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To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of the impact of the reported rising childcare costs on families, particularly those on low and middle incomes, in light of recent research by the Coram Family and Childcare charity. (S6O-04533)

Although a part-time nursery place for a child under the age of two now costs an average of £70.51 per week in England, after working-parent entitlements are taken into account, that represents a 56 per cent decrease since last year. In Scotland, a part-time nursery place for a child under two costs an average of £122.38, which represents a 7 per cent rise since 2024. Clearly, that will hit lowest-paid workers hardest, with many families in Scotland having to pay £50 more a week than families in England are paying for the same childcare. What will the Scottish Government do to address that inequality?

If it is short, Mr Stewart.

I point to what happened less than 24 months ago, when we saw a Prime Minister suddenly decide to change their fiscal rules and throw them out of the window. We saw a sudden drop in confidence in the United Kingdom among markets around the world and investors in this country. To risk such economic instability at this time is an utterly reckless proposition.

While we are in the midst of these global challenges, the UK Government is taking long-term decisions to grow our economy. As we have heard, the OBR recognised that last week, and it is upgrading its growth forecast for next year and, indeed, for every year thereafter, with a cumulative growth forecast that is now higher than was expected at the time of the budget.

The OBR can see that the decisions that this UK Government is taking will lead to economic growth. The increase of £2.2 billion on defence spending in 2025-26 will mean more jobs and more investment right here, in Scotland. In 2023-24, the Ministry of Defence spent more than £2 billion in Scotland, supporting 25,600 jobs. Current UK defence investment represents a huge boost for Scottish shipbuilding, with the £4.2 billion contract to build five type 26 frigates on the Clyde supporting 1,700 jobs directly and 2,300 jobs in the supply chain. While the SNP sends shipbuilding jobs abroad, the UK Labour Government is investing in people and industry here, in the UK and in Scotland. That is the difference that a UK Labour Government can make for our economy and for our national security.

I want to touch on house building. The UK Labour Government is taking bold steps to grow the economy, not least by introducing the most ambitious set of planning reforms in decades to get Britain building, with a target of 1.5 million new homes in England over the next five years. What is the conclusion of the OBR? It says that there will be a real GDP increase of 0.2 per cent by 2029-2030 and 0.4 per cent within the next 10 years. That will add £15.1 billion to our economy and is the biggest positive growth impact that the OBR has ever reflected in its forecasts. That significant action by the UK Labour Government to build more homes, to tackle homelessness and to grow our economy is endorsed by the independent OBR. That is the difference that a UK Labour Government can make.

What about house building in Scotland? Completions are down 7 per cent, new starts are down 9 per cent and the approval of affordable homes is down a staggering 48 per cent from its peak in 2018. I raise that issue because, in the East Lothian constituency, which is part of the South Scotland region, 80 out of every 100,000 people are still living in temporary accommodation, while the Scottish average is 59. There is a housing emergency in Scotland, and the Scottish Government has admitted that. However, the SNP is doing nothing; in fact, last year, it cut the affordable housing budget by 22 per cent.

The “Truth About Youth” survey for 2025, which was published today, reached out to young Scottish people and asked them what their number 1 issue was. Their number 1 issue is affordable housing, with 51 per cent bothered by the issue.

It is a pleasure, as always, to follow Liz Smith and to respond to the challenge that she has put to members today. Perhaps a debate in a more traditional format might assist us in understanding that better.

The UK chancellor is absolutely right to point to the global challenges that all the major economies are facing. The world has changed. To dismiss that is to deny the reality that we are seeing with the conflict in the middle east, the war in Ukraine, volatile energy prices and despots and dictators seeking to disrupt and divide. Just today, we see markets and economies the world over holding their breath as they wait for President Trump’s announcement at 9 o’clock—our time—this evening.

I do not have time.

In the survey, 48 per cent said that affordable housing is the most important issue for their future.

To close, I will pick up one other element from the “Truth About Youth” survey. In that survey, 40 per cent of the young people who responded said that they thought that their childhood was worse than it would have been when their parents were growing up. Only 24 per cent said that they felt that it was better. That is a damning indictment of a Government that has been in power for all or most of the lives of the young people who responded. It is this Scottish Government that is responsible for that, not another Government.

Therefore, while we discuss the impact of the UK Government’s spring statement and the money and investment that it represents, the challenge for the Government here is to consider its impact and what it chooses to do with its resources.

If Kevin Stewart does not mind, I would like to get started first.

The UK Government is working hard to secure a deal with the US, but, in the meantime, there is no doubt that the volatility in the global markets will impact our economy. The chancellor is grappling with these changed and uncertain circumstances, and, in this increasingly unstable and unpredictable world, increasing defence spending was the right choice for our national security. Anyone who argues against that fails to understand the genuine severity of the global moment.

Will the member take an intervention?

As others have done, I extend my condolences and thoughts to Keith Brown and to the family and friends of Christina McKelvie. As the First Minister rightly said, she was “a force of nature”.

It is a genuine pleasure to close the debate on behalf of Scottish Labour. In Liz Smith’s Schools (Residential Outdoor Education) (Scotland) Bill—I compliment her on introducing it—we see an opportunity to move education in Scotland forward. We see an opportunity to bring back to the centre of our education principles those principles on which the curriculum for excellence was founded. If nothing else, this debate has moved Oliver Mundell’s thinking on the curriculum for excellence, and I absolutely and whole-heartedly welcome that.

The curriculum for excellence is a national responsibility, and we have had interesting discussions about whether the costs of meeting a national responsibility, through the bill, can be met. If we were to turn round and say that the Government would not pay for the laptops, the desks or the chairs in schools, there would rightly be an outcry. The benefit of residential outdoor education has always been accepted by members across the Parliament. More importantly, its importance is understood across academia and the teaching profession, and, perhaps most importantly, it is understood by our young people themselves.

Residential outdoor education allows for the fulfilment of an aspect of the curriculum for excellence that we greatly struggle to fulfil within the confines of the classroom. Today, we have an opportunity to empower our schools and young people to take a different approach—an approach that suits them and allows them to show their true selves to their teachers, and which also allows the teachers, as observers, to make assessments of young people without having to be directly part of the learning process. Such observation is invaluable.

I still whole-heartedly agree with the principles of the curriculum for excellence, and I will continue to drag support for it out of Oliver Mundell, but if the curriculum for excellence is to work—if it is to be based on experiences and to create better adults as a result of their journey through childhood—we need to remember that, as Bill Kidd said, residential outdoor education ticks a human rights box as well.

Willie Rennie talked about the lack of evidence that progress has been made on outdoor education. In his closing speech, Ross Greer highlighted—albeit that it was not a deliberate attempt on his part—the need for a mix of outdoor education and the residential outdoor education that we are talking about today. That is important.

I very much welcomed some important and significant contributions to the debate but will selfishly pick on the one by my colleague Carol Mochan, because of something that she said that resonated with me, as someone who should declare an interest as a former teacher.

Residential outdoor education is frequently a key milestone in a child’s journey through school. They do not remember the maths lesson and rarely remember the poetry one, though they might sometimes remember a visitor or a trip to the pantomime. However, all who have had the benefit of experiencing residential outdoor education think back to that moment when the teacher looked like an idiot because they could not do something, or to the moment when they were able to do something that no one else in the class could do.

People remember when they celebrated eating a deeply overbaked and burnt bit of sugar as they sat round a fire, watching the sparkles going up into the evening and doing something that the curriculum for excellence asks our youngest children to do, which is to look up to the sky in amazement and perhaps, for the first time, to see stars without light pollution. Those are the experiences that live with young people for the whole of their lives, and the stories that we have heard today from members show that some of them stick very hard.

I wish that I did not have to do this, but I will spend the final part of my speech taking up Ross Greer’s comment about brinkmanship. Nothing further can happen with this bill without a financial resolution. Under rule 9.12 of standing orders, the only entity that can bring that financial resolution is the Scottish Government, which has, for the past eight months, talked about reaching out, seeking consensus and working with other parties and whose First Minister has stood up on a significant number of occasions—which I have welcomed—and said that this is a Parliament where the Scottish Government no longer has a majority.

Any strategy that would prevent stage 2 from even starting or that would formally prevent members from lodging amendments to try to improve the bill because of the need for the sort of resolution that—with the exception of what happened at decision time last night—normally passes with unanimity across the chamber, is a disappointing strategy for a Scottish Government that represents Scotland.

More than Liz Smith’s passion for it, outdoor learning is a proven pedagogical tool for teaching the experiences in the curriculum for excellence, which is the national curriculum that operates across Scotland. Does Oliver Mundell agree with that?