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My constituent Michael Rankin is 12 and suffers from the degenerative condition Duchenne muscular dystrophy. He can still walk with an aid at home, but his mother does not know for how long that will continue.

The First Minister will be aware of the efforts of Scottish parents who are seeking access to the drug Givinostat, which is used to treat the condition by holding back the progression of irreversible muscle damage. The drug has now been approved by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency and can be accessed through the national health service through the early access programme. It is now being prescribed in some NHS trusts in England and Wales, but the Scottish Medicines Consortium is yet to assess its use here. In the meantime, sadly, health boards are not prescribing the drug. For boys such as Michael, time is muscle, so will the First Minister urgently agree to meet parents, including Nicola Rankin, to learn more about how the drug could be life-changing for those boys?

Will the cabinet secretary concede the point that alarm bells were ringing about the sustainability of Scotland’s social security budget before the spring statement and that we put those questions to the Government at that point? How does the Government intend to plug the £1.9 billion gap that we will face by the end of this decade? She cannot simply say that the money will turn up from somewhere; she must start to plan for that now. Will there be tax rises, or will there be public service cuts?

As the Government has said in its defence, time and again, it is about priorities and choices. The problem with this Government is that it has the wrong priorities and has made the wrong choices.

Ultimately, the best means by which we can reduce the benefits bill across the whole UK, but in particular in Scotland, is by delivering growth. The SNP Government has failed to do that and, now, the Labour Party is undermining it, too. Only yesterday, we found out that the International Monetary Fund has downgraded UK growth forecasts for this year and next. Inflation is set to rise, and GDP per capita will barely grow this year. Borrowing, and the cost of borrowing, is soaring under Labour.

Labour will say that that is a consequence of tariffs, when we all know that it was Rachel Reeves who talked down the UK economy prior to that first budget, and who fundamentally undermined the UK economy with the budget and then with the spring statement. Those effects—the effects of Labour in Government—will be felt in Scotland. According to the IMF, struggling families—that is, those in work and those on benefits—will be paying the price of a Labour Government in the form of higher prices in the shops and lower wage growth this year and into the future. As the IMF warns, that issue is being faced primarily by the UK and the US, which are the principal outliers in that respect.

We can compare that with the situation under the previous Conservative Government, when inflation was falling, interest rates were on a downward trajectory and Scotland was receiving a record block grant from Westminster. Now, we are seeing the Labour Government—[Interruption.]

Michael Marra can laugh about the benign position that Labour was left with that has been ruined by Rachel Reeves, but his Government is now taking decisions that will cut £900 million from the Scottish budget into the future.

However, the SNP cannot simply wring its hands and blame others in respect of the predicament in which it finds itself. The SNP Government’s addiction to increasing welfare spend means that public services will now suffer more than they were going to suffer already. Keir Starmer is treating pensioners, business owners, workers and farmers as fools, but the SNP Government is not levelling with them, either. It cannot simply blame others, because, by 2030, its benefits deficit will be £2 billion.

Willie Rennie, who is not in the chamber at the moment, was right to point out structural challenges that the Government is failing to address because of its approach to benefits. Those challenges relate to labour market trends, Scotland’s demographics and economic inactivity, which the SNP Government is still not taking seriously enough.

We all want to live in a society that looks after vulnerable people. That can be achieved alongside and with welfare reform. I say to ministers that realism must prevail in all the budgetary decisions that the Parliament takes. They cannot simply hope that the money will turn up or that the taxpayer will, ultimately, foot the bill. The Scottish Government needs to get a grip on long-term trends in welfare. The Labour Government has made that more urgent, but the Scottish Government cannot in any way say that it is on a sustainable path. It needs to act now.

The debate so far has been interesting. I listened carefully to Maggie Chapman and her lecture on dignity and respect; it is a pity that she does not show the same commitment to dignity and respect for the rule of law to our Supreme Court and to the women who need and want safe spaces in Scotland.

I also listened carefully to Clare Adamson. Until that point, the debate had been fair-minded and reasonable, but—to quote Neil Kinnock back to her—it was sad and regrettable that she sought to

“play politics with people’s lives”

and people’s benefits. The same goes for Gordon MacDonald, who sought to turn this important and complex debate into a constitutional one.

I share the cabinet secretary’s concern about the tone, timbre and technical nature of the spring statement. It was an emergency budget in all but name, and it proves the point that Labour—just as we have seen with past Labour Governments—cannot be trusted to run the economy or to keep to its word.

I also share some of Liz Smith’s concerns about the nature, and more importantly the timing, of the welfare cuts. It is clear that the Labour Government has been forced into taking those decisions because of the black hole in the budget that it has created since it came to office last year. These measures reek of desperation—they were not planned.

We would welcome one thing: a debate on the future of welfare, not just in the rest of the UK but here in Scotland. Nonetheless, let us not beat around the bush—this is just yet another broken promise from a broken-promises Labour Government. It said that it would not raise national insurance, and it did. That will hamper people getting back into jobs and make it more difficult for the Labour Government to achieve its objective of getting people off benefits and back into work.

Appallingly, one of Labour’s first acts in coming to office was to take winter fuel payments away from pensioners, which—I remind the cabinet secretary—the SNP has still only partially restored, despite what it claims.

The Labour Party has created a budget black hole of immense proportions, but that does not let the SNP off the hook, either. I will come to the black hole that the SNP has created.

I accept the cabinet secretary’s point in respect of the UK Government, but has the Scottish National Party Government not made the same mistake at various points, when it has cut funding for employability at the same time as the benefits bill has been rising?

Will the cabinet secretary give way?

To ask the Scottish Government how much it projects to spend on social security by 2029-30, including how much of this it estimates will arise from Barnett consequential funding. (S6O-04541)

Has someone written his question for him?

In a bid to plug what is set to become a £2 billion benefits-induced budget black hole, the Scottish Government says that it will reform public services. This year, the Scottish National Party has set aside £30 million for an invest-to-save scheme. Can the minister say in what areas the Government will be looking to make savings in the social security portfolio? How much is she estimating to save as part of that process?

The Deputy First Minister is shaking her head. She is, in part, an architect of the £800 million black hole in the Scottish budget, which is a result of the Scottish economy not growing in line with the UK economy.

The cabinet secretary’s statement proves that the SNP Government is simply not serious about growing the economy and is certainly not committed to cutting the soaring benefits bill. Getting people off benefits and back into work is good for growth, society, individuals and their families. Fixing Scotland’s broken benefits system is not just desirable but essential, which the Scottish Government does not seem to recognise.