Chamber and committees

I will briefly explore the requirement to “make safe” versus “repair”. Some local authorities were questioning what that actually means. Will further guidance be offered to them in that respect? In my experience, making safe is about staking and tying the headstone so that it will not further deteriorate. Some local authorities are worried that a “repair” requirement means that they will have to undertake actual repair work to the headstones. That would normally be the responsibility of a lair holder but, obviously, some headstones are very old, so there might be nobody who has that responsibility.

Like many feminists of a certain age, I am tired of fighting a system that is so ingrained with inequality that it feels immovable and intransigent. It is as if the glass ceiling is becoming ever more opaque and could soon become the cement ceiling, which means that smashing the patriarchy is that much harder—a task so difficult that it feels impossible—and can make the yearly 16 days campaign feel futile. Then I hear the voices of our young women—my 16-year-old daughter and thousands like her—who raise their fists and their voices, shouting from the rooftops that what is happening today is not okay.

Today, the situation is worse than ever. Our young men are being captured by a pervasive culture of misogynistic hatred, dressed up as the greatest-of-all-time influencers, who peddle a brand of toxic masculinity that is so damaging and all-encompassing that I see clearly that we have gone back in time, to an age in which, daily, women and young girls are subjected openly to hatred in all spheres of their lives.

We need to ask ourselves: how did we get here? How did we empower the likes of Andrew Tate to poison the discourse so insidiously that he has not only taken too many young men with him but succeeded in helping to convince too many young women that feminism and the quest for real equality are damaging to society? How is it that we have left social media unbridled to the extent that we are only a click away from encountering extreme violent pornography that glorifies and normalises strangulation—meaning that our young people are at risk of becoming desensitised to normal, healthy relationships?

Many years ago, as a teenager, I railed against the use of women’s bodies to sell products, due to the damage that it did to women as a whole. Today, the internet age that we live in is dominated by influencers and those who seek to make money in any way possible. My teenage plight seems tame in comparison with the horrors that our young folk navigate every day.

I absolutely agree with the member. I have been looking at that issue for a long time. Before coming to Parliament, I led work in the East Ayrshire violence against women partnership to look at the pervasiveness and horribleness of pornography and what it is doing to our young people and our population as a whole.

When talking about these issues, we cannot shy away from the fact that so many of our young men feel ostracised and left behind. That feeling is nurtured and exploited by incels and those on the far right. We need to unpack that reality and address it urgently. We owe it to those boys and to their life chances. Why are we failing them as well?

We must also confront the fact that increasing numbers of young women do not feel able to participate fully in their own lives. Twice as many young women as a decade ago feel scared to travel on public transportation, to walk the school or college corridors, to speak out in class and to venture to the local shops. Young Scots are crying out for a different world, and we have a responsibility to help them to create it.

We know that extreme misogyny is a symptom of the wider patriarchal attitudes and rigid gender norms that still permeate our society. To eradicate misogyny and men’s violence against women, we must tackle the gender inequality that is at their core. We can do that through effective primary prevention and the equally safe strategy, focusing on structural, cultural, attitudinal and behavioural change. That long-term holistic strategy has the aim of ensuring that all women and girls, but especially marginalised women, share equal power with men and boys. We must look forensically at all the parts of the system and root out those parts that work against the aims of our equally safe strategy. We must address them urgently. We must also make the misogyny bill a reality.

Finally, as a former Women’s Aid worker who has seen first hand the harrowing reality of how court-mandated forced and unsafe contact perpetuates the abuse of child survivors of domestic abuse, I say loudly that we cannot ignore their voices—voices that have now been amplified by their rights under the UNCRC. Our court system must pay due regard to their right to feel safe and free from further abuse by an abuser who will all too often use the system as a form of lawfare and coercive control.

I urge all members to participate in the social media vigil #ForThemAll, this Friday at 7pm, to remember the far too many women and children who have been murdered by their abusers.

Yes, in two seconds.

Rates of fuel poverty when dying are also higher for people in older socially rented homes.

I thank Paul Sweeney for bringing this hugely important report to the attention of the chamber. I also extend my sincere thanks to Marie Curie and Loughborough University for researching this urgent issue and bringing the reality faced by those dying in poverty to our attention. I commend him for the way in which he narrated the experiences of his constituent—none of us can fail to be touched by what he put to us.

We rightly spend a lot of our energy and resources in the Parliament combating the scourge of child poverty and doing all that we can to ensure that, from the very beginning of life, this nation nurtures our youngest. Despite all the challenges, we are making good progress in that regard.

However, what we do not talk enough about in the Parliament, in our communities and in our homes is dying. As a nation, we find it too difficult, too awkward and too upsetting to speak to one another about the reality of death, dying and terminal illness.

In addition, when we are creating policies and strategies to eradicate poverty, what we do not think about enough in the Parliament is how poverty manifests itself for people who have a terminal illness and their families. No one who is dealing with a terminal prognosis should be worrying about ensuring that they are warm enough, can run any specialist equipment that they rely on and have enough money to get the nutrition that they need to be as well as they can be.

Dying from a terminal illness will always be the most difficult thing that we might face as human beings, and Paul Sweeney outlined how that affected that young mum. It is an existential crisis. However, as a nation, we cannot thole the reality that is faced by too many who simply do not have enough money to live their last moments in comfort and, instead, live in cold surroundings with mounting debt and ever-increasing worry about what they are leaving behind for their loved ones. That anxiety alone is a heavy burden to bear.

In East Ayrshire, which forms part of my Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley constituency, 28 per cent of people with a terminal illness die in end-of-life poverty and 23 per cent die in fuel poverty. Far too many of my constituents in rural areas who are reliant on an oil heating system face the most horrendous fuel poverty when dying.

I recognise the issue that Finlay Carson has put to me. I have made representations to the Government on that on several occasions, and have gone back and forth between the health and social care partnership and registered social landlords. I absolutely get the point that Finlay Carson raises, and I will continue to challenge the issue.

Paul Sweeney set out that 10,400 people die in poverty in Scotland—there has been an increase of 27 per cent from 2019. As we have heard, the figure is even higher—one in four—for people who are of working age. In Scotland, one in five people die in fuel poverty in their last year of life.

The report identified particular groups that are at risk of dying in poverty, including working-age parents with dependent children, women and people from minoritised backgrounds. That is why collecting and collating disaggregated data is essential in understanding the issues across groups. As Paul Sweeney outlined, 25 per cent of those from a white ethnicity die in poverty when they face a terminal illness, but a staggering 47 per cent from a black background with a terminal illness die in poverty. We need to understand all the drivers behind that so that we can make coherent policy.

There are steps that the Scottish Government can take that will make an impact, and I ask the minister to reflect on them. We should extend the eligibility for the Scottish child payment to parents living with a terminal illness with dependent children under 16 on the presentation of a benefits assessment under special rules in Scotland—BASRIS—form that confirms that they are eligible under the special rules on terminal illness situations. We should provide extra financial support for terminally ill people with their energy bills, which could include extending eligibility for the winter heating payment to all terminally ill people and reinvesting in the fuel insecurity fund. We should bring forward a minimum income guarantee and work even harder towards eradicating the gender pay gap, which has an impact on women who are dying in poverty.

We urgently need a social tariff for energy to prevent fuel poverty at the end of life, and I urge the United Kingdom and Scottish Governments to make that a reality.

I also support the calls for the UK Government to unlock pensions for people who are close to pension age who have a terminal diagnosis. For those who have not paid enough national insurance contributions at that point, the Government should ensure that they have a pension-level payment. That feels like the right thing to do.

To ask the Scottish Government what recent assessment it has made of how successful the Bella centre in Dundee and Lilias centre in Glasgow have been in acknowledging the experience of trauma and adversity and supporting successful transitions for women back into the community. (S6O-04066)

Foysol Choudhury touches on something that is important to my heart. As a young Scot over in Canada, I was able to partake in a college course called Scots in 1991, well before there was any such education here. That little migrant child was able to support students over there and to translate Scots text for them. There is a huge thing about the diaspora across the world, but we need to focus on what happens here in Scotland to make sure that our own people and the people who come here to live have those tools.

The Bella and Lilias community custody units are world-leading facilities and are the only ones of their kind in the United Kingdom, and as such, they have rightly garnered national and international interest. I was hugely impressed when I visited them in my former ministerial role. I was so struck by the sense of calm and the psychologically informed design that they embodied. I said at the time that they felt more like a women’s refuge than a custody setting. Will the cabinet secretary provide an update on the continued assessment and evaluation of those centres moving forward to ensure their success in delivering a safe, stable and trauma-informed service, especially to those women who have experienced severe and multiple disadvantages?

To ask the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body whether it will review whether the Parliament is providing sufficient resourcing for the legislation team to support MSPs to lodge amendments to bills. (S6O-04053)