Seòmar agus comataidhean

I will try to set a good example for once, Presiding Officer.

To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made, as part of its cross-Government co-ordination of Covid recovery policies, of the wider on-going impact of Covid-19, including on the economy. (S6O-01868)

I ask, with specific reference to my constituency, whether we have any data on the impact on the economies of Midlothian and the Borders. If the Deputy First Minister does not have that to hand, will he please write and provide me with it?

—four Tory chancellors in one year, and who could forget Liz Truss?

I think that that took Ms Webber by surprise, but she coped well.

I congratulate the member on securing the debate. I remember as far back as the days when ME was labelled “yuppie disease”, with the inference that it was a middle-class condition—at best psychosomatic and, at worst, just plain, privileged self-indulgence. Thank goodness that we have moved on, albeit not enough, and that ME is recognised by more people as a neurological condition.

It is certainly recognised as a neurological condition on the NHS Inform website, which says:

“Myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) or chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is a long term (chronic) neurological condition that affects the nervous and immune systems.

People with ME/CFS experience severe pain and fatigue ... when the body is not able to recover after using even small amounts of energy.”

The condition

“feels very different from ordinary tiredness. It might take a day or 2 to kick in after physical, mental, or emotional exertion ... It doesn’t go away with sleep or rest and affects everyday life ... The symptoms ... vary from person to person.”

Sometimes,

“you’ll be able to do some normal everyday activities. At other times, symptoms may get worse, affecting your daily life.”

Some

“physical or mental activities, or combinations of activities, can leave people with ME/CFS feeling completely exhausted. It can also lead to an increase in other symptoms.”

However, the issue, is that

“There’s no single test to detect ME/CFS. A diagnosis is made after other possible known causes for symptoms have been excluded.”

I support the comments that long Covid might have opened up more minds to the condition, whose varying impacts add to the complexities in diagnosis and around treatment—if suitable—and both physical and emotional support.

I, too, will give examples. I recall a colleague many years ago who suffered from ME when little was known about it. By way of explanation of how the condition impacted him, he told me how he could shave normally one day but could barely move the next, as if his internal electric circuitry had rebelled. The dramatic changes from one day to the next that the condition can bring means that people sometimes accuse others—wrongly—of faking it, or as Sue Webber said, of malingering.

I have the consent of a constituent to relay her experience and that of her son. She wrote:

“I’m happy for you to use my story if it’s anonymous, as in ‘a constituent’, or first name only, please. This is more for my son’s privacy than my own. Here is our story in short. When my son was 14, his life changed dramatically. He had been academically gifted, sporty and generally a social and happy boy who enjoyed life. He came down with ‘a bug’ that he never recovered from, and was later diagnosed with CFS/ME. For two years, he was housebound and unable to go further than our back garden, too unwell to attend school and isolated from friends. My son was offered no treatment and support was almost non-existent. I gave up my job to look after him. Everything was a struggle as this condition is hugely misunderstood. CFS/ME is much more than debilitating fatigue. He also suffers muscle aches, stomach pain, headaches, cognitive fog which makes learning very difficult, sleep disturbance and the fatigue affects everything he does. I spend my time caring for him and researching possible treatment or supplements that could help his recovery even a little. We’re now 4 years in and we have no support apart from a private specialist that we fund ourselves. We have spent thousands over the past few years on private consultations, supplements and medications to help his condition. Recovery is slow and costly, isolating and lonely.”

I note the complexities of the condition and I look forward to hearing the minister’s response to members’ contributions. I thank the member for bringing this important debate to the chamber. We have debated ME a few times, but we need to keep alert to the issue.

To ask the First Minister what discussions the Scottish Government has had with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities with regard to the proposals in some local authorities to reduce teacher numbers, given its commitment to increase teacher numbers by 3,500 by the end of the current parliamentary session. (S6F-01787)

I am in my last minute.

I have listened with interest to the contributions so far. Opposition members always fail to say how much proposals will cost on a recurring basis and from which existing budget the money will come. Neither is there essential recognition of the devastating impact of inflation.

I will go back to where I started. Every household in Scotland, including the dogs in the street, knows that its money is not going as far as it did before. Savings are having to be made. Choices are having to be made—shrinking back to the basics: rent, mortgage payments, heating bills and food. The Scottish Government is no different, just as it is no different for the domestic budgets of Wales and, indeed, England.

A budget debate is not my usual métier, but the principles of budgets are not a mystery. With an individual’s domestic budget, income needs to be balanced against expenditure, or borrowing will be required. The Scottish Government’s budget is no different, except that its income is, in the main, set by the UK and we have no borrowing powers for revenue.

Likewise, an individual’s budget has first to prioritise payments for necessities such as mortgages, rent, utilities and so on. Then, as inflation erodes the value of that income and costs rise, choices about savings or cuts have to be made. For some folk, the choice is now quite simply between food bills and energy bills. It is much the same for the Scottish Government. It has responsibility for billions of pounds, but the principles remain the same.

The necessities of government are the responsibilities that we all know about: delivering public services, including health, social care, education, the justice system and policing, and providing funding to local authorities. In most cases, some 80 per cent of what is provided is fixed in nature. For example, in health and social care, there are fixed costs associated with hospitals, all the staff, their salaries and pensions, ambulances, medical treatments and so on. That might seem obvious to us in Parliament, but many people do not understand that cutting into one budget and moving money to another would, if it were to have any substantial effect, perhaps mean cutting into staffing levels, for example.

The biggest slice of the Scottish budget rightly goes to health and social care, which accounts for nearly 33 per cent of the total. I do not think that we would argue with that being a priority. The next large chunk—almost 20 per cent—goes to local authorities via COSLA, which then divvies up the money to councils under an agreed formula that takes into account, inter alia, demographics, population, rurality and so on. The Scottish Government does not negotiate separately with each of the 32 local authorities in Scotland. I say that to start with in order to put the budget choices in context.

In my many years in Parliament, I have never known such pressures, which are felt across the UK, on Government budgets. In more than a decade of Tory Government, austerity—indeed, stagnation—was inbuilt. That was tolerable while interest rates and inflation were low and borrowing was cheap, but the UK economy was fragile. We can factor in the years of Covid, the war in Ukraine, Brexit and four Chancellors of the Exchequer in one year. We have a rudderless shambles of a UK Government that has no clear or consistent idea of how to manage the UK economy—otherwise, why were there four chancellors in 2022?

We have ended up where we are today, with general inflation at 10 per cent and food inflation reckoned to be nearer 15 per cent, while energy companies swim in unearned profits of billions of pounds. The Scottish Government, which is almost wholly dependent on the UK for its budget and is dealing with inflation of at least 10 per cent and pay demands to match, is firefighting as it has never had to do before.

Out of all the—[Inaudible.]

I thank the First Minister for her answer. As a former secondary school teacher—although it was some time ago—I have huge regard for the commitment of the profession. Indeed, I benefited, as someone from a working-class background, from state education through to university.

However, context is all, and budgets are, as a result of 10 per cent inflation, under severe pressure at Scottish Government and local government levels, with the same pressures applying in Wales and England, where teachers are on strike.

The issue of funding for education is not a Scottish Government problem: it is a United Kingdom-wide one and is a direct consequence of raging inflation, which Anas Sarwar sidestepped in his exchange with the First Minister. Is not it time that Rishi Sunak ditched his current policy of austerity to tackle the UK Government’s self-inflicted inflation, increased funding to the Scottish Government—and Wales, while we are at it—and dealt with the fallout of a decade of failed Tory policies, which have been exacerbated by Brexit—[Interruption.]

I will address that by quoting from the Finance and Public Administration Committee’s report—I do not know whether Mr Fraser is on that committee. In its preamble, the report says:

“It is clear from our scrutiny of the Scottish Budget 2023-24 that the Scottish Government is firefighting on a number of fronts.”

No wonder there is little opportunity for long-term planning. The problem is not only that so many costs in individual portfolio budgets are fixed but that there are horrendous pressures on those budgets.

I welcome progressive policies such as free travel for all under-22s and over-60s, as well as for people with certain disabilities and their carers; no tuition fees; free prescriptions; free school meals for pupils in primaries 1 to 5, with the proposal to extend that to all primary pupils; the baby box; and the Scottish child payment. Those policies prioritise families and children, who are Scotland’s future.

Incidentally, the Deputy First Minister referred to the small business bonus scheme, under which some businesses pay no rates whatsoever. That came into the Scottish Government’s budget after negotiations with the then Conservative finance spokesperson Derek Brownlee, who was a big loss to the Parliament. That Tory group supported the budget and amended it so that the scheme would be included in it. Those were the days when the Tories did not just oppose for opposition’s sake.

Other financial commitments will be needed to mitigate harsh Westminster policies and underfunding. No one pays the bedroom tax, which is imposed by Westminster, but that costs the Scottish Government £70 million. This year, £20 million has been allocated to the fuel insecurity fund. Those are just some examples of the millions of pounds that are spent to mitigate Tory austerity. However, there are limits. The Scottish Government has perhaps been a victim of its own success over the years, as we tend to take those mitigations for granted.