Chamber and committees

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.

Will the member give way?

Earlier this month, the Court of Session upheld an initial ruling that the legal definition of the word “woman” is not limited to a person of the female biological sex. That means that a trans woman with a gender recognition certificate—GRC—is given the same recognition in law as a biological woman.

Current legislation allows a trans woman to obtain a GRC if she has lived in her acquired gender for at least two years, is above the age of 18 and has received a suitable medical diagnosis. If the SNP-Green Government had its way, the process of obtaining a GRC would be made much easier by lowering the minimum age at which one can apply for a certificate to 16, removing the need for a medical diagnosis and significantly reducing to only three months the time period for which an applicant must have lived in the required gender. That would fundamentally change the definition of the word “woman” and would expand who would be eligible to sit on corporate boards as a woman.

Around this time last year, the United Nations special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, Reem Alsalem, wrote that the Scottish Government must,

“as a minimum, await the outcome of judgments on these very issues in front of both the Scottish and UK courts”,

including the judgment in the case of the Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act 2018, before moving forward with the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill.

My Scottish Conservative colleagues repeatedly warned that the SNP Government’s gender self-identification bill would make it significantly easier to change legal gender. Now, as a result of the latest court ruling, the SNP Government is being forced to remove the definition of the word “woman” from the Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act 2018. Just as with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Incorporation) (Scotland) Bill, we are having to use up parliamentary time and resources to fix a piece of poorly drafted legislation. Taxpayers have already had to foot an almost £230,000 bill for the Government’s legal battles as it has tried to save its flawed gender self-ID bill, which is opposed by a majority of Scots. Now, more time and money will be spent on fixing the SNP Government’s latest mistake.

I hope that Scottish ministers will use this court case to finally learn their lesson.

Will the member give way?

Will the member give way?

Thank you very much, panel.

I will move on to the appeals process. Rosemary Agnew touched on it briefly in the previous tranche of questions. Under the bill, appeals against SLCC decisions would be made not to the Court of Session but to a commission review body of the SLCC itself. I wonder whether that could be seen as the SLCC marking its own homework. Would there be any impact on the independence of the appeals process? I am genuinely interested in that with regard to how we move forward.

Good morning, panel. I will stick with the complaints process aspect. There has been a lot of discussion so far about the complexities. At present, we do not have a complainers fee in Scotland. While I was looking ahead to today’s committee session, I looked at examples in other countries. In South Australia, there is a complainers fee of £60, which I believe is returned to the complainer if they are successful. Given the pressures in the complaints system, including the delays and complexities that have already been discussed with the panel, has the SLCC thought about or discussed such a fee? We probably already know what the cons might be, but what are the pros and cons? I will start with Neil Stevenson.

Thank you.

The truth is that many children are in learning settings that do not suit their needs. Parents have contacted me to say that, due to long waiting lists for ASN diagnosis, many children are being refused a transfer to ASN specialist schools and nurseries. The fact of the matter is that our school and nursery estates are not equipped to deal with the number of young people who have complex additional support needs. ASN parent councils in my region have raised that issue, but their voices are being ignored.

What will this Government do to reduce the time that families spend waiting for an ASN diagnosis? Does the minister agree that a full review of the ASN estate is long overdue?