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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.

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?

We debate many motions that thank various workers and groups for their efforts. Although such motions have a place in the work that we do here, the weight of the crisis that affects ambulance availability and the subsequent stress that is caused to patients and front-line workers should hold greater sway than usual.

Although I applaud all of our dedicated staff, I will use my time better in trying to find out why the Government keeps letting them down. My standing here telling paramedics, call responders and technicians how thankful we are for their work will have made no difference if I am back here in a year doing exactly the same, while an unresponsive Government continues to make excuses for the problems.

We cannot change processes, adjust targets and rebrand services and call that reform. It is not. It is a branding exercise, not responsible governance. The key to the whole situation is simple. The Ambulance Service is underfunded, understaffed and lacking in resources: fix that, and we fix the problem.

I cannot stress enough to the Government that chasing targets and small headline improvements over proactive structural reform is not the way to run a health service. It is disappointing that the health secretary wasted his time this week briefing the Daily Record on his statement before informing Parliament, because doing so only further ingrains the image that this is all about expectation management and public presentation.

I do not want to manage the expectations of the woman who was left lying in Ayr town centre for four hours last month as she waited for an ambulance; I want her to be treated and back home with her family. That example is not even one of the extreme ones. Reports of patients waiting more than 40 hours for an ambulance create anxiety and stress throughout many communities, which are well aware that a delay in making it to hospital could, as we know, be the difference between life and death.

At least there is some positive news this week, as Covid rates seem to be declining across Scotland. I believe that we should use any breathing space that that allows us to focus all our efforts on preparing the NHS for the coming winter, and on alleviating pressure on the worst-impacted parts of our hospitals. Instead of doing that work, however, we might have to pick up the pieces from the missteps that have been taken over the past couple of years.

As my party colleagues and other members have mentioned, a concerning clinical backlog needs to be addressed right now that requires new field hospitals to tackle it. That is exactly what we should be doing. I understand that the health secretary has not ruled that out; I would support any steps to achieve that goal. Regardless of how it is reported, it is important for patients and the communities.

Before I close, I reiterate that all the problems—queues of ambulances, lack of beds, overworked staff—are deeply interconnected. We cannot tackle them without addressing the problem of underfunding. The Government has committed £1 billion of investment in the NHS over the next five years. Although some of that investment has gone towards training and recruiting new staff, that process will take almost a decade to bear fruit. In fact, nearly all the funding was already earmarked before May, with a fair amount of previous commitments already having been shelved.

That investment will not be enough. The NHS needs emergency measures to cope now. We see from feelings in the chamber that reports from our constituents suggest that the public wants action, too. After emergency measures, we need to address the problem of long-term planning and the failure to bring in well ahead of time the resources that the NHS requires.

The chamber should deal with the difficult issues, and we should pursue whatever works for the NHS. The strength of Scottish Labour’s motion reflects that intention, so I hope that it will be supported in that spirit.

I thank Michael Marra for bringing this important debate to the chamber.

The increased number of former professional footballers speaking publicly about their dementia diagnoses in recent years has undoubtedly encouraged increased research into the links between playing the sport professionally and being diagnosed with a neurodegenerative disease. The bravery of those former professionals in speaking out means that we can have this debate. Therefore, I encourage the Scottish Government to act purposefully to support professional footballers who are living with dementia and those who are currently playing the sport and might be worried about the impacts that it could have in later life.

Other members have quoted the statistics on the increased link, so I will not repeat them. However, the University of Glasgow found that, although the likelihood of being diagnosed with a disease such as dementia might vary depending on career length, it does not vary depending on the era during which a player played. That confirms that we have made little progress in making the game safer, which is an important point.

The diagnosis of those former footballers relates to an injury caused at work. That is the link. Football is a global, multibillion-pound industry in which a decent career can ensure financial stability for life. However, that was not always the case for footballers who played in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Their commitment to football often only just managed to pay the bills and put food on the table. It is important to note that many professional football players today are not paid the breathtaking figures that we read about in relation to high-profile players. They continue to play football, doing a job—just like the rest of us—that makes them much more susceptible to conditions such as dementia than the average person.

Wider discussion is needed in the football and health communities about reducing the incidence of dementia among professional footballers in the future. As I said, there is a clear link between playing professionally and dementia. It is an industrial injury.

It is in the Scottish Parliament’s power to right a historical wrong, lead the way and classify such incidences as cases of industrial injury. If we do so, players who are affected will be entitled to receive the industrial injury disablement benefit and have the fact that they were injured at work recognised by the state. That would be a small but important step, and it is supported by the Professional Footballers Association Scotland and the GMB. It would go towards helping former professionals who are affected and would be a great step for the future of current players who might be worried.

We can all agree that the personal stories of those former professionals and their families are devastating. Too many lives have already been lost and too many more people will suffer unduly if no action is taken. The Scottish Government has the power to act. In the interests of supporting and protecting our former, current and future professional players, I support Michael Marra’s motion and hope that the Government will do more with purpose before it is too late for many players.

Sorry, Presiding Officer.

This should be a lesson about proactivity rather than reactivity. Let us not wait until something becomes a media scandal before we tackle it. I am not sure that Scotland can take the situation for much longer. We need to deal with it now, because a crisis could become a catastrophe.

Like many members, I have been inundated with requests from constituents who want to return to face-to-face GP consultations. For the most part, people simply want a feeling of assurance from a friendly face. After all, so many of our constituents, particularly older people, receive a great deal of social as well as medical support from their local GP practice. It is understandable that losing that has been a real drain on so many lives.

Given all that, I think that, within the sensible confines of Covid regulations, we should be returning to face-to-face appointments. We do not expect that to happen immediately; the public are simply asking for clarity about when it might happen, and at the moment there is little that I can tell people—I can only calm their concerns.

Equally, I understand why, with Covid cases rising and fears about the approaching winter, many people still have concerns about returning to some form of normality. We must be led by the science and a disciplined focus on utilising the proven methods that limited the spread of cases in the past.

In doing that, we must be clear with the public about what it means. Thousands of people have been patient and have stayed away from the NHS unless they thought that their cases were urgent, but that will undoubtedly mean that serious illness has gone undetected. We have to let people know—sooner rather than later—when they can get back to their doctors. I want to work with the Government on that, as I am sure all members do. We will get the message out, but there has to be some direction from the top.

In chorus with other members, I emphasise the amount of pressure and uncertainty that GPs and practice staff have been dealing with since March 2020. Public criticism of GPs is perhaps due to unclear communication, and the current situation is making things worse. No one should be under the illusion that care is not being provided. GPs, practice staff and their colleagues in wider primary care teams are supporting colleagues in acute care and are administering thousands of vaccine doses. In most cases, GPs and practice staff are working more than they have ever worked, and with that come fatigue, burnout and serious stress.

In a recent BMA survey of GPs, two thirds of respondents said that their current workload is unmanageable, and more than half said that their workload had got worse during the pandemic. In what sense does that suggest that the problem is under control? We seem to have stressed staff, patients who are worried that they will not receive the care that they need and ministers who are unresponsive to people’s plight. If we do not deal with the problem now, it will damage the NHS not just during the Covid period but for years to come.

Let us be honest. Staffing levels in local practices were a concern long before Covid became a part of everyday life. This is just one chapter in 14 years of SNP mismanagement of the NHS. A great many staff expressed concern about staffing levels in the years that led up to the pandemic. Had we listened, we might have a much easier road to recovery now.

I will.