Chamber and committees

Good morning, minister. Thank you for being with us and thank you for your opening comments.

In either your opening statement or in response to the convener’s questions, you said that raising awareness is key to the crucial work of challenging and tackling stigma. You mentioned the short film, but we also know that storylines in dramas can have a significant and positive impact by raising general societal awareness, encouraging people to get tested and demystifying some of the process. What plans are in place to amplify and extend the campaigns that we have seen in recent months to focus on raising awareness and tackling stigma?

I appreciate that you want to evaluate the outcome of the Terrence Higgins Trust film and the impact that it has had. There might be other ways of getting the message out to different audiences to identify some of the cultural barriers that people can experience. We know that stigma can be compounded in areas of intersectionality such as culture, women, black and ethnic minority groups. Other than films and that kind of targeted project, how does the Scottish Government plan to take an intersectional approach to tackling stigma, either through the delivery plan or elsewhere?

One of the things that we heard quite clearly was that, in order to tackle the stigma associated with HIV, we need to tackle the taboo around talking about sex.

That speaks to what you have just said.

Is no provision of information required for anyone in the process to ensure that it has happened?

Good morning, minister, and thank you for joining us this morning. I have a quick question about the expansion of the provision of legal aid to children who might be subject to MRCs. How do you expect that those who qualify will be informed of the fact that legal aid is provided? Will provision be automatic, or will some kind of application be needed?

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. I seek your guidance in relation to section 7.5 of the code of conduct, the requirement to treat each other “with courtesy and respect”, given the repeated heckling, mainly from men, mainly of women who are on their feet answering questions. I refer specifically to an incident at topical questions earlier this afternoon, with Stephen Kerr’s repeated interruptions of the minister Jenni Minto, which I can only imagine were designed to try and knock her off her feet, when, as a Parliament, we should be valuing and welcoming the contribution of women ministers. I would welcome your guidance on that.

I, too, put on record my thanks to all the WASPI women who have campaigned on the issue for so long. Not only should their call for proper compensation be answered—we know that some women have lost up to six years of their pension—but we need to continue to stand with them and join their calls for fair and fast compensation. Will the cabinet secretary outline how else we can continue to support the WASPI women in their campaign for justice?

The WhatsApp trial will provide really good experience on how to receive evidence by video. We hope that that will be of use not only to our BSL communities but to others, too. Of course, it is not for the corporate body to dictate to committees how to do their business, but, if the pilot works, other committees might wish to use that method. The Conveners Group can perhaps discuss the issue. We want to make sure that we promote different practices and alternative ways of widening participation.

Mr McKee highlights an interesting issue, which might have come as a bit of a surprise to some in the chamber. In the main, the corporate body accesses software and cloud services, including the Microsoft 365 applications for our email system and other office functions, on a subscription basis. Microsoft makes modifications and updates, which are available immediately to users, to enhance functions or address cybervulnerabilities. Quarantine is one such update; it was introduced to protect users from potentially harmful emails, such as phishing or malware.

BIT recently introduced the new alerting system to let members know when email messages have been placed in quarantine; I think that that is the change to which Mr McKee referred. The notification system was introduced by BIT because it would otherwise not be automatically obvious to users that messages had been quarantined. That was in response to something that Microsoft had done behind the scenes.

With regard to the updating of the allowances system, members and staff were offered a range of training options during the roll-out of the system, with step-by-step instructions available on the intranet. The allowances office and other parts of the parliamentary estate continue to provide support and advice to members.

Of course, we always welcome feedback and challenge, and we push back when members or their staff think that something will not work. Those views will be taken into consideration.