Paul Sweeney
Scottish Labour · Scotland
“The single point of contact pilots that we have embarked on are making a significant difference in ensuring that people get the ability to discuss their treatment anxieties and their support. We have invested £2.5 million to expand the reach of that programme across Scotland.”
“As a member of the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee, I welcome the news on the proposed legislation, which is very welcome. Indeed, it is something that has been long hoped for.”
“It is more precise than conventional radiotherapy, and the team behind the trial in England has begun the process of establishing it in Scotland.”
“I thank Mesothelioma UK for continuing to raise awareness each year through action mesothelioma day. On 3 July, the Scottish Government will proudly show our support by lighting up in blue St Andrew’s house and Victoria Quay in Edinburgh to get behind the go blue for meso campaign.”
“There is an awful lot to be recognised in terms of holding people to account, which has been a feature of this campaign over time. The Scottish Government confirms its commitment to continue to stand alongside those who are affected by mesothelioma, to ensure that they receive the compassionate care and treatment that they require at ever…”
“The fact that there are such abandoned factories and that the people who enter them—whether for urban exploration or whatever else—do not understand the risks that they are exposing themselves to is a difficulty that we must overcome.”
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“I very much share the sentiments of the cabinet secretary and, indeed, all members who have spoken in the debate. However, I want to sound a note of caution in relation to the frequent closure of streets in Glasgow. We know that Glasgow is a very Atlantic- oriented city that often doubles up for American cities because of its grid system, but there have been issues with local businesses being closed arbitrarily for long periods without receiving adequate compensation. Perhaps a more robust system of protocols for compensation and advance notice could be considered for occasions when big production houses come to Glasgow and streets are closed down and blockaded for weeks on end, which has a significant impact on local businesses.”
“The recent removal of listed buildings relief for rates has caused a number of unintended consequences that have been very damaging. The cost of servicing the rates for empty listed buildings and of raising the capital to renovate them has proven prohibitive for many projects. Will the minister undertake to review that, together with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, and to introduce an appeals process, where that makes sense, to allow for reliefs to enable renovation? Hannah Mary Goodlad: That is something that I am happy to take away and have a look at, as I take the discussion forward before the summer. I would be quite happy to engage with Mr Sweeney on that before the summer recess.”
“To ask the Scottish Government what urgent action it will take in response to the reported violent racist demonstrations that took place last night in Glasgow.”
“It was really disappointing that it was lost to foreign ownership in the way that it was, because that was avoidable. In the previous parliamentary session, I made suggestions to the Government about how that could have been solved by the Government taking a transitional stake in the business, but they were not listened to. We need to be more interventionist, more active and more agile in protecting Scottish ownership.”
“It is also important to reflect what other members said in their speeches about the nature of foreign ownership in Scotland. Around 6 per cent of Scotland’s wealth is taken out of the country in extractive investments, which are rent seeking. It is important to recognise that greater ownership of our economy is important. Simply saying that foreign direct investment is up in Scotland does not mean that it is always a good thing. I will point to an example in the Cabinet Secretary for Economy, Tourism and Transport’s constituency. The recent takeover of Wood Group by Dubai-based Sidara is a great shame for Scotland. Wood Group was one of the great legacies of the North Sea for this country and was one of the great industrial champions that we built in Scotland.”
“I see that in the shipbuilding industry, where lots of contractors are coming in from all around the world to work in Scotland’s shipyards, because we simply cannot get the skilled labour into the yards to do the jobs that are needed. That is tragic, because we are seeing lots of potential being lost, as well as lots of jobs being lost elsewhere in the Scottish economy. Getting that joined up and connected in an efficient and effective way is really important. That is a good target for the Government in the coming years. Let us make that Government expenditure work harder to unlock investment, grow the economic base and the tax base, improve consumption and even promote exports around the world, which will all contribute to positive economic growth.”
“That relates to a point that was raised in a number of speeches: the thwarted potential of our people. Half a million people in Scotland are locked out of work. They are the great unused capital of human potential. Jimmy Reid was a great shipbuilder. At his funeral, Billy Connolly delivered a fantastic eulogy. He recalled that, as they passed a high-rise block of flats in Glasgow, Jimmy Reid said that behind every one of those windows was a Nobel prize- winning chemist or an Olympic athlete—someone who might have won gold—but who never got the chance because, from birth, they were denied opportunity. That takes us back to the 20 per cent cut to colleges that was mentioned in a number of speeches and to the inability to connect people with educational opportunities.”
“Although we have a shipbuilding industry of which we in this country are proud, we could achieve much more with the purchasing power of the Scottish Government. However, significant numbers of shipbuilding contracts are going overseas—to Turkey, China and Poland. One of the main reasons for that is that the Government has not put in place the financial mechanisms to enable Scottish shipyards to front‑finance contracts, meaning that they are unable to compete for that business. That could be fixed relatively easily with a more joined-up approach. I hope that the Government will look at that. I appealed to Kate Forbes, the then Deputy First Minister, to consider that when she was in Government. I hope that we can make progress on the issue in this session of Parliament.”
“There were a number of thoughtful speeches, notably from the member for Angus South, who noted that a lot more could be done with Government expenditure and procurement, and that those aspects could work a lot harder for the people of Scotland. We would want to encourage that. The latest statistics that I have seen show that there was £8.9 billion of public sector procurement expenditure in 2022–23. However, only around half of that is spent in Scotland itself, which affects the multiplier effect that could be generated to benefit Scotland’s people. I will translate that into a practical example from shipbuilding, the industry in which I worked. I know that the member for Inverclyde has a strong interest in that, which he reflected in his speech.”
“When men and women from all over Scotland will meet to work together for a future built from the first principles of social justice.” Social justice is at the heart of what we are talking about today when we consider economic growth and how best that serves the interests of the people we represent. GDP is a simple enough equation: consumption plus investment plus Government expenditure plus exports minus imports. However, behind that lies the question of who benefits from that equation and who owns the proceeds of the growth and the activity. The main factor in that equation that the Government deals with is expenditure.”
“It is a pleasure to close this debate on behalf of the Scottish Labour Party. I welcome the minister to his place and for making a fine first speech. We are certainly agreed on the ends—on the objectives for our country in the interests of its people. The debate has turned on the question of how best to achieve and effect those outcomes that we all want. “Opportunity” and “potential” were the words most frequently repeated in speeches this afternoon. Their absence is a significant concern facing people in this country. As members have mentioned, the recent election clearly reflected a deep sense of alienation and injustice in the country today. When the late, great Donald Dewar opened the Parliament, he said: “I look forward to the days ahead when this Chamber will sound with debate, argument and passion.”
“On a point of order, Presiding Officer. I would have abstained. The Presiding Officer: Thank you. Your vote is recorded.”
“Let us reject this short-sighted, headline-driven motion, honour the legacy of Sir Donald Miller and finally build a serious energy strategy that is grounded in engineering reality and will power Scotland’s homes for generations to come.”
“If the minister would like to look at a serious industrial strategy, he can look at the recent UK Government coup of securing the Vestas nacelle manufacturing plant for Scotland, bringing highly skilled manufacturing jobs back to our shores through British market stability. In the 1980s, Glasgow’s own James Howden & Company led the world in wind turbine manufacturing—a position that Scotland surrendered by the 1990s because we lacked an integrated state development strategy. We have a historic chance to right that wrong today, but we will do it through secure alliances, a robust grid and a nuclear baseload, not by returning to the same old stale arguments from 2014 that have led to stagnation and decline. Power pooling across the United Kingdom protects Scottish consumers, funds our infrastructure and secures our industrial future.”
“That is geopolitical illiteracy. Indeed, we can contrast that with the decision to invest— Stephen Gethins: Will the member give way? Paul Sweeney: I am happy to give way if I can have the time back. Stephen Gethins: The British Government vetoed Ming Yang and has not given us an adequate reason. Members from the Highlands and Islands will rightly be furious about that. It was also the British Labour Government that last week eased sanctions on Russia. What did our European partners make of that? Paul Sweeney: The British Government did no such thing. It introduced new sanctions on Russia; it did not remove them.”
“Contrary to what many speakers on the Government benches have said, further devolution of energy would be neither quick nor cheap for Scotland’s people. We see the hypocrisy of the motion reach its peak when we look at the SNP’s attitude towards our industrial supply chain. The SNP spent weeks screaming about sabotage when the UK Government rightly blocked the Chinese state- controlled firm Ming Yang from developing a wind turbine factory at Ardersier. However, let us be entirely clear that the European Union explicitly views such state-subsidised entities as a security risk and as systemic rivals to European original equipment manufacturers. We cannot claim to be pro-European while rolling out the red carpet for a foreign supply chain that actively undermines our European allies and undercuts domestic firms.”
“Even when our wind turbines are generating, under the integrated UK market, English bill payers heavily subsidise Scottish grid bottlenecks. Around a quarter of Scotland’s entire wind generation capacity was paid to turn off last year, which accounted for more than 90 per cent of total constraint payments across the Great Britain network. Members should look at the Moray East wind farm for an example of that. Between September 2021 and September 2023, the owners were paid approximately £100 million in constraint payments just to sit idle. Currently, those costs are socialised across the whole UK market but, if full devolution of energy were to take place, the Scottish Government’s approach to energy would mean that those constraint payment costs would fall entirely on the shoulders of Scottish taxpayers.”
“His prediction has proven to be an accurate guide to Scotland’s present reality: because of the Government’s catastrophic mismanagement of our energy sector, Scotland is now regularly forced to import power from England on calm days just to keep the lights on. Scotland has become more dependent on our southern neighbours, not less, due to the Government’s policy. Neil Gray: Will Mr Sweeney reflect on the fact that, regardless of the energy generation that is chosen in Scotland, one of the greatest hindrances to progress relates to access to, or offtake from, the national grid, and that there has been a singular failure to improve that situation under both the previous Conservative Government and his party’s Government? Paul Sweeney: I thank the cabinet secretary for making that point. The model is challenging.”
“Sir Donald looked at that trajectory and asked the fundamental question that every member on the Government benches should be forced to answer: “You may wonder just why Scotland (birthplace of so much engineering) should be importing power we could well generate here, exporting highly skilled jobs in the process.” He concluded that that drifting, ideologically driven approach would leave Scotland with “the least reliable and insecure electricity supply that we have seen for a hundred years” and warned us that failing to secure baseload capacity would make for “a very long night indeed” if we did not get it right.”
“In 2015, the much-missed Sir Donald Miller, the legendary former chairman of Scottish Power and the foremost electrical engineer of his generation in Scotland—the man who designed Scotland’s post-war electricity supply system—delivered a devastating warning that the Government chose to ignore completely. His prophecy has, sadly, become our painful reality. He warned us plainly that “The decommissioning of our conventional generation is fast approaching and yet there are no plans to replace the generating capacity at Longannet or the nuclear” stations. With the closure of Longannet, Scotland will be left with only around half of its peak demand capacity. It is incomprehensible that a country with Scotland’s energy resources should find itself entirely dependent on its neighbour for security of supply.”
“It has replaced real engineering substance and Scottish ownership with handouts to multinational capital, foreign control, imported infrastructure, and hollow photo opportunities to boot. We must judge the Government on its record, not its rhetoric. In 2021, we witnessed the spectacle of former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon ceremoniously pushing the button to demolish the iconic chimney stack at Longannet power station. It was the ultimate visual metaphor for the Government: destroying foundational, world-class energy infrastructure without a back-up plan for the sake of a fleeting headline, in defiance of Scotland’s greatest engineering minds.”
“Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I welcome you to your place. I also congratulate the member for Aberdeen Central on a fine maiden speech. It was an excellent and erudite tour of the granite city. Whether in the granite city or the sandstone city that I represent, the challenges that our people face are very similar. However, I am afraid that the Government’s motion is merely an economic and political sleight of hand. “Scotland’s energy in Scotland’s hands” is certainly a plausible and intuitive slogan to anyone who cares about our country’s interests, but the stark reality behind it is the SNP’s 20-year betrayal of our nation’s proud electrical engineering heritage. For two decades, the SNP Administration has systematically dismantled Scotland’s baseload generating capacity.”
“We know from other experiences that good planning prevents or, at least, reduces the risk of disorder. We need to plan not just in the weeks and months ahead; like operation moonbeam, that has to be a consistent endeavour, with good local leadership.”
“Angela Constance: I have to be candid with members—as justice secretary, I had a full briefing from Police Scotland on Friday about the preparations that had been made, irrespective of the result. I contrast the preparations that were made in one half of the country with the preparations that were made in the other half. Therefore, I must respectfully disagree with some of the commentary from Glasgow City Council. I repeat what I said to Mr Kerr: no solutions should be off the table. We all have something to bring to the table, and we have to prevent such disorder from happening again. Prevention falls on us all. It is not down to Police Scotland to be the only player in this; the organisation and its officers should not be exposed to such behaviour.”
“Presiding Officer, I welcome you to your position. Does the Government agree with Glasgow City Council’s claim that it is simply not possible to establish an official managed fan zone because the council cannot bear the burden of the cost? Given that the impact of football in Glasgow is equivalent to hosting a Commonwealth games every year, could the Government show some leadership in pulling together funding between the local authority, national Government, commercial sponsors and the football clubs to establish an official fan zone, to prevent Glasgow’s streets and emergency services from being subjected to entirely preventable disorder every year?”
“I, Paul John Sweeney, do swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to His Majesty King Charles, his heirs and successors, according to law. So help me”
“The CAMHS waiting times target has been met by NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, although I accept that we have more work to do around the neurodevelopmental diagnostic waits, which is why we are supporting NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde and partners to invest in capacity to ensure that that can be delivered. Adult Social Care Displaced Worker Scheme 4.”
“My 10-year- old constituent, Cara, was referred to child and adolescent mental health services in Glasgow in May 2023, but in March this year, her parents were informed that she is still number 381 on a waiting list of 1,500. That is surely unacceptable. Cara suffers from acute anxiety, but—despite even her GP requesting a timeline for diagnosis—her family have still been waiting years in limbo. What actions will the cabinet secretary take with the health board to help my constituents, such as Cara, who are trapped on CAMHS waiting lists for too long? Neil Gray: First, my sympathies go to Mr Sweeney’s constituent. I think that the matter that he is seeking to address is a diagnostic wait, rather than a CAMHS wait; those are two distinct matters.”
“Will the First Minister intervene urgently to stop City Property, Glasgow City Council’s arm’s‑length landlord, from issuing a notice to quit tomorrow to seven independent charitable arts organisations at the publicly funded Trongate 103 cultural centre, which would force them out and leave them facing an additional £700,000 a year in costs—four times their previous rent and ten times their service charges—while ignoring the independent sustainability study that was commissioned by the council, especially amid the wider crisis engulfing Glasgow’s cultural ecosystem, including the indefinite closures of the Centre for Contemporary Arts, the Lighthouse, the Arches and the People’s Palace? City Property is out of control. Will the First Minister intervene and get a grip of the issue?”
“Tom Arthur: I draw the member’s attention to the additional resource that was agreed through the budget process in the Parliament, although I recognise that social care providers are under significant pressure. We know that that is a consequence of the UK Labour Government’s decision to increase employer national insurance contributions. It is estimated that that is costing the social care sector in Scotland around £84 million this year. A range of factors are impacting on the delivery of social care, and resourcing is a key component of that. That is why there has been a significant uplift in investment in social care over this parliamentary session, and it is why we have committed to sectoral bargaining, ensuring that the terms, conditions and remuneration for social care workers can be enhanced and improved going forward.”
“Some 1,036 Glaswegians are currently on a waiting list for social care assessment by the city council, which is the highest total in just under two years. While waiting list numbers are increasing, the sector is now facing a crisis and social care providers have been told to deliver a pay increase but without the extra funding to meet it. Lynn Laughland, the chief executive of HRM Homecare Services, said: “Care providers are having to hand back work because they can’t afford to run their services.” That is surely not acceptable. Will the minister accept that that is a direct result of the Scottish Government’s decision, and will the Government aim to bridge the financial shortfall before we end up in a self-defeating situation whereby social care providers reduce staff levels and cut capacity?”
“We can do so much at home, while keeping up the effort to sustain Ukraine in its fight for freedom. 13:21”
“Led by businessman Simon Brake, it is working through a growing network of engaged volunteers and partners across the United Kingdom to deliver vehicles and humanitarian aid to trusted charity partners. I encourage all members—and indeed anyone watching—to connect with those organisations and show their own solidarity. It has been immense to see the contribution that Scotland has made to the war effort, as unnecessary and appalling as the war is. We have to remember that we must look after those who have sought refuge in Scotland, and we have to build connections within our own communities. I have certainly been enjoying doing that in Glasgow with the Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain, the Balgrayhill Ukrainian Tenants Alliance and others.”
“In the larger picture, it was a modest gesture, but the gratitude and solidarity were overwhelming to him. He talked about a recent attack that had claimed more than 30 lives, and about how British-supplied air defences were now their primary shield against Russian rockets. That journey reinforced what I have long believed—that the front line of European democracy is a mere three tanks of diesel away from Scotland. We all have a profound stake in Ukraine’s success. Around 40 per cent of all humanitarian aid arriving in Ukraine is donated, funded or transported by small organisations and charities, and, last September, we welcomed the team from Mighty Convoy here to the Parliament.”
“They do not want to let the Russians grind them down, and repairs are carried out promptly and vigorously to ensure that morale is maintained. We also toured one of Ukraine’s many drone production facilities. What looked like a modest industrial unit in a suburban neighbourhood produces 10,000 advanced one-way attack drones monthly for the armed forces. As Mr Kerr has mentioned, drones now cause up to 80 per cent of daily combat losses and have transformed the nature of modern warfare, with people using them to actively hunt soldiers on the front line. The most poignant moment came at a combat medic training base when we handed over the keys to one of the ambulances, which was bound for a field hospital far to the east of where we were. The brigade commander became emotional.”
“The medics at the centre expressed their keen interest in collaborating with Scotland, given the expertise that we have across the national health service, particularly at WestMARC—the west of Scotland mobility and rehabilitation centre—at the Queen Elizabeth university hospital and the Canniesburn plastic surgery and burns unit at Glasgow royal infirmary. We have real knowledge to share in that area, but we have a lot to learn about national resilience from Ukraine, too. We met the Lviv mayor, Andriy Sadovyi, who revealed that his city diverts 20 per cent of its budget—the equivalent of all of Glasgow City Council’s council tax revenue—to procuring weapons for the front line, all the while managing bomb damage and caring for mass casualties.”
“Lviv’s beautiful old town, which is a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization world heritage site reminiscent of Prague or Krakow, felt subdued under curfew and wartime restrictions, and there were eerie reminders of the vulnerability of Ukrainian cities to Russian attack, such as the netting strung from lampposts in case of a drone attack. The next day, we visited the UNBROKEN Center. It is the national rehabilitation centre at Saint Panteleimon hospital, Ukraine’s pioneering, state-of-the-art medical facility, and it provides surgical care, prosthetics and mental health support to all those who have life-changing injuries from the war, some of which are too appalling to talk about. As we toured, the nationwide minute of silence, a daily ritual to honour the fallen, began at 9 am.”
“Rural roads and village churches—which are much like our own in Scotland, although Ukrainian churches tend to have those glittering Orthodox onion domes—were lined with Ukrainian flags to mark the recent graves of fallen soldiers. It was a heartbreaking and stark reminder of the immense human cost borne by communities across that vast nation and an indication of what we ourselves went through a century or so ago, with the war memorials that were put up in every corner of every village and town in Scotland. We delivered the ambulances to dedicated volunteers at the Christian Medical Association of Ukraine in Lviv, who ensured that they reached the front-line units sustaining the armed forces.”
“During the Easter recess last year, I joined a cross-party group of volunteers, who included Alex Cole-Hamilton MSP, Angus MacDonald MP and Danny Chambers MP, to drive a convoy of old national health service ambulances that were loaded with humanitarian and medical aid from London to Lviv. It was organised by Mighty Convoy, and we drove non-stop in shifts across seven countries and covered the distance in around 36 hours, fuelled primarily by caffeine, Haribo and a determination and shared commitment to stand with Ukraine. As we crossed the border from Poland, the reality of total war hit us immediately. Instead of displaying typical advertisements for the consumer goods that we might be familiar with, billboards warned of disinformation and called for young people to volunteer as drone operators.”
“I congratulate Mr Gibson, the member for Cunninghame North, on securing today’s debate with his members’ business motion, which I was pleased to sign. More than four years have passed since Vladimir Putin launched his brutal all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 in the worst escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian war since 2014. What Russia had intended as a lightning conquest of the capital city of Ukraine became a grinding war of attrition, yet the Ukrainian people continue to defend their sovereignty with extraordinary courage and resilience, despite appalling atrocities, hardship and casualties.”
“It would need to be considered in the round. However, the existing registration scheme requires businesses that sell such products to be registered, and a broad range of factors can be considered through that mechanism. Demand for Local Authority Services (Budget 2026-27) 2.”
“In light of the fire in Glasgow, will the minister consider looking at the planning use classes in Scotland? They allowed the retail unit that went on fire to switch from being a bureau de change, after being empty for 10 years, to selling vapes, with no need for a change in planning consent. There seems to be an obvious opportunity to quickly tighten up the regulations so that consent would need to be sought for such use. Ivan McKee: I do not know whether doing so quickly would be appropriate, because we would need to go through a proper process to understand any changes that we chose to make. The member is right in that the class of use is fairly broad, covering as it does all retail, but to start to compartmentalise the class would potentially take us into a place where we were putting up unnecessary barriers for businesses.”
“It is an interesting approach, and we have looked carefully at all the approaches that we could take through procurement and grants, for example to support domestic manufacturing at Alexander Dennis. The company was clear that it could not rely only on Scottish buses to get it through these difficult times—the approach had to be UK wide, so we welcome commitments to procure buses. There has been a challenge arising from international bus manufacturing’s increased market share in those procurement processes, to which I think Stephen Kerr was alluding. We have not seen sufficient progress on some of that, as it is still putting at risk Scottish domestic manufacturing. However, we will look at all that and see whether we can learn lessons for our approach. Energy Prices (Impact on Businesses of Middle East Conflict) 5.”
“I wish the Deputy First Minister well in her future journey. We actually crossed paths as children, apparently— the fact that we stayed in the same street gives weight to the idea that Scotland seems to be a bit of a village at times. I want to ask the Deputy First Minister about the 10-year zero emission bus order pipeline that the United Kingdom Government announced this week, with 23,000 buses projected, and the potential deficiencies in the ScotZEB scheme. It is a limited subsidy scheme, so it cannot be directed to UK manufacturers. It might have been worthwhile for the Scottish Government to look at a direct purchasing and leasing model, which could allow for direct awards to Scottish manufacturers. Kate Forbes: The member makes a very interesting point, and I thank him, too, for his kind comments.”
“I again ask members to consider the implications for public spending over the lifetime of the programme were the levy not to be agreed to, and I remind them that there will be ample opportunities to review the levy’s operation over its lifetime. I urge members to vote to pass the bill. I move, That the Parliament agrees that the Building Safety Levy (Scotland) Bill be passed. 17:42”
“I reiterate the built heritage concerns. We already know that VAT is a major impediment to the development of derelict listed buildings, and we know that the removal of business rates exemption relief is another impediment. Will the minister take close note of how the measures could affect the viability of, and the conservation deficit faced by, heritage building renovation projects? Ivan McKee: Absolutely. The member will obviously be aware that VAT is the responsibility of the United Kingdom Labour Government. Regarding the points that he has made, we are absolutely seized by the need to consider the impact on historic—and indeed all—conversions, and indeed on brownfield developments. That is why the reliefs are set at a minimum of 50 per cent, with scope to increase them.”
“It is important to note that Historic Environment Scotland has very high thresholds for designating and listing buildings and that it would be unusual for it to grant such status on a whim. Liz Smith: I understand that but, in relation to our engagement at stage 2 and particularly what the Parliament has said on other issues relating to historic buildings, I was interested to tease out with the minister where the specific issues might lie. The minister agreed that we should meet to discuss that, and we did so on 26 February. At the end of that meeting, he said that he or his officials would come back to me before the deadline for lodging stage 3 amendments. That never happened, so I re-lodged my amendments to ensure that I would be satisfied by the minister’s intentions.”
“To ask the Scottish Government whether it will meet with stakeholders to discuss school provision and safe travel routes in Robroyston. (S6O-05639)”
“Although responsibility for such operational matters sits with the health board on a day-to-day basis, I am confident from the assurances that I have received from the health board that it has a full grasp and understanding of the importance of addressing the staffing situation to ensure that there is a positive culture for patients and staff. The Deputy Presiding Officer: I would call Rona Mackay, but she seems to be busy.”
“Will the minister provide an assurance that the health board is undertaking long-term workforce planning for Skye house so that children and families who are affected can have confidence in the quality and safety of care in the long term? Tom Arthur: I am confident that the health board has a full understanding of the message that is clearly implied in the reports about the link between culture and staffing, and the importance of ensuring that the positions at Skye house are permanent positions. That is reflected in the increase in staffing that we have seen. That link is highlighted in the reports, and the fact that there is a clear understanding of its importance was made clear to me in my engagement with the chief executive and her team.”