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I need to make some progress.

We will never shy away from the challenges that are facing our NHS and social care services. We will act quickly to deliver much-needed change and we are starting from strong foundations. The Scottish Government has overseen a 26.6 per cent increase in NHS staffing, including 12 consecutive years of workforce growth, which contradicts the false assertion that is made in Labour’s motion regarding graduates.

The First Minister and I dedicate considerable time in seeking to address the delayed discharge issues and to improve social care services. I have engaged with Donald Macaskill since he made that statement, and I think that there is an understanding of the investments that we are making to ensure that we expand capacity and support greater resilience.

The greatest threat and challenge that our social care sector faces right now is Labour’s national insurance contributions increase, which is putting at risk the very viability of the businesses and independent social care providers. That must be reversed at source to ensure the continued viability of our social care sector.

Importantly, with the record investment in health and social care, we will focus on improving the performance of our services and continue to take forward decisive action to support delivery against the reform vision, which I outlined to the Scottish Parliament last June.

Key to the focus on improvement and renewal is co-operation and collaboration across the system. The First Minister and I have regularly consulted health boards, health and social care partnerships, the Scottish Ambulance Service, Public Health Scotland, NHS 24 and others—and we will continue to do so. Indeed, just last week, we met a range of key stakeholders in Bute house to discuss the challenges that are ahead of us, and more meetings are planned.

It is that type of collaborative approach, and that focus on systemic change, that has led to an NHS renewal plan, which the First Minister outlined on Monday. It provides a route to address the immediate issues that impact the NHS, as well as the long-term change that is needed to ensure its sustainable future. We will set out more details of how that will be delivered in an operational improvement plan that will be published in March.

The draft budget that is progressing through Parliament gives us the means to turn those plans into action. Those dynamic and demanding plans seek to dramatically reduce waiting times so that no one is waiting longer than a year for their treatment.

The renewal plan sets out how our health services can provide the highest quality care in the right place. We will shift the balance of care from acute settings to the community. We will be taking measures to ensure that people receive the right care in the right place, and it will be made easier for people to see their first point of contact in the NHS—the general practice team, their dentist, optometrist or pharmacist.

The plan also commits to expanding the number of hospital at home and virtual beds to at least 2,000 by December 2026, or sooner if possible, and deliver direct access to specialist frailty teams from every emergency department by this summer. It also embraces digital innovation to increase access and speed up access to care, and has a strong emphasis on prevention, so that we improve our population’s overall health and ease the pressure on a service that we all value and treasure.

Last June, I outlined the reform vision for our health and social care services, which is to

“enable and empower people in Scotland to live longer, healthier and more fulfilling lives.”

That vision remains. This budget works towards that vision, by supporting plans that improve population health, focus on prevention and early intervention, provide quality services and maximise access.

I will now consider the wider critical public services that will benefit from the budget. Local government is of critical importance to delivering our high-quality public services in Scotland. The 2025-26 budget is allocating record funding of more than £15 billion to local government, which is a real-terms increase of 4.7 per cent compared with 2024-25. The funding will protect and build on the investments that this Government has already delivered for local communities across Scotland. The additional funding will allow councils to continue to provide high-quality services and invest in local priorities, including maintaining or restoring teacher numbers to 2023 levels, enhancing interisland connectivity, tackling the climate emergency through new capital funding and addressing issues in social care.

The social security budget demonstrates the strength of our commitment to building a future-proofed Scottish social security system that has dignity, fairness and respect at its heart. We are investing around £6.9 billion in benefits and payments for 2025-26. The investment will support around two million people, which is about one in three people in Scotland. That will support our national mission to end child poverty, help low-income families with their living costs, support older people, support carers, who devote their time to others, and enable disabled people to live full and independent lives.

We remain committed to supporting a high-quality post-school education, research and skills system, with a more than £2 billion investment in further education, higher education and skills, keeping the protection of free tuition at the heart of our education system.

For early years, we continue to invest in high-quality funded early learning and childcare, with wider family support.

Will the member give way?

I accept the challenges that exist in my area of health and social care, but does the member accept that the principles that we set out yesterday on shifting the balance of care, investing further in primary care, investing in reducing waiting times and increasing capacity in social care are ones that we would share, and areas where we can see better public services coming forward?

We have not rejected all means. We have taken responsibility here in Scotland and raised revenue through our more progressive income tax policy, which means that we have more than £1.7 billion available to us that we would not have had otherwise. There were choices available to Michael Marra’s colleagues in Whitehall that they chose not to take. Instead, they took an approach that is an attack on jobs and an attack on growth and is going to hammer our public services here in Scotland. Michael Marra should stand up to the Westminster Government for taking that approach.

We have called on the UK Government to fully fund those costs. However, the Treasury plans to provide us with a much lower Barnett share, which is likely to leave us some £300 million short, as it fails to take account of the fact that we have a larger public sector per person than other parts of the UK. It feels as though Scotland is now being punished for having decided to employ more people in the public sector and to invest in key public services.

We have a range of public sector employers, including the national health service, the police and local authorities, which urgently need clarity on this to inform their spending decisions from April. It is therefore essential that the Treasury fully funds those additional costs for Scotland’s public sector, rather than just giving a much lower-value Barnett share of the spending in England. It would be completely unacceptable for our public services to suffer as a result of that change in reserved taxation.

Turning to what the 2025-26 Scottish budget will deliver for Scotland’s public services, I begin with my own portfolio of health and social care. Our health and care services are an essential pillar of our public services, and will be supported next year with record investment of £21.7 billion. That includes £16.2 billion for health boards, representing a 3 per cent cash uplift and a real-terms increase on their baseline funding—boards’ resource funding, which has more than doubled since 2006-07. It also includes £139 million of additional investment across NHS infrastructure to support improvement and renewal.

The 2025-26 Scottish budget also contains £200 million to reduce waiting lists and increase capacity, including to help support the reduction of delayed discharge, supporting recovery initiatives such as frailty units and expanding the hospital at home programme to ensure that, by March 2026, no one will wait more than 12 months for a new out-patient appointment or day-case treatment.

With that investment, we are working closely with health boards to support the implementation of alternative pathways and initiatives to support people being seen more quickly and to increase capacity to ensure sustainability.

The budget also provides £2.2 billion of investment in primary care. That investment will deliver essential reform, improve capacity and patient access in local communities and reduce demand on acute services.

The budget delivers on our programme for government commitments for health, with £125 million to fund the real living wage for our adult social care workers, £5 million to provide short breaks for carers and more than £13 million to support growth in the independent living fund. It supports spending by the Scottish Government and NHS boards of £1.3 billion for mental health services, more than doubling direct programme investment since 2020-21—

Will the member give way?

Will the member give way?

Yesterday, we set out our plans for reforming and improving our health service, but I am interested in Labour’s approach to the budget negotiations. As a result of the way in which the Liberal Democrats and the Greens approached the budget negotiations, there has been increased funding in their areas of priority, including health and social care and drug and alcohol services. What approach did Michael Marra take? What asks did he make? What precisely did he get out of the negotiations?

During the election campaign, we made it very clear that an incoming UK Government would face a major deficit in its books, which the Labour Party denied. We set out the approach that we have taken in Scotland, which has involved addressing income tax in a more progressive manner. That approach would not have attacked growth or jobs, so why did Labour box itself in and pursue a policy that has attacked our public services and jobs?

High-quality, sustainable public services are crucial in progressing our ambitions of eradicating child poverty, growing the economy and tackling the climate emergency. The Government remains wholly committed to delivering that now and in the future.

I move,

That the Parliament welcomes the investment in Scotland’s public services through the draft Scottish Budget 2025-26; notes that £21.7 billion for health and social care investment and over £15 billion in funding for local authorities is being provided; calls on the UK Government to fully fund the additional cost of its increase in employer national insurance contributions, noting the significant impacts on public services, including social care, if it does not fund it in full; notes the importance of the public service reform programme to drive future financial sustainability, and celebrates the key role that the Scottish public service workforce plays in delivering these services across Scotland.