Presiding Officer
A central commitment in last year’s Programme for Government was a major reform and expansion of mental health services. This year’s programme continues that journey.
Again, we will build on the approaches adopted during the pandemic.
During lockdown, the reach of the Distress Brief Intervention Programme was expanded. This provides support for people in distress who contact emergency services, but who do not need emergency clinical help.
Evaluations have shown that this approach saves lives. I can confirm, therefore, that we will expand the Distress Brief Interventions programme across every part of Scotland.
We will also work with health boards to retain the Mental Health Assessment Centres established during the pandemic.
And we will deliver the major expansion of mental health support for children and young people announced in last year’s Programme for Government.
Presiding Officer, I have focussed largely so far on the National Health Service. But the pandemic has reminded us of the vital importance of social care services, and of the extraordinary professionalism, dedication and compassion of those who work in that sector.
However, it has also underlined the need for improvement and reform.
I can therefore announce today the immediate establishment of a comprehensive independent review of adult social care.
The review will seek the views of those with direct experience of adult social care, and make recommendations for immediate improvements.
However, more fundamentally, it will examine and set out options for the creation of a National Care Service.
The Health Secretary will set out more detail in her statement later today.
However, I can confirm that we will ask the review to produce its first report by January, so we can start to act quickly on its findings.
The quality of adult social care is something that matters deeply to us all. This is a moment to be bold and to build a service fit for the future.
The National Health Service was born out of the tragedy of World War 2.
Let us resolve that we will build out of this COVID crisis, the lasting and positive legacy of a high quality, National Care Service for all who need it.
The last few months have reminded us once again that quality public services and a strong economy must go together.
We will continue to invest in the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and in Police Scotland.
I am extremely grateful to both of these emergency services for the work they have done to help the country through the COVID crisis.
In terms of the wider justice system, we will work with courts, the legal profession, and victims’ organisations to tackle the backlog of cases, that COVID has caused.
We will continue to promote and expand the use of community interventions as a more effective alternative to short term prison sentences.
And we will progress plans to modernise the prison estate, prioritising replacements for HMP Barlinnie and HMP Inverness.
By the end of 2022, we will have delivered a new national women’s prison and two community custody units for women in Glasgow and Dundee - ensuring that the needs of women in our criminal justice system are better addressed.
And we will introduce in this session of Parliament a new Domestic Abuse Bill. This will legislate for emergency protection orders to better safeguard those at immediate risk of domestic abuse.
That Bill is one of four that we will introduce before the end of this term.
The others are the Budget Bill, a Bill relating to medical and dentistry education at St Andrew’s University, and a truly landmark Bill to incorporate the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child into Scots law, which I will say more about later.
There are 7 additional Bills already before Parliament, which will continue their progress in the weeks ahead.
They include the Defamation and Malicious Publications Bill, the Redress for Survivors of Historical Child Abuse Bill, the Heat Networks Bill, the Forensic Medical Services Bill and the Hate Crime & Public Order Bill.
On the last of these I know concerns have been raised. I want to give an assurance that we will listen carefully. Freedom of speech and expression is fundamental in any democracy.
Presiding Officer, let me turn now to housing.
We will continue to make ending homelessness a national priority, and provide more support for new housing.
We will update the Ending Homelessness Together Action Plan, learning from the approaches taken during the pandemic.
And we will significantly scale up Housing First.
We will also take action to reduce the risk of people becoming homeless because of COVID related financial pressures.
During the pandemic, we legislated to stop people being evicted.
We will extend the protection against eviction for rent arrears until March of next year.
However, I can announce today that we will also establish a £10 million Tenant Hardship Loan Fund, to support people struggling to pay their rent because of this pandemic
We will also continue to invest in new social and affordable housing.
Investment in housing is also an investment in our economy, in jobs and in our communities.
Before lockdown, we were on track to deliver to deliver 50,000 new affordable homes by the end of this parliament, 35,000 of them for social rent.
We are working with the construction sector to catch up and hit that target as soon as possible.
That has been a £3 billion investment and we intend to expand on it.
We have already committed a further £300 million of housing investment in the next financial year. That will secure much needed new homes - and also support around 10,000 jobs.
Later this year, we will publish a new 20 year vision for good quality, zero carbon housing with access to community services, transport links and green space.
For social housing, we will set new standards on carbon emissions, digital infrastructure, and access to outdoor space and room for home working.
This vision will be based on extensive consultation, and the Social Renewal Advisory Board – whose recommendations have been influential in several areas of this Programme - will help ensure it reflects our experiences of the pandemic.
It will also be backed by substantial new funding for the remainder of the next parliament, which will be confirmed in the Capital Spending review later in the year.
The last few months - as we have been able to travel less - have reminded us just how important our local communities are.
The concept of what is called the 20 minute neighbourhood has attracted growing global interest in recent years.
The basic idea is that people in any part of a town or city should be able to find shops, green space, public services, leisure facilities – and ideally work – within 20 minutes’ walk of a good affordable home.
We intend to work with local authorities and others to turn that vision into reality through our policies on transport, regeneration, housing and the environment.
And to support it, we will invest £275 million in community-led regeneration and town-centre revitalisation.
The pandemic reinforced what we already know. The quality of homes and communities impact directly on our health, happiness and wellbeing - and those impacts are unequal.
The plans in this Programme for Government – to invest in quality housing and better neighbourhoods – aim to transform that for the better.
Presiding officer, like our support for housing, the social safety net is also an investment in our collective wellbeing.
During COVID we expanded the Scottish Welfare Fund, increased payments for carers, and provided additional support for emergency food supplies.
Social Security Scotland now delivers eight different benefits to people across the country.
Four of these are new - and don’t exist elsewhere in the UK - and the other four are more generous than the UK benefits they replaced.
In November, our new social security system will reach its most significant milestone, when it starts taking applications for the new Scottish Child Payment.
The first payments will be in the pockets of eligible families in February next year.
Despite the six month disruption of COVID, that is just two months later than initially planned.
The Scottish Child Payment will give eligible families £10 a week for each child, initially for those under the age of six and then when fully implemented up to age 16.
Together with support available through the Best Start Grant, the Scottish Child Payment will be truly game changing in our fight against child poverty.
During the winter we will also start making payments through the child winter heating assistance program – providing £200 per child for families of severely disabled children.
Social security is part of the social contract between government and citizen. It is an expression of our solidarity as a society.
It is more important than ever to support, strengthen and invest in it - and this government will do exactly that.
The Scottish Child Payment - like the baby box - symbolises our determination to ensure that every child has the best start in life.
This generation of children and young people have experienced a year unlike anything we could have anticipated.
We have a duty to ensure that the impact of the past few months doesn’t disadvantage them in years to come.
One of the most important pledges of this parliament was our commitment to ensure 1140 hours of free childcare a year for all 3 and 4 year olds, and eligible 2 year olds.
This commitment was on course to be delivered from August.
Inevitably, COVID has delayed it, but we remain committed to delivering it in full.
A firm date for completion will be agreed between the Scottish Government and local authorities before the end of this year.
In schools, closing the attainment gap remains our defining aim, but we mustn’t underestimate the impact that closure of schools will have had on it.
We have already confirmed pupil equity funding of £130 million for the next financial year.
And we have allocated an additional £80 million this year for the recruitment of additional teachers and support staff to help young people catch up in their education.
We have already established a review of the awarding of SQA qualifications and we will ensure a broader consideration of our approach to assessments and qualifications in future.
I can also confirm that we will fund additional university places to ensure no young person loses out on higher education as a result of issues with this year’s qualifications.
And having already met our interim target, we will continue to work toward the objective of closing the gap in access to university.
We aim that by 2030, at least 20% of university entrants will be from our 20% most deprived communities.
In the more immediate term, we will work with our universities and colleges to help them deal with the substantial impact of COVID.
I also want today to renew my personal promise to children and young people with experience of care, and recommit to the full implementation of the independent Care Review’s recommendations.
Fiona Duncan – who chaired the review – has already been appointed to lead an oversight board to hold us to account.
We will also respond to the Black Lives Matter movement and the global resistance to continued racial injustice.
This Programme sets out how, on health, the economy and in our communities, we will better recognise and respond to the challenges faced by minority communities.
We will also work to educate young people on our past, and on the need to challenge racial injustice in the present.
And we will sponsor an independent expert group to make recommendations on how to raise awareness of Scotland’s role in colonialism, slavery and historic injustice, and how it manifests itself in society today.
Finally, I can confirm that we will shortly introduce one of the most ambitious pieces of legislation in the 20 year history of devolution.
We will - to the maximum extent possible - fully and directly incorporate into Scots law the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
This will mean public authorities - including Government - will be required by law to act in ways compatible with the Convention’s requirements to recognise, respect and be accountable for the rights of children in what we do.
The implications of this Bill will be profound, far reaching and long lasting.
It is a commitment that exemplifies the importance this Government attaches to the rights, opportunities and future of all our young people.
Presiding Officer,
That view to the future is the note I want to end on. But first, let me reflect on the past.
It is less than three weeks since we commemorated the 75th anniversary of VJ Day, and the end of World War II.
One of the many impressive things about that World War II generation is the way in which – even in desperate times - they resolved to build a better world.
They created institutions – from our National Health Service to the United Nations - which have stood the test of time and serve us to this day.
The crisis we face today is different - and in many ways less extreme.
But it is, without doubt, the biggest challenge our generation has faced.
It would be easy to focus on nothing but COVID – and of course the effort to suppress it will occupy us for some time yet.
But we should also seize this moment to imagine and start to build a better future.
That is why this programme, as well as tackling COVID, renews our commitment to end, once and for all, Scotland’s contribution to climate change.
It acknowledges the social solidarity of recent months, and aspires to a more equal country.
It invests in the skills and technologies people will need for the future.
It lays plans for homes and neighbourhoods which we hope can be cherished for generations.
It commits to the vision of a National Care Service, to match the post-war National Health Service.
And it seeks to ensure, above all, that COVID will not be the defining experience for this current generation of young people.
It aims instead to improve their education, enhance their life chances and guarantee their human rights.
Presiding Officer
This is a Programme for Government which necessarily prepares us for what may well be a difficult winter.
It also encourages us to lift our eyes, find hope in our hearts, and plan for brighter days ahead.
I commend it to Chamber.
A central commitment in last year’s Programme for Government was a major reform and expansion of mental health services. This year’s programme continues that journey.
Again, we will build on the approaches adopted during the pandemic.
During lockdown, the reach of the Distress Brief Intervention Programme was expanded. This provides support for people in distress who contact emergency services, but who do not need emergency clinical help.
Evaluations have shown that this approach saves lives. I can confirm, therefore, that we will expand the Distress Brief Interventions programme across every part of Scotland.
We will also work with health boards to retain the Mental Health Assessment Centres established during the pandemic.
And we will deliver the major expansion of mental health support for children and young people announced in last year’s Programme for Government.
Presiding Officer, I have focussed largely so far on the National Health Service. But the pandemic has reminded us of the vital importance of social care services, and of the extraordinary professionalism, dedication and compassion of those who work in that sector.
However, it has also underlined the need for improvement and reform.
I can therefore announce today the immediate establishment of a comprehensive independent review of adult social care.
The review will seek the views of those with direct experience of adult social care, and make recommendations for immediate improvements.
However, more fundamentally, it will examine and set out options for the creation of a National Care Service.
The Health Secretary will set out more detail in her statement later today.
However, I can confirm that we will ask the review to produce its first report by January, so we can start to act quickly on its findings.
The quality of adult social care is something that matters deeply to us all. This is a moment to be bold and to build a service fit for the future.
The National Health Service was born out of the tragedy of World War 2.
Let us resolve that we will build out of this COVID crisis, the lasting and positive legacy of a high quality, National Care Service for all who need it.
The last few months have reminded us once again that quality public services and a strong economy must go together.
We will continue to invest in the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and in Police Scotland.
I am extremely grateful to both of these emergency services for the work they have done to help the country through the COVID crisis.
In terms of the wider justice system, we will work with courts, the legal profession, and victims’ organisations to tackle the backlog of cases, that COVID has caused.
We will continue to promote and expand the use of community interventions as a more effective alternative to short term prison sentences.
And we will progress plans to modernise the prison estate, prioritising replacements for HMP Barlinnie and HMP Inverness.
By the end of 2022, we will have delivered a new national women’s prison and two community custody units for women in Glasgow and Dundee - ensuring that the needs of women in our criminal justice system are better addressed.
And we will introduce in this session of Parliament a new Domestic Abuse Bill. This will legislate for emergency protection orders to better safeguard those at immediate risk of domestic abuse.
That Bill is one of four that we will introduce before the end of this term.
The others are the Budget Bill, a Bill relating to medical and dentistry education at St Andrew’s University, and a truly landmark Bill to incorporate the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child into Scots law, which I will say more about later.
There are 7 additional Bills already before Parliament, which will continue their progress in the weeks ahead.
They include the Defamation and Malicious Publications Bill, the Redress for Survivors of Historical Child Abuse Bill, the Heat Networks Bill, the Forensic Medical Services Bill and the Hate Crime & Public Order Bill.
On the last of these I know concerns have been raised. I want to give an assurance that we will listen carefully. Freedom of speech and expression is fundamental in any democracy.
Presiding Officer, let me turn now to housing.
We will continue to make ending homelessness a national priority, and provide more support for new housing.
We will update the Ending Homelessness Together Action Plan, learning from the approaches taken during the pandemic.
And we will significantly scale up Housing First.
We will also take action to reduce the risk of people becoming homeless because of COVID related financial pressures.
During the pandemic, we legislated to stop people being evicted.
We will extend the protection against eviction for rent arrears until March of next year.
However, I can announce today that we will also establish a £10 million Tenant Hardship Loan Fund, to support people struggling to pay their rent because of this pandemic
We will also continue to invest in new social and affordable housing.
Investment in housing is also an investment in our economy, in jobs and in our communities.
Before lockdown, we were on track to deliver to deliver 50,000 new affordable homes by the end of this parliament, 35,000 of them for social rent.
We are working with the construction sector to catch up and hit that target as soon as possible.
That has been a £3 billion investment and we intend to expand on it.
We have already committed a further £300 million of housing investment in the next financial year. That will secure much needed new homes - and also support around 10,000 jobs.
Later this year, we will publish a new 20 year vision for good quality, zero carbon housing with access to community services, transport links and green space.
For social housing, we will set new standards on carbon emissions, digital infrastructure, and access to outdoor space and room for home working.
This vision will be based on extensive consultation, and the Social Renewal Advisory Board – whose recommendations have been influential in several areas of this Programme - will help ensure it reflects our experiences of the pandemic.
It will also be backed by substantial new funding for the remainder of the next parliament, which will be confirmed in the Capital Spending review later in the year.
The last few months - as we have been able to travel less - have reminded us just how important our local communities are.
The concept of what is called the 20 minute neighbourhood has attracted growing global interest in recent years.
The basic idea is that people in any part of a town or city should be able to find shops, green space, public services, leisure facilities – and ideally work – within 20 minutes’ walk of a good affordable home.
We intend to work with local authorities and others to turn that vision into reality through our policies on transport, regeneration, housing and the environment.
And to support it, we will invest £275 million in community-led regeneration and town-centre revitalisation.
The pandemic reinforced what we already know. The quality of homes and communities impact directly on our health, happiness and wellbeing - and those impacts are unequal.
The plans in this Programme for Government – to invest in quality housing and better neighbourhoods – aim to transform that for the better.
Presiding officer, like our support for housing, the social safety net is also an investment in our collective wellbeing.
During COVID we expanded the Scottish Welfare Fund, increased payments for carers, and provided additional support for emergency food supplies.
Social Security Scotland now delivers eight different benefits to people across the country.
Four of these are new - and don’t exist elsewhere in the UK - and the other four are more generous than the UK benefits they replaced.
In November, our new social security system will reach its most significant milestone, when it starts taking applications for the new Scottish Child Payment.
The first payments will be in the pockets of eligible families in February next year.
Despite the six month disruption of COVID, that is just two months later than initially planned.
The Scottish Child Payment will give eligible families £10 a week for each child, initially for those under the age of six and then when fully implemented up to age 16.
Together with support available through the Best Start Grant, the Scottish Child Payment will be truly game changing in our fight against child poverty.
During the winter we will also start making payments through the child winter heating assistance program – providing £200 per child for families of severely disabled children.
Social security is part of the social contract between government and citizen. It is an expression of our solidarity as a society.
It is more important than ever to support, strengthen and invest in it - and this government will do exactly that.
The Scottish Child Payment - like the baby box - symbolises our determination to ensure that every child has the best start in life.
This generation of children and young people have experienced a year unlike anything we could have anticipated.
We have a duty to ensure that the impact of the past few months doesn’t disadvantage them in years to come.
One of the most important pledges of this parliament was our commitment to ensure 1140 hours of free childcare a year for all 3 and 4 year olds, and eligible 2 year olds.
This commitment was on course to be delivered from August.
Inevitably, COVID has delayed it, but we remain committed to delivering it in full.
A firm date for completion will be agreed between the Scottish Government and local authorities before the end of this year.
In schools, closing the attainment gap remains our defining aim, but we mustn’t underestimate the impact that closure of schools will have had on it.
We have already confirmed pupil equity funding of £130 million for the next financial year.
And we have allocated an additional £80 million this year for the recruitment of additional teachers and support staff to help young people catch up in their education.
We have already established a review of the awarding of SQA qualifications and we will ensure a broader consideration of our approach to assessments and qualifications in future.
I can also confirm that we will fund additional university places to ensure no young person loses out on higher education as a result of issues with this year’s qualifications.
And having already met our interim target, we will continue to work toward the objective of closing the gap in access to university.
We aim that by 2030, at least 20% of university entrants will be from our 20% most deprived communities.
In the more immediate term, we will work with our universities and colleges to help them deal with the substantial impact of COVID.
I also want today to renew my personal promise to children and young people with experience of care, and recommit to the full implementation of the independent Care Review’s recommendations.
Fiona Duncan – who chaired the review – has already been appointed to lead an oversight board to hold us to account.
We will also respond to the Black Lives Matter movement and the global resistance to continued racial injustice.
This Programme sets out how, on health, the economy and in our communities, we will better recognise and respond to the challenges faced by minority communities.
We will also work to educate young people on our past, and on the need to challenge racial injustice in the present.
And we will sponsor an independent expert group to make recommendations on how to raise awareness of Scotland’s role in colonialism, slavery and historic injustice, and how it manifests itself in society today.
Finally, I can confirm that we will shortly introduce one of the most ambitious pieces of legislation in the 20 year history of devolution.
We will - to the maximum extent possible - fully and directly incorporate into Scots law the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
This will mean public authorities - including Government - will be required by law to act in ways compatible with the Convention’s requirements to recognise, respect and be accountable for the rights of children in what we do.
The implications of this Bill will be profound, far reaching and long lasting.
It is a commitment that exemplifies the importance this Government attaches to the rights, opportunities and future of all our young people.
Presiding Officer,
That view to the future is the note I want to end on. But first, let me reflect on the past.
It is less than three weeks since we commemorated the 75th anniversary of VJ Day, and the end of World War II.
One of the many impressive things about that World War II generation is the way in which – even in desperate times - they resolved to build a better world.
They created institutions – from our National Health Service to the United Nations - which have stood the test of time and serve us to this day.
The crisis we face today is different - and in many ways less extreme.
But it is, without doubt, the biggest challenge our generation has faced.
It would be easy to focus on nothing but COVID – and of course the effort to suppress it will occupy us for some time yet.
But we should also seize this moment to imagine and start to build a better future.
That is why this programme, as well as tackling COVID, renews our commitment to end, once and for all, Scotland’s contribution to climate change.
It acknowledges the social solidarity of recent months, and aspires to a more equal country.
It invests in the skills and technologies people will need for the future.
It lays plans for homes and neighbourhoods which we hope can be cherished for generations.
It commits to the vision of a National Care Service, to match the post-war National Health Service.
And it seeks to ensure, above all, that COVID will not be the defining experience for this current generation of young people.
It aims instead to improve their education, enhance their life chances and guarantee their human rights.
Presiding Officer
This is a Programme for Government which necessarily prepares us for what may well be a difficult winter.
It also encourages us to lift our eyes, find hope in our hearts, and plan for brighter days ahead.
I commend it to Chamber.
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