Scouts forced to axe workforce as virus causes £2m shortfall in funds
FM quizzed over care deaths... but refuses ‘for fourth time’ to give an answer
SCOTLAND’s Scouting movement is set to axe nearly half of its workforce after being mired in a major funding crisis.
Scouts Scotland said coronavirus had hit fundraising, meaning 8 of its 61 staff are being laid off or made redundant.
Local Scout groups are likely to struggle to survive as the pandemic continues. Scout leaders yesterday said the charity was looking at a loss of income of £ .3million.
Scouts Scotland said: ‘This is down to a complete loss of business at our centres, the cancellation of Scouting and fundraising events, cancelled bookings for our marquee hire service, and a drop in our investments to date.’
It added: ‘We moved quickly in March to furlough 80 per cent of our staff, cut all but absolutely essential expenditure, and worked tirelessly to try to secure extra funding.’
However, it is ‘still facing a large deficit that we simply can’t absorb, and so we have had to make incredibly difficult decisions to try to save our charity’.
In June the charity ‘made the heartbreaking decision to begin a consultation with our employees about restructuring, which put nearly half of our staff at risk of redundancy across our three outdoor centres and HQ teams’.
It added: ‘We looked at every possible way to reduce compulsory redundancies... sadly we have no choice but to proceed with the restructuring plan and compulsory redundancies.’
Tory MSP Murdo Fraser said he had raised the issue of support for Scouts Scotland with Nicola Sturgeon weeks ago ‘but little has been done to help’. A Scottish Government spokesman said: ‘Youth work charities including local Scout groups, have been awarded funding from the Third Sector Resilience Fund in recognition of the very important work they carry out.’
By Rachel Watson
Deputy Scottish Political Editor
NICOLA Sturgeon has refused for the fourth time to say when she found out patients with Covid-19 were being transferred to care homes.
The First Minister yesterday dodged questions – for the second week in a row – over the scandal, which involved elderly patients being moved into facilities with vulnerable residents.
Nearly 2,000 care home residents have died after contracting coronavirus in Scotland and families are demanding answers as to why their loved ones were put at risk.
Ruth Davidson questioned the First Minister over the scandal, which was revealed in a Sunday newspaper.
The Scottish Tories’ leader at Holyrood said Miss Sturgeon’s argument that ministers were not involved in the use of the policy and that she ‘wasn’t aware of the decision’ to move Covid-positive patients into care homes was not credible.
Miss Davidson said she was asking the First Minister for the ‘fourth time’ when she was made aware that hospital patients with the virus were being sent to care homes.
She demanded to know exactly when Miss Sturgeon learned about this, asking if this was in ‘March, April, May, June, July or August?’
Rather than providing a direct answer to the question, Miss Sturgeon said that the Scottish Government was ‘still waiting for the analysis from Public Health Scotland of the numbers of people discharged from hospital into care homes who may have had the virus’.
The First Minister then claimed that guidance issued on March 12 had set out the ‘need to clinically assess patients being discharged’ but she added: ‘Neither I nor any other minister would expect to know the individual details of the clinical risk assessment that was undertaken in respect of any patient’.’
The Scottish Government is facing heated criticism over the transfer of untested patients from hospital into care homes at the beginning of the pandemic.
Earlier this month, it emerged that at least 37 potentially infectious people in Ayrshire hospitals who had tested positive were still sent to care homes. Health Secretary Jeane Freeman announced afterwards that Public Health Scotland would be conducting research into this.
At the weekend, a newspaper published a letter sent by Miss Freeman to local health and care partnerships in April. It said that Scottish Government director general for health Malcolm Wright had made ‘requests’ in March for the number of delayed discharge patients stuck in hospital to be reduced by 900 by the end of April. It led to claims that targets had been imposed on hospitals to clear out patients.
Speaking at First Minister’s Questions, Miss Sturgeon said it was ‘interesting’ that opposition politicians were claiming they were unaware of a policy to free up space within hospitals in March.
She said: ‘For years politicians have rightly pressed the Government to reduce delayed discharge but if they didn’t know we were trying to do that to free up capacity for what was about to happen to our hospitals, then I just have to wonder where were they and what were they paying attention to.’
Miss Davidson said that families had a right to know ‘how many Covid patients were put into the care homes in which their loved ones died’.
She added: ‘The First Minister is clearly irked by this line of questioning but we’ve spoken to a number of families who’ve been affected by this. We’ve urged that the Scottish inquiry into care homes start immediately because it’s not right, or fair, on families to have information emerge bit by bit, piece by piece – they need answers now.’
Miss Davidson asked Miss Sturgeon to commit to publishing ‘all correspondence between herself, the health secretary, NHS boards and care homes throughout this pandemic to give families the clarity they deserve’. The First Minister said she would be ‘happy to make any relevant information available,’ adding: ‘I agree that families should have answers to their questions. That’s why I’ve asked Public Health Scotland to look specifically at these questions, to look at if people were tested, and if they weren’t, why not, and if they had Covid.’
It is understood that analysis on the issue will be completed by the end of next month.
‘Clearly irked by this line of questioning’
THe snorting yawps that boomed from the government benches like a choir of illtempered antelopes told you all you needed to know: Nicola Sturgeon was in trouble.
The First Minister had been cornered by Ruth Davidson on when she first learned patients infected with Covid-19 had been transferred into care homes.
The Tory semi-leader put Sturgeon on the spot about this scandal the previous week. Her responses had been evasive and so she was back for another go.
‘Was she first told in March? April? May? June? July? Or August?’ Davidson pressed, lobbing months like missiles.
Rather than answering directly, Sturgeon ‘turn[ed] again to the position that I set out clearly last week’, namely that ministers don’t know about clinical decisions.
‘The position that I set out clearly last week’ is many things but it is not an answer. Nor was it all that clear, since she was having to state it all over again. This was the most politicianesque Sturgeon had sounded for a while.
Davidson turned the screw: ‘That is the fourth time that that question has been asked at First
Minister’s Questions, twice by me last week, once by Richard Leonard and once by me again today. And it is the fourth time the First Minister has ducked it. I cannot work out why.’
She knew exactly why. The true answer, Davidson suspects, is something the SNP leader can’t admit – something that would reflect so badly on her that it might even dent the public’s invincible confidence in her haphazard handling of Covid-19. But because Davidson can’t be sure, she had to tease it out and did so with a classic Ruthism: the affected reasonableness that she knows drives the Nationalists potty.
‘Part of fixing mistakes is working out who knew what when’ not only poked them in the eye, it alluded to the Nixon Question: What did the President know and when did he know it?
Here is where the antelopes came in. Sturgeon, with the corny dramatics of a provincial theatre ham, began rhyming off questions Tory MSPs had asked about bed capacity in hospitals. The implication being that the opposition had supported government policy all along and was only switching now for tacky political advantage.
Sturgeon had pivoted so often she was all out of twists and so fell back on the Public Health Scotland review her government has commissioned.
It doesn’t report until the end of
September, after which something else will get them through another few months and something else after that. As governments go, it’s the best public relations firm in all the land.
Still, Davidson’s forensic style made for one of the more formidable FMQs interrogations in some time. You don’t always have to shout. Sometimes calm and clinical gets the job done.
RICHARD Leonard, on the other hand, should shout. He should shout ‘help’, or whatever a drowning man is meant to shout. He demanded Sturgeon back his call to extend the job retention scheme. Sturgeon pointed out she already had. Next he clamoured for her to extend the ban on evictions. Again, she had been there and done that.
‘Richard Leonard really needs to keep up with announcements as they are made by the Government,’ she told him. ‘I am afraid that I do not have the luxury of going at his pace on such things.’
At least Ruth Davidson gets contempt; for Leonard, she can summon only pity.