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As we have heard, the port at Cairnryan provided a lot to the local community. What assessment has the Government made, or will it make, of the impact that the decision might have locally? What support will be provided to those workers and communities in the wake of this absolutely appalling decision?

We all know that the benefits of active travel are wide ranging, from its environmental benefits to those for the health and wellbeing of the population. We should place significant focus on encouraging and facilitating active travel, which is why I reiterate that the Scottish Labour’s amendment calls for 10 per cent of the transport budget to be allocated to it.

We do not make that request without reason. Today’s debate has recognised the progress that we have made, but we must focus on what more there is still to do. Isolation, poor housing, health inequalities and poor transport links impact the poorest and most vulnerable in our society more than anyone else. It is therefore crucial that any active travel plan has the livelihood and opportunities of those in our most-deprived areas at its core.

Yes, we can welcome investments in e-bikes, cycling and walking paths, and more. However, those investments do little to improve the health outcomes for those who are most in need if we do not bring them closer to our communities and make it as feasible as possible for people to use active travel routes.

Equitable access to active travel is a factor in tackling health inequalities, which must be a priority for Parliament. We know that health inequalities create some of the biggest challenges that Scottish society faces. As my colleague Neil Bibby mentioned, for active travel to become a successful reality, it is crucial that the Scottish Government improves its performance in two areas where it has failed recently.

First, the SNP must stop cutting local government services. With political will and pressure from SNP back benchers, the Government could create high-quality, well-funded, accessible and affordable services, including active travel services, up and down the country. To cut the budgets of councils—thus cutting their ability to provide solid travel infrastructure—and then come to the chamber today with a self-congratulatory motion should shame SNP and Green MSPs, who stood on a manifesto of investment but have presided over horrific cuts to the services on which our communities rely.

Further, cutting train services and increasing the costs of train travel amid a cost-of-living crisis puts a strain on the pockets of millions and will not encourage people to choose active travel. It is vital that more people choose to walk, cycle or use public transport instead of a car, for the sake of future generations and our planet. However, we must make that choice a clear and easy one to make. The Scottish Government has failed in that regard.

Active travel is a worthwhile cause to pursue, so I am glad that we are having this debate. I had the privilege of joining Paths for All at Kilmarnock train station in my constituency. I walked through one of the newly installed active travel routes there, and it was clear to me how beneficial those routes could be if they were rolled out properly and more widely.

However, we have to get the basics right. We have to take a gendered approach to those routes, to ensure that they are accessible to women and that women feel safe on them, and they must be accessible to other vulnerable groups, such as the young, the elderly and the disabled. We have to invest in rail and bus services to keep them frequent and close to communities, with low fares. We have to ensure that active travel routes serve those whom health inequalities impact the most.

In doing so, we will take steps towards improving the health and lifestyle outcomes of those who have been worst impacted by the cuts of the Scottish and UK Governments in recent years, and we will give the active travel plan for Scotland the best chance of being successful. Therefore, I urge colleagues to back the Scottish Labour amendment this evening.

To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of the number of low-income households that will not be eligible for the £150 payment to help tackle the rising cost of living. (S6O-00876)

A new study from Energy Action Scotland has revealed that as many as 211,000 additional people in Scotland—a 43 per cent rise from 2019—are set to fall victim to fuel poverty this year. Almost all of them are in households that already have low incomes. Is it correct that the system that is proposed by the Scottish Government, which distributes the payment via council tax banding, will spread support too thinly, and that low-income households, who, proportionately, will suffer more as a result, will not receive the targeted support that they need?

There will be no overnight fix but I ask that we continue with this important work. Thank you, Presiding Officer

I thank everyone who has spoken so far in this necessary debate for their contributions. I would like to focus on the problems that are evident in our prisons. When we talk about problems with substance misuse, we are really talking about people who have, for one reason or another, slipped through the net. In so many cases, they will encounter some form of the justice system along that path.

Fortunately, we now seem to be at the point at which the majority recognises that simply locking up someone with a serious addiction will not make that problem go away. Evidence shows that prison stays only exacerbate existing substance misuse problems, leaving a legacy of addiction and distress.

Whether prisons can be reformed to prevent that and provide the opportunity for more sustainable rehabilitation is perhaps a wider debate, but it is one that we dearly need to have. We will not be able to get through all that today, but we can say that the current model is not working.

Where there should be adequate support to get drug users back on their feet, there is far too often still more of a focus on abstinence and a lack of effective intervention to look at a person’s misuse from a long-term perspective.

Above all, the most significant barrier to any progress is the massive overcrowding within our prison system. The incredibly hard-working healthcare staff who work in prisons are already facing unimaginable pressures and, on top of that, they must manage time constraints that in any ordinary circumstances would be deemed to be completely unacceptable. There are so few of them, and so many people who need help.

As always, just like a vast number of the problems that we speak about in the chamber, we expect exceptional results, but we seem to be unwilling to fund them.

If we insist on sending so many people there, it is time that we viewed prison as a unique opportunity to address many of the health inequalities that blight the worst off in our society. However, because of the same pressures on the entire NHS, with the added problems of working in a fractious and poorly managed environment, that will always be difficult to achieve for staff who feel like they are not being supported. In order to give them that support, we need to be honest with the public that, if we are to tackle the drug problem in this country and make our justice system more effective, we will require greater investment and a much longer-term approach, which are two things that the world of politics is often poorly prepared to deal with.

If we continue to address each problem individually, it will take a great deal of time to make any headway. However, as members will expect, my position is a socialist one of understanding that the root of all these problems is socioeconomic inequality that has gone on for generations and will continue for generations to come if more is not done. If we do not seriously tackle the low-pay, high-debt, exorbitant-housing-cost society that we have built, reliance on substances to deal with the pressure will only get worse. The minute that someone is made homeless or put on the cusp of homelessness through losing a job or unaffordable rents, their mental and physical health will rapidly deteriorate and the likelihood that they will look to substances to alleviate that pressure will increase. Those are largely the people who end up in our prisons. I ask again, why are we not dealing with this problem at the source?

Scottish Labour believes that we must begin to look at the several decades in which drug misuse has spiralled out of control in Scotland, and we have come to the conclusion that that should be a top priority for every Government, not just here in Edinburgh, but also in London, and it needs to remain a priority for a long time to come.

Yes—I will do so very quickly as I know that we are tight for time.

Is there somewhere to which you could direct the committee where we could ask for that work to be done? Would it be NES? Where could we get that work progressed?

That is lovely. Thanks very much.

Dr Marshall made an excellent point when he talked about how people’s access to money is linked to health.

My question is on allied health professionals. The evidence that we have heard today and on other days makes it clear that they can help in terms of inequalities in health. Do we have enough information about which AHPs are in primary care settings and whether there is a weighting towards areas that might need more of that support? Is more work needed on that?

I thank Jenni Minto for bringing the debate to the chamber, and I welcome those in the gallery. It is appropriate that, after marking international women’s day yesterday, we focus today on a pioneering woman who made such an important contribution to Scottish and wider society. Moreover, it is important that I put on record Scottish Labour’s support for those across Edinburgh who are taking part in fundraising events that will, I hope, secure funds for a statue for Elsie Inglis—a fitting tribute in her home city.

The efforts of campaigners are wide ranging and they include events held by the Edinburgh branch of Girlguiding Scotland as part of a two-week effort that started at the beginning of this month, such as a sponsored “sit still” event—referring to, as we have heard, the suggestion that Elsie Inglis should

“go home and sit still”

in response to her offer to open a female-operated hospital unit on the western front. I am pleased that cross-party support for those events was achieved at the City of Edinburgh Council in October last year, as we heard, which further highlights the wide range of support for tributes to a trailblazing woman.

As we have heard, the importance of Elsie Inglis’s contribution throughout her lifetime cannot be overstated. Although we are well aware of Elsie’s national influence, it is important, as we stand at the bottom of the Royal Mile, to recognise the importance of her contributions to this city. Establishing medical institutions to educate and to practise, Elsie Inglis helped to create opportunity for women and girls across Edinburgh.

That important work went beyond medicine to her strong campaigning for women’s suffrage, which was a huge fight in the late 1800s and early 1900s—a fight that women would eventually win, thanks to the work of those such as her. Her significant contribution went further than a campaign for women’s right to vote; what is important is that it was also for equality in education and in the workplace. That shows Elsie’s vision in aiming for equality of opportunity for women in politics, in education and in whatever career they chose. Who would have thought that, more than 100 years after her death, women across the world would still be fighting for equality in such things as politics? We will hope that, in the near future, there are no more firsts and no more glass ceilings to break. However, it is an apt reminder that work is still to be done.

I must not conclude my remarks without making reference to the international impact of Elsie Inglis. When the War Office rejected her offer of her services at home, she took them abroad, in the form of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals for Foreign Service, where she would assist those who were wounded by war—most notably, in Serbia, where, as we have heard, there remain several acts of homage in recognition of her and those who worked in her hospitals.

Elsie Inglis was a pioneering Scottish woman who had significant impact and influence anywhere that she went. Her contribution was to the city of Edinburgh through medicine, to Scotland through her contributions to the suffrage movement, and internationally, through setting up hospitals in countries that were impacted by the most awful violence of war. It is right that we commemorate her today and that we again offer support to those who are fundraising for a statue in Edinburgh to mark the life and work of Elsie Inglis.

It is so nice to hear members talking in the chamber today.