy to engage with ministers to add value to those who are going forward. Thank you very much. I call Stephen Kerr to be followed by John Mason. It is always a pleasure to follow Ivan McKee, because he is somebody on the SNP benches that I actually have enormous respect for. I say that sincerely. He is someone who has led organisations, who has led and managed businesses. When he talks about culture and transformation, I think that it is worthwhile that everyone in the chamber, especially the front bench for the Government, listen to what he is saying. I wanted to intervene on my colleague Sandesh Gulhane. I did not realise that there would be so much time for the debate when my intervention was not possible. However, at the point that I wanted to make the Greens today, Patrick Harvie, is claiming credit for the widening tax gap between Scotland and England. There you go. There is the SNP in this Government. The Greens are claiming the credit for that particular piece of nonsense. I agree with Michael Marra that this is a Government that has absolutely no appetite for reform of any kind, because there can be no doubt that there is a serious need for reform in the Scottish public sector. However, we are stuck with this SNP-Green Government that is never going to tackle the big issues, because they do not have the appetite for it. The people who know that it is better than anyone else are the people who work in our public services. They come to their work every day, frustrated by the stress of delivery failures that make their lives and the lives of the people that they serve worse. Willie Rennie, in his speech, went after the Government on the record, but I thought that he was too generous. The fact is that this set of ministers lack the competence to deal with serious reform, and he did not mention competence. They just cannot do it. They have not got it in them. It is all just too hard for this group of ministers. That is why so many of our public services, from the councils to the NHS, have turned inwards, because now they are obsessed with how things are done by a great morass of corporate governance. It is all about covering backs and finding new ways to refuse to do things. They have become obsessed with reputational protection and indeed PR. That is the product of the mismanagement, the lack of leadership of the last 17 years by the SNP-Green Government, which has compounded the decline of our public services that, frankly, started under Labour and the Liberal Democrat coalition of 20 years ago. It is also why we have ended up with so much secrecy. Organisations have lost their candor, and nowhere is that more evident than the area of whistleblowing. I want to make some serious remarks about whistleblowing because it is something that I think is a Parliament that should take a lot more seriously. In March last year, we observed whistleblower awareness week. We are a meeting in Parliament attended by parliamentarians from every party bar 1, including members who are present in the chamber this afternoon. We listened together to whistleblowers' public sector stories and it was a traumatic experience for those telling the stories but also for all of us listening. It was raw, authentic and distressing. Whistleblowing is a public good. We should hold those who whistleblow in high esteem. They are actually heroes who uphold the public good, but too often management sees them as some sort of an affront to the organisation and its reputation. They deal with the whistleblower as a problem to be solved rather than addressing the issue that the whistleblower has raised. HR procedures and legal devices are thrown at the whistleblower because they had a temerity in the first place to raise their hand and point out a genuine concern. There are many examples of mistreatment of whistleblowers in the Scottish public sector services. Nobody in this Parliament should assume a superior attitude about the treatment of whistleblowers in any branch of Scotland's public services. In NHS Scotland, there are cases of grotesque victimisation, the misuse of executive authority. We have health boards where we know there have been widespread cases of bullying. In one health board, senior clinicians have retired and left the service because they felt they were asked to do things that were unethical, being subject to what some called emotional black bell, which caused them in turn to suffer extreme mental stress. In one case that I am aware of, a senior clinician took his own life. Such was the horrendous experience that he was enduring. In Police Scotland, there have been outrageous examples of misogyny in the way that women police officers, highly professional accomplished women, have been dealt with by the senior officers. Police officers have been bullied because they raised concerns about their safety and the inappropriate behaviour of other officers. The culture in our education system also leaves a lot to be desired. I cannot tell you how many teachers I have spoken to who have said they fear speaking up about what is really happening in the classrooms of our country because they then feel that their careers will effectively be ended. They get marked out as troublemakers. When they raise concerns about what is happening in the schools in terms of school discipline, their ability as teachers is questioned. When they do speak out, their comments are ignored, deliberately struck out or withheld from the minutes of meetings. They become marked. It is career inhibiting if not career ending. That is but the tip of the iceberg. People who have come forward to serve in the NHS, in the police or in our schools deserve our respect and they deserve our support, they need to know that this Parliament has their interests at heart. Those who come forward with issues should be thanked and listened to, not sidelined and mistreated. They should not be threatened with legal sanction, harassed or blackmailed for their efforts, and members of this Parliament will know that they will have been told and seen that far too many people, for far too many people in our public services, this is their experience. We owe it to the people who work in public service to have an honest conversation about the culture that they experience in the workplace. That, I think, is in large measure, I took from Ivan McKee's speech. Culture is where we need to start. Culture eats strategy for breakfast. You might want to change things with strategic ideas, with visions, with objectives, but if the culture is not right, none of that progress will be realised. We owe it to the taxpayers of this country who feel that they are being shortchanged by the services that they expect to receive when they need to use them to speak up on their behalf. It is time for us to establish an independent office of the whistleblower sitting outside of any of the public services, an arms-length entity that is answerable to this Parliament, a safe harbour for whistleblowers somewhere they can go in confidence and be treated with respect and have their concerns listened to and addressed as appropriate. Public service begins with the transformation of organisational culture towards a culture of transparency and candour, and that transformation begins with the creation of an environment in which every employee's opinion and concerns are not only noted— Mr Kerr, could you please bring your remarks to a closed link? I will. I am not only noted but respected in app to the point. In conclusion, the people working in our public services know how to fix the service delivery problems that they experience every day of their working lives. What we need is transparency and accountability. Those are the values that we should be reinforcing through this debate. I have been very generous with the time. I have been very generous. Thank you, Mr Kerr. I am now going to call the next speaker. Mr Kerr, please resume your seat for a second. Further to your point of order, I had said that I wanted you to bring your remarks to a closed link. You continued and continued, and then I had to intervene to effect that very result, because I have to protect other speakers' speaking time as well. Mr Kerr had a very generous allocation above his six minutes, and I think that we have heard the general gist of Mr Kerr's points extremely well. A further point of order, Mr Kerr. I have to declare that members should refer to my register of interests, because I am the director of a not-for-profit company, Whistleblows UK, and it is important that that is put on the record. Perhaps, if you would allow me to say it, it would have been done and dusted a long ago. That could have been said during the member's speech, but it is now on the record, and I think that it is time to move on to the next speaker, who I am sure that the chamber would all very much wish to hear. Mr Mason, to be followed by Mr Rowley. Thank you, Presiding Officer, for your kind words. I was waiting quite a long time for Mr Kerr to finish. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I think that there is probably a lot that we can agree on, including the three key missions of equality, opportunity and community, as well as ensuring that public services remain ffiscally sustainable, improving outcomes and reducing inequalities of outcome among communities in Scotland. However, the challenge is how do we go about all of that? One of my themes is certainly around the area of could we reduce the number of organisations in Scotland? One of the advantages that we have of being a smaller country is that we should be able to do things with simpler structures and fewer organisations. That is why I have a concern about the growing number of commissioners, and the finance committee is to carry out an inquiry into that. I note that Mr Kerr wanted to add yet another. I note in the Government's response to the finance committee at paragraph 114 that it has an assumption against new public bodies, and my hope is that the Parliament will also take that approach. We have already brought police under one body, as has been mentioned already, and fire and rescue. There has been recent discussion about health boards and the suggestion that they could be reduced to three. I just wonder if we could even reduce them to one, but that is just a question. Also, the idea of single island authorities sounds very attractive to me. We had long needed better integration between health boards and councils, and the health and social care partnerships, or integrated joint boards, have moved that programme forward. On the other hand, it has meant that, where we had two organisations previously, now we have three. One of my fears, when I first heard about the national care service bill, was that we were going to end up with four. Again, I would say that Scotland is a small country. We have the opportunity to do things more simply, so definitely yes to more integration and partnership working, but surely no to more and more organisations. The motion mentions prevention and early intervention, and I think that we are all supportive of that. Policies such as the 1140 hours of early learning and childcare are a good example of that. If we can support children and families better in the early years, then it is highly likely that outcomes will be better later on. I would suggest that the fire service has also been a success story with fewer fires and less loss of life through fires because of so much good preventative work. However, it has to be said that we have struggled to achieve major changes in the health sector. There continues to be a major focus on hospitals and secondary care, including ambulance delays and waiting times at A and E, which are all important, but we tend to lose focus on GPs and other parts of the primary healthcare and preventative side. In turn, a lot of that depends on finances. If we had a period with budget surpluses, then we could invest more in preventative spending, but when budgets are tight, as they are at the moment, it is difficult to disinvest in hospitals and switch the money to community spending instead. The Finance Committee, which includes public administration in its remit, has been looking at public service reform. We had thought that the Government was going to set out clear targets for reducing the number of public sector workers, but it has seemed more recently that each organisation within the public sector will have to reform itself within its own budget limits. That approach leaves each body to manage a trade-off between what staff numbers it can afford and what pay increases it can afford. However, as we have also heard at the Finance Committee, the previous police boards and fire boards would not have amalgamated into Police Scotland and Scottish Fire and Rescue without clear leadership and direction from the Scottish Government and from Parliament. Again, the committee had expected more detail about future years, along with the publication of this year's budget. However, I now understand that we are due to get that in May when we get the new medium-term financial strategy. There is the on-going challenge of whether to provide support and benefit universally, or to target those who need support the most. Again, we have looked at this to some extent at the Finance Committee, and especially it was raised at our public engagement session in Largs in August. It seems to me that there is broad acceptance that school education and the NHS should be free to all at the point of use, and perhaps that is partly because they have been around for so long. Ideally, if we had enough money, I would like to see most services being universal, with no need for means testing or targeting. However, money is tight right now, and I do think that we need to target those who are most in need. For example, the retail and hospitality sector has been asking for NDR relief and more like the system in England. However, some parts of that sector are doing extremely well and have no need for such support. Therefore, I think that the Scottish Government's approach of targeting those who are most in need, including small businesses and businesses on islands, is the right one. Of course, even that is not perfect, and there will be anomalies. However, I think that it is better than providing no support at all on the one hand or support across the board, which is not always needed and which is unaffordable. However, public services form is only part of the answer. Going forward, we need to try to engage the wider public in debate as to what public services they want and how much they are willing to pay. Public services can be provided by the public sector but also by the private sector or the third sector. I was taken by the briefing from Social Enterprise Scotland for today's debate, making the point that there is room to look at new models and to democratise public bodies—for example, ScotRail and Scottish Water—by having customers and employees on their boards. Some workers in the private sector provide an excellent public service, for example post-men and post-women, going beyond the call of duty by checking up on older people, reducing isolation and similar. Bus drivers can be incredibly helpful with people who do not have good English or unfamiliar with an area. In conclusion, I very much agree that we need to emphasise values as we look at the public sector reform, but I also think that we should not be afraid of being radical and of taking a long-term view as to what is best for Scotland. To say that I was flabbergasted when I read the Government's motion for this debate today would be an understatement. I would have to say that the SNP is either in denial or they are completely delusional about the state of Scotland's economy and public services. I believe that it is clear to anyone in this country who has been paying attention that Scotland is in a worse state now than it was when the SNP took power 16 years ago. I think that it is completely ironic but predictable that this SNP Government has decided to bring MSPs to this chamber today to request congratulations for the dire state of Scotland's public services. I have no doubt with the support of their partners, the Greens, this motion of self-congratulation will be passed here today, but I would say that the only people that they are fooling is themselves. The majority of people in Scotland will not be fooled as they have witnessed the deterioration of their public services first-hand, so they know how disingenuous this motion is. Just yesterday, I read in the Scotsman the words of Dr Leah Peale, an A&E doctor working in Glasgow, who said that the last thing she would want is for any of her loved ones to be an A&E. She said, and I quote, to put it into perspective, imagine your granny or another elderly relative needing to go into A&E. You will call the ambulance. That ambulance is going to take longer to come out. Then they are going to sit in that ambulance outside of A&E for however many hours, and they are going to eventually come in, and they might sit in a corridor for however many hours, and then they will get seen by a doctor, and then they will be waiting on a trolley for another however many hours. Back to the self-congratulatory motion, how does that equate to success in health? Dr John Paul Lowry, vice-president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicines, said that at some emergency departments in Scotland, only 20 per cent of patients are seen within the Scottish Government's four hour wait targets, adding that many NHS workers are looking for exit plans as people are leaving shifts in tears. What impact will that have on our already short staffed and exhausted NHS workforce who are shouldering the repercussions of this Government's failure of workforce planning? What impact will that have on my constituents who are already having difficulty accessing medical care that they need or the one in six Scots who are currently on ever-increasing waiting lists? Also yesterday I read that over the past six years the number of elderly people who died while waiting for social care in Scotland has more than doubled. Donald McCaskill, the chief executive of Scottish Care said, and I quote, I have lost count of the number of social care providers who have said that a service user was supposed to come in but they died. He went on, it is an unforgivable scandal that people are not experiencing the quality of life that they could. He added that shortages of staff to perform assessments was likely behind the increase in deaths, as was, as he put it, the fact that there seemed to be a total inadequacy of resources going into social care. Yet this Government seems to believe that their proposals for a national care service, nothing more than a centralised procurement system that further removes power from the underfunded local authorities and has been widely condemned by key stakeholders, is the answer to these issues, an answer that is currently not scheduled to arrive until 2029, halfway through the next Parliament. In this, the ambitious public service reform that the Scottish Government believes should be supported in today's motion. Unless the region that I represent is uniquely unlucky, I am confident that the Cabinet Secretary's inbox and those of her colleagues are increasingly overwhelmed, much like mine, with contact from constituents desperately trying to access public services that are similarly overwhelmed or simply non-existent. How does the Cabinet Secretary explain to those struggling with access to public services across Scotland that the SNP Green Government think they are doing a great job? It is clear that this Government has spent 16 years engaged in short-term thinking for long-term problems, with the full extent of its ambitious reform proposals boiling down to little more than centralisation in budget cuts. I believe that people up and down Scotland are desperate for a change in approach, a change in attitude and a change in focus. If we are to deliver the public service reform that Scotland so desperately needs, ultimately the people of Scotland need a change in government. I am pleased to be contributing in today's debate in Scotland's public sector values. There is no doubt that Scotland's public sector is navigating one of the most challenging financial climates since devolution began. The impact of inflation, the tragic conflict in Ukraine and a severe cost of living crisis have exposed Scotland's public services to significant economic vulnerabilities, exacerbated by harsh Tory austerity choices and a hard Brexit. Brexit has been devastating. According to the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, the real GDP of the UK is decreased by a stagger in 2 to 3 per cent. In the year 2023 alone, Scotland experienced a reduction in devolved spending power, amounting to around £1.6 billion, a substantial consequence for a decision that voters in every local authority area across Scotland rejected. Despite challenging circumstances, Scotland fights to remain resilient, and there are some positives that we have heard many negatives to do already. The attainment gap for literacy is closing for primary school learners. Unemployment is at 3.8 per cent, and our core A&E facilities have consistently outperformed others in the UK for the past eight years. I certainly take pride in our Scottish Government's unwavering commitment to prioritise public services in stark contrast to the UK Tory Government's approach, cutting taxes at the expense of public services. The Verity House agreement marks a significant step towards achieving optimal outcomes for our citizens, and it empowers local government to use its wealth of local knowledge to enhance the delivery of our public services. With increased empowerment over local decisions and then the introduction of legislation such as the visitor levy and council tax premiums, local authorities will have greater autonomy to generate revenue to meet local needs. What does Stephanie Callan say to the local authority leaders that I have spoken to who say that the Verity House agreement is not worth the paper that is written on? I thank the member for that intervention, but to be fair that is certainly not the evidence that we are hearing that committee directly from them. I have lost my place now. This collaborative effort between national and local government operate within a shared framework and align policies that only enhances their capacity to deliver sustainable and person-centred public services. While that will continue to be challenging keeping the needs of our citizens at the core of this shared partnership and at the core of what we are thinking will be the key to success, the third sector, or more accurately, the community and voluntary sector, plays a pivotal role in delivering public services, yet its contribution is sometimes overlooked. When I met recently with the chief exec at voluntary action north Lanarkshire, their evidence—sorry, my tablet is jumping around— their emphasis on the big wins for small investments in the sector resonated deeply with me. The contributions of the community and voluntary sector include the crucial role in priming our economy for growth by providing essential skills, workplace training and delivering high-quality services and health, social care, education and more. That sentiment is reinforced by the economic contribution of the third sector in Scotland report, published by the Royal Society Edinburgh, which hails the sector as a significant player in the Scottish economy. Social enterprises have also played their part, and in 2021 they provided nearly 90,000 full-time equivalent jobs, and 2.6 billion in gross value added to the Scottish economy. However, the Royal Society Edinburgh and others have suggested that clarity and whether social enterprises are classed as third sector would be helpful as we consider public service reform going forward, and it would be good to have a comment on that. I want to talk about a local example—Morffitt gentle movement. It is based in Hamilton. Laneture delivers on close-up exercise plans and lifestyle interventions for those who would otherwise struggle to access exercise at all. Morffitt focused on supporting the ageing population, those experiencing isolation and those caring for others, and the received referrals from the local GPs and health and social care partnerships among others. It supports up to 60 individuals every week, and the built-in real community that is expanded into arts and other projects, and residents tell me very regularly that it has been absolutely life-changing for them. It is this person-centred delivery that really makes a difference in people's lives, and I think that it is imperative that we provide sustained support for third sector organisations and uphold their recognition as not just service providers but as integral sources of positive social and wealth generation. It will come as no surprise to anyone that I support Scottish independence. I have heard a lot of negatives today, and I have heard a lot of urgenies to spend more money, but where is that money going to come from? Some might be surprised that I did not vote SNP until 2015 after decades of voting for the Labour Party, but my principles and values have always been rooted in social justice, including our duty to look after each other, respect others' equals and value our local communities. That chines with the three key Scottish Government delivery priorities, equality, opportunity and community. Although Scottish independence is often portrayed as being about flag waving, nationality and dislike in England, that is not my experience at all. For myself and many like me, independence is all about creating a Scotland that looks after everyone who lives here from cradle to grave. It is only by the powers of independence that we can fully unleash the talents and the resources that will allow industry to thrive and truly invest in those precious public services that uphold Scottish citizens' rights and prioritise happiness and wellbeing. That is the kind of Scotland I want to live in. I will close with a recent quote from Scotland's First Minister that I could not agree with more. Independence is urgent precisely because living standards are top of people's concerns. I start by paying tribute to our public sector workforce from the NHS to schools, fire services and all our public sector workers. They deserve our praise, but, more than that, they deserve a Government that is prepared to meet the promises that they have made and that treat them with respect. That motion does not do that. I also speak directly to our communities who are being let down. I understand that it is them who suffer long waits within our health service, cannot access community facilities or see no future in the education system. It is our communities who suffer as this mess just deepens and deepens. We need action, and that action needs to work for both our communities and our dedicated workforce. Before my colleagues in the centre benches start to jump up and down at me, I want to make this point. I am no friend of the Tories. I believe that the chaos created by Truss and Johnson on top of the constant Tory attack on working-class people means that they have undoubtedly contributed to a raid on our public purse. However, to be clear, our job in this place is not to deflect, not to just blame, it is to deliver, to deliver on commitments made and services required. The reality is that if we do not reflect on our own actions, our own contributions to the problem, we will never seek to find a solution. We just absolve ourselves of the responsibility. The reality is that this tired Government, as it enters its 18th year, must be prepared to acknowledge its failures. Currently, it just grasps its straws trying to build a set of values, as it has described, out of the wreckage of Scotland's public services. The motion from the Government feels like it is about dressing up brutal cuts in the language of reform and values. It is about wonder dressing rather than substance. If we are absolutely honest, everyone in this chamber knows it, even those on the Government benches. We have had this for 17 years, no priority given. I give way to the gentleman. She talks about some of the pressures on Scotland's budget. I wonder if she can explain if she anticipates that an incoming UK Labour Government would continue to hold to its plans to stick to Tory spending priorities for the first two years. I thank the member for his intervention. I think that he will know from the words that I speak in this chamber. I expect delivery for our communities and that is what I expect from a Labour Government. If we strip away the spin and you can sense what really lies in store here in Scotland, funding cuts for the whole public sector and considerable job losses across Scotland. The Government wants to focus the debate on what someone else has done, but they need to face up to their lack of long-term planning, lack of leadership and lack of decision making. We have heard in the debate today that the Finance and Public Administration Committee has been critical of the Scottish Government's lack of strategy and leadership in the area of public sector reform. In its pre-budget report, it stated that the focus of the Scottish Government's public service reform programme since 2022 changed multiple times, as has the timescale for publishing further details on that programme. The multiple changes and lack of decision making is a common theme for this Government and is undeniably a problem for Scotland and its communities. It leads to anxiety, a lack of productivity, a country that looks to be in decline rather than surging into a new year with confidence and purpose, and that lies at the door of this SNP Government. Over the last year, I have spoken to workers on every part of our public sector, local government, colleges, NHS staff, emergency services, school teachers and more. Curring up new public service values is of little comfort to them. What they need is investment, leadership and to see the work that they do valued through proper planning, proper investment and pay. If I talk to constituents, they say the same. Can I make progress, please? If I speak to constituents, they say the same. They say a lack of investment in the public sector, particularly in their communities. They say a Government that is not capable of tackling NHS waiting lines or reducing the attainment gap. I will take a short intervention. There is just thanks for giving me the opportunity to ask about the point that you have just mentioned on pay. Would the member not recognise that we have delivered quite rightly the pay deals that are deserved by our public sector workforce, but, in advance of any other pay deals anywhere else in these islands, would the member not recognise that that is an important part of our public services investment and pay beyond anything that is seen anywhere else in these islands? That is what I expected from the cabinet secretary. I have spent hours on picket lines in Scotland. Do not pretend that we have a comprehensive plan of where we are going. I accept and I will accept good pay increases for all our public sector workers, but let us be honest about some of the other stuff that we have to do. If we think of the college sector, we are nowhere near where we should be in that. The reality is that we cannot have a debate like this without talking about local government. I do not have much time, but the Government's disdain for local government is in plain sight, and that has to be overcome. The very agreement that has been spoken about, we know that the councils and COSLA are concerned about it, and they spoke about the budget as it stands leaves not a single penny for transformative public sector reform. There is very limited scope for a focus on spend to save. One thing that the Deputy Minister has been unable to do is give councils or trade unions any idea of where the cuts that we have spoken about are. In closing, I ask the Government to speak less about values and to consider more closely what value they are providing voters who stood by them for a number of elections, only to be left with public services that are at the brink of collapse. This is a useful debate for us to have heading into the second half of this Parliament, particularly in the current financial context. Public sector reform should not just be based on affordability, but we cannot ignore the fact that budget availability is one of the deciding factors in our decision making. I am a fan of a big state. Government should be the expression of the popular will of society, where we share power and resources to do transformational things, in particular to protect our most vulnerable neighbours and our planet. Big challenges, such as the deeply embedded inequality present in the UK and the climate crisis, require a big co-ordinated response of the kind that only Government can lead. I want to see a bigger state in Scotland doing more to meet the needs of people and planet, but I do not just want what we have now on a bigger scale. We need far, far more efficient and accountable service provision. The kind of Scottish Government that Greens want to see would require a larger staff headcount inevitably, for example, but we recognise that the level of output from the Scottish public sector over the last decade has not grown as much as the headcount. That is not a criticism of staff themselves. Those are issues of structure, process and culture, not individual competence of civil servants and officials. That is very clear in the gap between intention and delivery that is identified by Audit Scotland. We are good at ambition, every party, but it is far easier than delivery, so that is not a surprise. Whether it is councils, Government, health boards or other public bodies, we all recognise that delivery, although rarely as bad as made out in debates in here or in sections of the press, certainly is not always meeting our aspirations. There is no singular solution to that, but I suggest that the following would help. Firstly, a rebalancing of resources from the Scottish Government centrally to its agencies and public bodies, we will not solve the delivery challenge by under-resourcing those who are responsible for delivery. Pulling resources into the centre because agencies are perceived to have failed or be unreliable is understandable, which is why Government reform and clear ministerial direction for public bodies is critical. More resources alone for bodies that are not delivering is rarely going to be the solution and in some cases will just be counterproductive. I think that we have heard enough from Mr Kerr, thank you very much. In some areas, funding is not actually the issue at all. Take the SQA, a body that has failed to deliver what we would all expect of it. The issues there relate to governance and culture. The education reform bill, which will replace the SQA with a new qualifications body, will be one of the most important in this session. It is critical that the weaknesses in the SQA's current governance structures and culture are not replicated by the new body. We cannot see a repeat of a board with just one current teacher but three management consultants. Corporate governance skills are important, but at the SQA and some other public bodies we are getting the balance wrong, leaving the boards with inadequate understanding of the policy areas that their organisation is responsible for, which I suggest is leading to their being unable to effectively scrutinise the decisions that those bodies are making and the way in which they are discharging their duties. Michael Marra. I wholeheartedly agree with Mr Greer in terms of his assessment of the SQA, but we are now three years on from the fiasco of the exams disgrace that happened to young people in this country. We were told at the time that this would be scrapped. The motion that we have from the Government today runs directly counter to the track record of getting this work of reform done. Ross Greer. I understand entirely Mr Marra's desire to see that work take place as quickly as possible. I will come on to later the fact that there is a tension between ensuring that we are undertaking good quality work, particularly legislative work and the need to do so at pace, and particularly when we are abolishing a body as significant as the SQA and replacing it. I think that it is right that the cabinet secretary has decided to take the time to consult with the workforce directly. I have mentioned before my belief that the new qualifications body would be better served via board, which includes a substantial number of current teachers and lecturers, as well as students, parents and carers representatives, children's rights experts and others. If that were the case with the SQA, I sincerely doubt that we would have ended up in the appalling situation where the Equality and Human Rights Commission had to take enforcement action after discovering that no-equality impact assessments had been conducted for who knows how. The other key element to successful replacement of the SQA is an overhaul of its organisational and, specifically, its management culture. The SQA has developed a deserved reputation for hostility to question and challenge, particularly from teachers. The structure of the new organisation can address that, in part by baking in consultation and co-design processes, discussion forums and a range of other mechanisms. However, just creating the space does not guarantee that you will fulfil that purpose—certainly not if the ivory tower culture of SQA management transfers over. Considerable work was done at the point of establishing Social Security Scotland to ensure that it had the right organisational culture. I think that that approach or something similar should be taken to the reform processes that are taking place in this session of Parliament. One other success story, which I do not think that we talk about enough in Parliament, is Screen Scotland. It was set up as a unit within Creative Scotland and it has had a transformational effect. Ten years ago, our film and TV professionals were embarrassed by the state of the sector. Now we have world-class studios, which are booked out and turning business away. The value of film and TV to our economy doubled from 2019 to 2021. The sector is employing record numbers of people in a vast range of roles, and our international reputation is rapidly growing. The team at Screen Scotland has been absolutely critical to that. I still think that, for the reform that is required, an independent body from Creative Scotland, the success of establishing that screen unit is an example that we should look to in other cases of public sector reform. I do not have too much time left, so I will raise through a few more points. I have mentioned the importance of consultation and co-design. As I said to Mr Marra, I think that there is a challenge between the demand on public bodies to be more nimble when responding to change and the need to take the time that is required to make the correct decision. I think that, sometimes just explaining why a process is what it is and why it is taking so long is sometimes all that is needed to maintain stakeholder buying at least for a time. Briefly, we need to see far more collaboration starting with the basics of sharing data. The David Hume Institute reckons that our economy loses £2 billion every year as a result of public data in Scotland not being accessible. The Government and a handful of councils operate open government licences. I have persuaded two more councils and four colleges to adopt it, but others need to do the same. We need to ask why we have an ethical standards commissioner and a standards commissioner when one body could fulfil both of those roles and save on operating costs. I am completely unconvinced by the argument that merging councils is a solution to anything when they already feel so remote to the communities that they serve, although sharing services have potential. I am concerned by the constant suggestions that the NHS needs fewer managers when it is already under managed compared to many other healthcare systems. Clinicians already do too much admin, so getting rid of more admin support will not help with that, even if it makes for easy headlines. We should make more time for debates like this on a regular basis. It is a key topic that cuts across every portfolio and affects the lives of everyone in Scotland. This afternoon, we had the opportunity to begin scratching the surface of what more radical and substantive reform could look like. Some members took up the opportunity to do so, sadly others did not. I still am completely unclear as to what the Opposition's alternatives are to any of the reform programmes that the Government is taking forward. However, I welcome the opportunity for us to have more debates on public sector reform on a regular, at the very least, and annual basis for the rest of this Parliament. I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate on the importance of continued investment in delivering and reforming public services for Scotland's people and communities. Although things have undoubtedly been challenging for quite some time—in fact, since the beginning of Tory austerity over a decade ago—it is clear that the economic damage of Brexit, which means up to £3.7 billion of potential funding for our public services, has been lost, has piled on additional pressure. Much like the austerity agenda, it is the result of a political choice, one of course that the majority of Scottish citizens voted against. In speaking to the Scottish Government's motion and legacy of successful public service reform in recent years, including health and social care partnerships and Social Security Scotland, I want to be clear that, although outcomes have improved for many people and communities, particularly in terms of the absolute focus that Social Security Scotland has on treating people with dignity and respect, something that has been transformational and that all parties in this Parliament contributed to, one person not having their rights realised in this country is one too many. We all need to focus on the policy implementation gap that is clear in several areas. The slightly hyperbolic rhetoric from some Opposition colleagues might have you thinking that our country is in absolute tatters. That is both untrue and unhelpful when seeking to reform services, but it would be equally unhelpful to close our eyes to the very real challenges that our public services are facing and the impact that that has on many of our vulnerable citizens. Colleagues on the Education, Children and Young People Committee saw a stark illustration of that with regard to our disabled children and young people. Of course, as with everything, there are pockets of excellent practice, but it is not good enough that the rights of any children and young people are not being realised. Colleagues across the chamber will also be aware of the numbers of people in their constituency who are not receiving their full entitlement of social care, care that is crucial to sustain them in a dignified manner in their own homes. Health and social care integration was absolutely the right thing to do, and again there are pockets of excellent practice and a skilled committed workforce doing their very best—work that makes the lives of citizens better. However, there is much to learn from what is not worked as well. For the proposed national care service to succeed, there must be clarity on what about its structure will mean, from the perspective of those who are entitled to the services, not the organisations or the professionals. Clarity on things like how a disabled citizen assessed as requiring additional support in their home to be healthy and thrive will actually get it. Clarity on how a citizen returning to their home from a serious operation will have the adaptations done that they have been assessed as needing by a professional to ensure that they are safe and completed in a timely manner. It is no exaggeration to say that those matters that I raised there are matters of life and death. My constituents will also want to be clear on whether key local services should be delivered on a project basis. Services such as mental health support for vulnerable young people should boards be able to withdraw with no consultation, no equality impact assessment or transition arrangements in place. World-leading human rights-based approaches to policy and legislation are a wonderful thing to talk to. They are what we should be aspiring to, but they must be backed up by delivery and access to redress where rights are not realised. Further reform to public services will be necessary to ensure that public services remain ffiscally sustainable and to improve outcomes for all Scotland's people and communities. Public sector workers are key to the success, and, as I acknowledged earlier, they are doing an excellent job in some challenging circumstances. Showing how much we value them will mean continuing with fair pay and conditions. Government motion states that further reform will require to focus on prevention and early intervention, involve people and communities in design and embrace the power of digital technologies. As my colleague John Mason laid out, in terms of focus on prevention and early intervention, I think that we all intuitively know that that is the right thing to do. We also have screeds of evidence that that is the right thing to do for outcomes for people, and it is also the most cost-effective way to operate. However, there is going to be required bravery to deliver that. Investing additional resource in prevention and early intervention will often involve shifting resource from elsewhere. Difficult in times of abundance, even more challenging in the sort of fiscal environment that we find ourselves in now. At the beginning of my remarks, I noted that political choices of austerity and Brexit made elsewhere that put our public services at risk. Choices that our citizens in Scotland did not vote for. Whatever constitutional arrangement Scotland has, there is a lot of work to do, but what is crystal clear to me is that until Scotland's independence is restored, we will always be at risk from political decisions made elsewhere. With the amount of challenges that our communities face, that is frankly heartbreaking. I agree that independence is urgent. I have the pleasure of closing the debate for the Labour Party. The party that brought us the national health service, our social security system and many other key pillars of our public services since the party first formed the Government almost exactly a century ago on the 22nd of January. The main achievement of that first Labour Government was, of course, the 1924 weekly housing act. That measure went some way towards rectifying the problem of the housing shortage caused by the disruption of the building trade during the First World War and the inability of working class tenants to rent decent affordable housing. That weekly act was able to provide public housing to council tenants as opposed to the previous Government's privatisation agenda. It subsidised the construction of over half a million homes at controlled rents by the 1930s, when the subsidy for encouraging local authority housing was abolished by the Tories. What do we have a century on in 2024 in the wake of a similar disruption of the pandemic? Housing emergencies in Scotland's two largest cities, a homelessness crisis and a cut to the country's capital budget for housing? A shameful indictment, a century on, we have made little progress and indeed we are going backwards. The NHS is another great institution of our public service, the epitome, one might say, of public services. Yet this Government has failed to give the people that give so much and it has failed NHS patients too. Our healthcare professionals are happy to give way. I thank the member for taking my intervention. Has he mentioned that the NHS is talking about housing at a time in this country when the UK was actually on its knees? I wonder if he would agree that perhaps Keir Stammer should be looking back at that point in time as well and looking to invest in this country should he become the next UK Prime Minister? I thank the member for that intervention. I think that she makes a fair challenge. Inspired by the Government's previous Labour Governments, out of a century Labour has only been in government for around 30 years. The opportunity to serve, hopefully, as of the end of this year, will be significant. I think that the national missions that Labour has outlined will supercharge that effort. Indeed, we need to be bold, resilient and show the ambition that is necessary to dig ourselves out of the vicious cycle that the country has been in for far too long, certainly for my entire adult life. I do not want to be part of a generation that is poorer than its parents. We need to build out of that. Our healthcare professionals are similarly—they have no headroom right now. They are telling us this every day that they are overstretched. Mental health services are at breaking point, waiting times and any need resulted in 1,600 excess deaths in Scotland last year, Presiding Officer. Astonishingly, the very principle of free at the point of need is no longer taken seriously with almost one in six Scots on an NHS waiting list. Some counted down the days between having a treatable condition and a terminal condition. The SNP Government has let down patients and the people that work in our national health service. The most glaring sign that NHS workers feel undervalid is the sways of staff leaving. Heading overseas, we have to not only retain staff, we have to grow the national health service workforce in Scotland. Labour will increase training places here in Scotland and aggressively relentlessly focus on countering the reasons why we are failing to retain staff. Happy to give way if I can have the time back. I wonder if he would at least acknowledge that NHS staff here in Scotland are the best paid anywhere in these islands. Would you acknowledge that? In relative terms, yes, but we still have a challenge in Scotland that is not working well because it is demonstrated in the workforce challenges that we have. The minister should recognise those challenges with a degree of humility because we are still not performing well enough because people are dying unnecessarily. That is not good enough on our watch. The member for Glasgow Provin recognised some of the structural changes that we need, which are critical to any realistic change management programme, and I commend them for his speech. As my friend Mr Rowley, the member for Mid Scotland and Fife mentioned, the SNP Government has neglected public services across the board for years. Sixteen years of SNP Government and abject failure to reform Scotland's public services mean that they are crying out for investment. My friend Ms Mawkin from South Scotland highlighted the lack of focus, the lack of commitment and the lack of consistency that has characterised this Government's programmes for many years. Indeed, it feels like a Government focused on public relations rather than on project management. Colleges was just one example that she cited. I find it, frankly, risible that the Government's motion today claims that the Scottish Government continues to invest in delivering public services. When the Deputy First Minister set out the Scottish Government's budget just before Christmas from where I was sitting, it did not sound like a budget that was about promoting and advancing our public services. COSLA has since said that, as a result of the proposed budget, there will be cuts in every community across Scotland and job losses in local government. Hardly the paragon of municipal socialism that characterised the First Labour Government. If I can have the time back, Presiding Officer, yes. The quantum available to us is clearly by and large dictated to the decisions of Whitehall spending departments and the quantum is the quantum. The only way to increase the quantum is through limited levers such as tax. Is it still the position of the Labour Party that it is against tax rises in order to raise additional revenues? Is that not totally inconsistent with the point that Paul Sweeney is just making? Paul Sweeney is about having fiscal rules that are characterised by discipline. The Government has been profligate with public expenditure. Let me perhaps allude to the points made by the member for Glasgow Provin that, if you make capital investments that earn back income for the country—one example might be colleges, for example—collegers should be making money for the country, not losing money for the country, but selling training programmes to industry to reinforce our public services and stabilising our workforce challenges. The Government does not seem capable of making those three-dimensional calculations and structures when it delivers public policy. What we are seeing is a Government characterised by draft players, not chess players. Indeed, the SNP spin does not cut the mustard. The disastrous budget fails to invest in public services and will leave councils at financial risk. It is just further evidence that communities across Scotland have been let down by the Government. Slow economic growth means that there is less money to spend in public services than could have been built up to reform our public service. If the Scottish economy had grown at the pace of the overall British economy since 2012, it would be £8.5 billion larger today. The Scottish Government must prioritise delivering economic growth across the country to ensure that the national health service is not stuck in a permanent crisis and local councils are not left cash-strapped. I go back to the member for Glasgow Provin, because I was taken with his speech. He made some really important points on the complex realities of undertaking a changed management process while adhering to the Christy principle of empowerment and the need to ensure clear lines of accountability continues improvement as well. We need micro and macro reforms. I could get into great detail. One example could be, for example, our efforts to recharge the commercial ship building industry in Scotland, but that would require an entirely different speech. Listening to empowering our staff or workers on the front line is essential to reform, and Mr Kerr, the Conservative member, certainly made that point about culture eating strategy for breakfast. The motion presented by the Deputy First Minister is puzzling. It is the void of reality and the humility that is the fundamental prerequisite of any reform programme. The Deputy First Minister says that the SNP are investing in public services, the budget slash public services left, right and centre. The spin does of the service to thousands of public service workers who feel overstretched, undervalued and demoralised. I wonder if I might, since this is the first debate in which I have participated since the passing of our former Labour colleague, Hanzala Malik, begin with a tribute to him. Hanzala Malik, when I saw today's subject debate, public service values, was to me actually the epitome of a politician who was one of the better public servants. He was a regular participant in what I call the graveyard shift, which is the Thursday afternoon debate, and he began every debate. Colleagues who served in the chamber will remember this by saying, good afternoon, Presiding Officer, good afternoon, everybody, and he would then enter into a spirited contribution. He was never pejoratively partisan, and I always felt that he had the interests of the people he served at the forefront of his concerns. He left here to serve again in council. He was immensely proud of his roots of his community and of his family, and I shall always remember him with great affection. I want to echo his fine tribute to the late Hanzala Malik, who I greatly enjoy working with as a fellow representative of Glasgow, and particularly his tribute to him for his founding of the Glasgow City Heritage Trust, which I am now a trustee of, which does great work cross-party to protect Glasgow's built heritage, so I just wanted to put that on the record. It does well to remember those of us with whom we have worked over time. I would like to just make a couple of reflections, if I may. One is one of age, really, as I approached my late 60s. That is to reflect, as I came into politics, on the peer group that motivated me. We are all men and women who served in the war, or who had learned their experience from those who had served in the war. There was a real sense of duty and public service that underpinned that. It was not just true of politics, it was true of people who went into the national health service. They had seen the absolute worst of the world, and they were determined to build the best of a new world thereafter. I look now, and I do not want to be too generalised. At that top level, whether it is in public life or whether it is in public service, I sometimes wonder whether it has the same moral authority that it had in that generation that I grew up in the wake of. Sometimes it seems to me that the moral authority now comes from those on the ground up, rather than from the top down. When I was undergoing a cancer biopsy just at the start of the Covid pandemic, nervous as I was, I was struck by the NHS staff who recognised who I was and asked if they could meet with me to say, we just want to let you know, Mr Carla, that we will not let the country down. I was very moved by that. That kind of integrity and sense of purpose that comes from so many of those who work within our public services, which I think, to some extent, is let down now by the chiefs, because it seems to me too often they seek to defend the indefensible and to find ways around taking responsibility or being properly accountable for what happens. When I came into this Parliament, I asked then what the NHS compensation bill was. It had grown pretty quickly and we were all pretty appalled. It had gone from £5 million up to £18.9 million in 2007. In the most recent figures, it was not £18.9 million. In the most recent year, it was £109.24 million in compensation. And it does seem to me that there is a reliance upon finding routes to absolve or to excuse responsibility than to take responsibility and that the corrosive effect of that is that further down the line within our public services or within public life or anywhere, there are people who think, well, why should I bother? Why should I be making all of that effort if others are able to get away and to excuse themselves? And just before I take the intervention, can I say that? That applies to politics too. So if you want to say to me, what about Boris Johnson? Or you want to say to me, what about the junior doctors who seem to be leaders? Or you want to talk about Sir Ed Dairie? Or you want to talk about Sadiq Khan? All of these figures in public life have, I think, led to beyond that a sense among those people at the sharp end that they are there giving and showing the moral leadership, but it's not being reflected by those above them. Ruth Maguire? I appreciate Jackson Carlaw giving me. I thought it was interesting remarks. I was not going to say any of those things. I wondered if, more generally, the dialogue that we have in politics and in the media prohibits that kind of honest reflection of leaders. I think sometimes our discourse contributes to that. Does he agree? I can see time as such. I'm not going to be able to make much of a contribution as wide as I wanted to this afternoon. In the lead-up to 2016, in that Parliament 2011 to 2016, I can recall that we were very reluctant in this chamber to apply the word crisis to any of our public services. When an MSP said that the NHS was in crisis, there was a general feeling around the chamber that we can't indulge in that sort of hyperbole. Yet in the decade since, I think we've come to the view that there's a crisis and not our public services, whether it's education, policing, health. It's not just here in Scotland. Let's be honest, it's in Wales and it's elsewhere too. Why? Because back in 2007, we also talked about the demographic changes that were coming in this country. Michael Marra reflected demographic changes, but sometimes we don't actually accept what that means. Because what it means is that we have an ageing population, a dramatically ageing population, and many of the benefits that this Parliament has decided to offer, rightly to people in Scotland, personal care, transport at 60, free tuition, free prescription charges, all of these benefits actually cost even more with an expanding population who are going to draw and rely on them. An even bigger percentage of the population than was the case when these benefits were first introduced. That has to be funded within the budget settlement that we have in Scotland, over and above all the other pressures that are applying to every other part of the United Kingdom. I thank the member for giving way and I also thank him for the very thoughtful, characteristically thoughtful, tenor of his remarks. He points to the demographic, I beg your pardon. Let's use the word crisis that Scotland and other parts of the northern Europe face. Does he also take the view that that must make us then think about what our policy is about freedom of movement within Europe and from elsewhere? I did address the fact that we had record migration into the UK last year, but not to Scotland earlier. I suppose that I want to conclude by saying that I'd hoped that this debate would be on a Thursday afternoon, one that could be more reflective. I thought the motion invited a more controversial and spirited debate. Mr Marra very politely eviscerated the Government. Mr Rennie less politely eviscerated the Government this afternoon. It did get rather heated, but it seems to me that if you recognise that we have a hugely ageing demographic, if you recognise that these problems are common elsewhere, if you recognise that we have advanced additional public services here in Scotland, it's not a weakness of the Government to accept after all these years that not everything is right or going right, and that if we are going to make progress at some point, as Alec Neil once, when he was a cabinet secretary, recognised, it will require more of a collective understanding and acceptance of what our priorities are going to be and how we are going to address them. That has to go beyond, I'm sorry Mr Greer, simply saying I want a bigger state, I want an even bigger state, I want a larger staff headcount when it's only gone up by 55 per cent and really saying to people you've never had it so rarely as bad as you think, which I think to paraphrase Mr Greer is what he said. But let me enclosing generously, if you'll allow me Deputy Presiding Officer, and dedicate part of my speech to Ross Greer at least in this the 150th anniversary of the year of the birth of Sir Winston Churchill, who of course has been such an inspiration to the notorious reputation Mr Greer has managed to secure. Thank you Presiding Officer. Thank you, and I call on Michael Matheson to wind up cabinet secretary. Thank you, Presiding Officer, and I apologise for being slightly late for the beginning of this debate to colleagues across the chamber. Presiding Officer, I'm conscious that in any debate about public sector services and public sector reform that we all have a vested interest in them because we all make use of them and we will all be dependent upon them at some point, whether that be from the point of our health service or education system or transport system or other parts of the public sector. We all have an interest in making sure that we have the most effective, most efficient and that we have public services that can deliver the best outcomes for citizens right across the country. I think that despite the political differences that we have in this chamber over some aspects of these, I think that we all share a view that we want our public services to be successful and to be effective. Prior to this debate, I was reflecting on the issue of public sector reform and very often the discourse and debate around public sector reform very often focuses on the here and now, the bit that we have experienced here in this chamber or we have witnessed moving through this political space. However, reform of our public sector and changing our public sector has always been with us. Probably one of the biggest and most significant public reforms that took place in the whole of the UK in the last 50 years was the introduction of the NHS and community care act back in 1990. For some of you, it was at the start of my own career in the health service. It was at the time when the UK Government made a decision to move away from institutional base care, long-stay care for those with mental health and women's disabilities and our complex needs, into a community-based approach, recognising the need for fundamental reform on how services would have to be delivered in the future. That, in my view, is probably one of the most significant social policy changes that has happened in the course of the last 50 years. At that time, it faced a great deal of criticism. There were challenges in its implementation, where care was not delivered in the right way. The funding was not necessary in order to help to support the transition from institutional care into community-based care, because community-based care was more expensive in the delivery of the care for individuals with complex needs. However, notwithstanding those challenges in its implementation, notwithstanding the problems that occurred at that particular point, it was the right policy decision to take forward. Had it not been taken forward at that particular point, the challenges that we would have faced in public sector reform would have been even greater. I think that there is a danger at times when it comes to public sector reform that we always characterise it as being a failure. The reality is that there has been public sector reform taking place over many decades, which has had challenges, but has also been necessary and has also been the right thing to do. I want to pick up on a couple of examples of what I believe have been very good public sector reforms that have been taken forward that very often will go under the radar. I want to do it on the basis of trying not to overly focus on the issue of structural reform as being the way in which we deliver public sector reform. My view is often that structural reform is the easy part of it. As Ivan McKee made in his contribution, the real challenge in public sector reform is cultural change in being able to change the way in which a service is delivered. I want to give three examples where no structural reform took place, but cultural change made a real difference to how services were delivered. One of the most notable over the course of the last 15 years has been the introduction of the Scottish patient safety programme, a programme that was about addressing the issue of unnecessary deaths taking place within our health service and to be able to identify where they were occurring and to be able to take action in order to prevent it from happening. The introduction of that programme was not about changing health board boundaries, it was not about changing the structures within hospitals in terms of the management structure, it was about cultural change and empowering staff to be able to make that decision and able to make the change that was necessary. I will give way to... Michelle Thomson for giving way. I would just like to put it on the record that I strongly agree with what he is saying in one of my multiple previous lives where I delivered large-scale transformational changes in corporate companies. The vast majority of change programs failed because of a failure to take cognisance of the prevailing culture. It is a well-known management statistic. I completely agree with what he is saying. I think very often that we focus on the structural change rather than some of the changes that have taken place in our public services over the course of the last two decades. The patient safety programme is not just something because we introduced it as a government, it is something that is internationally recognised, and it has been one of the most comprehensive patient safety programmes of its type anywhere in the world. That was about enabling staff and empowering staff to be able to make the right decisions. Another aspect of public sector reform that I think is often forgotten about has been a very significant change. It came from the challenge that was set out in the Christy report about the need to move from symptom management to being much more focused on the preventative measures and how public sector operates. That is an area of youth justice. We have gone from an environment as a result of the Christy report, where we had poament young offenders' institution overcrowded to the point where it is now or was half empty. Why? Because of a change in approach in order to be much more preventative focus in addressing offending behaviour at a critical stage. Moving away from this dependency and having to force people into the system and thinking that that is how the system knows best, put them into jail, that will solve the problem of recognising that it does not work very effectively, it is much more effective if you can deal with the upstream and you can prevent these crimes from happening in the first place. A youth justice system, in my view, again is a very good example of how we have been able to reform our public services without the need for structural reform, but in a way that has been much more meaningful and has changed the way in which those services are delivered. In the other area, I say this on the basis of Campbell Christy giving his own background on this issue. Some members may recognise this, but I have a constituent's interest in that, and I am in relation to the way in which Scottish Canals are British waterways operated. It was very often an organisation sitting in the background doing very little other than management, managing a bit of infrastructure within our country that very often very little use was made of. Campbell Christy, during the course of his chair of that, moved British waterways into Scottish Canals, moved it from being an asset management organisation into being an economic development organisation, helping to use our canals to unlock potential in areas, not more so than my constituency in Falkirk, with the Falkirk wheel and the way in which that has flowed right through into the Kelpies and also the way in which has led to significant investment in areas such as around Springburn. Again, a public service body taking a different approach, no structural change, but recognising that they have a more important role to play than just managing the assets that they hold and taking a much more holistic approach to how they can support communities. I appreciate the cabinet secretary giving way on that point. I recognise the huge transformation that Scottish Canals has achieved, particularly in the Glasgow canal section of the Forth and Clyde canal. Does he recognise that a large part of that was down to its structure as a public corporation and changing it most recently into a non-departmental public body? It has placed fiscal constraints on the organisation that may challenge its ability to do those more entrepreneurial activities, and maybe we need to look again at the structure of the public corporation. I recognise that. I make that point because a number of people have made reference to the Christy report. Campbell Christy was the chair of Bridges Waterways and also when it moved into becoming Scottish Canals when the UK Government decided to abolish Bridges Waterways. The issue that you reference is an issue around treasurer rules that have led to the challenge that we have had to address, which I know is not ideal and it does place constraints on it. However, I offer up as an example of a very good public body making a real difference in communities, particularly in deprived areas, that will use assets and unlock them in a way that have much greater benefit now. You only have to look around, as the member I know will round the string burn, the real difference that it has made to that area around Mary Hill, the back of her hill etc. It opened up an area that people just would not have simply gone because of the economic development approach that they have taken. I think that we have to encourage more of our public bodies to be able to do that. I also want to address the issue that a number of members have made reference to is the challenges that we have around healthcare. Jackson Carlaw and Michael Marr have made reference to this in terms of demographic challenges that we face. Some of the early policy options that we made back in the early part of this Parliament also still have to be funded. For example, free personal care etc, decisions were made then given the demographic shift that we face at the present moment. That is the same challenge that we will face in our health and social care system going forward, and it will have to reform and it will have to change in order to meet that demand. Not just because of the demographic challenge that we face, but also because of the disease burden that we face as a country. The disease burden is estimated to increase by about 21 per cent alone over the course of the next 20 years. We cannot simply think that we can continue in the existing model and it will deliver for us. Right now, we have a health and social care system that, if we can just finish this point and I will give way to the member, I am 5 o'clock, so I will keep going then. I want to make this point because if you look at the way in which your health and social care system has historically, over many decades, over many Governments has traditionally operated, in terms of its priorities, it has been secondary care, primary care, social care and then the individual, the patient themselves. In reality, our system has to be completely flipped. It has to be much more patient focused, much more social care focused, much more primary care focused and then secondary care. That will require very significant change in our health and social care system over the course of the next decade. However, if we are to meet that demographic challenge, if we are to meet that disease burden in which we face in the future, we are going to have to address that. That will require the point that Alex Neil was making those years ago. It will require greater collaboration and co-operation across this chamber to have a mature, reasoned conversation about what we can realistically provide and how that can be delivered in the years ahead. That will require us to, did I say it, Presiding Officer, to try to take some of the party politics out of the decision-making process in order to make sure that we make the right decisions for the future in order to deliver better outcomes for those who will make use of those public services? I will give way to Michael Marra. I appreciate what he has given way. He recognises two points. The first is that many of the problems in our health system, as well as our social care system, come from that demographic transition in which we are undertaken. The second is that this is well and long-predicted. It precedes the advent of this Government in 2007. We knew the demographic trajectory of this country, so why, nearly 17 years on, are we just having the beginnings that it would seem of this conversation of trying to build that consensus when you have known all along that this had to be done? I do not think that that is a fair characterisation, because throughout my time in this Parliament, there have been various debates, discussions and attempts to try to engage in public sector reform and to have reason to debate on some of those issues. Let me just take, for example, if you look at the issue that we are trying to deal with around delayed discharges. Delayed discharges are not a new thing within our health and social care system. They predate where they are—well, they are not actually, but they predate where they have—they predate even this Government, even this Parliament, as well. There have been various iterations to try to address it. We have had joint futures. We have had the structural change, which was the new trust that was introduced as well. I will make this point. We then had different approaches to try to deliver greater integration, all of which have helped to a small degree, but they have not been able to take it to the full extent that is required. That is why I think—I will come back to this point where I think that a national care service is going to be critical to helping to support us in achieving that. I will give way to Mr Swinney. I am grateful to the cabinet secretary for giving way. Wouldn't the short answer to Mr Marra's intervention be the Government initiated the Christie commission 13 years ago and has spent the last 13 years implementing its outcomes? Cabinet secretary? I do agree with that. I have made reference to a couple of points where we have made progress with issues around the Christie principles, but I want to turn back to the issue about the national care service, because it is a huge reform and it is a reform that we need to get right. My view is that it is important that we take the right time in order to manage that reform, because a top-down approach to the creation of our national care service will not work. We need to work in a collaborative, cooperative fashion, which is why the extra time that we have taken with COSLA and others is an attempt by us to try to help to achieve that. We have made progress, and there is more that we need to do, but it is critical that we get it right. I hope—and I know the criticism from the Government and I presume the Labour Party—that you still support the creation of a national care service. However, if we are to change the system to make it patient, social care, primary care and secondary care as our four creed priorities, the national care service will be critical to supporting us and achieving that, which is why we need to get it right and we need to make sure that that engagement is taken forward correctly. I say that we always must learn from the reforms that we have taken forward where they have not progressed as well as they can. I hope that the approach that we are taking with the national care service is a genuine attempt and a recognition in our part, a genuine attempt in order to try to seek to do that. In drawing this debate to a close, there will be a need for us to significantly reform and change our public services going forward. However, I also want to put on record my huge thanks to the thousands of public sector workers across Scotland who work day in, day out and deliver excellent and outstanding services where they can. I recognise the challenges and as the Government recognises the challenges that they face and ways that the Government will continue to do everything that we can to support them in the important role that they play within Scottish society. That concludes the debate on Scotland's public service values. It is now time to move on to the next item of business. There are three questions to be put as a result of today's business. I remind members that, if the amendment in the name of Sandesh Gulhanei is agreed to, the amendment in the name of Michael Marra will fall. The first question is that amendment 11831.2, in the name of Sandesh Gulhanei, which seeks to amend motion 11831, in the name of Shona Robison, on Scotland's public service values, be agreed. Are we all agreed? The Parliament is not agreed, therefore we will move to vote and there will be a short suspension until our members to access digital voting.