Chamber and committees

To ask the First Minister what the Scottish Government’s response is to Rape Crisis Scotland’s “Survivor Reference Group Police Responses in Scotland Report”. (S6F-00500)

I thank the First Minister for that response and acknowledge how seriously she takes the issue.

Today is the international day for the elimination of violence against women, and we will be debating that later. Sexism and misogyny remain entrenched in our society, and the rise in reports of domestic abuse and sexual crimes should ring alarm bells for us all. The Rape Crisis Scotland survivor reference group report reveals concerns about how reports of domestic violence and sexual crimes are dealt with by police. It makes it clear how important understanding and awareness of trauma is both for justice and for recovery. It also makes it clear that survivors of colour, or those from different cultural backgrounds, are least able to access justice.

In the First Minister’s view, what can we all do to ensure that our criminal justice system does not prevent minoritised and marginalised women in particular from being given fair and equal access to pursue justice?

Before I begin, I refer to my entry in the register of interests, which shows that, pre-election, I worked for a Rape Crisis centre.

Once again, I thank all those involved in supporting and advocating for survivors of gender-based violence. It is heart-wrenching work, but it is so, so important. I acknowledge and remember all the women and girls who have lost their lives because of gender-based violence: those that have been named in the motion and around the chamber today, those known to us, and those who are unknown and unnamed, here in Scotland and around the world.

I echo the cabinet secretary’s comments about Emma Ritch. Emma made Scotland a better country for women and girls, and we miss her.

We should not have to be having this debate today. We should not have to have a 30th anniversary of the international day for the elimination of violence against women. We should not be in the situation, in the 21st century, where our society and our culture are still so deeply unequal. That we are here at all should be a source of shame for us all.

One in three women have been abused in their lifetime. When things are tougher than usual, such as during a pandemic, the numbers of victims and survivors increase. A recent report from UN Women, based on data from 13 countries since the pandemic, shows that two in three women reported that they or a woman they know experienced some form of violence and are more likely to face food insecurity. Even more, if not all, women have experienced some form of gender-based oppression, coercion, financial insecurity or street harassment. We can expect the incidence of abuse and violence to rise as we face significant other crises—climate disasters, humanitarian crises and conflict.

As the same UN Women report shows, only one in 10 women said that victims would go to the police for help. We will be speaking more about justice and policing issues in next week’s debate, I am sure, but earlier today at First Minister’s questions I raised the Rape Crisis Scotland survivor reference group’s report on police responses to survivors. I did so because police dealings with survivors of sexual crimes tell us, among other things, just how entrenched sexism and misogyny are in our institutions and our society, how important understanding and awareness of trauma are for justice and recovery, how equality matters, and just how vital intersectionality is.

We still live in a deeply unequal and patriarchal society where the abuse of power causes life-changing, and sometimes life-ending, physical and mental harm. We should not accept that as inevitable. Violence against women can and must be prevented. It can and must stop.

Stopping that violence will mean transformational action across many sectors: justice, health, education, policing and culture. It means securing long-term—not piecemeal—funding for survivor-centred support services and the women’s rights agenda. Fundamentally, it means tackling the root cause of violence and oppression: inequality. That inequality fuels harmful social norms and leads to the implementation of policies that have disproportionate impacts on women, as Covid has made abundantly clear. Indeed, the UN estimates that Covid could set back women’s equality by a quarter of a century.

We cannot assume that Scotland is immune to this. We women are not yet adequately protected from misogynistic behaviours and sexualised harassment. Gender-based violence happens to a majority, if not all, of us women. It costs us money. It wastes our time and energy. It makes us fearful. It changes how we use public spaces. It makes us consider what we say and do, and what we do not say and do not do. It exhausts us. It kills us.

We have a moral obligation to act. As parliamentarians, we must ensure that our policies and practices do not exacerbate gender-based violence or negatively impact women. We must take seriously the mechanisms that we have in place to scrutinise what we do. For example, equalities impact assessments must never be just a tick-box exercise. We also need to see the connections between different areas of policy and to understand that a well-meaning policy in one area can have devastating consequences in others, both in Scotland and further afield. Policy coherence matters.

It is not only in our policy making and scrutiny that we require to act. We need wholesale culture change. Preventative measures play a key part in that. Once again, I would like to recognise the prevention, education and awareness-raising work that is undertaken across our schools and communities by many of the same organisations that support survivors of violence: Scottish Women’s Aid, Close the Gap, Zero Tolerance, Engender, Rape Crisis Scotland and all the rape crisis centres.

We also have a role to play in that culture change. I challenge all the men in the Scottish Parliament and all the men MSPs who are role models in their communities to look critically at their behaviour. All men have a responsibility in this: a responsibility to act, to check their behaviour in social, private and intimate settings and to call out sexist behaviour and language whenever they encounter it, including in their own heads. I am pretty sure that all the women in this chamber can recall behaviour by some of the men in this chamber that made them—us—feel uncomfortable. It is not good enough. You men must do better.

Gender-based violence is a public health issue and it is a women’s rights issue. When we talk about tackling the inequality that women face and standing up for women’s rights, we must include all women—trans women, disabled women, women of colour, poor women, old women and girls. Only with an intersectional approach to tackling gender-based violence will we create a better world.

I ask Robert Windsor the same question.

Thank you. I will leave it there.

Thanks very much, Bryan. I ask the same question of Richard Ballantyne.

Hello to the panel. Thank you for putting up with the glitches that we have had this morning.

I wish to explore how ready we are and what we need to do to meet our ambitious net zero targets and other climate change ambitions. In particular, I am interested in how we take advantage of the innovations and new technologies that we will have to adopt, as we change what we do and how we function economically and socially.

We heard from Maggie Simpson about some of the infrastructure requirements in rail. There has also been discussion of the modal shifts that are possible. Regarding infrastructure or other elements of development, investment and change, what do we need—or what do you need—to ensure that we can take advantage of the innovations and new technologies that we will have to rely on in the future?

I ask Bryan Hepburn to respond first.

I thank Paul Sweeney for raising this important issue, and for highlighting the human rights that are at stake and the appalling approach that the UK Government has taken. What, if any, role will the Scottish guardianship service have in the process? What can we do to support local authorities to work with the third sector, which has been working in the area for many years? What, if anything, can we do with our limited powers to ensure that children are not separated from their families in the first place?

I thank the minister for the advance sight of her statement. I am pleased to hear of the progress of the global south panel and I look forward to hearing about its work in the coming months. I note the comments on loss and damage, and climate justice, and I, too, will be interested in the written response that Sarah Boyack will receive.

As the minister has outlined, the global south has experienced the pandemic in very different ways from how we have experienced it here in Scotland, with inequalities being exacerbated by the lack of health and other infrastructure. Can we consider supporting a permanent vaccination roll-out system in our partner countries and elsewhere, not just one for Covid vaccinations? Such a system would allow vaccination against other diseases in non-pandemic times and would be there, ready and waiting, and thus a vital part of preparedness, for when future pandemics hit.

Such a system would also be transformative, especially given the potential advances in mRNA vaccines, which offer to help to tackle a whole variety of diseases that are not currently susceptible to previous vaccine technology.

No, I am not going to take interventions.

We need to create good-quality jobs in a just transition that delivers decarbonisation and social justice, rather than propping up an increasingly unpopular union by splashing cash to curry favour.

That is a point for us in this Parliament, too. We need to base our infrastructure developments in more participatory processes. We have had a climate assembly and we will hear about its outcomes soon. We need an infrastructure assembly to decide, collectively, what infrastructure we need and want, which could then be delivered with local, regional and Scottish input, without further complicating or cluttering the economic development landscape.

We have worked very hard in Scotland to ensure that fair work standards are at the heart of our infrastructure. We need well-paid jobs, partnership with trade unions, and procurement that delivers community wealth building and drives down carbon emissions. There seems to be no intention to build those standards into the UK funds. That is another reason why the UK Government should follow the logic of devolution.

We need a democratic green industrial revolution—we need to transform our energy system to decarbonise it, while creating good jobs. We need to provide high-quality homes that are carbon neutral. We need to be at the forefront of digital connectivity to increase social inclusion and create new opportunities for good-quality, low-carbon work. We need to engage more people in the creation of those projects to identify how best they can deliver for the people of Scotland.

We need ambition in our infrastructure funding, which is why I am so looking forward to discussions about how the £0.5 billion just transition fund—which we secured as part of the Scottish Government-Greens co-operation agreement—will support communities in the north-east, and on the roll-out of the £5 billion investment in our railways.

What we do not need is the replacement of the EU structural funds with a slush fund for politically motivated projects to make the case for London rule that is imposed on the people of Scotland; nor do we need something that adds to the already cluttered landscape of development funding in Scotland.

Now is the time for us to move away from the old elite decision-making processes. We should be creating national missions supported by the infrastructure spending. We should be bringing Scotland’s people behind those missions. As we all know, after the 26th United Nations climate change conference of the parties—COP26—we need to build a country that both mitigates and adapts to the climate crisis. We need funding to ensure that that happens. That must be our priority.