i ffrindwyr i gael i gael i chi fel cyfoedd y gwaith i ddechiw'r chael Mwyslith. Sgwlfaen i gyda i gael i gael i ei wneud i ysgolwladau cyfrif羅 hwnnw, sy'n gweinydd i gael i Gwai fearshawr yn crawf, a hwnnw nid yn teimlo i chi i gael i Faugh Mwyslith. Rwy'n fyddaniadol i gael i chi i gael i gael i'i gael i'u gwellidau elli hwng, …weith oedden nhw ynddag diolch y ddiglirio dweud o infoeth gavewy Ty westol. The debate gives us the opportunity to reflect on the importance of our public services and the vital... …role that they play for the spectrum of people who teach them treatment and serve their communities... …that are in so many different ways. I could mention of course the continuing progress... of Pauline Cafferke, who I'm sure the chamber will be very happy to hear, is now no longer in a critical condition, somebody who treats many people both here and abroad. We heard in the chamber last week that, as the economy recovers, growth must be balanced and sustainable, and the Scottish Government is clear about its responsibility for setting the vision of a fair, equitable and sustainable Scotland. At the heart of this vision is the importance of high quality public services and their power to enhance quality of life and improve economic opportunities for all. I believe that the people of Scotland also place a high value on our public services and increasingly recognise that the role of public services is crucial in reducing inequalities. It's a shared value and it's essential to ensuring a sustainable economic recovery that all can benefit from. However, UK Government austerity has not just slowed economic recovery but continues to undermine it. This is an asymmetrical austerity where those least able to are those shouldering the greatest burden. With an absence of fairness, we can't have true prosperity. The five years of austerity that is already imposed by Westminster has resulted in real-term cuts and is much more to come. We have challenged the wrong-headed approach on many occasions in this chamber and beyond and will continue to do so. We now face the very unwelcome prospect of austerity lasting for a decade or more, regardless of which Westminster party forms a Government in May. Despite its cuts, ours is a different approach in Scotland and we will continue to invest and prioritise our work to protect and enhance public services as far as we are able to using the powers available to this Parliament. At this difficult time for people, we are protecting household budgets through the provision of services and policies that make up the social wage, sometimes characterised in debate as universal services. We remain committed to freezing council tax, to abolishing or continuing with the abolition of prescription charges, maintaining free higher education, free eye examinations and concessionary travel, and ensuring free personal care for the elderly. This commitment underpins the Scottish Government's commitment to fairness—I welcome back to Neil Finlay shortly—this commitment underpins the Scottish Government's commitment to fairness, prevention and value for money. If I can just give the example of the national concessionary travel scheme for older and disabled people, it has important health and social benefits, with evidence that it promotes socialising and leisure, especially among older people on low incomes. A recent measure, worth noting in its context, is a recent announcement to expand free school meals to every primary one in three child, which will save families of every eligible child at least £330 a year. I would say to Neil Finlay, the Labour Party, who would be interesting to know whether he agrees with Jim Murphy that Ian Gray was completely wrong in relation to free meals or whether, in relation to Jim Murphy's assertion that Ian Gray was completely right. Perhaps he can elucidate for us when Jim Murphy had his meltdown on Sunday as to which he believed, whether he believed in universal services or did not believe in those. What is the position of allowing Neil Finlay to come in? What is the position of Labour's cuts commission now? Neil Finlay. One of the best ways to keep money in people's pockets is to keep them in employment. I wonder if the minister can advise me how many jobs have gone in local government under his regime? I think that, unlike many Labour authorities, this side of the government has continued with its approach of no compulsory redundancies, and I think that that is protected to work forces. The crucial point and the reason for that was, of course, that provided security for those employees, speaking as a former local government employee myself, and their families during a time of recession to know that their job would be safe. I think that that was an important point, and it is part of what we term as the social wage for public sector employees. We have also taken a very distinctive approach to reform. Along with that, and guided by the findings of the Christy commission, the Scottish Government is pursuing an ambitious programme of public service reform, focused on improving outcomes for people. A clear strategic direction for service transformation is now well-established, and that is built around four pillars. Working in partnership, engaging in developing the people who deliver our services, continually improving performance and making a decisive shift to prevention. A wide range of reform has already been delivered nationally and locally, and a shared ambition is established across a public service landscape to build upon those foundations and increases pace and scale of positive change. I will give way to Gavin Brown. I will give way to Gavin Brown. In terms of preventative spend, what evidence has he got that the £500 million has had an impact on outcomes? There is evidence from the change funds that are being established, and also the benefits in terms of more efficient public services. However, there is also evidence, if he cares to look at, for example, the user survey on concessory travel, which itemises some of the benefits. That is preventative spend. Perhaps the member does not believe that providing a free bus travel for our pensioners and disabled people prevents further problems or free prescription charges, but I can assure him that those things provide long-term benefits in bearing down on public expenditure, as well as the £500 million that has been found by John Swinney. Let us not forget at a time of huge constraint on public finances. We have taken the tough decision to address reform that has never been taken by the previous Administrations either in this place or at Westminster. We have invested a great deal of time and effort into a wide-ranging programme of public service reform from establishing single services for police and fire to college mergers and the establishment of the early years collaborative. The successful transition to single police and fire services is an example of the decisive action that is being taken in Scotland to protect the resources that are available to us and to ensure continued front-line presence and delivery. Events such as the Cluthabar tragedy and the more recent George Square crash remind us how important front-line services are. Great progress has already been made towards delivering the projected savings by Police Scotland of £1.1 billion by 2026, with approximately £880 million of sustainable and recurring savings secured. We will also spend £100 million this year mitigating the coalition welfare cuts in Scotland. We will increase the number of free childcare to 30 hours for all three and four-year-olds by 2020, make real terms increases in NHS spending in each year of the next parliaments, and make payment of the living wage a central priority of all Scottish Government contracts. In education, we have continued to invest in Scotland's schools for the future, despite the cuts to our capital budget. The total investment for the programme between the Scottish Government and local authorities is £1.8 billion. On 2 January, we announced more than £2 million of funding for an extra 250 places for people to start teacher training next year. We recognise that the future of the profession is important, and we are investing in it. In the NHS, only last week, the First Minister announced further spending to fund specialist nurses. Those nurses will have a direct impact on people in real need. Scotland's public service workers who teach, treat, protect and serve our communities are among the greatest assets that we have. I thank them for their passion, commitment and hard work. As has been mentioned already, some of our emergency workers face, although we expect that they face, absolutely, horrendous situations—on many occasions, one dramatic situation in my constituency recently involving the death of a child. We have mentioned the Clutha tragedy and, of course, George Square. They are people as well, and they are affected by some of the work that we ask them to do on our behalf. It is also one of the reasons why we want to thank them for their passion and their hard work, but also why the Scottish Government has committed to a distinctive pay policy. That policy that is fair supports those on the lowest incomes, and I will take an intervention from Duncan MacNeill. Heading in this direction to commend the work of those who are not employed by the public sector, who do valuable work daily delivering public services, where is the fair deal for them in terms of jobs and wages? I am coming on to the point about jobs and wages, but we are responsible for those that we directly employ and also for the other public bodies. The point that Duncan MacNeill quite rightly makes about many of those who are not directly employed, and I think that my colleague Richard Lochhead was very careful to make sure that we thank them for their efforts—for example, people working in the seas around Scotland as well. We are also clear that we should have fair pay, support those on the lowest incomes, and protect public sector jobs and services, while also delivering value for money for the people of Scotland. We are clear that senior pay packages should be in step with the salary, the terms and conditions that are offered to other staff. We also remain committed to a policy that has no compulsory redundancies, and we have extended that until 2016. It is also worth pointing out that, in relation to the NHS, we have implemented the agenda for change wage increase for nurses, which has not happened in England. Believe it or not, that has not happened in Wales either, but we have stayed with the recommendation for agenda for change, and although we believe that it is, of course, a small increase of 1 per cent, we have paid that where others have not done that. We want to support the public sector workforce, and for every individual, no matter what their role or the area that they work in, to feel utterly empowered to formulate the responses required to deliver the services that meet the needs and expectations of society, operating in a culture in which people feel that they can deliver reform and improvement at the local level. That is an essential element of Scotland's approach to service transformation. The recent announcement by the Conservative Party on limiting public sector strikes is just one example of the different type of relationship with the workforce that ministers north and south of the border are seeking to forge. Of course, we have the Tories mimicking the Labour 1970s habit of introducing 40 per cent rules to try and rig ballots, and that, of course, backfire in the Labour Party when they ushered in 18 years of Tory government. Perhaps that explains why the Tories are so keen on it, but what can't be explained is why Labour argued vehemently in the Smith commission to keep trade union law in the hands of the Tories, rather than the hands of the people of Scotland. Much more is being done with the programme for government, and it shows our ambition and the passion to deliver an alternative plan in a different way. We recognise the full range of strengths, abilities and capacities found in all sectors and that it is key. Public third sector, to come back to the point by Duncan McNeill, and private organisations must work closely in partnership with communities and with each other to design and deliver excellent public services that meet the needs of local people. Through community planning partnerships and single outcomes agreements, we are seeking to support public and third sector partners to come together and share budgets to achieve outcomes. If we are to tackle inequalities, power must be balanced, and we have to tackle inequalities, as well as the idea that five families in the UK have the same combined wealth as the poorest 12 million people, we are now told by Oxfam that three families in Scotland have the same wealth as the poorest 20 per cent of people. That is in a country that is the 14th richest in the world. That is a level of inequality that is not only morally wrong but stops us from achieving our economic ambitions. If we are to tackle those inequalities, we have power to be balanced much more between the individual, between communities and professionals. People have to be seen as citizens, neighbours and co-producers of services. The third sector, with its connections and its reach to community networks and organisations and its capacity to mobilise volunteers and external investment, is a critical partner in working directly with individuals, families and communities to co-produce approaches that build on the assets found in every community across Scotland and support resilience and wellbeing. In that way, we can enable greater levels of participation in the democratic process, and that helps to unlock the potential found in every community. That is the distinctive Scottish approach to public service design and delivery, and it is key to tackling inequalities and delivering the better outcomes that we all seek. In conclusion, I have mentioned asymmetric austerity. If it was the case that everyone faced the cuts that we faced equally and that they together shared the pain and the grief, I am not saying that it would be right. We have a fundamental difference with the approach that it has been taking, but it would be easier to accept, but that is not the case. In our view, we have a need to have a strategic approach to service renewal that has been internationally recognised, with a Carnegie trust review of international evidence identifying Scotland as unique in supporting its system-wide rethink of public services with coherent cross-cutting programmes of improvement. We are in a good position. We are in as good a position as it can be with the limitations that we have to get into that particular service renewal framework. Given that we are dealing with policies that are not of our making, as I have said, Scotland is the 14th richest country in the world, and yet 1 million people in Scotland are in poverty, including 220,000 children of which half live in a household where at least one adult works. Let us be clear, continuing cuts are going to be extremely severe. A figure of £15 billion has been mentioned, so it is more important than ever that we have an alternative approach. There is an austerity alternative, one that would support up to 30,000 jobs. The Scottish Government, for our part, would seek to invest £1.2 million of additional resources in 2017-18 and £2.4 billion more in additional resources in 2018-19 to invest in Scotland's economy, as outlined in the Outlook for Scotland's Public Finances report. It would be great to add to that the savings that we could make if we were to abolish Trident, something that Neil Findlay failed to support previously in this Parliament, but that would produce an excess of £200 million more every year for the lifetime of that expenditure on those weapons. The economic impact of that spend would depend on the specific programmes that are allocated to us. Based on the input tables, it is estimated that a £2.4 billion increase in spending, if it was distributed across public services, capital investment and social transfers in proportion to the share of current Scottish public spending, could boost GVA by approximately £1.5 billion in support of up to 30,000 jobs a year. We have a clear choice. Stick with the Westminster party's consensus on cuts or invest in Scotland's public services to support economic growth, create jobs and tackle inequality. I now call on Mary Fee to speak to and move amendment 12034.2. I will quite tight for time today. I am pleased to be opening today's very important debate on protecting public services on behalf of Scottish Labour. Our public services care, protect and educate us and the world-class workforce that endure long, tiring hours and environments that we cannot begin to imagine in some circumstances deserve our respect, encouragement and both our moral and financial support. The Scottish Government in motion once again lays the blame at Westminster without taking any responsibility for their own actions. Our amendment, while recognising the difficult financial circumstances, acknowledges the pulling and sharing of resources across the UK and highlights the benefit that the Barnett formula brings. Local government finance is broken, our NHS is at breaking point with A&Es and crisis and our education system from childcare to college needs leadership and prioritisation. Instead, we have the SNP withholding crucial funds from Scottish councils, the NHS and our children's future. I will happily take an intervention from the member if he could explain to me why this Government is sitting with a £440 million underspend when our NHS is in crisis. Stuart Stevenson? Of course the member knows perfectly well that we are not, but, more fundamentally, the member's amendment deletes from the Government motion the expenditure in relation to Trident. Does that mean that she is in favour of investing huge sums of money in Trident instead of for the benefit of the people of Scotland and elsewhere in the UK? As I suspected, I would get no answer from the member. It is disappointing that the Government benches would rather play political ping-paw than debate this very important issue. £440 million is no drop in the ocean for public services in the current climate. No, I am sorry, I need to make some progress. Even if the figure represents one point three of the overall budget, the budget underspend includes £165 million from the school's budget. On top of that, we have one of Scotland's main industries struggling with jobs at risk, incomes reducing and families worried. I briefly mentioned schools, hospitals and councils, and that is what I wish to focus on if you let me make some progress. I will come back to you, Mr Swinney, on opening for Scottish Labour. Teacher numbers are at a 10-year low. Over 4,000 teachers have been removed from Scottish classrooms at a time when pupil numbers are rising. This has led to larger classroom sizes and a failure by the SNP to keep their promise on this matter. Parents and pupils deserve and want better than this, and the Scottish Government responds by holding back money from the education budget. The percentage of pupils in classes of 18 or less has fallen from 21.6 per cent in 2010 to just 12.9 per cent last year. That distressing statistic shows that the SNP has no plan to protect public services, and teachers know that the Scottish Government cannot be trusted to assist the education of young children. Children in the most deprived areas are struggling in comparison to those in the most affluent areas, and the attainment gap is substantial, especially for looked-after children. Scottish Labour supports the role that further education can play in our communities and growing our economy. That is one of our most precious public services that offers a lifeline to many across Scotland. The opportunity for an education should be available to all, no matter the background of the prospective student. Vocational courses enhance the employability of our workforce and be unemployed alike, and are intrinsic to boosting our economy. Colleges have been under attack from this Government. Student numbers have sharply decreased. Learning hours are cut by 10 million, and the further education budget is squeezed and cut by tens of millions in real terms. When the SNP talks about securing economic growth in its motion, it needs to reassess its stance on college education and reverse its previous cuts. That would be a great opportunity for the new education secretary to re-establish the trust in our college system and to place faith in the hard-working lecturers that remain in their jobs. Presiding Officer, this year's general election will be unlike any scene on these islands. However, the choice for Scots could not be clearer. Do they want a Labour Government that is committed to investing in the NHS or more of the same attacks on the UK's most sacred institution? I, for one, look forward to Prime Minister Ed Miliband implementing Labour's time-to-care fund, which will see an additional £250 million added to the Scottish budget through the Barnett formula. The mansion tax, the tax on tobacco companies and clamping down on tax avoidance schemes will raise around £2.5 billion, and Scottish Labour has rightly pledged to use part of the resulting boost to our budget to fund an additional 1,000 nurses. Again, the choice could not be clearer. A Labour Government that will create and use the resources available for the NHS or the Tories or the SNP. Going back to the referendum campaign, we constantly heard how the Scottish Government was underfunded, and the NHS would be privatised in the event of a no vote. As we knew at the time and clarified again in the last week, the only crisis put on the NHS is one of this Government's making. Accident and emergencies are close to breaking, and as Scottish Labour showed at the weekend, waiting times are not being met for 12,510 patients since 2012. There were 12,510 occasions where patients have not received their legal right to be treated within 12 weeks. How many of those patients could have had their legal right met with additional allocations from the budgetary underspend? How many nurses, doctors and other crucial hospital staff would the budget underspend have paid for? Those are serious questions that patients and their families deserve to. For the Scottish Government to use the NHS as a primary example of how they protect public service is nothing but a slap in the face to the 12,510 patients denied the legal right that they themselves implemented. They give it and they take it away, nor this is far too important a debate to play political ping pong. My colleagues on these benches will pick up on matters relating to the NHS throughout this debate, and our focus will remain the same. Patients deserve better. Presiding Officer, an ageing and growing population increasing operational costs. I suppose that it is an example, Presiding Officer, of the attitude of this Government toward our public services that they would rather sneer and jeer than listen. Presiding Officer, an ageing and growing population increasing operational costs and heavily centralised commitments such as the underfunded council tax freeze are placing an unbearable burden on local authorities who are screaming out for financial assistance. The pressure forced on councils—no, I am not taking any interventions—the pressure forced on councils are resulting in increasingly difficult decisions that are disproportionately impacting on the poorest in our society. Under the SNP, local government has taken the largest share of budget cuts, and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation warns us that local government spending is set to fall by 24 per cent in real terms this year. Every single local authority has faced real-term cuts between 2007 and now. The Scottish Government talks about protecting public services and that smacks of total desperation and shows how hypocritical this SNP Government is, because the real-term cuts are against a backdrop of increased costs of 10 per cent since 2007, and councils are resorting to increasing the charges for services. The Scottish Government controls 82 per cent of our local authority budgets, and it has simply passed the Tory cuts down to our councils. In our speech to the SNP's October conference, Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister, said that she knows that there are Westminster MPs in all UK parties itching to abolish Barnett. The only party itching to abolish Barnett are the SNP, and their plan for full fiscal autonomy would devastate our public services. In the last week, Jackie Baillie rightly stated that there is no greater danger to our economy right now than the falling price of oil, because we rely on the revenues from the oil industry to run our public services. An oil price of $50 a barrel means an 85 per cent cut in the revenues from what the Scottish Government predicted in its own white paper, yet the Government still continues to base its economic estimates on a higher price. Our schools, our national health service, our councils, our justice system and communities are not safe in the hands of the SNP. Public service workers are the backbone that ensures that we are cared for, educated and kept safe. I move the amendment in my name. Many thanks. I now call on Gavin Brown to speak to a move amendment 12034.3, up to six minutes, please, Mr Brown. I thank you. I start by moving the amendment in my name and also by saying publicly, I think, because it's the first time I've had the chance to do so, to congratulate Keith Brown on his promotion to Cabinet and indeed Mary Fee on her promotion to Labour's top team. The Government motion started well. A couple of lines into it we were perfectly happily with it, but very quickly it turned into the rather predictable, hackneyed complaint, blaming everybody else for issues other than themselves, and ending up with that age old issue of saying that there is an alternative to an austerity agenda. The fact is that the Scottish Government claims there is an alternative, but it just won't say what it is. I've lost track of the number of times we've asked them in this chamber what is their alternative, and, more crucially, how would that be funded? It's all well and good for Keith Brown to stand up in this chamber and to glibly quote from a pre-referendum document that was designed purely to attract votes, entitled the Outlook for Scotland's Finances, and rather nonchalantly say, we could just spend a couple of extra billion in 1516, a few billion more in 1617, and a few billion more in 1718, and everything will be all right. What nobody in the Scottish Government has done at any point is explain where those extra billions were to come from. If it were as easy as putting it in a document and making it happen, I suspect every political party would be saying it, and I suspect everybody would want us to do it, but ultimately—in one second I will, of course—if you are going to do that, you have to either increase borrowing, you have to cut spending somewhere else, or you have to increase taxation, and I think that we have a right to know which one of those it would be. Keith Brown Just as one example, apart from the ones that I mentioned when I spoke earlier, how about the housing benefit overspends just now around £8 billion, I think £1.2 billion a year spent on overpayments and also in relation to fraud, which has grown over recent years? Surely, if his government got a grip of that, we could have more money for public spending in Scotland. Keith Brown I think that he is wanting to cut the housing benefit budget in some way in order to pay for it. I have not seen that on any SNP manifesto, but every Government—I have to say including the Scottish Government—does all it can to cut down on fraud. I know that John Swinney has put a lot of effort into that to make sure that that is the case with the land and buildings transaction tax and indeed the landfill tax. Every Government attempts to do that, but I think that most Governments accept that you cannot eliminate it in its entirety. I did not think that those figures were credible at the time. That was at a point in history where oil was trading at $110 a barrel. The figures did not really work then. When they dropped to $80 a barrel, they became even less credible—$70 down to $60 down to $50—now heading towards $45, it is fantasy. That document, the Outlook for Scotland's Finances, is a historic document. I believed that it was fantasy at the time, but events subsequent to that have proven that it is genuine fantasy now. So they can say that there is an alternative, but until they outline what that alternative is, it completely lacks any degree of credibility. Mr Swinney looked like he was about to stand up in that case, so I will give way to Mark McDonald in that case. I am grateful to the member for giving way. Can the member advise what the figure is for uncollected revenue through unpaid taxation, which, of course, would be money that would be available to the Exchequer to spend on essential services? I think that, as the member knows, if he has paid attention to the last five budgets and indeed autumn statements, the amount of resources being put into the inland revenue to cut down on tax evasion to ensure that we collect the maximum possible amount has improved. I think that the results have been encouraging, and people giving evidence to the finance committee have made that specific point. I think that the UK Government will have its critics, but to suggest that they have not been trying to ensure the maximum tax take, I have to say that I think that that lacks a degree of credibility. Let me move on to the point that I wanted to make to Keith Brown in my intervention, because the Scottish Government needs to start talking about the powers that it has and taking action where it can take action. Everyone in the chamber agreed that preventative spending was one of the most important things that we could do as a Parliament three years ago at the spending review process. The Scottish Government at the time put forward £500 million through three change funds over a three-year period in order to get what they described as a decisive shift—a step change that would improve outcomes and would get far better results for people across Scotland. How are we doing after three years? The finance committee rather helpfully produced its report yesterday, and I have to say that it is a pretty damaging critique of almost everything that the Government has done in preventative spend over the past three years. We quote Audit Scotland, who says that it is unlikely to deliver radical change in the design and delivery of public services. The local government and regeneration committee's view is that pace of transformation of service delivery across the public services in Scotland is concerning. The finance committee without anyone disagreeing said that there is little evidence of the essential shift in resource taking place to support a preventative spending. I am happy to give way if there is— No, you are not.  My apologies to the cabinet secretary. I was certainly willing to do so. In relation to the children and young people's fund, the committee remains concerned. Without anyone disagreeing across the parties that, despite an investment, little evidence has been provided of any shift in the funding world. This is a serious issue. It is £500 million, and it is something that the Scottish Government, if it is concerned about public services, should be looking at with a fine tooth comb to make sure that we get it right. I congratulate Keith Brown on his promotion and also welcome the Labour front bench to the positions. I also welcome the opportunity to participate in this debate and put on record the gratitude and respect of myself and the Scottish-level Democrats for the vital contribution made by all those who work across our public sector in Scotland. I need no persuading at all that making that contribution has been more difficult over recent times in the face of the need to bring the country's finances back under control and tackle the legacy of debt. That has presented enormous challenges and continues to create real pressures, not least for those working to deliver our public services. Yet meeting those challenges is made no easier by the SNP's Government's obsession with independence and obsession that leads them to characterise support for Scotland, remaining a part of the UK as somehow anti-public service. Again, today we have heard it implied that independent Scotland would miraculously be immune from the need to reign in public spending, despite the Government's own fiscal commission advising that matching the UK's deficit reduction path would be required. Since then, we have seen world oil prices fall to half the level that they were at when the Government's white paper was published, leaving an even bigger black hole at the heart of the SNP's assertions that would almost inevitably require deeper cuts in public services. The other tragedy of the SNP's self-delusion, where everything difficult is always somebody else's fault, is that it ignores the reality of what is happening now within our public services and removes the responsibility of doing anything to help improve the situation. What has been happening on the SNP's watch? The RCN recently reported that staff at NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde have been expressing concerns that they have too few staff and too little equipment to look after patients properly. NHS Grampian 2 has been in crisis due to a lack of funding a situation that ministers belatedly woke up to earlier this week, having taken their eye off the ball for years. The damage caused by this inaction is very real. It has affected staff, patients and the wider community in the north-east, as well as the islands that I represent, where constituents rely heavily on specialist services and treatment provided by NHS Grampian. I will give way to Kevin Stewart. I thank the member for giving way. Would Mr MacArthur care to comment on the Arbuthnut formula, which was in place for many years, which led to the underfunding of NHS Grampian? Would he pray tribute to the likes of the late Brian Adam, who had that system abolished, which the Labour-Liberal coalition would not, in favour of Enrack, and would he welcome the position that was announced yesterday? It is funny how there has been a revelation for the SNP with a general election impending. I have been told for years about the underfunding for NHS Grampian, having witnessed the crisis that is unfolded. In our schools too, we have seen teachers put under an order state. No one could argue that the roll-out last year of the new exams under the curriculum for excellence was textbook EIS repeatedly warned of the effect that additional workload and uncertainty was having on teachers as well as pupils and their parents. Meanwhile, last week also saw confirmation that the Government has again failed to honour its commitments on primary schools, class sizes and teacher numbers, both failures that make life much more difficult for those working in this key public sector and those who rely on it. Education and health are both areas where the Scottish Government already has a full range of powers over policy and budgets. SNP ministers cannot duck the consequences of the decisions that they have chosen to make. They may wish to say that a big boy did it and ran away, but blaming Mr Salmond does not absolve them of the responsibility to face up to the choices that any and every Government has to make. Boasting about the continued freeze on council tax, for example, is perfectly legitimate, but only if, at the same time, you accept the effect that this has on the ability of local councils to meet the demands that are placed upon them for a wide range of services. Only if you acknowledge that a measure that everybody knows benefits most those living in largest houses. Asymmetric benefits, if you will, means that there is less money available for other priorities, including those targeted at those most in need. The other nonsense trotted out by the SNP, everybody, is that they have no truck with a private sector helping to deliver public services. For sound, pragmatic reasons, this has never been the case, despite process stations over the last eight years. In that time, ministers have been happy for Kilmarnock prison to be run by a private operator, so they are happy that they subsequently offer the same private operator circle, a contract to run lifeline ferry services to Orkney and Shetland. Our health services too have long involved private operators as partners, carrying out specific operations and treatment, as well as helping to meet Government targets, for example in relation to dental provision. The truth is that the SNP has presided over annual increases in the amount of public money that is spent on private providers in the health service to the tune now of over £400 million. Meanwhile, for all the talk today and in this motion about the UK Government's austerity agenda, the fact remains that Barnett consequentials from protected health and education spending have allowed the Scottish Government, if it wishes, to plough those increases into key public services in Scotland. A further £238 million will come to Scotland courtesy of the autumn statement and to that the significant underspend that Mr Swinney has admitted in running up. The assertions from the SNP are even more nonsensical. Moreover, the economic course taken by the coalition has put the UK's finances back on track. Liberal Democrats have anchored the economic policy in the centre ground. It is that security for the future from which we can build quality public services that are affordable and sustainable into the long term. Contrast that with the prospectus offered by the nationalists, who still appear intent on pursuing independence by the back door. The SNP took his eye off the ball in pursuit of independence, an obsession that remains for many young people. We will not take lectures on public services. In Scotland, those services have helped to protect by balancing spending and borrowing to allow continued movement from economic rescue to recover. That is the best and most robust foundation on which to build a strong economy and a fairer society, able to deliver high-quality public services and opportunity for all. On that basis, I have pleasure in moving the amendment in my name. Many thanks. We now call on Kevin Stewart, as we move to the open debate, to be followed by Ian Gray. Up to six minutes, please, tight for time. I think that we should take a step back and look at the realities of what is going on at this moment in time. Let's quote some of the bodies that the Tory Liberal Coalition often speak about in the chamber. The IFS has described the plan cuts as spending cuts on a colossal scale, taking total government spending to its lowest level as a proportion of national income since before the last war. The OBR notes that under the coalition government's plans, total public spending would fall to 35.2 per cent of GDP by 2019-20 and would probably be the lowest in around 80 years, back to the 1930s, folks, basically. Economist James Meadway says that, on the fundamental issue of austerity, there is remarkably little to choose between Conservative and Labour. Those are the realities, and it is likely today that Labour will enter the lobbies with the Tories at Westminster to support £30 billion worth of austerity cuts. That may be the Westminster way, but that is not the way that I want to follow, and I do not think that it is the way that the people of Scotland want to follow either. At the same time as we are seeing cuts to public services, which amount to about £1,800 per head of population, we see the continued nonsense of wanting to replace a current weapon of mass destruction system with another one. One of the things that amazes me about that situation is that there is very little between Tory, Labour and Liberal on that front. They all seem happy to throw tens of billions of pounds at such abhorrent weapons, which, hopefully, would never be used, and they seem perfectly at ease that those cuts will fall on the poorest in society to pay for those weapons of mass destruction. When he was shadow defence secretary, the current Scottish Labour leader, Jim Murphy, told BBC Radio Scotland's GMS programme, we are in favour of the UK retaining a nuclear capability. He also said that Labour's anti-nuclear stance in the 1980s was a flirtation with surrealism. I will tell you what I think is a flirtation of surrealism, spending money on weapons of mass destruction and, at the same time, cutting public services and having a major effect on the poorest in our society. That is a flirtation with surrealism as far as I am concerned, and that is something that I want to see change dramatically. We have heard all the nonsense about the SNP Government and what it has been doing. Of course, the SNP Government has to cut its cloth to the money that we actually get. That money comes from the Treasury, and we have seen cut after cut after cut. Yet, at the same time, we have seen, as far as I am concerned, clever ways of dealing with the situation, ensuring that public services are protected to its utmost, and, as far as I am concerned, the people of Scotland recognise that protection of services such as the NHS is something that the SNP Government has done particularly well. The representative from Orkney, Mr MacArthur, has, in his speech—he was easily forgotten, Mr MacArthur, because it was the usual nonsense—fails to take account of the years that his party would empower in this place, who had a dud formula, the Arbuthnot formula, which dealt with NHS spending. It was something that my colleague Brian Adam campaigned long and hard against, and it was this Government that eventually got rid of our Arbuthnot and replaced it with a fairer formula in the form of NRAC, and largely down to lobbying from the likes of Brian Adam and other colleagues who have seen that happen. Beyond that, what we have seen is a move to create parity quicker from this Government. I thank the Cabinet Secretary for Health for the Announcement yesterday, which will see £15.2 million extra coming to NHS Grampian. A nupliff next year in the NHS Grampian's budget of £49.1 million. The share of the NHS budget to Grampian has risen from 9.1 per cent when this Government came to power to 9.7 per cent today. Staffing levels have increased by 4.4 per cent, and there are 29.6 per cent more medical consultants in NHS Grampian than there were when this Government took power. That is good news, as far as I am concerned. I will continue to lobby for the north-east, as ministers will well know, but what we have got to look at is what this Government has managed to achieve despite Westminster. Iain Gray, to be followed by Joan McAlpine, up to six minutes, please. In debating the protection of public services, we inevitably end up confronting the question of what is most important to us. For the Labour Party, Nye Bevan's dictum that the language of priorities is a religion of socialism is never far from our minds, nor indeed is the Labour Party's proudest achievement, the creation of the NHS, the legacy of that same Nye Bevan's politics and his own priorities. Colleagues will have plenty to say about the NHS, but we are Scottish too, and that is mindful of what is perhaps Scotland as a nation's greatest public sector legacy, and that is our education system. Our oldest university recently celebrated its 600th anniversary, and next year it will be 400 years since the School Establishment Act, the foundation of the system of a school in every parish, the idea of universal education, which underpins our education system to this day. Indeed, the Government motion calls public services the bedrock of a fair and prosperous society, and no more so than education in the aftermath of what happened in France and the debate currently around liberty and rights and how they play against security. It is worth remembering that Lincoln's colleague Edward Everett said, education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army. So an idea worth protecting and up there with the health service as a public sector priority. The Government motion is explicit in identifying education as one of the key services we must protect, but the motion also portrays that Scottish Government as a protector of public services. Indeed, the cabinet secretary waxed lyrical in such self-praise in his opening remarks. We are entitled to ask what priorities the Government has given to education and to what extent they have met the standards that they set for themselves. On the subject of priorities, this afternoon the Labour Party will march through the lobby with the Tories, not just to back the Tory budget, but to lock the UK into austerity for many years to come. What does that say about the Labour's priority for public spending and what does it say to the people of Scotland about the measures that the Labour Party is sending to them? Iain Gray. Our priorities are to protect the public services, to stable finances and to allocate them in the place that is most important to our political priorities. That is the point that Nye Bevan was making back in the 50s, and it is the point that all serious politicians have to make today. It requires a degree of honesty, and we can ask ourselves if that degree of honesty has been forthcoming from the Scottish Government. This is the Scottish Government who promised Scottish parents that they would maintain teacher numbers at the levels that they inherited in 2007 so that class sizes would decline. In 2011, they promised to continue, they said, with reductions in class sizes and to improve pupil-teacher ratios. The truth is that we now have over 4,000 fewer teachers in our schools than there were in 2007, and pupil-teacher ratios are higher than they were eight years ago and rising. The classroom assistants have been cut, additional support provision has been cut, preschool teachers have been cut, numeracy levels are falling, and the attainment gap between children from poorer families and the better off remains persistent and significant. I thank the member for taking the intervention. I am listening to what he says. I wonder whether he could explain why. Given what he said that when COSLA gave evidence to the education committee on the budget this year, they said that the budget looks okay for next year and that they did not ask for any more money. As I understand it, COSLA is dominated by Labour councils. Would he also like to comment on the fact that only two councils gave evidence on the budget cuts? I do not mind giving an intervention, but this is a speech in which people complain when we do not take interventions. Whatever COSLA might have said, I can tell the member what the EIS said. The EIS is in absolutely no doubt that, just before Christmas, in presenting its budget, the Deputy First Minister abandoned his commitments on teacher numbers and class sizes when he replaced them with broader educational outcomes. There may be nothing wrong with the idea of broader educational outcomes, agreed with teachers and parents. That is what Mr Swinney said he was going to pursue. My question is this. After eight years, three education secretaries and two First Ministers, do you not think that someone would have got round to working out what our educational outcomes for schools are before now? We want our schools to be the best in the world and we want to see the attainment gap that leaves too many pupils behind addressed at last. That will not happen until our schools are given real and not just rhetorical protection. The truth is that schools have probably suffered less than colleges. 2012-13 saw FE budgets slashed. This year's budget maintains the financial squeeze. 1,500 posts have gone from our colleges and 140,000 fewer students are able to study in them. It is hard to see where the protection of schools and colleges has been. Harder still, when we find out in the latest outturn figures, 165 million pound underspend in the education budget. Yes, we need to protect public services like education from Tory plans, but we also need to protect them from this Scottish Government, their false promises, their wrong priorities and their empty rhetoric. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I am pleased to speak in this debate for a number of reasons, not least because it illustrates what we have called a tale of two Governments. We see the Government in London slashing burn public services, they wish to conquer and destroy the welfare state, the NHS and the entire commitment to collective good that we have all grown up with. Like their mentor, Margaret Thatcher, they are ideologically opposed to the principle of public service. The recent proposal to remove the right to strike from public service workers demonstrates that contempt for all kinds of collective action. Although, if they get their way, there will be no public sector workers left at all. As has already been mentioned, the Office of Budget Responsibility that the coalition Government set up predicts that total public spending will fall to 35.2 per cent of GDP by 2019-20, which is probably the lowest in around 80 years according to the OBR. They pursue the social vandalism known as austerity even though the fact show has failed. By the end of 2015, the UK economy's forecast to be almost 4 per cent smaller than was predicted in 2010 when the chancellor first entered office. By contrast, the Government in Scotland has maintained superior public services in the most difficult of circumstances. Between 2010-11 and 2015-16, the discretionary budget of the Scottish Government has been cut in real terms by around 10 per cent and independent analysis suggests that that could reach almost 20 per cent by 2018-19. Cuts to UK spending have a further knock-on effect on Scotland's devolved budget if we try to mitigate the effects of policies such as welfare cuts. The Scottish Government has protected public services to a greater degree than the UK Government and the rest of the UK. Can she explain why Scotland is investing almost half as much in science education in our schools than in the rest of the UK? How does that happen? I think that the record of Scotland's schools speaks for itself. On the subject of education, the fact that we have delivered free education when students in England and Wales are having to pay £9,000 a year in tuition fees and younger students are being deprived of the EMA, which is put in place, shows how far ahead we are in terms of provision and commitment to public services. As I was talking about the further knock-on effect on Scotland's devolved budget if we try to mitigate the policies such as welfare cuts, which we must, for decency's sake, offset the bedroom tax, establish the Scottish welfare fund, top up council tax benefits—all are essential and all take money out of public service budgets, but Westminster's mess must be cleared up, but there is a cost, and this year that cost is £104 million. There is worse to come with the OBR forecast that 60 per cent of the UK Government's cuts are still to take effect. Given that background, it is nothing short of a miracle that Scotland's public services still perform well. The health resource budget, for example, has grown by 4.6 per cent in real terms despite the overall 10 per cent cut in Scotland's resource budget. I have already mentioned the free tuition. Has the health budget grown by more in England or in Scotland? Scotland spending per head on health is far greater than in England, as he well knows. The health resource budget in Scotland has grown by 4.6 per cent in real terms, despite the overall 10 per cent cut to Scotland's resource budget, inflicted by his Government colleagues in London. Criminal justice has delivered an extra 1,000 officers, while numbers in England and Wales will drop by more than 15,000. The coming year will support the provision of 600 hours of childcare to over 120,000 three and four-year-olds and eligible two-year-olds. The roll-out of free school meals shows that the commitment to universalism and the social wage remains despite the mounting pressures being placed on us. However, what is perhaps most remarkable about the tale of two Governments is that, despite all those pressures, the Scottish Government continues to look ahead and to develop enhanced public services that fit for the 21st century, even if the UK wants to roll them back to the first half of the 20th century. In health, for example, we should all welcome the commitment to the 2020 vision for health and social care, enshrining the prevention agenda set out in the Christie commission. Under the Public Bodies Joint Working Scotland Act, which comes into force in April this year, new partnerships between the NHS and local authorities will have the responsibility for planning and delivering health and social services in their areas. That will meet the needs of vulnerable people in their community and take pressure off our NHS. I welcome the additional £100 million allocated to aid integration in 2015-16. Also, in health, further important preventative work is being funded and taken forward, for example, in the detect cancer early programme. I was very pleased to see proposals at this line increasing cash terms from £8.5 million in 2014-15 to £9.3 million in 2015-16. I should perhaps have said that I started talking about a tale of two Governments, but perhaps I should have talked about a tale of two Parliaments, because it appears that whatever unionist party holds power on the banks of the Thames, the outcomes will be equally dismal. In December, Ed Balls and Ed Miliband promised to meet the Tory cuts. In fact, last week, it seemed as if they were vying with the Tories to show that they would be tougher on public services. All the while promising to equal Tory spending and renew Trident across £100 billion, which will, of course, detract from the huge space of public services in the UK. Neil Findlay, to be followed by Mark McDonald. The UK coalition Government is involved in an ideologically driven attack on the various services that civilise our society. The services that mean that, irrespective of your wealth, we all get our bins emptied, our children receive an education and elderly are looked after. We access a whole host of other services. We see Cameron, Clegg and Osborne driving further privatisation, closing libraries, youth services, sport and leisure facilities, housing budgets slashed, and social care in crisis. To them, those are either services that they do not want and can flog off to their city friends or that they do not use to them. There is no value in them, and so they must be surplus to requirements. That is the attitude of the coalition. For the sake of those people who rely on those services, let us hope that they are bootied out of government in May and replaced by a Labour Government. I thank Neil Findlay for taking intervention and whether he would agree with me that, as he has just said, privatisation of those public services is a bad thing. Does he agree with the Labour leader in Scotland's right-hand man, John McTernan, when he says that privatisation is good for the NHS? I will listen to the Labour leader in Scotland. It is not just in England that we see cuts to services far from it. I often wonder what planet SNP backbenchers live on. Here in Scotland, local government is at breaking point and the NHS is under strain like never before in its history. Council services are no longer being cut. Some services are disappearing altogether, yet today we see the minister come to this chamber with all the gall and brass neck that we associate with this Government, putting down a motion paying tribute to those who teach, treat, protect and serve our communities. There is no recognition, no self-awareness, not even a mention of any of the policies being pursued by this Scottish Government, policies that are impacting so badly on our people and our communities. I want to know exactly who the minister is paying tribute to in his motion. Is he paying tribute to the classroom assistants that I work beside in his constituency, some of whom were like mothers to the vulnerable children in some of my classes but who have now lost their jobs? Is he paying tribute to the community wardens who keep our streets clean and safe but have been paid off? Is he paying tribute to the social care staff who work for private contractors who demand 15-minute care visits, some working for as little as £5.13 an hour on a zero-hour contract? Is he paying tribute to them? Is he paying tribute to the police support staff, thousands of whom his Government has rid of? Is he paying tribute to the ambulance staff who still cannot get proper breaks? Is he paying tribute to the fire control room staff whose jobs have been centralised and cut? Is he paying tribute to the thousands of college lecturers and support staff who have gone following Mike Russell's disastrous spell and charge of our colleges? Is he paying tribute to the 40,000 council staff who have lost their jobs across a whole range of sectors? Is he paying tribute to the public sector workers who say that we are protecting so well and who will be on strike in this very building next Thursday because of John Swinney's pay policy? Are those the people that he is paying tribute to?  No thanks to the hypocrisy of this Government. Here in this Government, at times of bad weather, falling an emergency or an accident, praising public sector workers for their efforts and commitment in one breath, then in the next passing budgets that mean more of this, those very same workers will lose their jobs, have their pay reduced or frozen or our services cut. The Government claim that the council tax phrase, no thanks, has been fully funded each year of their term in office. That is an out and out lie. Look at my own council. From 2003 to 2011, I was a proud member of West Lothian Council. In 2006, we won UK Council of the Year because we were a well-run, efficient council providing good-quality, valued public services. It is still a well-run council today. Yet despite claims to have fully funded the council tax phrase, West Lothian Council has been forced since 2007 to cut its budget by £58 million and will need to cut by another £30 million over the next three years. I water and cuts, even greater than those passed on by Osborne and Eric Pickles to local government in England. As John Stevenson of Unison put it a few days ago, 40,000 jobs have been lost across Scottish councils. If that had been any other employer, politicians would have been queuing up to demand action and a rescue plan, and he is absolutely right. Rather than gauge in such rank hypocrisy, the minister should be apologising for his actions, the actions of his Government, the actions that have slashed our services, while sitting on a £444 million underspend. What hypocrisy, Presiding Officer, let me say this. No thanks, Presiding Officer. We cannot go on like this. It is immoral what the Government are telling public sector workers. We need to fund our services. We need the mansion tax, the bankers' bonus tax. We need the £50 tax rate, and we need our local government services to be fully funded. We need a Labour Government. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I am being lectured on hypocrisy by Neil Findlay. I like Alice in Wonderland. I try and believe six impossible things before breakfast, but one of those was not that Neil Findlay would be capable of making such a speech on the very day that his party will march through the lobby with the Tories at Westminster and condemn the UK to further austerity whatever the colour of Tory government is elected in May. That is why it is so crucial that the Labour Government, if there is to be one, is not a majority Labour Government, but one that has an SNP conscience attached to it, to try and ensure that the public sector and public services of Scotland are protected. Indeed, today in Parliament we see the real progressives in Parliament. The SNP, Plaid Cymru and the Greens are the ones opposing the Tories while the Labour Party backs them up. We will take no lectures on hypocrisy from those Labour members who talk left in this chamber about vote right in Westminster. There is an opportunity here for us to look at how we protect public services, maybe a little bit later, Mr Macintosh. It is equally galling for the Labour Party to come here and throw around an underspend that they know full well. That they know full well is allocated against financial transactions and managed expenditure and therefore cannot be used in the ways that they suggest. Save for the £145 million that Mr Swinney himself announced in the chamber in June and stated that he would carry forward and use in the financial year in order to fund, for example, welfare mitigation measures and economic support. We have already seen Mr Swinney taking action in relation to the underspend that he is able to carry forward and to utilise. It is equally on the issue of being lectured on hypocrisy by the Labour Party. It is galling to make those comments when, when the SNP inherited office in 2007, we had to negotiate furiously with the Treasury in order to secure £1 billion, £1 billion of Scottish expenditure that was left sitting in a Treasury bank account by the previous Labour Lib Dem Executive and could potentially have been lost to Scotland's public services because of their inability to manage their budgets appropriately. We will take no lectures, we will certainly take no lectures from Jackie Baillie on those issues and I had previously said to Mr Macintosh if he wanted to come in later, I would take him in later so I will use the rest of my time meantime to move on and talk about other issues. The Labour Party lectured us on the issue of teacher numbers as well. They say to us that we are reneging on our commitment in relation to teacher numbers. We have said repeatedly in this chamber that we want to ensure that the teacher-people ratio is maintained. However, on issues around teacher numbers, it would be interesting to note where the calls on teacher numbers are coming from. They are coming from Labour councils and from the Labour leader of COSLA. I sat on the local government and regeneration committee when the Labour leader of COSLA sat before us and said that he wanted to see greater flexibility being afforded to councils specifically in relation to teacher numbers, as did Labour-led local authorities. So, before they come to this chamber and start lecturing the Scottish Government around the issues about teacher numbers, they might want to go and get their own little provincial houses in order in the councils that they are running at present and try to tell their councillors that they are the ones who need to get their act together when it comes to teacher numbers, Mr Macintosh. Rather than quoting others, would Mr Macintosh remind the chamber what the SNP's promise on teacher numbers was at the last election? As Mr Macintosh well knows, the SNP inherited office in 2007 and Labour then wrecked the economy in 2008 and forced us into a situation where we had to manage our budgets in the face of austerity that first began under Alistair Darling and has since been continued by George Osborne. He should check the record on that before he comes into this chamber and pretends that somehow the world was not changed as a result of Labour's economic mismanagement. Gavin Brown spoke about progress—I intervened on Gavin Brown—and asked him what the progress was in terms of unpaid taxation and collection of unpaid taxation. He was very evasive in his response. The reason he was evasive in his response is because the figure has remained stubbornly around about the £30 billion mark and has not shifted dramatically in any way, shape or form. Were it the case that the UK Government were pursuing those individuals, those corporations, who are not paying their fair share of taxation, with the same level of zeal that they appear to be pursuing those at the margins of society, those vulnerable citizens, those vulnerable individuals, those voiceless individuals who are unable to lobby or to put forward their argument with perhaps the same ability that those in the wealthiest strata of society are able to do when they sit in the same gentlemen's clubs as certain members of the UK cabinet were able to do, were that they had those same networks and opportunities, perhaps they would find themselves getting the same sort of feather duster treatment as the wealthiest in society appear to be getting so much for those with the broadest shoulders bearing the burden. It tends to be those who are the weakest in society in terms of their ability to put across their case or in their ability to stand up to the UK Government's relentless assault on their incomes, who are the ones who are bearing the hardest brunt, and that frankly is an absolute disgrace. But what is a bigger disgrace, Presiding Officer, is that we know that this is what we get from the Tories. We know that. We don't need to be lectured upon that. We know that that's what happens when the Tories are in government. I think that the biggest regret that people will have is that up here in Scotland we're being sold the message that the Labour Party are somehow an alternative to this. They're not, they're simply a repainting of the same tired old approach. That's all that is being offered by the Labour Party in Scotland and they should just be honest about it. It shouldn't come as any great surprise that David Cameron's coalition government policy is austerity for all, but especially for women, and it's certainly no surprise that Labour supported it even in the corridors of power at Westminster today.  I would like to remind the Prime Minister and his acolytes that women make up a little more than half of the vote in public, even in wealthy Tory seats in the home counties. Presiding Officer, I'm not naive. I do not think for a moment that my drawing attention to this obvious reality will make the slightest difference to the policies of the current Westminster Government. That is why we do need more SNP MPs there to shift the balance. Nevertheless, it is worth looking a bit more closely at just how misogynistic those actions are. The family-orientated government is taking at least £360 a year off new mothers in real terms with a combination of freezing statutory maternity pay and removing the health and pregnancy grant. Let's move along the age range a wee bit. Westminster's welfare cuts threaten to put another 10,000 of Scotland's children into poverty—that's 100,000 across the UK. The reductions in benefits will take away over £6 billion from Scottish households. If that sounds like too hard a figure to grasp, let me mention that £6 billion would keep our NHS for the whole of Scotland for a full six months. Mr Finlay wouldn't answer the cabinet secretary's response on Mr McTernan's views on the health service, but maybe the Labour Party would like to answer that. McTernan, on 1 August 2014, in an article in The Times, said, privatisation, what is it good for? Everything. That's what I feel like shouting at the TV and radio when I hear Andy Burnham, the shadow secretary of health, pontificating about the supposedly dire effects of competition in the NHS. That's how the Labour Party in Scotland view the NHS—an opportunity to make money. Maybe women need to go back to their caves and stop challenging the menfolk when they go out to slaughter the bison. I don't think so, although it sometimes feels as if that's what Westminster would like us to do—bedroom tax, disability allowance, introduction of universal benefits and PIP—not only are the policies fundamentally wrong, but they discriminate specifically against women. Why? Because it's mostly the women who manage the care of disabled children and their parents who are among the 400 per cent, yes, 400 per cent increase of food bank users who have to somehow keep the house ticking over and put food on the table. Women in Scotland are still paid, on average, less than men for the same kind of jobs. The benefit cap introduced by Mr Cameron and supported by Labour MPs is a clear attack on single women with children. Those households make up 60 per cent of those who are affected. Then there is a reduction in child benefit, another attack on women. That was the one benefit that they could bank themselves. That's gone now. The proportion of childcare costs covered by working tax credit is reduced. That's an increase in the taper rate for tax credits. There's a removal of the baby element of the child tax credits. There's a requirement for lone parents on income support with the youngest child aged 5 or 6 to move on to jobseekers allowance. Then we've got universal credit system. Structure a single monthly payment, which will be made to one person in a couple household, with a single earnings disregard, which may weaken the incentive for second earners—the women in the main to work. Again, it removes women from the direct payment package. The First Minister of this Parliament has made clear many times that the benefit reform programme of Westminster unfairly impacts on some of the most vulnerable members of our society, particularly women, mothers and their children. Of this Government's agenda for change, there's the other elephant in the room, and we've heard much about that today, Trident. Westminster has given us the news back by Labour at Westminster—and obviously here today, because we wouldn't answer the question—that it intends to spend about £100 billion on replacing the existing system. How is that for prioritising? I would say that it should be burns, not bombs. Of course, Labour's record on prioritising the doubtful anyway in Scotland was Labour that enthusiastically rolled out PFI so that we are now tied into private sector deals that strip out about £2.4 billion of our budget every year. Yes, the Scottish Government does what it can to mitigate, but until we have full fiscal control of welfare, we are limited in how much we can deliver. You have already heard some of the figures that show that commitment, and I would like to go back in history a bit. Paul Sinclair—remember him? I'm sure some of the Labour benches do. He wrote an article in The Daily Record a number of years ago when Angus Macai, the then finance minister, was justifying the fact that, what did he say, the Scottish executive couldn't cope with the extra amount of cash, £718 million, sent back to the Treasury by the last Labour Government in this building. So let's not talk about underspensy—that's just an embarrassing fact. It's not the first to say that Scottish politics will never be the same again since the referendum, but I reiterate that. We indeed will hold the feet to the fire when it comes to securing our legitimate right to control our own budgetary policies. We will need to move on from the Dickensian view of the role of women and protecting our public services is exactly the way to do that. Thank you. Many of us will be pleased that the Scottish Government has called this afternoon's debate. Teachers, hospital staff and public servants across Scotland are currently struggling with the impact of budgetary and political decisions that are already taken. The forthcoming general election throws into stark relief the very future of the public services that we expect and rely on. The Tory plans to reduce public spending to levels not seen since the 1930s finally give the game away about the whole austerity agenda. An economic crisis created by private spending and borrowing has been successfully used as cover for an attack on public spending and borrowing. Welfare, the largest part of which predominantly goes to pensioners, is portrayed as wasted on work-shy benefit scroungers. New laws are being mooted to prevent public sector workers from even withdrawing their labour. The Tories hide behind the argument of balancing the books, but their agenda goes way beyond that. Those of us who believe in the value of good shared common services, those of us who believe that they provide the backbone for a good society, the bedrock of a fair and prosperous society as the motion put, we have a battle on our hands at the next election and one that we have to win. Even beyond the political threat posed by the Tories, there are growing pressures on our public services, which we also have to deal with, and new demands, such as the demographic changes within our society. Healthier lives and medical advances, for example, mean that there are ever more of us living with dementia or living with cancer, and we have to respond to that demand. I do not underestimate the difficulty of getting that right. Just this week, for example, the well-intentioned English Cancer Drugs Fund revealed the limitations of such an approach with its overspend and cutting back on the availability of cancer drugs. We have not just growing demands, too, but higher expectations. Just one example of that might be for single-patient wards. The Scottish Government might try to adjust the targets, but, as it has discovered, if more and more people are waiting for longer than four hours for A and E, it is not good enough to say that that is better than it was 15 years ago. It is good that we have this debate today, and it is good that we resist the Tory approach, but that should not blind us to the challenges that we face. We should not pretend that the Tory assault on the public sector allows us to evade or escape from our own responsibilities, because the Government here in Edinburgh is responsible for and has already taken a series of decisions. Choices are already being made, and it is not enough simply to bemoan how difficult those choices may be. Joe McAlpine earlier quoted that universities have been offered some protection, but that is because colleges have been abandoned and 140,000 Scots have now been denied a learning opportunity because of that decision. We heard from the health secretary just this weekend that revenue for some health boards has been protected, but not for all boards and that capital spending has been cut. In other words, I believe that the Scottish Government is cutting NHS spending in Scotland in real terms. Real-term spending on the NHS has gone up by 4.6 per cent since 2010, and indeed all boards will get an uplift through NRAC, and £380 million in 2015-16 all boards are getting more money—a record £12 billion—£3 billion more than you spent on the NHS. Clearly, the minister yet again refers to revenue, and I point members to the auditor general's report, which reveals real NHS spending. We also know that the Scottish Government has asked our councils to bear the brunt of the cuts, so we have more than 4,000 fewer teachers. I noticed that Neil Findlay was uncharacteristically generous towards the Scottish Government earlier when he said that there have been 40,000 job losses in the public sector in the public sector in local government, but the Scottish Government's statistics reveal that it has been 70,000 over the last eight years. Care visits are restricted to 15 minutes from carers barely earning the minimum wage, let alone the living wage, and public sector wages have been frozen, pent and restricted. Those are all decisions taken here in Edinburgh by the Scottish Government, not by the Tories. SNP backbenchers and ministers will protest that they have no choice, that they operate within a fixed budget, but that is not exactly true. We know that they have a choice because, for example, after much pressure from Scottish Labour, SNP ministers finally used their powers to mitigate the bedroom tax. In fact, Scottish ministers are the first to point out that funding decisions taken by the UK Government do not apply and do not have to be repeated here. Of course, it is also not strictly the case that we have a fixed budget. We have tax-raising powers here in the Scottish Parliament and have always had since our inception in 1999. That is where we get to the real difference between Scottish Labour and the SNP. Labour would keep the public finances under control, but it would find additional money needed to find public services by restoring the top rate of income tax to 50p on those earning more than £150,000 a year. I am grateful to the member for giving way. He appears to be suggesting that more money should be spent in every single portfolio. Can he advise whether he envisages that the rate of taxation that he would be levying would be sufficient to fund the increases that he is calling for? Or does he not accept that when you have a fixed budget that is being reduced, you have to ensure that you manage the finances across all portfolios appropriately? Ken Macintosh, you must begin to conclude, please. I am just in the middle of outlining exactly where we would raise our money by restoring the top rate of taxation, by introducing a mansion tax that would fund an extra 1,000 nurses. Those are choices that the Scottish Labour Party is willing to state publicly, and yet we cannot, despite repeated offers, we cannot get one SNP member or one SNP minister to state that they would do likewise. They are not prepared to put their money where their mouth is. They are not prepared to fund the choices that we wish to see. Until the Scottish Government is willing to actually talk about tax rises or where they will find their money, if they continue to say that we should swap the pooling and sharing resources for oil revenues, I do not believe that they will get the confidence of the Scottish people. I must indicate to members that interventions are in their own time. Please, six-minute speeches. Bob Doris, to be followed by Stuart Stevenson. The theme of the debate is protecting public services. In a key aspect of any debate in relation to protecting public services, I must first identify which valued public services that we would wish to see protected in flouration. Mr Doris, sorry, could you move your microphone up? Absolutely. The Scottish Government has a clear vision for protecting our public services, so whether it is the restoration of free university education, something rejected by the Labour Party or universal free school meals where the Labour Party seems to not have a position on it anymore or it may change from day to day or the abolition of prescription charges that the Labour Party fought tooth and nail to oppose, whether it is expanding the concessionary travel scheme, something that the Labour Party was seeking to reduce significantly, whether it is more money for free personal care, whether it is an additional 1,000 police officers on the beat or whether it is—and we should listen to this one carefully, especially if Jim Murphy is listening—whether it is 1,700 more nurses in the NHS under this SNP Government as compared to the last Labour-Scotish Executive. The Government has clearly laid out our vision and what we see as protecting public services actually means in practice, so it is clear from the investment that is led perhaps if there is time later, Mr McNeill. However, what we do not know, of course, is where Labour's cuts commission is these days. Remember, everything is on the table, nothing is off the table, but they have been silent in relation to it. Perhaps Mr Murphy, if he ever finds himself in this place, hopefully never in a position of power, of course, can give us some more information in relation to that. However, any public service has to be paid for, something that will become increasingly difficult as the UK continues to accelerate its programme of savage austerity. I note that today Ed Miliband will support the UK Labour Government's so-called charter for budget responsibility. That charter will sign Labour up to matching Tory budget cuts to Scotland pound for pound, million pounds for million pounds and part of the process that will take six billion pounds out of the welfare system in Scotland by 2016. Those cuts are aimed at attacking our most vulnerable in society, and the Labour Party is ready to do them. For example, Labour's DWP spokesperson Rachel Reeves MP said that they would be tougher than the Conservatives on benefits. Let us not forget that tougher than the Conservatives. Where does that leave the Scottish Government where we see 100,000 disabled people in the firing line with further cuts to disability benefits or 100,000 children to be pushed into poverty because of UK benefits changes? Indeed, there are thousands of families who will be worse off because of the tax credit changes. Christina McKelvie gave a very good exposition of why that targets women and children in particular with those savage cuts. The Scottish Government has pursued a policy of mitigation where it can, so it is £35 million in relation to discretionary housing payments to end the bedroom tax where we can in Scotland so that no one loses out. £38 million for the Scottish welfare fund in the face of UK cuts. Funding of council tax benefit cut again by a UK Government. Reopening the independent living fund in Scotland, £100 million, more than £100 million in fact, each and every year to mitigate. Not just about protecting public services, but protecting the public where we can. Much has been made about the Scottish Government's so-called underspend. I understand that the figure is £145 million that the Scottish Government, for a significant period of time, has already said that it will be spent in the financial year 2015-16. Already with the funding bids, retrospective funding bids, I have to say for how the Labour Party would already have wanted that money to be spent. Let's just give it to councils, let's give more to the NHS, let's give it to colleges, let's give it to schools, let's give it to care workers, let's give it to fire staff. Indeed, I have to say that it could be an eye-watering figure, because Mr Finlay said that West Lothian Council alone should have £88 million spent on it. From that £145 million, I have to say no credibility at all, but let me tell you who the Scottish Government has said— Mr Finlay, the member doesn't seem to be taking your attention. The Scottish Government has said that it will spend that £145 million. Remember, the Labour Party has spent it five, six, ten times over. I'm looking forward to adding up the financial bill that the Labour Party has talked about, accumulated today. The Scottish Government will spend it on economic support in these difficult financial, straight and economic times. We will spend it to further mitigate the worst aspects of UK welfare reform. Let me tell you, when the Scottish Government makes those financial commitments, no-one in the Labour benches should welcome them, they should criticise them, because they would have spent the money already. Gone, the bank is empty, no more money to spend protecting our economy, no more money left to protect the most vulnerable in relation to welfare reform, the cupboard would be bare. Absolute hypocrisy from the Labour Party. I look forward to no exercise in arch deceit when the Labour Party gives its opinion when we spend that £145 million that we will do in protecting the Scottish economy where we can and protecting our most vulnerable, Mr Finlay, where we can. I trust this party, this Government, in the face of savage UK Tory or red Tory labour cuts after the next UK election to defend our public services. I hope that we are in a position to hold the balance of power at the UK so that we can protect the people of Scotland. Stuart Stevenson, to be followed by Duncan McNeill. Let me start on a consensual note. I congratulate the Labour Party for the third part of their amendment calls on all parties to work together to tackle inequality, support economic growth and proudly protect Scotland's public services. That is pretty hard to disagree with. Essentially, of course, it just replaces the last paragraph of the Government's motion with a slightly different formulation, which it has deleted. Most significantly is what the Labour Party has taken out of the Government's motion, which is most of it. The first one might look at deleting reference to and criticism of the UK Government's austerity agenda on the delivery of public services. Obviously, they agree with it, but they are deleting it from the Government's motion. Secondly, the cuts for welfare of £15 billion—again, they are deleting that from the Government's motion. Clearly, that is something that they agree with. Ken Macintosh rightly made reference to Government spending at UK level, being the smallest proportion of national income that it has been since the 1930s. However, at 5 o'clock, if he so chooses, he will vote for a Labour amendment that deletes a reference to that from the Government's motion. However, the reality is that the biggest and most important deletion that there is from the Government's motion relates to spending money on weapons and mass destruction rather than on other things. The way that the motion is drawn is quite wide and covers all levels of government. I want to spend a bit of my time on proper defence for Scotland and its interests. Of course, it touches on the wider interests of the UK. Our soldiers—and we contribute disproportionately more from Scotland than elsewhere in the UK—had to use their personal mobile phones for communication, because the armies' radio—the Mark IVs—was so poor that they did not work properly in the two mountainous terrain of Kosovo. That is because there was not money being spent on developing communication systems that were fit for purpose. When they were in the Middle East in Iraq, we had the sight of soldiers ordering boots by email from suppliers in the UK. The rubber soles on the boots that the army provided were melting in the desert sands. The equipment was not fit for purpose. More fundamentally, in Afghanistan, where the UK has had so few helicopters, the only 5 per cent of soldiers have gone to points of application in helicopters compared to 95 per cent of US soldiers going up there. The most dangerous part of their deployment is the travel from their barracks to the point of application. As a result of which, the casualty rate among the UK military was 50 per cent higher than the US military, because we are not investing the right money in the equipment for our troops and that diminishes their effectiveness and leaves Scotland and the UK vulnerable. Of course, we have seen in the past week further evidence of the under-investment, because money is being diverted into weapons and mass destruction that will never be used in our maritime interests, having to scrounge support from other countries when there appeared to be threats off our shores. Scotland has the longest coastline in Europe. In fact, our coastline is half of the coastline of China, one of the biggest countries in the world after Russia. Every single country around us has proper defence. The Irish have maritime surveillance aircraft. The Icelanders have maritime surveillance aircraft. The Norwegians have. The UK has none. The Irish have eight vessels posted around their coasts, providing coastal defence. The Icelanders have vessels. There is not a single vessel based in Scotland for the purposes of coastal defence or coastal support. We can see that we are seeing the money that is being spent on weapons and mass destruction. It is not only depriving our public services and our public servants from their proper funding, it is not even serving the purposes of defence in any reasonable measure that one might apply to it. Until you get the basics right, matters such as weapons and mass destruction. I do not make a moral case against it, as easy to do that as it is. I make a simple pragmatic case against the current priorities, which the Labour Party, in common with others, is deleting from the motion. I automatically assume that Mr Finlay at five o'clock will be voting to spend £100 billion on new nuclear weapons, and all his Labour colleagues will be doing likewise. There are only two of us here who were born before the health service. I will not name the other person. I am very fortunate, and others have been fortunate when the health service was founded. The reason that I am fortunate is that my parents were able to afford the approximately £50 that it cost for an operation for my mother so that she could conceive me and give birth. There may be those who regret it, but the kind of benefit that I got from my family is now through the health service extended to all our population. I congratulate the Labour Party on having done that then. Would they now adhere once again to the principles that they carried the health service into being and resiled from the cuts agenda to which they are now irrevocably wedded? Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I was joined that, and until the end, we changed the chart and that contribution. I look at Keith Brown's motion. You mentioned, Stuart, that there is not a lot that we can disagree with, that the Parliament has a strong public services are the bedrock of a fair and prosperous society and pays tribute to the public service workers who reach and the sentiments of inadequate. No, not many others can disagree with that. In fact, there is an astounding amount of agreement about the collective way that we would provide our public services, how we would like them to be cured and all of that. Why we have had the last couple of hours trading figures, finance, numbers, who did what, who cares more—none of us here—have got a monopoly on care or a monopoly on respect for the public sector, its workers. Go on. Actually, there are people in good heart and they are not all on the Government benches. I just want you to step up to the plate in what you actually do. In terms of—I was not addressed it personally, you were referring to your initial speech, I did not mean it to be a personal attack on you, but I think that it is a criticism of us all that when there is such agreement about what we should be doing that we seek excuses for not doing it elsewhere. That is the point that I am going to try to make here. When I look at the emphasis on the financial crisis, the austerity that has come from that and different policies that have been pursued by a Government and a party, I have never supported and it drew me into politics many, many years ago because of what the effects of those policies had on my community, my neighbours and friends that I became involved in politics. But 10 years ago, we were discussing these. We had the care proposals, the care review about the health service a decade ago now, recognising that we had serious issues that we needed to address in health, that the demographic challenge was going to put an impossible strain on our health services as they existed and as they still exist, and as winter crisis grows on winter crisis and those people are dealing with increased numbers going through the door, but we have been slow to see that as a priority. We ditched it many years ago and it is no surprise indeed that a decade on we hear the BMA and the RCN calling to review the care review. Yes, cabinet secretary. Can I very much welcome the tone of Duncan McNeill's contribution? Can I ask him whether he thinks that one of the biggest public sector reforms that we have seen in a decade is the integration of health and social care, which takes place from April? Surely it is really important that we all make that work. Duncan McNeill. I agree with you that we should make that work, but the fact that we had to introduce legislation to make it work gives us the idea of the scale and the challenge and the problem of a decade on integration of health and social care. Maybe we stop swapping numbers and fighting about numbers and who does what and does this and where the Tories are. Maybe we would be addressing some of these issues. Five years ago Crawford Breverage told us that we faced the worst financial crisis since the war. He was asked by the current Government to carry out an independent budget report. The purpose of that review was to present an informed and a dispassionate view of the scale of expenditure challenge that Scotland is facing over the coming years in the light of the public spending and to look at options of discounting the current way of how we spend our public money. That was a challenge five years ago.  Another one was to impose a two-year phrase on the council employees. It is strange that we can claim at this date that we chose to continue the council tax freeze but impose a wage freeze on some of the lowest-paid workers in Scotland without any doubt. If Beverage provided the economic imperative for politicians in Scotland, in this Parliament, who have a responsibility to address all of these issues, then Campbell Christie outlined the moral imperative of his acting. In limited resources, that is where the politicians are tested. It is all right when we have money in surplus now and in the past. The decisions are much easier, but the decisions with a decline in budget are much more difficult. That is where priorities must be put in place. Christie said that, alongside a decade of growth in public spending, money is not necessarily the issue that I think I would agree. A growth in which public spending has grown, inequalities have grown too. If we had money, we would not deal with the inequalities then. It is all the more difficult now. I think that I will finish at that point and leave us with that challenge. Let us have constructive debate. Let us accept our responsibility. Let us use the money that we have wisely to fulfil our commitment to reduce inequalities in Scotland. Many thanks. Jimmy Dithie to be followed by Dennis Robertson. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I am very pleased to follow the thoughtful and constructive contribution that we have just heard from Duncan McNeill. I congratulate as did other colleagues Keith Brown on his appointment as Cabinet Secretary and welcome Mary Fee to her front bench position. We have heard from speakers this afternoon that the UK Government's austerity agenda has failed. I certainly agree with that. I think that it is a view that is borne out by a range of evidence from a variety of reputable sources. It has failed because it has impeded recovery and economic growth. It has failed because public spending, as we have heard, is at its lowest level in modern times and it has failed on its own terms because borrowing is now higher than when the coalition Government came to power in 2010. Asterity has failed because it has hampered economic growth. The UK economy is now forecast to be almost 4 per cent smaller than was predicted in 2010 when the chancellor first entered office. The fact is that austerity is harming the economy, putting pressure on household and family budgets and putting pressure on public services. Asterity has failed because public spending is at its lowest levels in modern times. That was the point that was made by Kevin Stewart and Ken Macintosh in their contributions. As we heard, it will fall to 35.2 per cent of gross domestic product by 2019-20 and will probably be the lowest in around 80 years according to the Office of Budget Responsibility. The reality of the Government's austerity agenda is that total government spending will be reduced to its lowest level since the 1930s, and yet we know that the bulk of the cuts are still to come. The chancellor has confirmed cuts of £25 billion, much of it from the welfare budget beyond 2015. Analysis shows that 60 per cent of the revenue cuts to the Scottish budget are still to come. The Institute for Fiscal Studies analysis of the chancellor's autumn statement states, "...the overwhelming fact about the public finance plans remains that spending in unprotected departments is set to have fallen by more than one third by 2018-19, with most of those cuts still to come." The IFS goes on to state, "...a worsening of long-run public finances gives the Treasury extra money to spend now. That is not a sensible way to think about fiscal policy." Finally, austerity has failed on its own terms because borrowing this year will be £108 billion, or £50 billion higher than the chancellor predicted in 2010, which means that the total borrowing under this Government will be in the region of £430 billion. If we agree that austerity has failed, then what is the alternative? The Scottish Government has led the way in promoting an investment-led recovery by accelerating capital spending on vital infrastructure projects. It has protected the front-line public services, in particular the revenue budget of the national health service, and it has mitigated the impact of the UK Government's welfare reforms on the most needy and vulnerable within our society. If we take capital spending, the Scottish Government has brought forward spending on infrastructure projects to accelerate that spending to secure economic growth and create jobs. Just two examples—the investment in the fourth replacement crossing, supporting 1,200 jobs, and the Scotland's schools for the future building programme worth £1.8 billion. That will deliver 91 new schools by March 2018, and that will include the new Burramur High School at Fountainbridge in my constituency and the new James Gillespie High School in my constituency. On the NHS, despite the cuts, as the cabinet secretary reminded us, to the Scottish Dell budget, the Scottish Government is committed to increasing the revenue budget in real terms for the remainder of this Parliament and for each and every year of the next Parliament. While the Scottish fiscal resource budget is being slashed by 10 per cent in real terms over the lifetime of this Parliament, the health resource budget has increased by 4.6 per cent. One of the biggest scandals within both the NHS and our public finances is the issue of the private finance initiative. The PFI contract at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary is, as I have said before, one of the worst examples of an NHS contract anywhere in the UK. Over the lifetime of the contract, the taxpayer will have paid out £1.44 billion in service charges. In the current financial year, that will cost the NHS £47 million. The contract is robbing the NHS today and well into the future of valuable resources that should be used to safeguard front-line NHS services, to recruit and retain hard-working healthcare professionals, and to provide the high-quality patient-centred healthcare to the people of Edinburgh and the Lothians, which we all wish to see. That is why I am renewing my call for a full-scale parliamentary debate with the support of Unison and the British Medical Association on the operation of the contract. On welfare reform, Christina McKelvie was right to remind us that welfare reform impacts disproportionately on women as carers and single parents. Does he accept that the Government's NPD project is just PFI by another name? If we are going to look at one thing, we must look at that also. I am very happy to have a wide debate on NPD and PFI, but it is time for Labour members to come off the fence and to decide whether they wish to have that debate by backing my motion. The NPD is an interesting point, because the point is that we need to factor in the investment that we are not able to make through the public loan route that I would prefer and which the Government would prefer because of the financial constraints and the borrowing constraints that we currently operate within. Let's have that debate about PFI and NPD and I look forward to that. In conclusion, I would like to end with a quote from Unison Scotland's convener, Lillian Mesa. She said, "...public services are used by everyone at each stage of life. We ought to see money spent on them not as a cost but as an investment. Surely we can all agree with that." Thank you, and I call Dennis Robertson before we turn to the closing speeches. The cabinet secretary's opening remarks mentioned that we need to have public services that are sustainable and fair. I agree that if we are to continue to provide our public services, they need to be sustainable and fair. I agree with Duncan McNeill. We should be looking at ways and how we can protect our public services at the point of delivery. No-one in the chamber disagrees that there has been austerity, and there are greater austerity cuts to come. We perhaps disagree on the impact of those austerity cuts on different services, and perhaps we disagree on how the priority of this Government has been to mitigate some of those cuts that have come to Scotland. Mitigation on the impact of welfare reform has impacted on or most vulnerable within society. When Duncan McNeill talks about tackling the inequalities, it is those sorts of issues that we need to tackle. I believe that some of the aspects and some of the programmes that the Government has taken forward are the right ones. The cabinet secretary mentioned in his opening remarks concessionary travel. Concessionary travel is not about just getting a free ride on a bus. Concessionary travel enables people to get out of their homes. To get out of their homes. Given that the member represents an area of a large rural population, for those people who live in that area where there is no bus, they do not get out of the house. Perhaps Mr Finlay is not aware of the support that the local authority and the state's coach provide within my own rural constituency. Indeed, perhaps there are buses that get people out of their homes. However, the free is more to do with health and wellbeing. It gives the people the opportunity to take advantage of a service that they would otherwise have to pay for, which, again, against what their limited budgets probably would not be able to afford. There are other services, such as free personal care for the elderly. That is something that I think that we should be able to agree on, and I think that we do. However, is it about the choices? Last week, I was at Aberdeen North East College, a wonderful new campus, a wonderful college, a college that is seeing the way forward, working closely with the universities, both at Aberdeen University and Robert Gordon's. It is looking at how they can progress forward, looking at what is needed within the north-east to sustain the economy of the north-east, providing the skills and the training within the college sector. They were commending the Government for the work that they have done in bringing forward that agenda and bringing the colleges together within the north-east. It was the right thing to do. Presiding Officer, there are issues within the health service, no one can say otherwise. However, I think that the Scottish Government has realised and have taken the appropriate action. NHS Grampian has quite rightly been criticised recently. No doubt about that. There was mismanagement within the board, there was mismanagement within the management sector. Absolutely. No one is shying away from that. However, NHS Grampian has a world-class service, a world-class new A&E department. It was just mismanaged. The cabinet secretary and the cabinet secretary before went there, and Malcolm Wright, who is there at the moment, is taking cognisance of all those factors and putting things on the right path. Yesterday, the cabinet secretary announced the additional funding for NHS Grampian. That brings him to parity, Presiding Officer, with the other NHS boards in Scotland, something that the Scottish Government had been working towards ever since they came into power in 2007. Presiding Officer, there are many aspects of services that we need to applaud, I think, that the Scottish Government has been moving forward. The protection of our rural schools is, again, supporting our local communities within rural Scotland. That is something that we need to applaud. Yes, that takes more out of the public purse, of course it does, but it supports our local communities and ensures that those communities survive. Presiding Officer, free eye tests are something that I would commend to the benches in the coalition government and to Labour. I think that they are viewing the austerity programme through tunnel vision. We now turn to closing speeches. I call on Liam McArthur six minutes, please. Thank you for remembering my name. Let me start, as I did earlier, by reiterating my support and that of my party for the work carried out by all those who work in our public services. I am under no illusions whatsoever how difficult it has been for them over recent years and, indeed, the challenges that are set to continue going forward. I believe that those are challenges that can be overcome, however. That has already been demonstrated in the considerable innovation and creativity that we are seeing across the public sector. In difficult times, that does indeed give cause for some optimism. The public sector workers deserve our full-throtted support across the chamber. That is not the same, however, as false promises are easy options that have more to do with short-term electoral calculations than any long-term commitment to the public sector. Unfortunately, there has been too much of the former in a number of contributions this afternoon, with honourable exceptions, I would have to say, including those from Duncan McNeill and Stuart Stevenson. If I may echo the touching expression of mutual admiration that Mr McNeill and Stuart Stevenson were involved in, I have generally found Mr Brown a reasonable minister to deal with. We have had our disagreements, some of them fairly vigorous, but he has always been approachable and willing to listen, even if not always to act in the way that I would have wished. The call from Mr Brown today for all parties to work together to secure economic growth, tackle inequality and protect Scotland's public services is one that I would normally be prepared to take on board and take seriously. Unfortunately, the premise on which it is based is one that rather undermines its sincerity. For one thing, it presupposes that none of this is already happening, but that is simply not the case. Having denied that the coalition strategy for dealing with the debt and growing the economy would ever work, the SNP now bluster that it is the wrong sort of economic growth and that we should be racking up more debt. In fact, it is growth and an approach to debt reduction that gives the best prospect for protecting public services in the future. Little wonder then that the SNP's own fiscal commission emphasised the need to match the UK's debt reduction path for the foreseeable. Tackling inequality too is also taking place in trying circumstances. It is what lies behind delivery of the pupil premium, free early learning and childcare for 40 per cent of two-year-olds in the most disadvantaged backgrounds, and free school meals for all P1 to P3 pupils. In each of those areas, the UK coalition has led in response to the Scottish Government has followed, partially or flatly refused to follow at all. Is there more that can be done to grow the economy, to tackle inequality, to protect public services? Absolutely. Does that mean that the SNP is not taking steps in all of those areas? Absolutely not. However, it requires more honesty from the SNP Government about where we are now, as Ian Gray rightly suggested in his contribution, and what the implications are of the choices that they have made. We are willing to focus on using the powers that we have and are set to take on to deliver those critical objectives. Unsurprisingly, perhaps the contribution is focused on three areas, and I will turn to each of those now. In health, there is no getting away from the crisis that we are seeing in a number of areas, notably Grampian. Mr Stewart, who was clearly put off by my pre-Christmas haircut, was keen to focus on Arbuthnot. The review into Arbuthnot began in 2005, concluded in 2007, and the agreement from the Government to take forward those reforms is in 2008. I do not think that it is unreasonable for us to question why it has taken seven years to address the problems of underfunding. In my own health board area of Orkney, I have taken an intervention not even on that basis. NHS Orkney, where underfunding again has been an issue. What we have seen is an increase that will simply go towards paying off the borrowing that has been required to make good that underfunding. In education, we have heard from a number of colleagues this afternoon about real pressures in our primary sector, in our secondary schools and in the college sector, as well as those who are coping with significant cuts. Local authorities have put in a straight jacket by a council tax freeze that removes local accountability and flexibility to respond to local need in Edinburgh, Aberdeen and, indeed, Orkney where we are seeing relative underfunding. All represent areas where the Scottish Government has full policy and budget responsibility. As Ken Macintosh, I think that Mark McDonald is really by implication accepted. Government is about choices, whatever the powers that we have. Duncan McNeill was right to point out that those choices become more difficult in straightened times, but nevertheless they are the stuff of government. Claiming credit for all the popular stuff, as Bob Doris was keen to rattle off, is only credible if you are also going to take responsibility for what that popular stuff then prevents you from doing. An independence offers no panacea, quite the reverse. I think that a number of members have revered to what has happened to the oil price in the course of the last six months. The white paper suggested that, with independence, we can ensure that taxation revenues from oil and gas support Scottish public services. Today, what we have heard is an alternative perspective based on tackling fraud and housing benefit and tackling tax evasion. Both are a priority for the UK Government, a priority for any Government, but are not the basis on which to find an alternative economic vision. We need to continue to anchor the economy in the centre ground, continue to move from economic rescue to recovery. I think that the best platform for a strong economy, for a fairer society, for the high quality sustainable public services that we all, as Stuart Stevenson acknowledged, wish to see is anchoring that economy in the centre ground. Again, I have pleasure in moving the amendment in my name. Many thanks. Before we move on, could I remind members not to respond to interventions that they do not officially allow because it makes it very difficult for our recording of proceedings? Could it also remind members that all members are supposed to be in the chamber for closing speeches when they have participated in the debate, and I regret to note that Ian Gray is not in the chamber? I now call on Annette Millan to six minutes, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I'd also like to welcome Keith Brown to his new role. I welcome this debate, hostile though it has been, if only to dispel some of the myths and scare mongering contained in the Government's motion before us this afternoon, which Gavin Brown dealt with in his opening speech. Given my particular interest, I'll focus on health. Personally, I've always felt that politics is demeaned when point scoring is used with regard to the NHS. Having begun my association with the NHS in the medical student 56 years ago, and having spent my entire working life in the health service and most of my time in Parliament dealing with health issues, I'm all too aware of the constraints and pressures put in our front-line services. To keep resorting to slogans such as the UK Government's austerity agenda, when there's a real need to reign in public spending, merely reinforces the now-reminded approach taken by this Government and its tendency to blame Westminster for all of Scotland's ills. Let's look at some facts with regard to the rest of the SNP Government's motion. Harking back to the 1930s, long before even I was born, or the NHS was dreamed of, it looks pretty feeble, and yes, I am the other older member referred to but not named by Stuart Stevenson. There have been peaks and troughs over the years in the share of GDP going into public services, but this was 36 per cent in the late 1990s and has predicted to fall to 35.2 per cent in 2019-20, a fall, yes, but hardly the dramatic fall of SNP rhetoric. What I do agree with in the Government's motion for this debate is the need to pay tribute to Scotland's public service workers in all our public services, but with my experience most particularly all those staff, all those whose staff are NHS, every one of these from porters, cleaners, cooks, secretaries, associated health professionals and medical staff in primary, secondary and tertiary care. Those are the people at the front line of NHS care. Those are the people that patients depend on, and those are the people coupled with the patients they serve who want to hear proactive thinking and co-operation from politicians, not the sort of point scoring we're increasingly hearing as election time approaches yet again. The NHS has faced many crisis times throughout the years of its existence, but there's never been a greater need for a united approach to dealing with the enormous pressures currently facing the service as highlighted by Duncan McNeill. Nor has there been a greater need for co-operation between the authorities providing care for our increasingly elderly population, because only by the real integration of health and social care services focused on the actual needs of people can we expect to achieve our desired goal of people living at home or in a homely setting in the community for as long as possible, so relieving some of the existing serious pressures on our overworked NHS staff. The Liberal Democrat amendment, which has some merit, actually points to chronic underfunding of the NHS over many years, particularly in some health board areas, and this is only now being addressed. Yesterday's announcement in Aberdeen of £5.2 million, for example, while it is very welcome, has only come in the wake of the recent crisis in NHS Grampian. A and D problems are in significant measure due to the impaired flow of patients through the system, leading to bed blocking because care provision in the community is not adequate. Again, Aberdeen City Council has the lowest level of funding of all local authorities, as well as having to deal with competition from the oil and gas industry, which makes it difficult to recruit and retain carers within the city. The amendment put forward by my colleague rightly turns our attention to the issue of the difficulty of recruitment and retention of staff. Will the member acknowledge that Aberdeen City Council was telling me yesterday that they have an underspend on their social care budget because of the issues of the difficulty of recruitment and retention of staff? Will she therefore welcome the work that is going on to try to develop the key worker housing, affordable housing option for all public sector workers in the area? I think that that is a range of measures that needs to be taken, but there is still a very acute shortage of carers within Aberdeen City. The amendment put forward by Gavin Brown rightly turns our attention to preventative spending, an area in which the Government appears reluctant to even consider an alternative option to overbloated public spending. We have today heard their usual arguments around that. The NHS budget has been fully protected by the current Westminster Government, leading to Barnett consequentials of around £1.3 billion since 2011. It is, of course, the Scottish Government to determine how this money is spent. Of course, we do not always agree with their choices, but then that is politics. There are undoubted pressures on the NHS with the demography of an ageing population in Scotland and a lack of qualified specialists in A and E and in the field of cancer care, for example. There is also a need to address waiting-time delays, which has led to an increased reliance on the use of the private sector, something denied by the SNP but has been accepted by health boards such as NHS Grampian as they strive to provide care within the time limits set by the Government. On those benches, we fully support the principle that the NHS is free at the point of delivery and need and funded from the public purse, but we must have a real debate about how care is to be delivered in the future. There are two areas of particular relevance that need to be addressed by the Government, and those concern the care for older people, change fund and the integrated care fund. It is quite clear that this Government seems to be ignoring its commitment to a decisive shift to preventative spending, so I ask the health secretary whether she will give an undertaking that the £500 million pledged by John Swinney in his spending review of 2011 will be honoured and she will acknowledge the grave concerns expressed by Audit Scotland that has been little progress in the radical change in the design and delivery of public services. To conclude, as far as health is concerned, my colleague Jackson Carlaw and I are committed to the health service in Scotland and are happy to work with other political parties in the interests of delivering good patient care, but let's stop the blame game, stop living in the past and instead focus on where we go from now on. We need to think beyond this year's Westminster election and next year's Scottish Parliament election and get down to the very difficult but essential task of some long-term thinking and a coherent strategy for the future. I thank you most, Colin. Thank you very much, Colin. Jackie Baillie. Eight minutes, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. There you have it. The general election starting gum has certainly been fired in the chamber today, but this debate crystalises for me the choice that people face in the general election in May. If you inhabit the world of the SNP Government, then it is all the UK coalition's fault. Whilst I reject absolutely the Conservative Lib Dem austerity plan, because it falls on the shoulders of the most disadvantaged and least able to cope, I find it frankly extraordinary but not surprising that the SNP denies any responsibility, yet it must share part of the blame. Before I turn to the SNP's record, I want to spend a little time on the SNP's offer going into that general election. On 8 January this year, Alex Salmond said that the election is about full fiscal autonomy, the ability to raise and spend all of Scotland's taxes in Scotland. I hear no disagreement from the SNP benches. That is really interesting, because that indeed is a real flirtation with reality. What Alex Salmond is saying is that he will plunge Scotland into deficit with a rapid decline—well, they sigh—but let's just think this through. The rapid decline in oil price from $113 a barrel, estimated in the SNP's independence white paper, is now down at $48 a barrel today. We would see revenues due to Scotland being slashed. Oil is not some optional extra that is quite nice to have. It is central to our public services. It makes up 20 per cent of our tax base, and the reality is that that has fallen off a cliff. At $50 a barrel, it means an 85 per cent decline in revenues. That is almost £6 billion less spent on public services on an annual basis. That blows out of the water, the SNP's position on cuts. The hypocrisy, frankly, is breathtaking, because their cuts will be deeper and faster than even those of the UK coalitions. Let's just spell out what that would mean. It means cuts. It would wipe out the school's budget in Scotland. It would wipe out the cost of all the nurses and doctors in our hospitals and our community health settings. It would wipe out the entirety of the infrastructure programme for next year. Under the SNP's plans for full fiscal autonomy, the Barnett formula would no longer exist. We would face £6 billion in cuts immediately. How many schools and hospitals would that close? How many teachers and nurses would we have to make redundant? Instead, we have the security of the Barnett formula. It is guaranteed to continue in the Vow and in the Smith agreement something that I would have thought the SNP would welcome. Let me ask Mark MacDonald. Who was it? Who warned how much Scotland would lose if Barnett was scrapped? Allow me to pose a question to the member. The new Scottish Labour chief of staff said that Labour is committed to £20 billion of cuts if elected. What will the impact of that be on Scottish public services? I asked Mark MacDonald a question. He failed to answer it. Let me tell him that it was Nicola Sturgeon who warned how much Scotland would lose if Barnett was scrapped. In October 2014, she said that £4 billion of cuts for Scotland would result, if the Barnett formula was scrapped, as so many Westminster politicians want. She said it in January, she said it in March, she said it in June, but scrapping Barnett is exactly what her former boss wants to do. We have heard enough from you, Mr Stewart. Is it full fiscal autonomy with billions of cuts, as Alex Salmond says, or is it deeper and faster than even the UK Government, or is it Barnett that protects public spending in Scotland? Is it Nicola Sturgeon that is in charge, or is it Alex Salmond continuing as a backseat driver? Let us deal with the underspend of £444 million, not spent at a time of growing austerity, not spent at a time when the cost of living crisis had a huge effect on families across Scotland, and this at a time when the SNP Government were cutting budgets. Just think what public services could have done without that £444 million. Let me remind the SNP of the words of John Swinney. Long gone are the days when hundreds of millions of pounds of Government money would be underspent each year doing nothing to help communities across the country. That was June 2009, really, I kid you not, Presiding Officer. That was when he claimed an underspend of about £30 million. Now it is 15 times that amount of £440 million. Teacher numbers down, college places cut, birthdays cut and an underspend of £160 million in education. I will take Shona Robinson on why her Government is failing the people of Scotland. I wonder if Jackie Baillie could answer two points. One is that, given that the £145 million of that, which can be put into public services, has been done so by John Swinney, the rest of it is financial transactions and account-managed expenditure, such as student loans, which Jackie Baillie, as a finance spokesperson for her party, must know cannot be redirected into public services. Finally, why, when she was a Minister, she did not spend £718 million? Let me just remind her of the words of John Swinney. Long gone are the days when hundreds of millions of pounds of money would be underspent. Well, we have heard enough from you, but let us look at the SNP record extremely quickly in education. Teacher numbers down by 4,080-year low, the promise of smaller class sizes broken, 140,000 college places slashed, 10 million hours cut from learning, schools starved of resources, in health, A and E services struggling, despite the best efforts of staff, some hospitals closed to new admissions, people on trolleys for 14 hours, for 17 hours, in one case for 20 hours. It is ridiculous, but bed numbers have been slashed, there is real pressure on social care and we see a spike in delayed discharge. 65 million of Barnett consequentials is welcome, but it does not begin to address the problem. Then we have the 12,000 patients who have not had their 12-week waiting time met. That is 12,000 who have been denied their legal right by the same Government that legislated for it. Let me compare health spending in England and Scotland. That is an interesting table. It is the case that health spending in the UK, in England, has gone up by 4.4 per cent. Health spending overall in Scotland has dropped by 1.2 per cent. That came from spice. I would prefer to believe them than I would you. Neil Findlay was, of course, right to ask you about the loss of public sector jobs. More than 40,000 fewer public sector jobs across Scotland. The majority of whom, to Christina McKelvie, are women. However, let me finish with a word on which party is actually progressive. It is Labour that will have a top rate of income tax of £0.50 so that those with the broadest shoulders pay more. It is Labour that will introduce a mansion tax that will fund our pledge of 1,000 more nurses and more. It is Labour that will tax bankers' bonuses. The SNP simply wants to cut co-operation tax even more than George Osborne. It wants full fiscal autonomy. Oh yes, that would see 6 billion of cuts in public services. That is the choice, fiscal autonomy, with huge cuts with the SNP or the security of the Barnett phonia. The SNP has been rumbled. They are prepared to sacrifice public services rather than on reducing inequalities in Scotland. Thank you. I remind members to address the remarks through the chair please, a call on Shona Robison to wind up the debate. Ten minutes please, cabinet secretary. Is it only me that remembers Jim Murphy's comments about the change of tone that we were going to see under his leadership that the Labour Party were going to cease being the anti-SNP party? I have to say that there is not much sign of that today on the Labour benches. The debate has given us an opportunity to reflect on the importance of our public services and the vital role played by the spectrum of people that teach, treat and serve our communities everywhere and in so many different ways. All of us respect and value the people who work in our public services. Duncan McNeill was right on that point. That is not just something that should be one part of this chamber. We all care, but we have different policy priorities in terms of how we think that that should be delivered. I will come on to say something more about that in a minute. As the cabinet secretary said in his opening remarks, the five years of austerity already imposed by Westminster have resulted in real-term cuts. We have challenged this wrong-headed approach on many occasions in this chamber and beyond, and we will carry on doing so. Despite their cuts, ours is a different approach in Scotland and we will continue to invest and prioritise our work to protect and enhance public services as far as we are able to within the powers of this Parliament. It should be noted that, while we were having this to be in this Parliament, that Tory MP David Mout was on his feet in the Commons, making the case for a Tory Labour coalition after the election, based on Labour just having supported the Tory austerity cuts in today's vote. You cannot come along to this chamber calling for more money for every single part of the public sector when your memb