Chamber and committees

At the risk of starting a new debate, I will leave it there, convener. Thank you very much, everyone.

I wish to return to the complaints process and the complainer’s fee. We do not have that in Scotland, but it exists in other places, including South Australia, where I believe there is a complainer’s fee equivalent to £60, which is returned to the complainant should their complaint be successful. Given the pressure on the complaints system, and referencing the delays that were mentioned earlier, has anyone on the panel thought whether it would, in that regard, be better for the legal profession were we to proceed with the bill?

I am happy to throw that out to whoever would like to answer.

More than 200 people—Israelis and non-Israelis, babies, women, the elderly, civilians and soldiers—were taken captive by Hamas on 7 October and taken by force to Gaza.

Noga Weiss, 18 years old. Shiri Weiss, 53 years old. Eden Yerushalmi, 24 years old. Ilan Weiss, 56 years old. Judy Weinstein, 70 years old. Elia Toledano, 27 years old. Doron Steinbrecher, 30 years old. Soussana Amit, 40 years old. Almog Sarusi, 26 years old. Ada Sagi, 75 years old. Hila Shoshani, 13 years old. Raaya Rotem, 54 years old. Ofelia Roitman, 77 years old. Noam Or, 17 years old. Alma Or, 13 years old. Dror Or, 48 years old. Liam Or, 18 years old. Nili Margalit, 41 years old. Eliyahu (Churchill) Margalit, 75 years old. Aisha Alziedana, 17 years old. Bilal Alziedana, 21 years old. Hamza Alziedana, 22 years old. Youssef Hamis Alziedana, 53 years old. Sujith Nissanka, 48 years old. Michel Nisenbaum, 59 years old. Tamir Nimrod, 19 years old. Omer Neutra, 22 years old. Shlomo Mansour, 85 years old. Lobanov Alexander, 32 years old. Andrey Kozlov, 27 years old. Dror Kaplun, 68 years old. Maya Goren, 56 years old. Ori Danino, 24 years old. Nimrod Cohen, 19 years old. Sagi Dekel Chen, 35 years old. Rom Braslavski, 19 years old. Gali Berman, 26 years old. Ariel Baruch, 35 years old. Tomer Ahimas, 20 years old. Shani Goren, 29 years old. Jimmy Pacheco, whose age has not even been given. Emily Hand, eight years old. Guy Iluz, 26 years old. Meirav Tal, 53 years old. Yair Yaakov, 59 years old. Yagil Yaakov, 12 years old. Or Yaakov, 16 years old. Sasha Trupanov, 27 years old. Elena Trupanov, 50 years old. Sapir Cohen, 29 years old. Amit Buskila, 28 years old. Yotam Haim, 28 years old. Lior Rudaeff, 61 years old. Yair Horn, 45 years old. Idan Alexander, 19 years old. Arbel Yahod, 28 years old. Dolev Yahod, 35 years old. Eitan Horn, 37 years old. Amit Shani, 16 years old. Ohad Munder, nine years old. Keren Munder, 54 years old. Ruth Munder, 78 years old. Abraham Munder, 78 years old. Kaid Farhan Elkadi, 53 years old. Yarden Roman Gat, 35 years old. Amiram Cooper, 84 years old. Mika Engel, 18 years old. Yuval Engel, 11 years old. Carina Engel-Bert, 51 years old. Ronen Engel, 55 years old. Avigail Idan, three years old. Emilia Aloni, five years old. Ema Konio, three years old. David Konio, 33 years old. Sharon Aloni Konio, 34 years old. Shlomi Ziv, 39 years old. Nave Shoham, eight years old.

I have just spent most of my time reading out some of the many names of hostages taken by Hamas. Some were enjoying time with their friends at a rave when they were taken; others were asleep in their beds. There is a real human cost to the conflict, and it comes back to the names that I have just read out.

I welcome the tone of the debate so far, but it will not necessarily resonate outside. We have already witnessed unsafe protests outside the Parliament and politicians receiving death threats. Recently, my friend and colleague Councillor Thomas Kerr was assaulted in a pub when out with his friends because of his stance on the conflict.

I agree with previous speakers that we must stand shoulder to shoulder against Islamophobia and antisemitism. Communities in Scotland are frightened and we need calm, gentle diplomacy, not just for the safe return of the hostages but for humanitarian breaks to allow vital supplies to get to those who need them most.

I will finish by reading out one name again: Avigail Idan, just three years old. Avigail was kidnapped from her home. Both of her parents were killed. She has her whole life ahead of her without the love and support of her parents, who were cruelly taken before their time. Avigail is in my thoughts today, as are all the innocent people who are caught up in the conflict.

For a family member to access the cabinet secretary’s iPad, passwords would need to be shared. Can the cabinet secretary confirm whether he has shared his device’s passwords with anyone? Does he accept that that goes against general data protection regulation rules, given the sensitive information that is held on parliamentary devices? When did he first share with the First Minister that his family members used his iPad during his family holiday in Morocco?

A freedom of information response earlier this year stated that digital inclusion funding has not been made available since 2020-21. What funding has been made available for digital devices since the digital inclusion fund was closed?

Will the member give way?

Will the member give way?

Absolutely. That is why the debate is so important. I am sure that there are many colleagues from all parties who stood for election for the same reasons as I stood, which were to represent their communities and to make sure that Scotland is a better place. They did not stand for election to defend sleekit behaviour and evasion, and to be lobby fodder for a Government that is determined to pull the wool over the eyes of the chamber and the public. It is past time that the Parliament stood up for itself and that its members showed some backbone and forced the Government to tell the truth.

How can the Government be fully transparent if WhatsApp messages were manually deleted by key players during the Covid-19 inquiry?

Why is the Government not telling the truth? That is the big question that remains unanswered in the SNP’s secret Scotland.

For weeks, Douglas Ross has forensically questioned the First Minister about what information key players in the Covid-19 pandemic handed over to the UK inquiry, but the answers that have been given by Humza Yousaf and Shona Robison just do not add up.

On 31 October, it was announced that the Scottish Government was initially approached for WhatsApp messages by the UK inquiry in September. On 2 November, the Deputy First Minister said that it had been approached in February. The Government could be forgiven if it was a few days out, but eight months is not a simple mistake. Was the Government mendacious? If that was an honest mistake, why did it fail to correct the record? Those questions are why the Scottish Conservatives have brought the motion to the chamber today.

Something stinks about the SNP’s attitude to handling information over to the Covid inquiry, and it is the duty of every member of the Parliament to find out why. If the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister were confident in their positions, they would refer themselves to the independent adviser for the Scottish ministerial code. If they have nothing to hide, they have nothing to worry about. Instead, we have a whitewash amendment from the Scottish Government, which lays bare its arrogance and completely avoids any scrutiny or accountability.

That brings me on to the WhatsApp messages. We have been told about the 14,000 or 28,000 messages that the Government has handed over, but every time it is challenged on deletion of WhatsApp messages, it crumbles, because it knows: it knows that people who made key decisions during the pandemic have manually deleted WhatsApp messages.

Jamie Dawson from the UK Covid inquiry said that the majority of messages have not been retained. Some SNP members will say, “So what if those messages have been deleted?” We have been told that the Scottish Government did not make key decisions on that platform. I challenge every minister—or former minister—to prove that no key decisions were taken and to prove that the information that was deleted was not relevant to the Covid inquiry. However, we cannot prove a negative, can we?

People are up in arms about this because the key players—Jason Leitch and Nicola Sturgeon—were told not to delete messages during the pandemic because they could be relevant afterwards. However, even the UK inquiry now believes that vital information could be lost. I find that shameful, and I am sure that the bereaved families who are wanting answers will also find that behaviour shameful.

I referenced the SNP’s secret Scotland earlier, because transparency has never been the party’s strong point. We have seen it time and again—with Ferguson Marine, the botched Police Scotland information technology systems, the false claims around offshore wind and—who can forget?—the party’s finances probe. That is, by the way, still on-going. The governing party is shrouded in secrecy, and Scotland is worse off for it.

Members across the chamber have a choice. They have the choice to stand up to the Government and show that transparency matters, and that truth in the Parliament is more important than partisan political interests.