Chamber and committees

I thank the minister for the advance sight of his statement.

The minister will be aware of the Scottish Greens’ very strong opposition to free ports. I will not rehearse all our reasons for that now, but I must make it clear that what we have heard today does not do enough to challenge the fundamental functions of free ports—that they facilitate and legitimise tax avoidance, poor labour conditions and environmental degradation. It is not enough that bids will

“aim for the very highest standards in fair work practice”;

we must demand and require that companies meet those high standards. Our workers and trade unions deserve nothing less.

Are not the proposals just a UK Government Brexit project that has been greenwashed and that will result in tax avoidance and the loss of public resources and commons wealth to the private sector?

I thank the minister for his response and the information that he provided. Given the cost-of-living crisis that we face, and the significant role of rising energy bills in that, can he outline how the Scottish Government can maximise insulation and other measures to keep bills as low as possible, and what more we can and should all be doing in the longer term to tackle issues in the retrofit supply chain?

I add my voice to the voices of those who have already welcomed Christina McKelvie back to the chamber.

I congratulate and thank Karen Adam for lodging the motion and securing the debate. It is important to have the opportunity to stand in solidarity with LGBTQI+ people. That is what allyship is all about. Scottish Greens are proud to have always whole-heartedly supported LGBTQI rights and to have been part of the many campaigns that we have already heard about.

LGBT history month matters. It gives us the opportunity to celebrate diversity and to recognise and embrace difference. It also allows us to celebrate the victories that have been won. It is not that long since homosexuality was a criminal offence in this country. This Parliament should be proud of the role that it has played in enhancing the rights of LGBTQI+ people: abolishing section 28, bringing in equal marriage, supporting trans-inclusive education, enabling gay men to give blood and much more. I recognise that all those victories were the result of tireless campaigning by LGBTQI+ people and their allies.

It is right that we remember those victories and those who fought for them. It is also right that we remember those who suffered the consequences—the trauma, the violence, the harm and the grief—that are associated with participating in those fights, or with living in the world before they were won. That also means that we can learn more about the LGBTQI+ histories that have been ignored, erased or altered in the past because of prejudice and bigotry. LGBTQI+ identities have existed for as long as humans have, but they are seldom mentioned in history books. Erasing people’s lives is not okay. This month, we can learn what we have missed out on because of that erasure.

Making those identities visible now matters deeply. Letting people see themselves reflected in society is important. Education is a key part of that, but so is ensuring that our leaders, workplaces, culture and much more reflect the diversity of our society.

It is important that we take a moment to remember all those who are still fighting for equality and access to rights. Too many countries around the world still criminalise same-sex relationships and research shows that trans and gender-diverse people face disproportionate hate crime and violence. We know that recent evidence shows that there is rising victimisation and targeting of people in Scotland, based on their gender and sexuality. None of that is inevitable and, together, we can change it.

I was delighted to take part in Dundee Pride and Shaper/Caper’s OutFest question time last weekend, along with my colleagues Joe Fitzpatrick, Mercedes Villalba and Willie Rennie. I would like to think that, across the chamber, we can agree that organisations such as Dundee Pride, and Four Pillars in Aberdeen, do vital work supporting LGBTQI+ communities. Their support, campaigning and activism is not for February alone, but for every day of the year. I pay tribute to them for their tireless work.

Ultimately, LGBT history month allows us to stand in solidarity with the LGBTQI+ community, to learn how to be better allies and equalities campaigners and to pay homage to those who have paved the way for the rights and freedoms that we enjoy today. It reminds us of those who were erased, ignored and murdered because of their identity. It requires us to not be complacent, but to keep fighting and to keep challenging discrimination and inequalities in power, wherever they occur. We still have much work to do.

Good morning. I thank the witnesses for joining us and for their opening remarks. You have covered a lot of ground and a lot of different issues. I was struck by what Ian Maxwell and Marsha Scott said about the old normal not being good enough; it is not satisfactory and is not working for anybody. Will Ian Maxwell and then Megan Farr say a bit more about their experience of how the pandemic has shown just how bad the old normal was? What can we do better? In all of this, there is a conflict or tension between the welfare of the child and their rights to be heard and to have their views expressed. I am interested in how you balance those experiences with what I perceive as the welfare versus rights conflict.

Thank you very much for that. This perhaps shows my lack of knowledge of the complete landscape, but I am interested in this. Megan, you seemed to be speaking about the challenge of infantilisation and not taking children as human beings with their own minds, and about them being used as pawns in some cases, in some ways, perhaps more so where there is actual conflict—and you highlight the cases that go to court. I wonder whether we need to be thinking about doing some work around this. I do not think that everything can be solved with training, but there is something around training on what trauma means and on what people’s capabilities are. Capabilities will change within an individual, never mind among a group of people, as they grow up. Could you say a little bit more about those kinds of issues, which we need to be able to get at?

I am going to make some progress.

Secondly, if online platforms were banned, it would force sex workers into on-street and other informal ways of working.

I will talk about the responses from Scot-PEP, which represents sex workers, about how their evidence was not included in that report.

I do not agree that outlawing adult services websites will stop sex trafficking and deliver the kinds of changes that the motion outlines. Sex workers—and groups that support and represent them—do not want online platforms to be banned, and they highlight three key reasons for that. First, sex workers use online platforms to screen clients, in order to improve safety. They also use them to connect with each other, in order to reduce isolation and keep each other up to date with risk alerts.

I thank Ruth Maguire for bringing this debate to the chamber today, because it allows me to give voice to those who are not represented by the sexual exploitation inquiry report—sex workers.

As we seek to tackle violence against women and girls, including sex trafficking, we should follow the evidence to ensure that we support sex workers and keep them safe and tackle the causes and structures that enable sex trafficking and violence against women and girls.

I am going to make progress.

That could disrupt their income streams, which would cause economic hardship, and would lead to survival sex work, which is more unsafe. There is clear evidence from the US where, following the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act and the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act of 2018, violence experienced by sex workers increased, as did their vulnerability to pimps. Perhaps unexpectedly, it also negatively affected their ability to find other forms of work. They were less able to deal with mental and physical health issues and therefore less able to secure alternative employment.

Thirdly, banning online platforms risks displacing activities to the dark web and other unregulatable spaces, where there is far more risk of harm and less scope for outreach, safety and support services. The dark web is already used by traffickers, and banning online sites now will not stop that.

Beyond the Gaze, a research project that was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, found that sex workers overwhelmingly agreed that the internet had enabled them to work independently of pimps or managers, screen clients effectively, find out about their rights as workers and people, access networks and support, and improve the quality of their working lives.

Rather than criminalising and endangering sex workers, I urge the Scottish Government and those who speak in the debate today to engage with and speak to sex workers, in order to explore how we can regulate adult services sites, improve safety, secure rights and options for earning the money needed to live, while also addressing poverty, economic insecurity and structural inequality.

I also encourage members to read the response to the CPG’s sexual exploitation inquiry from Scot-Pep, whose evidence was not included in that report.

I will close with the words of a young sex worker in Edinburgh. Jay says:

“I know firsthand the impact removing online advertising spaces causes as my colleagues in the united states were being contacted by pimps being told that it’s different now, and claiming that we need them. I don’t want to see workers in Scotland pushed back into the hands of managers. When I started sex working at 21 I worked in a brothel where a manager took 60% of my earnings and I kept 40%. Being able to work alone has helped me to keep my earnings, helped me to achieve stable housing, and allowed me to claw my way out of poverty. We must abolish poverty, not force women working in sex work into worse and more dangerous conditions in the name of saving them.”

I will give members a brief explanation of the motion. The reimbursement of members’ expenses scheme requires that regional members for a party in any region share an office. In this session, circumstances have arisen whereby some regional members have chosen not to have a local office, which has impacted on the ability of the remaining regional members from that party to secure a local office within their pooled office-cost provision limits.

At our meeting on 2 December last year, the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body considered options around supporting regional members who find themselves in such circumstances through no choice of their own. We agreed that the calculations for the allocation of office-cost provision for regional members would remain as they are. However, where a regional member or members find themselves with reduced funds due to a decision of one or more members not to participate, a recalculation process would be introduced and the scheme amended accordingly.

Changes to the reimbursement of the members’ expenses scheme require agreement by Parliament. Therefore, on behalf of the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body, I move,

That the Parliament, in exercise of the powers conferred by sections 81(2) and (5)(b) and 83(5) of the Scotland Act 1998, determines that the Reimbursement of Members’ Expenses Scheme, which was agreed to by resolution of the Parliament on 2 March 2021, be amended to:

(a) in paragraph 4.3.5, delete “the” where it appears at the beginning of the fourth line and delete “members concerned” in that same line and insert instead “those members who establish a local parliamentary office”;

(b) delete “When” at the beginning of paragraph 4.3.6 and insert instead “Subject to paragraphs 4.3.9 and 4.3.10, when”;

(c) insert after paragraph 4.3.8:

“4.3.9 Where one or more regional members, returned from a registered political party’s regional list, do not establish and run a local office the limit of entitlement to office cost provision of those members remaining who do establish and run a local office, in the circumstances set out in paragraphs 4.3.4 to 4.3.7, will be recalculated as though the member or members who do not establish an office had not been returned on that registered political party’s regional list.

Number of Regional Members originally returned on regional list

2
3
4
3
4
4

Number of Members not establishing a local office

1
1
1
2
2
3

Number of Regional Members recalculations subsequently based on

1
2
3
1
2
1

4.3.10 Should a member, who has previously not established a local office, decide at any subsequent point to establish a local office then all of those members returned from a registered political party’s regional list who establish a local office will require to share a local office as set out in paragraphs 4.3.4 to 4.3.7 and those members’ entitlement to office cost provision will be recalculated in accordance with paragraph 4.3.9 from the point of establishing that shared office.”;

(d) renumber paragraphs currently numbered as 4.3.9 to 4.3.13 to paragraphs 4.3.11 to 4.3.15 and amend any references to those paragraphs to take account of the number change accordingly; and

(e) insert after paragraph 4.4.1:

“4.4.2 The above calculation will be based on the number of members originally returned on the regional list for the political party, taking no account of any change made to calculations for those members who do establish and run a local office as set out in paragraphs 4.3.9 and 4.3.10.”