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There seems to be general agreement that we must treat drug deaths in Scotland as a public health issue, not a matter of law and order. I think—I hope—that somewhere among members on the Tory benches, there is an understanding of that. In order to progress and pull our country out of the spiral, we will need to maintain that understanding, and my party will support measures to do so.

I am sure that my parliamentary colleagues will have noticed that, since Scotland re-established its Parliament in 1999, there has not been a parliamentary session in which drug deaths were not a serious concern for the constituents whom members are committed to represent. However, the seriousness with which the Parliament has treated the problem has only recently got anywhere near the level that is required to tackle it. Having seen some examples of other countries that have worked miracles to put a stop to deaths multiplying annually, we are now slowly waking up.

The Lord Advocate’s recent statement is simply realistic. It is not anything that the average person on the street would not understand as necessary. Drug abuse and its effects are not hidden away any more. We all see drug abuse, but far too many just want to keep it at arm’s length. Equally, the Lord Advocate’s intervention has had the positive effect of keeping the issue in the headlines during a time when, naturally, there has been a considerable focus on other health issues. That attention is sorely required.

Prior to Covid, a reform that was getting considerable attention—in no small part due to the great work of my party colleague Paul Sweeney—was safe consumption facilities. They are not an ideal solution, nor one that I particularly envisioned having to support, but over the years, it has become obvious that the scale of the problem in Scotland is well beyond slogans and awareness campaigns. We need to treat the issue with the same seriousness with which we treated the pandemic, and providing safe facilities to prevent death has been proven to work. That is one example of the direct and meaningful approaches that we need to take at all levels of health policy, policing and education. However, it requires serious funding.

In my region, NHS Ayrshire and Arran is experiencing the second highest rate of drug deaths in Scotland. Much of the work falls on the shoulders of community health workers, hospitals and the police, who are overworked, underpaid and left with resources that are stretched to breaking point. Undoubtedly, councils and health boards see the problem as a priority, but they simply do not have the funds to tackle it all the time. We need to expand community resources and improve access to residential rehabilitation and treatment to get on top of the issue. Part of that involves giving the police the time and training to support any reforms that take place, and not forcing through a new model with little consideration of those on the front line.

The police officers whom I have spoken to will be relieved to hear that a more pragmatic approach is now being taken on drugs, because it frees them up to do the policing that they joined the force to do. Included in that should be proper training, so that officers are prepared to respect the use of naloxone to prevent overdoses, as the minister mentioned.

The debate does not have to be about who can show themselves to be the toughest on people with serious addictions. If it becomes so, that is just about politics, not progress.

Poverty is at the heart of the issue. Although I fully endorse all the measures that I have mentioned, the biggest reform that we could push through to end the crisis would be to remodel our economy and society so that it does not have built into its architecture acceptance that the vast number of people should simply be left to struggle in desperation while others have more wealth than could ever reasonably be required.

To ask the Scottish Government what measures it has taken to address the consequences of the reduction of universal credit and any potential impact on child poverty. (S6O-00216)

As the cabinet secretary stated, all parliamentary parties, except the Tories, agree that this cut is shameful and it must be reversed. However, we must also recognise that, here in Scotland, we can mitigate the worst of the effects and help to tackle child poverty in particular. Will she therefore immediately use the powers that we have in Scotland to double the Scottish child payment, and will she commit to investigating doubling it again to meet the desperate need that we have in my region of South Scotland and across Scotland before we see instances of child poverty reaching desperate levels?

Scotland in 2021 should not require many of the services that Fulton MacGregor mentioned in his motion and in his speech. Decisions by the Scottish Government and the Conservative Government in Westminster have made it harder for people to get by and have ensured that fewer families are in stable well-paid employment. That means that more children live and grow up in poverty. The poverty that is associated with purchase of school uniforms is a direct impact of political decision-making. Families are being let down, so we must act with purpose to deliver the real radical change that is required to improve livelihoods and life chances.

The motion suggests that we should welcome the SNP-Green Party coalition pledge to introduce statutory guidance for schools to increase use of generic items of uniforms in order to reduce costs. I support any progressive steps to make buying school uniforms easier and less expensive for low-income families. I know the pressure that is felt by some parents to buy for their children items such as new school uniforms, when it is not really an expense that they can afford.

In 14 years of government, the SNP Government has taken the Tory cuts, multiplied them and passed them on to local communities, so I hope that I can be forgiven for being sceptical about the likelihood of the SNP-Green coalition taking the necessary steps to support our lowest-income families and communities. I hope that tonight’s debate will prove me wrong. I hope that the members who have spoken here will stand up and be counted on the issue.

In response to the need that has been created by political decision making, it has been encouraging to see so many groups and individuals in our communities doing all that they can to help parents to provide uniforms for children, whether that be in the form of donating directly to families or setting up uniform banks where uniforms can be handed in and collected by families. Communities are pulling together to help to alleviate the pressure that is put on their neighbours by poverty that is associated with purchase of school uniform and other items. That has been truly positive and has continued throughout the pandemic.

South Ayrshire School Clothing Bank in my area is a fine example of such work. It is run fully by volunteers, with a mission to ensure that every child is able to go to school in clothing that is just like that of their peers’, which the clothing bank believes can help their ability to learn, socialise and develop key interpersonal skills. However, I stress again that it is shameful that it has come to that. Although community intervention is welcome and the work of volunteers is admirable, the correct policies would have to be put in place to ensure that it is not needed.

With regard to local government, this year, despite more than a decade of cuts to its budget, Labour-run North Lanarkshire Council became the first council in the United Kingdom to introduce a clothing and footwear grant for nursery children. That is an example of a council doing what it can to give children the best start in life. It is clear to me that if such action was to be replicated across Scotland, our young people would start off with the best of benefits.

It is devastating that poverty that is associated with purchase of school uniforms exists in Scotland, and I agree with Fulton MacGregor that schools can and should do more to make generic and less expensive uniform items more accessible to parents of the children who attend. Having an exclusive supplier of expensive uniforms might work for a school, but it does not necessarily work for the low-income families whom it serves. I would welcome regular reviews of such arrangements.

The issue that we are debating today has much deeper causes—namely, fundamentally flawed policies that have failed the people who are most in need. To alleviate poverty that is caused by a host of factors, we must be more radical in our politics and stand up for those who have been let down by austerity and cuts. Only by doing that will we deliver the change that we truly need.

As Sue Webber mentioned, there has been a lot of discussion about the Feeley report, a key aspect of which is how we support the staff. How important is it that we get it right for the staff and make social care a fair work profession? I am particularly interested in some of the aspects that the trade unions are interested in around pay, terms and conditions, and social care being seen as a profession with proper structure in the way that staff are trained and employed. I want some feedback on what we should be looking at in that area.

Yes, that would be excellent, as Henry Simmons mentioned that issue at the start of the meeting.

On universal credit, I am in full agreement with Opposition parties across the UK as well as the Governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and the many councils that see the effects of these decisions on a daily basis. The cut is blatant vandalism and will ruin lives—it is as simple as that. It does not make any sort of economic sense, given that it will result in the Scottish economy losing more than £500 million a year.

However, that is far from my mind at the moment. The cut will not ruin the lives of the wealthy, of course, nor the lives of the hundreds of Tory MPs who waved it through, but it will ruin the lives of the worst off in our society—an ignored and belittled group who are repeatedly booted back down the ladder the minute they get their foot on a rung. When the so-called uplift ends in October, it will be one of the most blatant examples of punishing the poor to pay for the mistakes of the rich that we have seen in this country for some time.

The reality is that in a sensible country a meagre increase of £20 during an unprecedented health crisis would be seen as necessary and sensible. In many countries, the level of benefits available to people in need were significantly higher to begin with. The uplift rectified a small portion of the years of stripping away benefits in order to appear to be tough, but pushing people to the brink is not tough—it is a tragedy.

We speak about being a compassionate country and a society that is built on shared values of community and fairness, but that is all just for show if we attack at every turn those who are least able to get by. I know that Tory colleagues will say, as they often do, that what I am saying is evidence of an anti-Tory mindset. Let me be honest: I am anti-Tory—Boris Johnson is destroying not only my region, South Scotland, but the entire UK with decisions such as this cut. It will correctly be seen by the electorate as cruel.

When so many people are living hand to mouth, how can anyone stand by such a decision? It is not what we were elected to do, and the cut will damage families and communities for years to come. Decisions of this nature help to ingrain poverty and push communities that have been suffering for decades into a spiral of poor conditions and decreased wealth from which few ever escape. There is no trickle-down effect in places such as Kilmarnock, Tarbolton and Catrine; there is just the cold hard reality of an economy that does not work for the many. The £20 uplift gave a small respite from that and now we have to tell people that it will go. That is shameful.

Scotland should advocate for a floor under which we will not let people fall; part of that should be adequate benefits, but that is far from the only thing that is needed. The economic fallout from Covid has been worsened by years of deregulation, moving the ownership of wealth and assets overseas and a complete disregard for any kind of just taxation that addresses historical inequality.

That grand scheme—the £20 uplift—is a small symptom of a much larger plan to engineer a society for the rich at the expense of everyone else, and that is how we should view it. If you believe that a single parent who lost their job due to Covid should be punished while a hedge fund manager with 10 properties in five different countries should flourish, you are articulating a set of political priorities that I find truly abhorrent. History will look on your decision as disgraceful. However, it is not too late to do the right thing and put your name to the opposition of the planned cut—that is all we ask.

I thank Jamie Halcro Johnston for bringing the debate to the chamber.

The people who work in our Ambulance Service deserve our admiration and gratitude for the work that they do every day in responding to emergency situations—even more so for what they have done over the past 18 months of a global pandemic, when they have experienced pressure like never before. They have worked throughout lockdowns, putting others before themselves, and their contribution to our efforts to get through the pandemic cannot be overstated.

However, our thanks are nowhere near enough and do little to address the Government’s fundamental failure to properly provide health and emergency services. The problems that we see today in our Ambulance Service are not down to our workers but are down to Governments and ministers lacking the political will to intervene, invest and focus on issues that impact people’s daily lives.

The debate rightly considers our Ambulance Service workers’ positive contribution, but the situation that the service finds itself in now is serious. It predates the pandemic and reflects the Scottish Government’s inability to address issues with purpose in order to protect the services that thousands of people rely on every day.

Jamie Halcro Johnston’s motion notes the importance of having a well-connected Ambulance Service that serves rural communities such as his, in the Highlands, but the same is true in the South Scotland region, where ambulance waiting times can be lengthy, particularly for our rural communities. That adds to the existing problems that the Ambulance Service faces in other areas.

As I mentioned in a speech on ambulance services last week, neither expectation management nor improving media coverage should be the Government’s priority. Neither of those is acceptable for the woman from Ayr who waited four hours for an ambulance last month or for the families who have felt powerless as loved ones have waited as long as 40 hours. Those are personal stories and individual tragedies, such as that of Rebecca Stevenson from Paisley, who, aged 85, sadly died after waiting eight hours for an ambulance. It should not have taken that much for the Scottish Government to sit up and listen.

People are not asking for much. They are asking their Government to focus on the matters at hand—to address the fundamental issues in our health and emergency services, to deliver ambulance services that support incredibly hardworking staff and to ensure that there is confidence across our communities that they will be well served in emergencies.

I will support the Scottish Government in its efforts to resolve the issues that our Ambulance Service faces, but I will not sit back and accept commitments of investment that will take years to make any changes. The situation can by no means be rapidly sorted—indeed, several years of mismanagement have ensured that—but, with the political will and with the correct investment, focus and urgency, it can be turned around.

Underfunding, understaffing and a lack of resources have led our Ambulance Service to the difficult position that it now finds itself in. Workers have gone way beyond expectations during the pandemic, and the strain on them has been significant. It did not have to be this way, and it must not be this way again.

This evening, we are here—rightly—to highlight the importance of our Ambulance Service and its incredible workers, but that will do the service, its workers and our communities little good if we do not hold to account the people who are responsible for the serious issues that the Scottish Ambulance Service faces.

I will support the Scottish Government in its efforts to deliver change, but no more time can be wasted. The situation is urgent, and urgent action is needed because lives depend on it.

My last point is that I hope that the Scottish Government will step in and mitigate those plans where it can, because that is also the right thing to do.

Last weekend, I visited Mikeysline in Inverness, which is an organisation that is dedicated to supporting young people’s mental health. The staff highlighted how critical early intervention is, but the Government has consistently failed on that when it comes to its mental health strategy. Will the Scottish Government carry out any consultation or analysis to consider the effects on children’s long-term mental health of repeatedly isolating them due to Covid-19? Will it tell the Parliament what plans it has to utilise early intervention as a means of avoiding such effects becoming more serious?