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?

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?

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on the support and services available for children and young people with additional support needs in mainstream education across Central Scotland. (S6O-02706)

One of the many interesting aspects of our role as MSPs is learning about incentives that bring cash back to our local communities. I welcome the opportunity to speak in this debate on a subject that I do not usually give voice to in the Parliament, which is how Governments reinvest dirty money that is obtained through organised crime.

I am not the only MSP in the chamber who wants the Scottish Government to get tougher on organised crime. We have already heard from our “Crimewatch” champion, Russell Findlay, who, since his election, has made sure that tackling crime is at the forefront of discussions in the chamber.

The cashback for communities scheme has the potential to do a lot of good for young people across Scotland. The £130 million that has been reinvested as a result of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 is not to be scoffed at, and I know that that money goes directly to young people who are at risk of turning to a life of crime.

Prevention is key when trying to protect young people from a life of crime, and I will always support incentives that are youth led and are targeted in areas where crime rates are higher. It is my understanding that the latest round of funding is for projects that aim to deliver a range of trauma-informed and person-centred services, including those for young people who are more likely to be involved in antisocial behaviour. Given the rise in antisocial behaviour in our town centres and high streets, I am sure that business owners and those who are concerned about such behaviour will be reassured that funding is being used to reduce the problem that many of us experience just now in our communities.

However, money is not just being directed at those types of incentives. The moving forward+ project, which is delivered by the National Autistic Society Scotland’s prospects team, is funded by the cashback for communities scheme. The project supports disadvantaged autistic young people on a path to becoming more engaged and happier citizens, and it reduces the chances of them becoming either the victims or the perpetrators of crime by recognising that each autistic young person has individual needs and aspirations. The project has two routes—one for children aged 10 to 15 who are not engaged with school education, and another for autistic young adults aged 16 to 25 who are not in training, employment or education. The support involves helping individuals to better understand their autism, explore their strengths and develop suitable strategies to help them to become more resilient. It is a wonderful project that benefits so many young people. I have a statistic here: since 2020, the project has supported more than 93 young autistic people.

As I said, the cashback for communities scheme has the potential to do a lot of good, but we should recognise that it is not perfect. I hope that the Government will realise that more can be done to increase the amount of cash that goes back to our communities. Crime should pay, and what better message to send to communities than that the Government backs them? As it stands, the money that has been recovered as a result of the 2002 act does not match the wealth that has been accumulated by criminals in Scotland. For example, as has been pointed out, it was reported in 2022 that £11 million of dirty money had not been paid back—that is £11 million that could be invested directly back into our communities—although I appreciate that that is subject to a review.

The Government must think about how it can recoup as much money as possible from organised crime. As Russell Findlay said, the scheme needs to be audited in order to maximise the amount of money that could be reinstated back into our communities.

Time is tight, so I will conclude. Prevention, which I mentioned earlier, is key, and investment is needed to ensure that effective programmes are rolled out, so I call on the Government to get tougher on crime and to ensure that prevention is at the heart of cashback for communities.

A leaked document from staff at a Lanarkshire hospital has shown that senior medics fear for the safety of babies if the specialised centre at the Wishaw neonatal unit is downgraded. Does the minister share my concerns that medics in the facility in Wishaw are concerned about those proposals? As a result, should that be reviewed?

I agree that discussions need to take place around that, because we need to have a whole discussion on the issue of early years. I go back to the point about detail, because many such issues have not been mentioned today. That is why I think that the Government needs to have more open conversations with the whole of the chamber instead of having debates and not really informing us what it is trying to debate during its Government business.

I turn back to the point that I was making with regard to Pregnant Then Screwed. Carol Erskine, its head of policy and campaigns, said:

“there is a price on being a parent today is brutal. It is truly shocking that almost two-thirds of Parents are being forced to reduce their hours or leave the workforce entirely due to the cost and availability of childcare, and there is no end in sight.”

That view is coming not from politicians but from parents who are completely fed up about the fact that the system is working not for them but against them.

That brings me on to nurseries. Like Willie Rennie, I will raise the issue time and again until the Government finally gets it and sorts the problems that exist around the 1,140-hours policy. When we look at the various issues that were mentioned today around the policy, we can see that there are politicians on the SNP benches who get it: Fulton MacGregor and Evelyn Tweed get it, and I praise them for their honest assessment of childcare issues in their communities. Evelyn Tweed is right that rural communities have been left behind when it comes to nursery provision, and they have also been left behind in relation to other issues relating to pregnancy and bringing up a child. We need only look at Dr Gray’s hospital in Moray and the Caithness general hospital to see how hard it is for rural mums to bring up a family.

I realise that time is tight and I do not have much time left. There is much more that I would have liked to mention today, because there have been some really good conversations. Oliver Mundell mentioned speech and language therapy and said that the Government needs to sort those issues out, and Jamie Greene rightly mentioned the issues surrounding child dental care. There are many more issues that we need to resolve in relation to early years development as a whole, but, my goodness, this Government has a long way to go.

Presiding Officer,

“Giving children the best possible start in life”—

those are words that we can all get behind, regardless of where we sit in the Parliament. We have all heard them from the Scottish Government before. In 2009, a similar programme, the early years framework, was launched, which also promised to give

“all our children the best start in life.”

That leads me to Willie Rennie’s earlier point about rhetoric. It is all well and good for the Government to launch documents and programmes that intend to improve the lives of children and young people. However, what are its aims? What will the Government do, in addition to the policies that are already in place, to make such improvements? How will success be measured? Those are key questions that I am not sure have been answered in the debate.

I reflect on a quote from the Government motion, part of which my colleague Jamie Greene picked out earlier. The Government states that

“it can build on the targeted investments that it has already made in support of families pre-birth to three and that joint working can create a culture, environment, economy and society that prioritises and enhances early child development, to realise its ambition of creating a more healthy, fair and equal society”.

Joint working with whom? And how will joint working lead to the creation of a more healthy, fair and equal society? Detail is everything if the Government wants people to come with it on its early years journey.

The minister mentioned Government policies that are already in place. Some of them are good and some—well, we will leave that for later. However, when will we see the outcomes? Martin Whitfield was spot on when he mentioned data, and I am beyond fed up with the Government’s lack of data capture, especially across portfolios. Carol Mochan mentioned that during her speech.

Throughout the debate, we have travelled through the stages of raising a child, from pregnancy to early years, and policies and ambitions have been mentioned. However, as Oliver Mundell has rightly said, we are falling at the first hurdle. That was evidenced just last week during First Minister’s question time, when I asked the First Minister about the Pregnant Then Screwed campaign. The First Minister had no answers for parents who have had to reduce their hours or leave the workforce because work and childcare are incompatible. He has no answers for the 43 per cent of parents who cannot afford to have any more children. It has already been forecast that the number of births will drop over the next decade. The Government needs to realise that current policies are not working for parents but are working against them.

Does the member agree that it would also be helpful if before today’s debate, Opposition parties had been made privy to what the programme would actually mean for young people?