Chamber and committees

Richmond Davies, one group that we have not talked about is people who have been released from prison. You may be aware that The Lancet recently published multinational research that included Scottish data—Scotland was one of the eight countries covered in that research. It found that suicide was the second-highest cause of death in the first week following their release. Is Public Health Scotland making the connections that Neil Mathers has just been talking about? Are we gathering the right data? That links back to Annie Wells’s questions about how we collect and use data and therefore how we feed that into our strategic work.

It is the seventh birthday of the two-child cap. Should we have a party, with balloons, games and wee slices of sponge cake wrapped in a paper napkin? Maybe not. For the 400,000 UK families who are being bludgeoned by the two-child cap, including nearly 500 in Dundee West alone, there is not much money for parties. Indeed, there is not much money for anything.

A report published just last week by Nesta, the innovation agency, found that parents who are affected by the cap are struggling to afford necessities for their children. Many are being forced into desperate debt, and many are skipping meals and selling their belongings. Taking their children to other children’s parties—never mind having their own—is one of the luxuries that they cannot afford, along with books, educational toys and school trips. Parents described the stress, guilt and demoralisation that they feel. They are often trapped in low-paid and insecure jobs—we must remember that 59 per cent of affected households are in work—because they cannot afford the childcare that would help them earn more.

We have known that for a long time, of course. The Tory UK Government knew from the beginning that that would be the outcome. It went ahead anyway, veiling its war on the poor with pious talk of unavoidable austerity. That was never true—not then, not now.

Six months ago, we debated the issue here, not long after Keir Starmer had declared:

“We’re not changing that policy.”

Paul O’Kane has reassured us this afternoon that that is not Scottish Labour’s position, which is good to hear. However, it was chilling to hear Sir Keir, in conversation with Tony Blair, doubling down on his intransigence by comparing the lifting of the two-child cap to Liz Truss’s calamitous speculation. If he does not understand how distasteful and how downright demeaning that is, I do not know what can reach him.

I do not know what can reach the Tories either. New evidence from the End Child Poverty coalition shows that a quarter of households that are caught by the limit are single-parent families with a child under three. Those are parents that even the UK Government’s universal credit rules recognise should not be obliged to find employment. Further, a fifth of the households affected have at least one disabled child.

I have to ask the Conservative representatives: is that really what they want? Do they really think that parents of disabled children, babies and toddlers are to blame for experiencing hard times, perhaps as a result of bereavement, separation or redundancy or due to the excruciating effects of inflation, mortgage or rent increases and the cost of the heating and the food that keep those children alive?

If they do think that those parents should be punished, do they really believe that punishment should be borne by the children? After all, that is what the policy means: collective punishment. We are seeing the punishment of babies, toddlers and disabled children for sins that are not even those of their parents but of successive Tory Governments. Those Governments have no shame, no compunction and no conscience about using the poverty, ill health and misery that they have created to scapegoat those who bear the heaviest burdens.

I am tired. Like many of us, including Clare Haughey, whom I thank for securing this evening’s debate, I am sick and tired of standing here, begging those who can influence this obscene policy to do so. However, I am not as sick and tired as the mothers who go without meals so that their children can eat. I am not as tired as the parents who work multiple jobs, come home to care for their families and still cannot afford to buy them a picture book. They are not giving up, so neither will we.

I am delighted to be speaking to the motion in my name as a member of the corporate body appointment panel, and invite members of the Parliament to agree to the appointment of Morag Ferguson and Lezley Stewart as members of the Standards Commission for Scotland.

The standards commission is part of the ethical standards framework, and its role is to encourage high ethical standards in public life by promoting and enforcing the codes of conduct for councillors and members of devolved public bodies. It issues guidance to councils and public bodies, and adjudicates on alleged contraventions of the codes referred to it by the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland.

I turn to our nominees. Morag Ferguson has been a solicitor for more than 30 years, spending most of her career in the public sector, both in the NHS National Services Scotland central legal office and in a number of local authorities. Latterly, she was head of corporate support at East Lothian Council, with responsibility for governance, people services, human resources and corporate communications.

Lezley Stewart has worked for the Church of Scotland for more than 25 years in Dundee and Edinburgh, serving as an ordained office-holder. Most recently, she was employed as the recruitment and support secretary, and ministry support manager, for the Church of Scotland.

I am also delighted to announce that, following an open recruitment exercise, the corporate body will appoint Suzanne Vestri, an existing member of the Standards Commission, as the new convener, with effect from 7 May 2024.

I am sure that the Parliament will want to wish them all every success in their new roles.

I thank the outgoing convener, Paul Walker, and Anne-Marie O’Hara, who was a member for a while. I wish them all the best for their future.

I move,

That the Parliament agrees, under section 8 of the Ethical Standards in Public Life etc. (Scotland) Act 2000, to appoint Morag Ferguson and Lezley Stewart as Members of the Standards Commission for Scotland.

Doing justice is about the process as well as the outcome. As a society, we lay a heavy burden on those who have experienced serious crime as victims, survivors or witnesses. We call on them to recount their experiences—often again and again—in the face of trauma, disbelief and outright hostility. It is a burden that most are more than willing to shoulder, not for revenge or gain but to prevent others from suffering in the same way. They do a precious service to their community by telling their stories and doing so with truth, grace and courage, so one would think that the very least that the community and the agencies that represent it can do is to treat them with respect and humanity but, far too often, that is not the case.

We have an adversarial justice system but, in criminal cases, the opponents are supposed to be the prosecution, representing the state, and the defence. Survivors and witnesses are not adversarial actors and yet look at how they are treated: as though they themselves are on trial, with the trauma of their original experience intensified, even overshadowed, by the trauma of the court process. They are central to the facts of the case, yet are the last to know what is happening and why. They are treated as pawns in courtroom games and collateral damage in performative conflicts.

It is no coincidence that all that is overwhelmingly true of one type of crime—a type that I know of all too well from my previous work in the rape crisis network. I refer colleagues to that previous employment, which is set out in my entry in the register of interests. The survivors who are supported by my former colleagues not only carry the direct consequences of their experience but struggle through a toxic morass of misogyny, structural violence and a male impunity that is embedded in tradition, assumption and myth.

The bill that is before us today is part of a long process of examination, research, consideration and consultation about those issues, and I pay tribute to all who have been part of that work, in whatever capacity, and all who will continue to take it forward. Yes, the provisions are challenging, not least to long-standing tradition, but the changes that the bill proposes are not made on a whim for the sake of change itself or necessarily to follow other jurisdictions; they are made because the evidence suggests that justice—both process and outcome—urgently requires it.

It is not just to have a verdict that judges cannot explain, that leaves defendants stigmatised and survivors traumatised, and that serves only to excuse juries from the hardest decision—for it is hard, we know, to convict men for doing what, deep down, many still expect real men to do. It is not just for courts, offices and police stations to be staffed with people who still do not know—who perhaps choose not to know—the effects of trauma and the need to act appropriately. It is not just to have juries so large that not all members need fully to participate.

It is not just that abusers in many civil cases should still be able to personally cross-examine those they have abused, and that vulnerable witnesses should be denied the protections that they would receive in other proceedings. It is not just that rape survivors should be questioned about their most intimate lives and relationships without the benefit of independent legal advice, or that they should be named against their will on social media. It is not just that women should undergo all that—all the horror of reliving their trauma, explaining their pain and postponing their hopes of resolution, perhaps for years—only to have their truth denied by the stubborn persistence of rape myths, which are old lies of inappropriate response, invisible emotion, delayed reporting and false accusations.

It is perhaps encouraging that the proposal for a pilot judge-only court is the most controversial and contested part of the bill. While the Tory Government in England does its best to suppress even the knowledge that juries can acquit a defendant such as a climate protector when it is equitable to do so, it is a relief to hear that the Tories’ Scottish colleagues have such affection for juries. Juries matter, and it matters that they hear the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

I firmly believe that any pilot established under those provisions must be created and implemented with sensitivity, with the active participation of all relevant stakeholders, with strict time limits and in conjunction with serious and urgent work to address the prevalence of rape myths, not only in jury rooms but everywhere.

I will be voting for the bill today, not in triumph or challenge but in quiet remembrance of all those for whom it has come too late. Let us do justice for them, for those who wait now and for those who might thank us in the future.

I thank Pauline McNeill for her motion and for securing the debate. Before the Easter recess, it was my pleasure to co-host, with Pauline McNeill and other cross-party colleagues, a drop-in session in the Parliament with the Prison Officers Association. Many colleagues will have taken the chance to have a chat with prison officers about the work that they do and the conditions in which they must do that work.

In those conversations, I heard prison officers talk about the physically demanding nature of their role, which staff who are in their seventh decade—and who are approaching their eighth decade—should not be expected to undertake. A prison may be a “controlled environment”, but that does not mean that it is a safe environment. This afternoon and in many other debates in the chamber, we have heard of the violence and abuse that take place in our prisons. I argue that such conditions alone are justification enough for a whole-scale review of our prison system that covers what—and who—it is for, and why we still use a carceral system that has not fundamentally changed for decades, if not centuries.

However, that may be a debate for another day. Today, we have the chance to come together as a Parliament and stand in solidarity with workers who do a difficult and demanding job. We have the chance to make a clear and united call to the UK Government that we agree with the Prison Officers Association’s campaign—that 68 is, indeed, too late.

Pauline McNeill has mentioned, but it is worth reiterating, that as a uniformed service, prison officers should have been included in the 2011 Furness review of public service pensions. That review stated clearly that uniformed services should have a pension age of 60,

“to reflect the unique nature of their work”.

Pauline McNeill outlined clearly many of the increasing pressures on our prisons, all of which make a retirement age of 68 even less appropriate. Making prison officers work until they are 68 is risky, and lays the foundations for problems in the service in the coming years. Experienced prison officers might decide to leave their roles in their 40s or 50s because they want to get another job before getting close to 60, when their employment prospects will decline. That is not good for ensuring that younger workers have experienced colleagues to support them as they get to grips with a job that probably not many of us would want to do. It is not good for the service as whole. It is also likely that sickness absence rates will increase, which will put additional strain on remaining colleagues and potentially make prisons even more dangerous. That cannot be the future that we want for the service.

I hope that we can all be clear in our commitment to ensuring that prison officers are included in the list of uniformed services with a retirement age of 60. I urge the cabinet secretary, in her closing remarks, to commit to engaging with the Prison Officers Association and others, so that we might explore what we can do to support prison officers until we get the change that we need at Westminster.

I close with the words of a prison officer who took part in a survey undertaken by the POA this year:

“I am aged 59 at the moment and have 30 years of experience in working in various establishments. The job that I am required to do has had a lasting mental and physical impact on me, in particular the latter years. The thought of having to go to 67/68 fills me with dread as I feel that I will be less capable of doing what is demanded of me. It is not an environment for anybody over the age of 60.”

Decades of inaction have brought us to this point. Today must be a pivotal moment in our fight against the climate emergency and for a liveable future. We might have come half way, but that is the easy part. Decarbonising our homes, transitioning to regenerative zero-carbon farming, addressing transport emissions and transforming our economy are the challenges ahead.

Although the Scottish Government is making progress, we must go further and move faster, and today’s package of measures to accelerate action will help make that happen. Does the cabinet secretary agree that blocking climate action for the sake of opposition, or because of vested interests, is not good enough and that Labour and the Tories must stop the hypocrisy and get behind the climate acceleration package?

I remind colleagues of my trade union membership, as recorded in my entry in the register of members’ interests.

I begin by paying tribute to Mark Griffin for all the work that he has put into his bill and the wider issues of support and compensation for people who are made unwell, injured or disabled at or by their work. I also thank the Social Justice and Social Security Committee for its detailed scrutiny of the bill’s proposals and for the report that it published earlier this year. I am sorry not to be a member of that committee, which is why I did not play a full part in that scrutiny, but I tried to follow the evidence sessions as best I could.

I also pay tribute to the many trade unions, other organisations and individuals who not only contributed to the committee’s scrutiny of the bill but, as Mark Griffin has outlined, have campaigned for years to have the issues that he outlined earlier properly recognised and addressed.

Scottish Greens believe that no one should suffer as a consequence of their work or because of an injury, illness or disability that happens in, or develops because of, their workplace. I think that that is something on which we can all agree. In our view, the extension of that belief is that people who do, unfortunately, suffer an industrial injury or develop an occupational disease should be appropriately supported and compensated.

I agree that we must reform and modernise the industrial benefits scheme that we have had in place for more than 70 years. We need to see significant improvements, some of which we have heard about already today, and I will highlight just a couple of them.

Members will be aware of the on-going DECON campaign by the Fire Brigades Union. Firefighting is now recognised by the World Health Organization as a carcinogenic profession. It is clear that we should recognise that and act not only to provide the best possible protections for firefighters as they do their important and life-saving jobs but to ensure that, if they are diagnosed with diseases that are a consequence of their work, they are appropriately supported and compensated. I ask the cabinet secretary to confirm, in her closing statement, a commitment to working with her colleagues in justice, the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and the FBU to ensure that the future employment injury assistance system is available to firefighters.

I also ask the cabinet secretary to assure members that the following issues will be clearly addressed in the work that is to be undertaken in the coming months. The committee heard that current approaches to workplace health and safety often ignore women-specific occupational illnesses and injuries, so the employment injury assistance benefit must not be gender blind. The STUC and Close the Gap have clearly highlighted the fact that women are vastly underrepresented in the current industrial injuries disablement benefit system, accounting for only 16 per cent of those who claim IIDB. Occupational injuries and illnesses that are associated with women-dominated work such as social care and retail are often ignored, underdiagnosed, underresearched and undercompensated. Scotland’s EIA must not replicate that inequality and injustice.

As others have said, we want the system that we design for Scotland to be inclusive, supportive and effective. I do not envy those who have the task of digitising all the paper records that we have heard about, but I wish them well. I also hope that the conversations that must happen to ensure that the EIA system that we develop is fit for purpose can start and continue apace, so that we do not leave people waiting any longer than is absolutely necessary for the support that they deserve.

I again thank Mark Griffin for making us all more aware of the weaknesses in the current system of support for those with industrial injuries or occupational diseases and for the conversations that we have had about those issues in the past couple of years. He has ensured that the system that we end up developing in Scotland will be better than it might otherwise have been, and I thank him for that. I look forward to working with him, the cabinet secretary and others as work on the issue continues in the coming months.

Good morning, minister, and thank you for your contribution so far.

In the 10 years since the 2014 act was passed, we have seen more focus on issues such as the climate impact of our work, the shift to net zero, renewed interest in community wealth building, as you have already spoken about, and the development of regional economic partnerships to focus on local resilience, sustainability and the like. The vision in the five-year procurement strategy that was published last year focuses on maximising value for the people of Scotland and putting public procurement at the heart of a sustainable economy.

Are we using procurement to the best possible effect to meet the challenges in the 2014 act around the sustainable procurement duty and deliver the positive social and environmental outcomes that we know it can deliver?

Thanks for that. You talked about the delivery of goods, services and works, but around those also come the jobs and pay and conditions of the people who are delivering those goods, services and works. It is not only those individuals; it is the communities that they live in and support, and those local economies. We can see the tracking of fair work requirements through some of the contracting processes, and I hear what you say about the bureaucracy of following that all the way through. We have seen really positive progress, as you outlined, around the real living wage, but that is easily defined, easy to measure and easy to monitor.

There has perhaps been less progress around gender representation and carbon accounting, for instance. What thought has the Scottish Government given to defining more clearly what we mean by progress in those areas? They are fundamental to the sustainable communities that rely on the economies that we are talking about, but if we do not have a clear understanding of what we mean when we talk about gender equality or carbon accounting, those who are delivering the goods, services and works are working, perhaps not blind, but with good intentions although without a clearly defined focus or outcome.

Okay, thank you—I will leave it there.