Programme for Government 2018-19

Part of the debate – in the Scottish Parliament at on 4 September 2018.

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Photo of Stuart McMillan Stuart McMillan Scottish National Party

No, the member can listen a wee bit more.

Those are projects that previous Scottish Executives and, before the creation of this Parliament, the Scottish Office did not deliver, because of the lack of foresight, vision and desire on the part of the politicians in charge over those decades.

The Opposition parties should be thanking the Scottish Government for its record of building more than 72,000 affordable homes, including, most recently, homes in Bay Street and Slaemuir Avenue in Port Glasgow in my constituency. They should be thanking the Scottish Government for keeping commercial shipbuilding alive on the lower Clyde through its continued support and awarding of contracts to Ferguson Marine in Port Glasgow. They should be thanking the Scottish Government for the investment of £120 million this year in the attainment challenge, with £9.3 million going directly to schools in Inverclyde over the past three years—and we should not forget the additional investment in the schools for the future programme, which, among other things, paid for half of the cost of the newly built St Patrick’s primary school in Greenock. They should be thanking the Scottish Government for the continued investment of more than £13 billion in the NHS as well as the £7.3 million that has been invested in the new Orchard View hospital, which is the Inverclyde adult and older persons continuing care hospital—that was yet another chapter in the long, drawn-out saga to replace the not-fit-for-purpose Ravenscraig hospital.

There are many more such examples, but time prevents me from continuing down that line.

On the issue of mental health, every member of this Parliament should welcome today’s announcement of additional finance and resources to help with early intervention in our schools and colleges. We have investment in additional school nursing to create around 350 counsellors in school education across the nation and to ensure that every secondary school has counselling services, which should be welcomed and supported; investment in an additional 250 school nurses across the country, which will help provide the response to mild and moderate emotional and mental health difficulties experienced by young people; investment in 80 additional counsellors in further and higher education over the next four years, which will also greatly help our young people as they progress through their educational journey; and an expansion of the range of perinatal support that is available to women, which will be greatly beneficial to society. Almost 20 per cent of women will experience mental ill health during their pregnancy, so that latter point is another example of doing the right thing.

Many concerns have been raised about the delivery of child and adolescent mental health services, and I am sure that the proposals in the programme for government will assist many people across the country. In addition to the extra counsellors, the proposals will result in parents having a much clearer understanding of the kind of help that is available, and of where and how to access it; children and young people having a much wider range of help available to them; and schools being better supported to deal with wellbeing concerns and more able to direct children to counselling services. They will also result in the development of services for community mental wellbeing for five to 24-year-olds and their parents in order to provide direct and immediate access to counselling sessions. That new support and investment will have a hugely beneficial effect on the mental health of our young people, and it is fitting that this announcement is made in this year of young people. It once again shows the commitment of the Scottish Government to the future generations of our nation.

I want to touch on the vision and direction of this Scottish Government, in comparison with the rudderless and chaotic nonsense coming from Whitehall.

When Jackson Carlaw stands up to try and lay the blame for his own party’s total incompetence elsewhere and then has the brass neck to try to get the SNP to support his party—although which party, or faction of it, he wants us to support is unclear—I think that we can say that he will win

The Herald

’s next annual brass neck of the year award. The Tory civil war that has been taking place for months now is proof of the old phrase we use in Inverclyde: never trust a Tory.

Theresa May’s Chequers plan was slammed as the last person left the building. One side of her party is scrambling to cobble together some semblance of a narrative on the EU and the other side of her party wants the UK to go back to the Victorian era, with delusions that Britain is still a world power. All of that is in contrast to the united and growing SNP, which has now overtaken the Tories to become the second-largest party in the UK.

There is much to welcome in the programme for government, which builds on the social and business focus that the SNP Scottish Government has demonstrated, from the additional £2 million to tackle holiday hunger among children to the carers allowance supplement that the First Minister spoke about earlier. I commend the programme for government to the chamber.