Seòmar agus comataidhean

I am sorry—I am struggling for time. I cannot take Pam Duncan-Glancy’s intervention.

Overall, the Scottish Government will invest more than £1 billion in high-quality funded ELC next year.

The budget also invests in our schools, teachers and support staff. It includes £186.5 million for local authorities to maintain teacher numbers and £29 million of additionality for additional support needs, including funding to support the recruitment and retention of the ASN workforce.

That funding is part of a wider package and deal that has been agreed with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities that is predicated on trust. We will see the Scottish Government and COSLA working together to restore teacher numbers to, and maintain them at, 2023 levels, to freeze learning hours and to make meaningful progress on reducing teacher class contact time. In addition, we will continue our investment of £1 billion in the Scottish attainment challenge over this parliamentary session to support closing the poverty-related attainment gap.

At this stage, I declare an interest in that my wife is a primary school teacher.

On justice, the 2025-26 Scottish budget will invest almost £4.2 billion across the justice system.

On transport, we will continue our strong focus on sustainable transport, which is central to the 2025-26 Scottish budget, by investing nearly £2.9 billion in public transport infrastructure and green initiatives.

Recognising the importance of public sector reform, we are also introducing greater flexibility in how our key services can be delivered locally to better support the families who need them most. We will work with local government and community partners to redesign systems so that they are integrated, locally responsive and focused on improving lives.

The Government is delivering key funding to support investment in our public services through the 2025-26 budget.

As I conclude, I wish to emphasise and acknowledge the valued contribution of Scotland’s public sector workforce, which forms the true backbone of our society. Our hard-working public sector workers deliver our essential services all across Scotland with dedication, dignity and compassion every day. I am proud that Scotland’s nurses, teachers and public sector workers are paid more than those in the rest of the UK. I thank each and every one of them for the significant contribution that they make to society in Scotland.

Scotland’s public services are the foundation of our society. Through our public services, we ensure that all individuals, regardless of their background or circumstances, have access to essential resources and support. Our front-line services play a vital role in all our lives, providing quality education to our children and young people, supporting our most vulnerable people through social care services, and improving the wellbeing of the people of Scotland.

We saw a key example of that this past weekend. Our public services were critical in responding to the challenges that were posed by storm Éowyn. The role that they played in protecting the wellbeing of our communities cannot be overstated. From emergency services to health and social care teams, their dedication and co-ordination ensured that individuals were supported and that essential services continued to operate. I extend our deepest thanks to all those who worked relentlessly to keep us safe during the storm.

That is exactly why, in June last year, the Parliament recognised the importance of maintaining high-quality services and the need for public service investment. I am proud that the 2025-26 Scottish budget does exactly that, including investing £21.7 billion for health and social care and more than £15 billion for local government.

The Government committed to listening to the priorities of Opposition parties as we shaped the 2025-26 budget, to offer a budget by Scotland for Scotland. Our approach ensured that the budget that was presented on 4 December not only delivers on those requests but, above all, fulfils the expectations of the people of Scotland.

Since the draft budget was presented in December, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government and the Minister for Public Finance have continued to engage constructively with all parties.

I am pleased to say that, as confirmed in the finance secretary’s letter to the Finance and Public Administration Committee this morning, the Scottish Greens and the Scottish Liberal Democrats have indicated their intention to support the Budget (Scotland) (No 4) Bill throughout its parliamentary passage.

This Government is proud of the successes in Scotland’s public services, including the best-performing core accident and emergency departments in the United Kingdom, record levels of young people progressing to positive destinations, and police-recorded crimes at one of the lowest levels since 1974, to name but a few.

This Government is also clear about the challenges that our public services face. In recent times, our nation has faced an unprecedented range of challenges, including the Covid pandemic, prolonged Westminster austerity, Brexit, the war in Ukraine and high inflation. Those difficult challenges have all put our hard-working public services staff under significant and prolonged pressure.

Although the increase in funding from the new UK Government’s autumn budget is welcome, after inflation, it equates to only around 1 per cent growth in our resource budget—the budget that is used to pay for our public services. Therefore, significant financial pressures and challenges remain.

At the same time, the chancellor has announced an increase in employer national insurance contributions, which will increase the cost of delivering public services. We estimate that this change could add over £500 million in costs for directly employed public sector staff in Scotland and, if we include the costs of wider staff who are delivering public services, such as general practitioners, dentists and those working in hospices, that figure increases to over £700 million.

I will—for the final time, I think.

Will the member give way?

Absolutely. In the interests of brevity, I will just say that we are monitoring that domestically, within the four nations’ responses—and we are considering how we can collaborate on that—as well as looking to international evidence.

I absolutely agree with Annabelle Ewing’s assessment, which is why the prioritisation that we have set out through the budget aims to tackle those very issues.

In relation to GP appointments, we continue to work together with all relevant partners to effectively implement the general practice access principles that were established in 2023, including through our commitment to the on-going recruitment of primary care multidisciplinary teams, as well as 800 more GPs.

As Annabelle Ewing will be aware, our draft budget sets out a clear plan to reduce waiting times and delayed discharges, which is supported by the provision of £200 million of targeted investment, and shift the balance of care from acute to community. We will also continue to build on the good work that is under way in many boards, including by ensuring that every core accident and emergency department has a frailty unit or frailty team that is linked to community re-enablement and by optimising our flow navigation centres to create more alternatives to accident and emergency.

We want to make progress on improving our health service. That is why, by 26 March, we expect nobody to wait longer than 12 months for a new out-patient appointment, in-patient treatment or day-case treatment.

I thank Willie Rennie for setting out the situation. I accept some of what he has said. I say to Willie Rennie what I said to Alex Rowley: we will provide an assessment, based on the UK Government’s recent budget, as well as the spending review, to enable us to determine what capital programme we can bring forward.

I thank Rhoda Grant for raising the issue. As she will understand, Maree Todd and I are both heavily engaged with areas facing the most significant challenges regarding delayed discharge, as are senior and other officials across Government—and Highland is absolutely at the top of that engagement.

We have been working with people in the area on how we can support the whole system to respond, which includes providing support to maintain some care home provision that would otherwise have been put to closure. That is clear in evidence around Moss Park, on which we have engaged previously. We are working with partners on further interventions, which I hope will help to improve the situation, as we are starting to see from the data.

Both ministers and Scottish Government officials regularly meet with representatives of all health boards, including NHS Fife, to discuss matters of importance to local people. Senior health officials met with the NHS Fife chief executive earlier today as part of the national health service executive group, which discusses key operational matters and supports NHS boards and senior leaders to work co-operatively, regionally and nationally.

I thank Tim Eagle for his question, because it allows me to reiterate the fact that the pressures that impact on the hospital environment are shared with the social care environment. We need to ensure that we respond to the pressures that exist in primary and secondary care and in the acute system. That is exactly what we are targeting with the interventions that we are taking through the budget, which is why I hope that colleagues on all sides of the chamber will support it and allow us to get on with that work.