Chamber and committees

I am grateful to have the chance to speak in the debate and I thank Jackie Baillie for securing it. I want to speak because of a courageous and inspiring boy from Clydebank, Caleb Stirrat. At only three years old, Caleb was diagnosed with a brain tumour and was given a less than 50 per cent chance of survival. Shortly after completing treatment at the age of four, Caleb relapsed and was placed in palliative care.

Faced with unimaginable distress and the worst news that a parent could ever hear, his parents, Karen and Andy, fought incredibly hard for Caleb to receive a trial drug. Caleb is now 10 years old and, despite setbacks and living with long-term side effects, he is still fighting and living his life to the fullest, each and every day, with the love and support of his parents and triplet sisters.

Having gone through that experience, his parents noticed at first hand the gaps in services and the need for better support for families. As a result, the family set up Caleb’s Trio of Hope in 2022. The charity provides a wide range of support to families who are living with a palliative care childhood cancer diagnosis. That includes bereavement support to families, and food shop and fuel vouchers for families on treatment, given how costly it can be for family members, who often have to give up work to care for the child. It also provides grants for family days out and special treats on the ward.

All that work is undertaken by volunteers, with no Government funding whatsoever. The family do all that while still supporting Caleb through his journey and raising their two girls.

With the cost of living crisis still ever present, and with the energy price cap rising on 1 October, their services remain in demand to this day. I am grateful for the work that Caleb’s Trio of Hope has done to support parents and families who are going through the hardest time of their lives, but none of that would be possible without the immense strength and bravery of Caleb, his dedicated parents, Karen and Andy, and the support of his sisters, Poppy and Alyssia. Caleb is an inspiration to us all, and I know that the family would appreciate it, as would I, if the minister would acknowledge their work in closing the debate.

The motion mentions that

“320 children and young people in Scotland are diagnosed with cancer each year”,

and that they

“have unique needs and experiences compared with older adults”.

Over the summer recess, I met with Young Lives vs Cancer to discuss various challenges that young people face when receiving a diagnosis of cancer. Beyond the diagnosis itself, we discussed the unique travel challenges that they face, as they have to travel to a small number of principal treatment centres to get the dedicated age-appropriate care that they need. As has been mentioned, on average they travel twice as far and spend twice as much as older adults. That is a UK-wide issue, but, on average, patients in Scotland travel further.

It was welcome, therefore, when the Scottish Government introduced the young patients family fund in 2021 to provide reimbursement for travel, food and accommodation costs for families of in-patients under 18. That has made a real difference for those who can access it, but I see a strong case for the criteria to be expanded to consider young adults aged up to 25 and those receiving day-patient care.

Too many courageous children are battling cancer and, as we know from Caleb’s story, their journey is not straightforward and can leave a lasting impact. Childhood cancer awareness month provides us with a unique chance to look at how we support those children and raise awareness, but, most importantly, we must look at how we can do more and get help to families at their time of greatest need.

18:08

The air departure tax is a welcome progressive measure, ensuring that those who contribute disproportionately to emissions make a fair contribution, and I support the ambition to go further by introducing a private jet supplement. Can the cabinet secretary say more about the anticipated benefits of introducing that measure for our emissions reduction and for generating much-needed funding for our public services?

I have been in contact with constituents who are concerned about national entitlement pass holders still being unable to buy concessionary rail tickets, which is down to the lack of staffed train stations and the inability to buy tickets on board. Can the cabinet secretary comment further on any assessment of the policy and how it could be changed to ensure that concessionary passengers are able to purchase tickets easily?

To ask the Scottish Government what recent assessment it has made of the Strathclyde concessionary travel scheme and the benefits to those in Clydebank and Milngavie. (S7O-00160)

I am delighted to hear it. I welcome today’s announcement on the time bar issue, which I know will be well received by asbestos sufferers and campaigners. Does the minister accept that, on this issue, justice delayed is justice denied? Can she tell us how quickly the Government will proceed with the bill?

This is the fifth year that I have managed to secure a debate to mark mesothelioma day. My determination to secure truth and justice for asbestos victims and their families will never wane. I thank those members who have supported my motion and those who are speaking in today’s debate.

This is an issue that deserves cross-party support and, once again, that has been achieved. I also invite Parliament to welcome members of the Clydebank Asbestos Group and Asbestos Action (Tayside), and I make a special mention of Christine Sayer, my local hero from Clydebank Asbestos Group, who will be visiting the Parliament again on Saturday. For decades, those groups have stood beside individuals and families in their time of greatest need. They provide not only advice and support but a voice, ensuring that those affected are heard in this Parliament and beyond.

Since my debate last year, we have, sadly, lost two central figures in the fight for truth and justice: David Colraine, a founding member of the Clydebank Asbestos Group; and former MP for Clydebank and Milngavie, Tony Worthington, who passed away earlier this year. They were a real driving force behind the pursuit of truth and justice for asbestos victims—true giants whose legacy and impact have been felt throughout Clydebank and beyond. Unfortunately, every year, I have mentioned individuals we have lost. For them and for the many unheard victims of asbestos exposure we must see progress and secure justice.

Mesothelioma is a rare but devastating cancer that is mostly caused by exposure to asbestos. Across the United Kingdom, there are around 2,700 new cases each year, including more than 200 in Scotland. However, statistics alone cannot convey the reality of the disease. In my hometown of Clydebank, the issue is deeply personal. Clydebank has paid one of the heaviest prices anywhere in the United Kingdom for asbestos exposure. West Dunbartonshire has some of the highest mesothelioma mortality rates in the country: over a period of nearly 40 years, 295 men in the area died from mesothelioma when only 81 deaths would have been expected. That is one of the highest mortality rates anywhere in the UK. However, even those stark figures do not tell the whole story. Women in our area have also been significantly affected, with more than double the expected number of deaths having been recorded over the same period. Those are not abstract figures; they represent hundreds of families in one community who have lost loved ones.

Clydebank was once described as the mesothelioma capital of Europe. That is a title that no community would ever wish to hold, and it speaks directly to our industrial past: the shipbuilding, manufacturing and construction industries that built our nation at an enormous human cost. However, that cost was not inevitable. For decades, workers were exposed to asbestos fibres—often daily, often without protection, and too often without being advised of the risks. Evidence has since shown that companies were aware of the dangers long before meaningful protections were put in place. As campaigners have rightly said, that was not simply an accident of history; it was a profound failure to protect workers. I say in the strongest terms that knowingly exposing people to a deadly substance without adequate safeguards is not neglect; it is an abhorrent criminal act.

The legacy of asbestos is not confined to the past. It continues to affect people across the United Kingdom today. Around 5,000 people still die each year from asbestos-related disease, making it the single biggest cause of work-related death.

Asbestos is still present in the buildings around us. In Scotland alone, more than 1,700 schools are known to contain asbestos, and there have been cases of teachers—people with no connection to heavy industry—developing mesothelioma after exposure in their workplaces. That is why we need to see the phased removal of asbestos from public buildings, starting with our schools.

We must also address the issue of justice. I have campaigned hard on what I have described as the disgraceful three-year time bar, which has denied justice to some victims of asbestos-related disease. Under current law, an individual who is diagnosed with a relatively minor condition such as pleural plaques might have just three years in which to raise a claim, even though they might not go on to develop mesothelioma until decades later. The nature of asbestos-related disease makes that time limit totally unjust. It is welcome that the Scottish Law Commission recognised that issue and proposed reforms. I met the First Minister and other members of the Government to stress the urgent need to implement those reforms, and I want the earliest possible progress to be made on that.

Despite the scale of the challenge, people are showing resilience. Again and again, I have met individuals who, even in the face of a devastating diagnosis, choose to campaign not for themselves but for others. That selflessness speaks volumes about the strength of our communities. It also places a responsibility on all of us, because we cannot simply reflect on the issue; we must act. We must continue to raise awareness of mesothelioma and asbestos-related disease, we must support research so that we can improve treatment and outcomes, and we must ensure that compensation is fair and accessible by removing barriers such as the time bar. Critically, we must also prevent future exposure. That means properly managing asbestos where it remains and making progress towards its safe removal from public buildings, including our schools.

Mesothelioma is a disease that is rooted in our industrial history, but its impact is still being felt today in Clydebank, across Scotland and throughout the United Kingdom. It reminds us of the human cost of that history and of our responsibility to those who have been affected.

Unfortunately, mesothelioma is not just a disease of the past—far from it. In 2023 alone, 2,218 people in the UK died from it. That is a stark and sobering reminder that the disease continues to take lives every year. In communities such as mine, in Clydebank, that reality is not distant. It is still being felt, heard and lived. Families continue to face loss, people continue to receive a diagnosis and the risks that cause the harm of mesothelioma have not yet been fully removed from the world around us.

Therefore, this is not a closed chapter. We have a continuing responsibility to act where we know that the risk remains, to ensure justice where it has been denied and to prevent future generations from facing the same fate. The burden that is carried by communities such as Clydebank has been far too great for far too long. Although we cannot change what has happened, we can decide what happens next. The future of the issue, whether it remains a story of harm or becomes a turning point for action, is in our hands. Therefore, our purpose must be to recognise the scale of this legacy and our duty to address it so that, in the years to come, it can be said not only that we understood the consequences of asbestos, but that we chose to act decisively to bring them to an end.

17:34

I am going to make progress. I will not take an intervention—I have already taken one and I am mindful that I have a lot to say.

No—I will make some progress.

The loss of trust goes all the way back to the mishandling of the financial crash, when the payment of bankers’ bonuses was more important than the ability of many to pay their household bills. It was exacerbated further by the Westminster expenses scandal, when some of Labour’s own went to prison and others were allowed to pay back what they had wrongly claimed—including thousands of pounds that were paid back by the current Labour Secretary of State for Scotland, Douglas Alexander.

Since he arrived on the scene, the only thing that Mr Sarwar has excelled at is the erosion of trust from the electorate. Just a few days ago, Ipsos polling revealed that trust in Mr Sarwar has plummeted, with only the Tory and Reform leaders at even lower levels of favourability. John Swinney was the only leader with a positive rating.

Nothing in the debate—

Nothing in the debate today acknowledges or explains why there is a lack of trust in the integrity of Mr Sarwar and the Labour Party. As has already been said, is he one of the least trusted leaders in Scotland because of cosying up to Peter Mandelson—who was the best friend of Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted paedophile—at a time when everyone knew that Peter Mandelson had maintained contact with Epstein? We will not forget the big smiles in the picture of Sarwar and Mandelson and the quotation that

“It was great to catch up with my old friend”.

Scottish Labour appeared to maintain its murky relationship with Mandelson more widely than that—Douglas Alexander apparently credited him for getting Douglas Alexander back into Parliament and then had undeclared meetings at his behest. There are suggestions that Mandelson was allowed to hand pick Scottish Labour Westminster election candidates.

Or is the lack of trust due to the shady influence of Labour Together on the Scottish Labour Party, with Scottish candidates taking thousands of pounds in cash from it? Only one Scottish Labour MP signed the early day motion that called for an independent inquiry into Labour Together and, as far as I am aware, not one Labour MP has handed any money back. As the party’s Scottish leader, will Mr Sarwar instruct his MPs to hand the money back, and will he back the calls for an independent investigation? Will he open the books to reveal how much cash Scottish Labour took from Labour Together? On that point, I am sympathetic to the Greens’ amendment.

As one of my constituents said,

“I don’t trust a single word Sarwar and the Labour Party say.”

It will be no surprise when I reveal that my constituent is one of the women against state pension inequality—the WASPI women—who were promised compensation, then betrayed. We do not forget, either, that Labour campaign leaflet with the fabricated quotation that Mr Sarwar could not explain and which he had to apologise for.

All those things are likely to have caused the lack of trust that the electorate showed in Labour. In particular, they show the spectacular lack of awareness—[Interruption.]

—and the arrogant denial in the motion. [Interruption.] I am sorry—I am being heckled by Mr Sarwar.

I condemn Peter Murrell for what he did. It is right that he is in prison. The police investigation did its job and a criminal has been convicted. More generally, I am up for meaningful consideration of how we try to resolve and restore trust in politics. However, anyone who is being honest knows that that is not what the Labour motion is about.

16:48