Chamber and committees

I have asked the broadcasting staff to turn the sound up. We can hear you, but we are straining a little. They have turned it up now.

I thank the committee for the opportunity to speak on this important subject. The petition has my full support. Ms McKay previously contacted my office, and I raised her case with Police Scotland. She has my admiration for the way that she has approached the issue after such a harrowing incident for her family.

We know that there is a correlation between spiking and sexual offences, and we know the systemic barriers that people face in reporting such crimes. Those are wider cultural issues, which are typically rooted in the tacit societal acceptance of both violence and misogyny. The petition does not speak to those harmful cultural norms, but it is those attitudes that drive the inequity that have made such incidents troublingly commonplace.

As policy makers, we must recognise the areas in which we can make an immediate and tangible difference. Other barriers will still exist to reporting those incidents, but confidence in those incidents being investigated should not be one of them. Victims should feel confident that their complaints will be treated with the utmost seriousness. They need to know that their voices will be heard and that their experiences will be compassionately handled and rigorously investigated. That is not the current position, as demonstrated by the experience of the McKay family. Too many people are hesitant to bring cases forward; our Parliament has an opportunity to change that narrative.

In cases of suspected spiking, I share the belief that appropriate testing should be standard, because we know that the hours following the incident are critical. Further, victims should be directed to holistic emotional support. People in such situations will always feel scared and isolated, and supporting their mental wellbeing is crucial. Promoting that support more widely will encourage more people to relay their experiences so that the crimes can be investigated and perpetrators will feel the full legal scrutiny for their actions. No one who commits those heinous crimes should feel safe and their actions should not go unpunished. No one who suffers because of those crimes should feel that their voice is dismissed.

I thank the committee once again for allowing me to speak and convey my appreciation for Catherine Anne McKay and for her dedicated advocacy on behalf of her family. Their work will make no difference to their experience and the outcome of it, but it may ensure that no other victim or family are left feeling that incredible injustice.

Thank you for that brief introduction. We do not always get that, but it was ideal for setting the tone for our questions.

I will open with a quote from the strategy:

“We will not be able to protect every heritage asset though, and will need to make difficult choices about the historic places we invest in and which elements of our heritage we can maintain for the future. And we must face all of this within a difficult funding environment”.

I would like you to expand on the impact of the funding environment on the numbers of assets that you are able to protect, but I also want to try to understand whether there is a framework or a matrix around that decision-making process and how it develops.

Did you want to come in on that, Dr Jackson?

I understood you as saying that the apprenticeship model is not the right one financially. Can you give us a bit more detail about that? Where are the pinch points? Are they with the colleges or the employers? Why does the model not quite work?

Do you subcontract all your work or do you have skilled people who work directly for your organisation?

Yes, absolutely. I am sure that my local college would be delighted to have a visit from you to look at some of those options.

Good morning, and a very warm welcome to the 33rd meeting in 2023 of the Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee.

Our first item is to continue to take evidence on “Our Past, Our Future: The Strategy for Scotland’s Historic Environment”. We are delighted to be joined by Alex Paterson, chief executive of Historic Environment Scotland, and Dr Adam Jackson, head of strategy and policy at Historic Environment Scotland. I ask Mr Paterson to make a short opening statement.

I think that we have exhausted the questions. I thank the witnesses for their attendance. The session has been really interesting and we look forward to finding out where the Lookaboutye tower ends up down the line.

This might seem a bit off the wall, but I recently visited my local college, New College Lanarkshire Motherwell campus, and I saw its robotics hub, where cobots are being used to do skilled sanding and welding work to repair turbines. That is partly about taking the risk factor away from people who would otherwise have to abseil on the machines. Instead, the robot can be hoisted up to do the work, so the skill comes from the person directing the robot. Have you considered that sort of technology for some of the work that you are doing to see if it is more commercially viable, given the skills shortage. If you could get some tasks on to a different platform, would that work?