Chamber and committees

Today, we mark the 30th international day for the elimination of violence against women. Despite some progress having been made, it is clear that gender-based violence is still the lived reality for too many women across the world.

We see that in the Covid-19 pandemic, humanitarian crises, conflicts and climate disasters, which are all causing an increasing threat of violence to women and girls, so I welcome the UN’s UNiTE to end violence against women campaign and the 16 days of activism, which are focused on preventing and eliminating violence against women and girls around the world. I welcome the Scottish Government’s motion that highlights the need for the Parliament to renew its shared ambition to tackle gender-based violence.

However, there is clearly still more work to be done to make that ambition a reality. Gender-based violence, whether it is domestic abuse, rape and sexual assault, stalking or harassment, remains deeply rooted in our society. Recent figures, which were published in September, found that there were more than 33,000 charges of domestic abuse in Scotland last year. That was the highest number of charges reported since 2015 and represents an almost 10 per cent increase in one year. There were also more than 1,000 stalking charges last year. Yet those figures represent only instances of gender-based violence that were reported and where charges were brought. The truth is that too much of the gender-based violence that is suffered by women and girls in Scotland goes unreported.

Therefore, it is clear that there is more that we must do in Scotland and that there are policy changes that we could make now. We must teach our young people and children to respect each other’s bodily autonomy. Girls should not be expected to internalise misogyny, and boys should not grow up with a sense of entitlement over others. In our public services, we must look to increase awareness of gender-based violence among staff and strengthen training for them to support women and girls. We must address the concerns that women and girls have for their safety, by carrying out safety audits of public spaces to ensure that they are well lit, welcoming and accessible.

We also have to acknowledge the role of the police in women’s safety. The motion refers to the murder of Sarah Everard, who was murdered not just by a man, but a man who was a serving police officer. Women and girls are told to turn to the police in times of crisis, but Sarah Everard’s murder has damaged trust in the police as an institution. Statistics show that Sarah’s murderer is not an exception, but a symptom of the institutional sexism that still exists within the police. At least 15 serving or former UK police officers have killed women since 2009. More than 40 police officers and staff in Police Scotland are being prosecuted over offences that include sex crime, assaults and domestic abuse. Rape Crisis Scotland published a damning report of the experiences of survivors of rape and sexual assault, which exposed the systemic sexism that still exists in Police Scotland’s ranks.

That is why it was so concerning that Police Scotland’s international development and innovation unit had been undertaking work with the Sri Lankan police, including how to tackle gender-based violence. Given Police Scotland’s poor record, how could anyone argue that that unit was best placed to promote good practice internationally? In spite of its supposed aims, the unit’s activities in Sri Lanka failed to change the attitude and culture of gender-based violence that is rife in the country. A Sri Lankan police spokesperson was recently quoted as confirming that the force would not take cases of intimate partner violence to court, so it is no surprise that campaigners feared that Police Scotland’s work was providing political cover and legitimacy for the human rights violations, including gender-based violence, that occur in Sri Lanka.

The chief constable has now made a welcome announcement that there will be no further deployment of Police Scotland officers to Sri Lanka during the remainder of the agreed period, which ends in March 2022, and that Police Scotland will not seek to renew its engagement to support policing in Sri Lanka when the current period ends. That is a victory for campaigners, who will write to the chief constable in the coming days to seek a written confirmation of that decision, and I hope that they are provided with that.

However, members should note that the U-turn comes in spite of the inaction of the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Veterans. If the Scottish Government had wanted to demonstrate its willingness to take all necessary steps to tackle gender-based violence, the justice secretary should have supported the calls for Police Scotland’s contract with the Sri Lankan police to be terminated and not renewed. There is no point in a justice secretary who does not stand up for human rights, yet that is exactly what we have in Keith Brown.

I conclude by acknowledging that all of us in the Parliament want to tackle gender-based violence and that it is the responsibility of us all to push the Government to do more to help achieve that. We must educate our children and young people if we are to address deep-rooted attitudes and behaviours, we must improve the support that is offered to women and girls by our public services and we must make our public spaces safe for women and girls. It would be a mark of the failure of all of us in the Parliament if people looking back in 30 years’ time concluded that we had said all the right things but failed to deliver the action that was needed to eliminate violence against women and girls.

The current provisions seem to make exceptions for the tail docking of working dogs and the declawing of cats. In the light of those exceptions, are you satisfied with the legislation? Does it go far enough?

It would make sense for me to direct my first question to Professor Bill Austin. How important is carbon capture and storage in marine and coastal environments in respect of climate change? What are the main pressures on blue carbon stores in Scotland?

Only the Tories would lodge a motion in the wake of COP26 that focuses solely on road building without any reference to public transport or active travel. Domestic transport continues to be the largest source of net emissions. Cars account for almost 40 per cent of those emissions and car dependency is increasing at unsustainable levels, with the proportion of single-occupant journeys reaching 66 per cent.

However, there is an alternative. A double-decker bus can replace 75 single-occupant cars, but to get people out of cars and on to buses requires public investment, democratic ownership and socialist ambition—things that we cannot rely on the SNP or the Tories to deliver. By all means, let us debate road infrastructure, but let us speak about connecting our communities with accessible and affordable public transport, making our pavements and cycleways safer for everyone and restoring biodiversity through a network of green corridors.

Road infrastructure must focus on delivering accessible and affordable public transport and creating an integrated transport network that seamlessly links communities and promotes active travel. It must also focus on making such a network environmentally sustainable, but the reality is that private control of our public transport is a barrier to achieving that. Tory-driven deregulation in the 1980s led us to the broken transport system that we have today—it is expensive, disjointed and fragmented.

Bus operators extract profit from the most commercial routes while failing to invest in the wider network, despite receiving more than 40 per cent of their income from public subsidies. They continue to hike up fares, which have risen by more than 10 per cent above inflation over the past decade. All that has led to a decline in bus journeys, so it is no wonder that the Tories do not mention public transport in their motion, given their toxic legacy of deregulation, which they continue to champion.

However, the Scottish Government’s amendment is no better. It acknowledges

“a need to encourage more people to use more sustainable travel options and reduce their car use”

but offers no practical steps to make that a reality. The Government has a target of reducing car kilometres travelled by 20 per cent by 2030, but has yet to outline what steps will be taken to achieve that.

The Transport (Scotland) Act 2019 allows for publicly run bus services, but it is not backed by sufficient resources for local authorities, and the Government’s proposed bus service improvement partnerships will leave control of fares, routes and timetables at the whim of private companies. Instead of capitulating to private interests, the Scottish Government should take innovative action, such as providing start-up capital through the Scottish National Investment Bank to enable the development of publicly run local bus services. Public ownership is key, because it means that profits that are generated can be reinvested to support non-commercial routes, deliver affordable fares and improve workers’ pay and conditions.

To conclude, I contrast the empty rhetoric of the SNP Government and the lack of ambition from the Tories with the action that is being taken in Wales. The Welsh Labour Government has announced that it will suspend all future road-building projects, and the money that is saved by not building new roads will be used to improve existing ones, including creating new bus and cycle lanes and infrastructure for sustainable transport.

That is the kind of ambition that Labour in Government has, and is the kind of ambition that we need in the Scottish Parliament if we are to meet our climate change targets.

Who is paying?

I thank the minister for advance sight of her statement. We recognise that Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs position on VAT is challenging, but VAT deposits have not been a barrier to implementation of deposit return schemes in other European countries.

The minister says that the Scottish Government

“is committed to the scheme being operational as soon as practically possibly.”

Can she confirm that there will be no delay to the July 2022 implementation date?

We know how concerned the minister was about industry lobbying causing delays to the scheme, so can she confirm what discussions she has had with large-scale producers to ensure that they, and not local authorities, will foot the bill for any delay?

We acknowledge that the minister has committed to come back to the chamber to outline the final timeline, but can she confirm today when she will return to the chamber?

The bill seems to be quite narrow in scope, specifically focusing on the good food nation plans. What was the thinking behind that? What are the practical implications of having such a focused purpose for the bill?

I think that a lot of people expected that a right to food would be included in the bill. Can we expect to see that? If not, why was that decision taken?

I also thank Elena Whitham for bringing forward the motion for debate. The motion rightly highlights the essential injustice that sex workers face under the current legal framework. They face criminal sanctions for soliciting, under section 46 of the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982. The threat of criminal sanctions deters many sex workers from seeking support, including support to leave sex work altogether. That is an untenable position, which is why we must remove the burden of criminality from sex workers.

To explain why that is the case, I will highlight some of the consequences of criminalisation. It prevents sex workers from accessing essential healthcare services, impacting on their health. Concerns about the link between criminalisation and poor health among sex workers are shared by international bodies including the World Health Organization and UNAIDS—the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS. The World Health Organization found that female sex workers were up to 30 times more likely to be living with HIV than other women of reproductive age.

Human Rights Watch has found that criminalisation makes sex workers more prone to violence, including assault and rape. That is because criminalisation stigmatises sex workers, reducing their likelihood of seeking police help and increasing their use of unsafe locations for work. Human Rights Watch surveyed South African sex workers who said that they were less likely to report crimes to the police because of the illegality of sex work. That, in turn, left them at risk of suffering violence that they then did not report to the police.

We can break that vicious cycle by taking a decriminalisation approach. That does not mean abolishing laws that protect sex workers from exploitation, human trafficking and violence; it means removing the laws and policies that criminalise the selling and buying of sexual services. Decriminalisation is supported by a broad range of organisations including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women and is increasingly backed by evidence from international bodies including the World Health Organization and UN agencies. The World Health Organization estimates that decriminalisation could lead to an almost 50 per cent reduction in new HIV infections in sex workers over 10 years.

Decriminalisation alone is not enough. We must also tackle the underlying material issues that often drive people into sex work in the first place. For some, it is a lack of employment or educational opportunities; for others, it is rising living costs including those of rent, food and heating. Some sex workers have chronic conditions or disabilities and turn to sex work because of inadequate social security provision. Until there is a concerted effort to improve material conditions, we will see people turning to sex work.

Continuing the criminalisation of sex workers will not help individuals to leave sex work. The evidence shows that it will not reduce violence against sex workers. Criminalisation serves as a barrier to sex workers accessing essential services such as healthcare. We need a new approach, which is why I believe that we should pursue decriminalisation.

I will conclude by sharing a worker’s testimony that I received. Kim, who is an Edinburgh-based migrant worker, said this in response to the proposal to criminalise buyers:

“We are just out of a whole year of Covid, which showed that taking our clients away does not magically deliver us into a new life free from exploitation, but rather makes us poor and hungry and heavily dependent on the few clients that are left.”

I thank all the members who supported the motion, which allowed it to be brought forward for debate at today’s members’ business.

I think that we all agree that our economy must shift from reliance on carbon-intensive sectors to greener alternatives and that failure to bring about such economic change will weaken our efforts to tackle the climate emergency. However, we cannot pursue that at the expense of workers such as those in the offshore oil and gas sector.

I represent offshore oil and gas workers in the north-east, so I know the importance of delivering a worker-led transition. That means a transition that will not only deliver well-paid and secure green jobs but empower workers. We are far from achieving such a transition in the offshore energy sector. In fact, offshore oil and gas workers are left in a position where their transferable skills go unrecognised. They are often asked, and at great personal expense, to duplicate skills and qualifications that they already have. Workers continue to find themselves in that position because of on-going market failure coupled with Government inaction.

Left to their own devices, the sector’s major training bodies have failed to agree common standards. They have instead developed rival standards, training modules and qualifications. Although the Scottish Government provides warm words about a skills guarantee and a just transition, there is no hint that it is willing to meaningfully intervene. That is why I have been engaging with climate campaigners from Friends of the Earth and with trade unions such as the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers.

Workers’ futures can no longer be left to the whims of the market or remain unsupported by Government. Workers need Government intervention. That is why I am calling on the Scottish Government to commit to creating an offshore training passport. When I raised the issue with the First Minister last month, she described an offshore training passport as a “constructive proposal”. However, when the Minister for Just Transition, Employment and Fair Work later wrote to me, he failed to offer any firm commitment that the Scottish Government would support the creation of an offshore training passport. I therefore have three key asks that I hope a minister will respond to when they come to close the debate. I cannot see a minister here.