Seòmar agus comataidhean

::It would be interesting for the committee to know where the report was considered. Did the Cabinet discuss the strategic impact of public inquiries on public services, and were the recommendations considered in full by the Cabinet?

::I think that it is a very strong and important recommendation. It is correct for the Parliament, as one of the core organisations that will have made demands that the Government will have responded to, to have oversight of the process, but that flows from the other recommendations about ensuring better control of time, remit and costs. The Deputy First Minister and I had an exchange on that, and the question of responsibility between the Government and the Parliament is absolutely clear.

In the debate, issues of transparency have come to the fore. Michelle Thomson touched on issues related to people making declarations, and we would all welcome the Deputy First Minister’s response in that regard.

We need a full explanation of why the Government has taken the decision to grant a public inquiry. I echo Michelle Thomson’s comments. I do not think that, in the most recent announcement yesterday, we had the fullest explanation that we could have had. That is critical to the setting of the terms of reference and the remit that flows from the parliamentary process and the Government’s decision, but it also relates to issues of transparency and a declaration of why we might have got to that position in the first place. That is critical.

It is also critical that we understand why an inquiry is needed, because they are not cost free. We have talked about the cash cost to the public purse and taxpayers as a result of an inquiry. However, the impact on the judicial system, which came through loud and clear in our inquiry, is really important and was, frankly, unknown to me prior to our inquiry. It is a really significant issue at a time of particular challenge for our justice system. The Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs is nodding, because she knows those issues acutely.

I am very conscious of the issues pertaining to public service delivery and the amount of pressure that public inquiries put on public services. One of the key considerations relating to the Eljamel inquiry, which I mentioned, is the pressure that it puts on NHS Tayside, which gives care to the people whom I represent. When considering those issues, we are displacing resource, time, management and strategy. I am a strong supporter of that inquiry, but we must recognise the trade-offs in that regard.

Liz Smith, Rhoda Grant, John Mason and Paul McLennan touched on the frequency with which we hold public inquiries, but there are also the issues of urgency, which Martin Whitfield covered. As he said, there is a demand for remedy before the harm is repeated. I have concerns that we are not seeing that urgency.

Covid inquiries provided one of the most striking comparisons. The Covid inquiry in Australia was completed within a matter of months after the end of the pandemic. Here we are, in Scotland, years on, still awaiting the final modules and recommendations, when we know that another pandemic could happen at any time.

The issues must be dealt with timeously, including for the victims. Victims die as a result of the actions that we are investigating. Again, I think about issues that pertain to the hospital inquiry, which we have talked about at length in the Parliament, and rightly so, and to the Eljamel inquiry.

I will use my remaining few seconds to touch on the speech that the clerks prepared for me. The committee considers it essential for transparency and accountability that the relevant public bodies respond promptly to public inquiries, and there is a question of timeframes in that regard.

We also recommended the establishment of a central public inquiries unit. I would like to see, perhaps in correspondence to the committee, a more in-depth response to that recommendation, because there is a glaring inefficiency in the process. Lord Hardie—a former Lord Advocate—trying to get an internet connection feels like one of the most inefficient and ridiculous uses possible of public inquiry time. There should be a standard operating procedure that can be followed so that we can get things moving and so that people can receive the justice that they are hungry for. The committee heard that message loudly and clearly across those nine months.

::I am pleased to do so. I declare an interest as a witness to the Eljamel public inquiry, in common with my colleague Liz Smith. I pay tribute to the FPA Committee clerks, who are outstanding, and to my colleagues on the committee for all their contributions to the inquiry and the work that we have done over recent years. I pay particular tribute to our convener, who has led the committee in exemplary fashion during my time on the committee. I cannot comment on his behaviour before that.

The question of why so many inquiries are taking place was perhaps not covered by our inquiry’s terms of reference, but it became a key consideration in the way in which all members addressed the issue. It is a question that should animate the Government, hence my intervention on the Deputy First Minister in her opening speech, because it is about the performance and culture of the Government and, frankly, trust in our democracy, which is a very profound question at the moment.

In relation to the balance of considerations that the Deputy First Minister pointed to in her thoughtful closing speech, the tension between the Government and the Parliament in making the decision on whether to have an inquiry is a core issue. Without an inquiry, people are denied justice and access to information and transparency, and parliamentarians can ask whether the Government is satisfied and can stand in front of the people and make that justification. Frankly, I think that we came to the correct conclusions in that regard.

::I will take the member’s intervention in a moment.

I get that there are people in the chamber who do not agree that we should have a redistributive budget, but that is what is in place. Analysis by the Office for Budget Responsibility clearly shows that additional taxation has been introduced to produce the additional resources that the Scottish Government has benefited from.

::Given that the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government rightly ended her speech in valedictory terms, it is right that I also compliment her on a quarter century of service to our country and to our city of Dundee. I think that anyone would recognise the considerable personal sacrifices that are involved in the service by a politician of such tenure. She has my sincere best wishes for whatever comes next for her. [Applause.]

I anticipate that the clapping will end with the nice stuff. The good parts of this budget show a knackered SNP Government that is desperately trying to fix a few of its own mistakes. In that regard, it is back to form. The Government is trying to turn a corner on itself and the harm that is has wrought on Scotland’s public services and finances. However, let us be clear that the budget contains none of the transformative change that Scotland needs after two decades of the SNP.

It has been obvious to anyone with even a passing interest in the matter that the budget was always going to be agreed to. The SNP’s pretend brinkmanship has been exposed for what it always was, which is the same old SNP spin. Scottish Labour will not stand in the way of police officers, nurses and local services continuing to be funded at the start of the new financial year in just five weeks’ time. However, we know that this budget of half measures will not last the year. Independent experts from the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Fraser of Allander Institute have said so. The former said that areas of the budget are “increasingly detached from reality”.

This budget is more of the same financial chaos from the SNP. There were three consecutive years of emergency budgets in this parliamentary session alone, and another emergency budget is now a racing certainty for whoever forms the next Government in May. There was a spending review, but within days of its publication, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government told the Finance and Public Administration Committee that she did not expect it to last. There is no grip on the finances and no grasp of the peril into which the SNP is plunging Scotland.

Let us consider local government, which is at the sharp end of the SNP’s cuts. In a move straight out of John Swinney’s playbook of the past two decades, it has been mercilessly hammered yet again by this SNP Government. Year after year, the SNP in Edinburgh knifes local government and leaves local councillors to take the flak for the savage cuts that they are forced to mete out on communities. As we speak, councils are meeting to set their budgets for the coming year. Yet again, they are being forced into making eye-watering council tax rises, all because the SNP Government in Edinburgh refuses to give councils their fair share. Many councils now find themselves struggling to deliver even the most basic statutory services.

::Local government needs a sustainable budget that can be taken over the long term. As Mr Mason knows well, the spending review will lead to £500 million in cuts over the spending review period. Even the SNP’s councillors—including Ricky Bell, the resources spokesperson for the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities—are biting back.

The SNP has never been a party to ignore the chance to have financial sleight of hand. In this budget, it has tried to get away with claiming that it is uplifting the real living wage for social care workers while neglecting to say that money has been allocated only for the discretionary element and not for the statutory amount, leaving overstretched local authorities to pick up the pieces.

::It is absolutely clear from the information that has been provided by the Lord Advocate that this practice developed under the Scottish National Party Government. The Lockerbie bombing and the Glasgow terror attack are completely different from—and not comparable to—the cases since 2011 that have been presented in her information. There was a clear change of approach and culture at that point.

However, as has already been mentioned, three times last week, the Lord Advocate said in very specific terms that she was able to inform the First Minister about the details of the case because,

“From the point at which an indictment is served, there is no limitation on its terms being made public.”—[Official Report, 18 February 2026; c 77.]

Those are the Lord Advocate’s words. We now know that the Lord Advocate provided the First Minister with that information in March 2025.

So, Lord Advocate, is a new justification being provided today that is different from the one that was provided last week? It certainly seems that, three times last week, that justification was made and Parliament was misled.

::The cabinet secretary says that people from across Dundee can access the centre, but is it not the case that only patients who are already registered with the Lochee practice will be able to do so?

::Lots of fine-tuning choices can be made. Mr Greer might be right that there are more progressive ways to apply parts of different taxes, and we continue to have those arguments. However, the idea that you just do not make such choices and therefore have less money for public services has been the SNP front bench’s approach—it asked for an additional £90 billion for spending but opposed £45 billion of revenue raisers. Frankly, that is incomprehensible and ludicrous.

The reality is that the SNP will never take the bold choices that are needed to change this country for the better. Time and again, it puts party before country—receiving tip-offs about court cases, circling the wagons to protect its own, blurring the lines between Government and party, colluding and covering up, and offering grieving families cash and trips to Disneyland rather than honesty and accountability.

::That is absolutely the case, and the First Minister should be ashamed of it.