Chamber and committees

That is really helpful.

Good morning, minister. Thank you for being here this morning.

I seek some reassurance. In your remarks you said what the public sector equality duties are and what these organisations need to do. One of those is to foster good relations. Are you confident that both organisations have the resources that they need to meet their obligations under the Equality Act 2010? Some of the ones that you mentioned are about data gathering, but an obligation to foster good relations is in a different category to those. Are you confident that there are sufficient resources and awareness of what is needed for that specific obligation?

I thank all members who have told the stories of their constituents and community members who have been affected by the scandal. It is those people—the victims and survivors of this gross miscarriage of justice—and their families who must be at the forefront of our minds as we consider the bill this week. It is those people and the horrific experiences that they have been through that must be in our minds as we work to ensure that they receive effective compensation and redress, and support them to do so.

It is also those people who must be central as we learn the lessons of the scandal about our justice system, our culture around corporate power and our treatment of people who raise concerns about systems and processes that affect and control their lives.

Innocent people lost their lives. Innocent people were convicted of crimes that did not even exist. Innocent people have suffered financial distress, emotional trauma and so much more, because of failures in both the public and private sectors. We have hard work to do to renew the trust that they will have lost—trust not only in institutions such as the Post Office and in the technology that so many of us rely on, but—in many ways, more fundamentally—in our justice system and our politics.

Of course, part of rebuilding of trust is about enabling better understanding of the responsibilities of private and public agencies. I have spoken already in the debate, as have other members, about the dangers of the privatisation and corporatisation of vital services and utilities. We must work, too, on improving the accountability of the institutions that are involved and, as a consequence, accountability for the decisions that we make as politicians, because we set the frameworks within which others—perhaps not all, but most—function.

This afternoon, I have been heartened to see the extent of consensus across the Parliament on the urgency of the bill, the need to ensure that it is comprehensive and the desire to address the causes as well as the consequences of this appalling injustice.

From a constitutional point of view—I am speaking of the constitutional issue that is actually of relevance to us today—it is deeply regrettable that we need to have legislation to overturn court judgments. It is a sign not of the breakdown of the principle of the separation of powers, but of the extraordinary scale on which that miscarriage of justice was allowed to occur.

It is important to recognise that this kind of legislation is exceptional and should not be the norm, but it is equally important to recognise that, in these extraordinary and exceptional circumstances, it is the right thing to do.

This bill is not a rubber-stamping exercise that exactly mirrors UK legislation, nor will the eventual act be a direct copy. The UK Government was asked to legislate for Scotland but chose not to do so, so we must take our responsibility seriously and we must, as I said in my opening speech, make this law as robust, inclusive and effective as possible.

Our debates today and on Thursday will give us the opportunity to do that together and I trust that today’s spirit of co-operation and joint endeavour will characterise the discussions that we will have in two days.

We speak this week for the people who have been affected by that miscarriage of justice. It is for them that we seek not only to quash the convictions that they should never have faced but to ensure that they get compensation and redress. It is for them that we seek justice.

On behalf of the Scottish Greens, I welcome the bill and recognise its urgency. It is clear that the convictions that we are discussing today are miscarriages of justice, and they must be quashed.

There is, as we have heard, a shared understanding across the Parliament, as there is across Scotland, of how very important the issue is. Therefore, I believe and hope that we can work together during the week to ensure that our legislation is as robust, inclusive and effective as it can possibly be.

I want to say just a little about the areas in which I consider that there is room to make the bill stronger. I am grateful to hear the cabinet secretary state her intention to remove the provision that a conviction must not have been previously addressed by the High Court in the context of appeal. As I said in my question to the Lord Advocate after her statement last week, new information on and understanding of how the scandal has been handled and dealt with is coming to light via various sources, not least the public inquiry, on an on-going basis. In the absence of that newer information, the earlier convictions cannot be considered safe. I have amendments planned along similar lines to those of the cabinet secretary on that.

I also want the provisions of the bill to apply to people who were not themselves working in a post office but were convicted along with someone who is covered by the bill. Additionally, if a close relative of someone who worked in a post office was convicted instead, perhaps to save their relative some distress, they should also be covered.

The amendments that we will discuss on Thursday will make the bill more robust, more inclusive and more effective, but the bill is neither the beginning nor the end of the story. It is not the beginning, because it builds on the years of arduous campaigning by Alan Bates and others, the years of speaking tenacious truth to perfidious power and the years of countering lies and persecution with courage and comradeship. It is not the end, because those who have survived the ordeal, and the families of those who have not, still have not received what is properly due to them.

As well as passing the legislation, it is our responsibility to scrutinise meticulously the UK Government’s schemes of redress. We must ensure, as far as we possibly can, that all those who suffered from this monstrous injustice receive full exoneration, satisfactory compensation and all that they need to resume their fractured lives. That is the absolute minimum, but that is still not the whole story.

This tragedy has causes as well as consequences. The wrong that was done by corporations and their senior personnel must be spoken, addressed and learned from. We live in a society where crimes of the powerful are almost invariably overlooked, erased or treated as anomalies. One bad apple, they say, but sometimes the barrel itself is rotten, with a culture of impunity, collusion, abuse and greed. When the time is right, we must be bold in seeking robust and appropriate penalties, including criminal charges that reflect the immense harm that has been done to individuals and their families most of all, but also to communities, to the reputation of once-respected institutions, to the rule of law and to trust itself. I will lodge a further amendment on that issue for our discussion on Thursday.

We must learn, at last, some wider lessons about those processes of privatisation and corporatisation that enhance personal rewards for those at the top while removing accountability to the society that they are supposed to serve. We must also learn lessons about outsourcing without transparency, about what is sacrificed to preserve reputation, and about the privileged acting with neither responsibility nor care.

It is chilling to reflect on the fact that the chief executive of the Post Office for much of this time was also a minister of the Church of England, preaching a gospel that is largely about the oppression of the poor by the rich, the conscientious by the hypocrites and the open-handed by the greedy. It seems that there is an acceptable disconnect between the personal lives of the powerful, which might be characterised by kindness and decency, and their professional roles, in which integrity is disregarded in a game of status and profit. However, this is not a game. It is fundamentally a question of justice for those who have been wrongly convicted in this situation. We need to address the fact that they endured incarceration and humiliation and lost their livelihoods, their reputations, their homes and even their lives. It is not a game for them and it should not be for us.

Finally, I would like to reflect on the fact that the scandal might have stayed secret for years and robbed hundreds of others of their freedom and wellbeing had it not been for the work of those few brave, stubborn and dedicated individuals.

The bill is a tribute to all those who, when faced with injustice, did not give up and did not allow themselves to be fobbed off with reassurances, scared off by threats or bought off with less than that which justice demands. We salute and thank them.

The Lancet recently published research that showed that the chances of a former prisoner dying were highest in the week immediately after release, compared with subsequent months. Alcohol and drug-related deaths, followed by suicide, were the main causes of death in the first week post release. What assurances can the cabinet secretary give that, with the measures that she has outlined, appropriate and sufficient resources and support will be available from public and third sector agencies to former prisoners and the communities that receive them, especially in the days and weeks immediately after release?

Yes—I will take an intervention from Willie Rennie.

We believe in the importance of taxation for sustaining our economy and our communities, and for funding our public services. However, taxation is not just a revenue-raising measure; it is a tool for behaviour change. On that subject, we share the minister’s ambitions to create an economy that is green, fair and, importantly, circular. However, we have clearly heard this afternoon that the aim of maximising the use of secondary materials such as processed construction waste is undermined by the already high and increasing rate of recycling in the sector. The rate of recycling is already at about 89 per cent, but there is clearly room for improvement. Perhaps we need to be a little more creative and ambitious in how we use the tax.

As John Mason has said, the UK rates of taxation have remained unchanged for many years. Although we understand the initial intention to align the tax level with that of the UK aggregates levy, we might be able to achieve more—increased recycling and reuse, of course, but more besides. There is a lack of solid research and data describing what exactly the potential is, considering the underdeveloped market for construction and demolition wastes. Increasing rates of tax might provide the incentive and funding for such research to be done.

Local authorities are clearly a key stakeholder in all this, because they will be affected in two major ways. First, they will be liable for tax themselves, being the proprietors of first-point commercial exploitation of taxable aggregates. Secondly, there is a safety element to the use of recycled materials, which local authorities are bound to observe and enforce. Reliefs and, possibly, exemptions might be needed to offset the costs of that disproportionate burden and the ultimate purpose of public infrastructure and service delivery. However, that might be a discussion for another day.

With the bill, we need to consider the resources that Revenue Scotland will require to ensure that all liable taxpayers are identified and monitored over time.

I have already touched on the importance of data and of really understanding what we have, so I look forward to the publication of some of that data next year by the Scottish and UK Governments.

I will make a brief comment on part 2 of the bill. We welcome the minister’s assurances that there will be engagement and consultation with the public and relevant stakeholders before the introduction of any regulations that are relevant to the measures that are contained in part 2. We look forward to the parliamentary scrutiny of those regulations, particularly the provisions on automation, and we welcome the minister’s commitment to make sure that all the regulations fit with our broader tax objectives.

The Scottish Greens welcome the establishment of the Scottish aggregates tax and we will be pleased to support the bill at decision time.

The Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body is pleased to nominate Jamie Greene to be a member of the Scottish Commission for Public Audit.

Given that it is Thursday evening and that we are all very well acquainted with Jamie’s many qualities and skills, I move,

That the Parliament agrees to the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body’s proposal to appoint Jamie Greene to be a member of the Scottish Commission for Public Audit.

I thank the Lord Advocate for her statement. She spoke about convictions that have already been quashed by the High Court and about two that are currently before the court. However, we do not know about any cases in which convictions might have been upheld by the High Court or in which the High Court refused to give leave to appeal. If such cases exist, they would be excluded from the bill as it is currently drafted. What assurances can the Lord Advocate provide that such cases that have already been considered by the High Court will be given a fair hearing, given that more and more information is coming to light through various routes, including via the public inquiry, which is on-going?

I am pleased to close on behalf of the Scottish Greens this afternoon, and I will begin by thanking the Finance and Public Administration Committee for the detailed scrutiny of the bill and for its stage 1 report. As others have already done, I also thank those who gave evidence during the stage 1 process and those who have provided advice and commentary on the proposed legislation.

I think that I am the only member in the chamber at the moment who was involved in the Smith commission discussions that led to the Scotland Act 2016, which others have highlighted. Then, we were quite clear that further powers for Scotland to design the fiscal levers to suit our own needs were an important outcome of the Smith commission process. Michael Marra said that he did not think that the devolution of the aggregates levy would have been a leading light in those discussions. As much as I love a good gravel tax conversation, I have to admit that he is not wrong.

We believe in the importance of taxation for sustaining our economy—