Chamber and committees

Alan Thornburrow, you spoke earlier of the failure to support people at an early age, and we have heard from Charlie McMillan that that happens throughout people’s lives because of the culture of our society. How can we use the examples of good practice to help change that culture?

Good morning to the panel. Thank you for joining us and for the information that you have provided us with. I am mindful that Alan Thornburrow has said that things need to start in early education. Some of my colleagues will pick up on that.

Joanna Panese and Carmel McKeogh spoke about businesses wanting to employ people but that there are barriers to their doing so and that they cannot do what they want to do. When businesses are successful in that regard, what makes it work? What is their mindset? We have heard about the use of the social model of disability rather than the medical model, for example. When it works, why does it work?

Thanks very much for that. Charlie McMillan, you were nodding along to that. Earlier, you said that there are good examples but that they are small scale and are not everywhere. What are the barriers to scaling that up or out?

Thank you—I will leave it there.

The Scottish Greens fully support treating the Post Office (Horizon System) Offences (Scotland) Bill as emergency legislation. We consider the scandal that has led us to this point to be a series of appalling miscarriages of justice, poor governance or the failure of trusted institutions on which sub-postmasters, their families and all our communities should have been able to rely. Never again must the lives, reputations and freedom of those working hard and honestly for their communities be sacrificed to defective corporate systems.

We welcomed the apology that was given by the Lord Advocate earlier this year, but an apology is not enough. Those who were convicted of crimes in the scandal must have their convictions quashed, so we support the principles of the legislation that we will discuss next week. However, legislation is not enough. We still need answers about how prosecutions were dealt with in Scotland, including the role of the Post Office and the significance of the evidence that was admitted under the corroboration rule. We need clear and accessible compensation for those who were unjustly accused and reimbursement of sub-postmasters who made payments to rectify Horizon errors out of their own pockets. We need to explore prosecution for those responsible for the fiasco and for the recovery of relevant awards, rewards and bonuses. We must make sure that we learn from what has happened regarding the outsourcing of sensitive systems to profit-driven corporate entities and the safeguards that are necessary in relation to increasingly privatised agencies.

For now, we have the legislation about the quashing of convictions. We must deal with it quickly, so I support today’s motion and look forward to our stage 1 and 2 discussions next week.

I thank Collette Stevenson for securing the debate and for highlighting that people experience domestic abuse and intimate partner violence within a wide range of situations, identities and relationships.

Collette Stevenson’s comprehensive motion raises many important issues, of which I would like to focus on just one: the experience of trans and non-binary survivors of domestic abuse. I thank the Scottish Transgender Alliance, LGBT Youth Scotland, the Equality Network, Stonewall and others for their painstaking and sensitive work in that area.

Trans people experience disproportionately high levels of domestic abuse. That abuse includes physical and sexual violence, emotional and financial abuse and controlling and coercive behaviour. Perpetrators deny their trans partners access to essential medication and treatment to prevent them from expressing their identity. They undermine their decisions and manipulate their vulnerability, intentionally leaving them ashamed of who they are and guilty about living with integrity.

Trans partners are often isolated from family and friends, and are sometimes outed before they are ready. Those who are parents may face denial of contact with their children and encouragement of those children to reject or abuse them. We know that potential predators seek out people who are vulnerable because of their previous experiences of abuse, trauma or rejection.

Trans and non-binary children and young people are disproportionately likely to be estranged from their families and to have undergone abuse, including conversion practices. The cumulative and combined mental health impacts of family and intimate partner abuse can be devastating, especially for young people and those who are early in their transition process.

All those forms and consequences of abuse are made much worse by toxic media and political narratives. The myths and tropes of transphobia serve to normalise abuse, embed feelings of worthlessness and isolation and block pathways to support and recovery. It is hard to seek help when you are told that you do not deserve it, that this is the only relationship that you will ever have and that safety and respect do not apply to you. It is hard to find help when your family and friends turn away and when you are still learning the norms that cis people have been taught every day of their lives. It is hard to contact support services when political rhetoric says that a refuge is no safe place for you.

Those services—I refer members to my entry in the register of interests on that—have been supporting trans people safely for many years, but that good practice is too often invisible or vilified. What can we do? How can we in the Parliament, with the privilege that we have, show our solidarity and care for our trans and non-binary neighbours who are enduring such abuse?

We can be courageous, by speaking out against the rhetoric of hate and fear and by recognising the scale and depth of the problem and the ways in which political discourse and political choices have failed those who we ought to protect. We can be sensitive, by working with and supporting civil society organisations that have built expertise, learning from them and—most of all—from transgender and non-binary people. We can be fair, by properly funding services that address all forms of domestic abuse, including those that offer specialist support for minority and intersectional survivors. We can be progressive, by acting robustly and radically to address misogyny, including trans misogyny, and by bringing in a comprehensive ban on conversion practices and ensuring that young and older people can access the healthcare, respect and dignified processes that they still need and deserve.

I would like to speak once more to the trans community—our neighbours, our friends and our family. Much has changed, and for the worse, but our solidarity and care remain. You are treasured and you are not forgotten.

Thanks.

I have similar questions for Angela Matthews. In the Business Disability Forum, what do the people you engage with need to know to enable them to employ disabled people without those fears and concerns and barriers?

Good morning to the panel; thank you for joining us this morning.

I will follow on from Brian Whittle’s questions and come back to you, Vikki. You talked about the case studies in the report that the FSB published a couple of years ago. Do you get the sense that there is an appetite among your members to learn and to share information about what works, how easy it was and where the challenges were? You have all spoken about employers’ uncertainties, fears and worry about the cost of employing disabled people. How can we overcome the barriers that might just be barriers of perception rather than reality?

I turn to Heather Fisken. Following on from that, where do you see the gaps in the national plans and strategies for the ambition of halving the disability employment gap? Is there enough co-ordination? Are people talking to each other? Do we have the structures of the plans and strategies right, in your view?

I have a similar question for Chirsty McFadyen. I very much take to heart Heather Fisken’s challenge, in that halving the disability employment gap is not ambitious enough. Where have you identified the gaps or the lack of co-ordination across the strategies and plans?