Chamber and committees

Carol Mochan makes a powerful point. In the exhibition “The Cost of Dying”, there was an older woman who was dying and who had been so house-proud that she was photographing all her rooms to show how she had kept her house really nice. One thing that struck me was the humiliation of everything slowly falling apart around her as she was struggling to care for herself, and then that she was not even able to stay in her house at the end. It was devastating to witness that in that exhibition. It speaks powerfully to the point that Carol Mochan just made.

Does the member recognise that, by sheer dint of numbers, the fact that a large minority of the Parliament’s 129 members are Government ministers makes it very difficult, from a workload perspective, for large committees to function?

I congratulate the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee on its fine report, and I thank the committee’s convener, Mr Whitfield, for outlining its findings succinctly at the outset of the debate and for his summation of Donald Dewar’s comments about cynicism and unrealistic expectation and how those were the key challenges that we all have to overcome, as parliamentarians, when it comes to how we maintain public confidence in this institution after a quarter of a century.

There are many issues that we must contend with, and we have an abundance of opportunity but a massive dearth of time in which to do so. It is a question of rationing that time effectively so that we can give the Parliament the ability not only to be effective, but to manage the tension between consent and dissent, which Mr Leonard mentioned, in conducting effective scrutiny of Government and all other aspects of the public functions of this country. It is a real challenge for us to do that strategically and to put some of our more partisan instincts to one side in the interests of the country.

Stephen Kerr’s point about putting party before country must be a central part of the ethos of a parliamentarian. Notwithstanding our ideological positions or our perspectives on how the country should function and how things should be done, we should pursue a truthful outcome, as far as that is possible.

Often, rather than being to do with the politics, the issue can simply be to do with the bureaucracy. We must remember that, while Scotland has had bureaucratic devolution for more than a century, it has had legislative devolution for only a quarter of a century. It is a question of how this young legislature can hold to account an old bureaucracy up on Calton Hill whose approach to things is often very ingrained. We must recognise that distinction as we perform our functions as a legislature.

In a unicameral legislature such as the Scottish Parliament, the role of the committees is essential to our performing those functions. Some excellent points about the committees have been made in the debate. I am pleased that, although the committee did not take a firm view on the role of elected conveners for committees, it has opened the door for the full Parliament to consider that prospect.

I think it is essential that we have elected conveners. Indeed, I made a written submission to the committee in the course of its inquiry in May last year, in which I highlighted why I thought that committee convener elections would be useful.

As members who have served in the House of Commons will know, the process of elections of conveners, which takes place at the start of the session, is a bit like a student union election, in that lots of flyers suddenly appear in members’ offices as part of the canvassing process. People were perturbed to see lots of Conservative leaflets appearing in Labour offices in relation to members who were seeking election as chair of a certain committee. There was a sudden realisation that the role of committee chair is allocated to a party, but all members have to come together to decide who the best parliamentarian is. It was a steep learning curve for me to learn that it was necessary to put party affiliation to one side and look at an individual’s background, what they had said in the Commons before, what their parliamentary record was like, what campaigns they had been involved in and what their attitude was to working with colleagues, in order to determine who the best—or, at least, the least worst—option was to elect to the role.

Such a process serves as a useful check. It tempers behaviour, reduces the idea of party entrenchment and brings members closer together as a Parliament.

Does the member agree that the role should be rooted in respect and having authority on the subject? The Constitution Society reviewed the system in the UK Parliament and concluded that

“changes in the system have elevated the profile and status of select committees in Parliament and government”.

If we did it in that way, it would be a great opportunity.

I put it on the record that my participation in the cross-committee work on drug deaths has been particularly rewarding. That is a synthesis of the work of two committees—the Criminal Justice Committee and the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee—and it has been really useful in getting to the nub of a major emergency in Scotland, so perhaps more of that could be a good thing.

I thank everybody in the chamber who supported my members’ business motion. During the week that saw the start of stage 2 proceedings on the Deputy Presiding Officer’s Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill, it is good and proper that the Parliament takes a moment to consider end-of-life poverty in Scotland. Regardless of members’ views on the bill, it has been made clear from the discussions in the Parliament and across the country that we are all united, by a massive majority, in wanting the best possible support for those who are suffering with terminal illness.

Ensuring dignity in the final months and days when someone is suffering from a terminal illness should be a paramount consideration for the Parliament. No one needs to die in poverty, spending their final moments worrying about bills, how to afford their final meal or the implications for their loved ones. Unfortunately, as the preliminary data from Marie Curie’s 2025 report shows, dying in poverty is still the norm in too much of Scotland. We want to believe that we live in a land where everyone dies in the comfort of their own bed, surrounded by family and friends, in a peaceful, dignified and pain-free way, but a staggering one in four working-age people and one in six pensioners with a terminal illness die in poverty every year in this country. We can all agree that that is completely unacceptable.

Scotland remains such an unequal society in so many ways—most notably, in relation to income—and a closer look at the figures shows that areas such as my home city of Glasgow are affected the most, with one in three working-age people dying in poverty. A legacy of deindustrialisation, austerity and social neglect has led to too many of my constituents spending their whole lives, from the cradle to the grave, in poverty—indeed, it is a life sentence before they are even born. Where there should be dignity and support, instead, there is a constant, exhausting and overwhelming battle that does not end until their untimely passing.

In the past couple of weeks, there has been news of a credit union’s funeral plans being pulled at a moment’s notice by a completely unscrupulous provider, which shows that, even in death, some people are stripped of the dignity of the funeral that they might have planned. The fear of the pauper’s funeral still looms large in this country. It is the final indignity—a funeral being stripped from elderly, low-income Scots with no recourse. I hope that we can at least change that.

The terrible overlap of class and health inequalities was brought home to me, as I have mentioned previously, when I visited the Marie Curie hospice at Stobhill hospital—the hospital where I was born. I met a lady there who was suffering from terminal throat cancer. She had grown up in Bridgeton and had had a difficult upbringing—she had been involved in drug taking and various other things. She had two young boys and had just got her life back on track, or so she thought. She had had a persistent cough and a sore throat, and she went to the doctor umpteen times to try to get help. She was sent away with painkillers and told that it was just an infection. By the time she got a referral and was diagnosed, she had incurable throat cancer. She was in her late forties.

I walked around the hospice—as members of the Scottish Parliament, we often visit such places—and was suddenly confronted with this most horrendous, shattering story. What do you even say to someone in that situation? She felt that she had been robbed of her life because, due to her upbringing, she was not taken seriously and was unable to advocate for herself. She was suffering a terminal illness; she was going to die.

What were the implications for her? What about her young kids? It was a really difficult conversation, but we tried to turn it into something positive by talking about the impact that she had had on her children and how they were doing really well. We tried to gather some degree of positivity from the situation. She made the point that, if she had grown up in Bearsden rather than Bridgeton, she might still be alive today. I got a call just the day afterwards to say that she had passed away.

In many ways, we need to think about the reality of the avoidable deaths that happen every day in Scotland because of this economic and social problem, and about the lack of equality.

I congratulate Audrey Nicoll, the member for Aberdeen South and North Kincardine, on her excellent members’ business motion and particularly for highlighting the concerns in relation to the River Dee. Those concerns give light to wider issues to do with the river basin management planning process in Scotland and how we are dealing with improvements to water quality and riverine protection in the country. The Government’s policy seems to be centred around the Scottish Environment Protection Agency’s management of river basin management plans, but there is a lack of clarity on how those integrate and on how SEPA can be held accountable for them, and that situation certainly requires improvement.

I had recent cause to engage with this somewhat esoteric issue through a public petition. One of the great aspects of the Scottish Parliament is that the public petitions process can bring to light a lot of issues that are otherwise obscured by the parliamentary agenda. I particularly commend author Louise Welsh and architect Jude Barber, who have recently produced an amazing award-winning podcast called “Who Owns the Clyde?” They set about establishing, in a fairly iterative way, the complex patterns of land and river ownership. A lot of interesting aspects have been unpacked, which precipitated and stimulated a public petition about the idea of creating legal personhood for the Clyde so that certain rights would be attributed to it. Sadly, the Government was not in agreement with that proposal, and the petition was closed last week.

Nonetheless, the process of discussion and the different stakeholder representations elicited a lot of interesting ideas. The fundamental issues are control and accountability. There is no formal mechanism for all stakeholders—there is a vast number of them—who might have a role to play in a river basin to be represented in a coherent manner. There is a real opportunity for further development. Myriad private owners with significant interests are in control of our river landscapes and hinterlands, but there are no formal obligations for them to engage or consult with stakeholders beyond fairly threadbare planning and statutory obligations, which often do not get considered in the round but are considered in little silos by different local authorities. There is a need for greater oversight. For example, the way in which we have developed the national parks process could be a benchmark for future arrangements for our rivers and river basin management.

The Clyde has a long, complex history. Responsibility for it was originally held by a trust port that was established in 1770, before coming under the scope of the River Improvement Trust in 1809. It was then further developed by the Clyde Navigation Trust in 1858, which was subsequently privatised in the 1990s. Those bodies were primarily concerned with the development of industry on the river, but wider considerations now need to be brought to the fore.

In the greater Glasgow and Clyde area, we now have the Glasgow city region and its Clyde mission. They have made it clear that they do not have a role in dealing with the preservation and protection of the Clyde. That is not within their remit; they are purely concerned with economic development considerations. The question then turns to who is responsible for preservation and protection and whether that responsibility should be joined up.

Although the minister is likely to refer to the river basin management plan process, I ask her to consider in her response how those responsibilities, particularly in relation to the Clyde, can integrate better with the Glasgow city region that has been established in the past 10 years and its new role in adopting the Clyde mission. I also ask her to consider how we can bring all that together so that the environmental impact of development of the river, rather than just issues of economic development, are brought into the consideration.

Other rivers in the world have such guardianship arrangements, whether that is the River Ouse in England, the River Atrato in Colombia or the River Meuse in the Netherlands. In her 2025 book, “A Barrister for the Earth: Ten Cases of Hope for Our Future”, lawyer Monica Feria-Tinta notes that rivers should have rights. We need to recognise that emerging reality and the fact that we need a much more considered approach to the development of our river landscapes in Scotland.

In fact, I had already had the opportunity to do that because, just before I left the House of Commons, we elected the Speaker, Lindsay Hoyle. When I came here, I took part in the election of the Presiding Officer and the Deputy Presiding Officers. That was a really good moment, because it involved the Parliament coming together to think about who the best candidates might be.

There was some consideration of parliamentary arithmetic and who could best afford at key moments to lose a member to the chair. Sometimes, in a carefully balanced Parliament such as the Scottish Parliament, the parliamentary arithmetic can be important and it drives behaviour.

I agree. There should be much more regular engagement with those very powerful bodies that are in control of, potentially, billions of pounds-worth of public or community-owned assets. Understanding what is going on and engaging with the community is the essence of this Parliament.

Maybe there should be extra powers to call in decisions. For example, if there was a contentious takeover of a housing association and that was a cause of alarm to a committee, it would have the power to call in that decision. In the planning system, ministers have the power to call in contentious planning decisions made by local authorities. Maybe the Parliament should exercise greater functions through its committee system. It could be a good evolution of devolution if the Parliament could do more of that rather than leaving it to the executive or the bureaucracy at St Andrew’s house.

There is also a great opportunity for interparliamentary committee work. We do not do enough of that in this country. We have 25 years of devolution, devolved legislatures and House of Commons committees. We could do a lot more together, including in areas that straddle devolved and reserved competencies such as drugs, housing issues, asylum and immigration. We could have much closer working across committees and Parliaments to get more coherence in public policy and hold all the Governments to account where they have interlocking roles. That could all be useful.

I have barely scratched the surface of the potential, but I hope that I have made my view on the election of committee conveners clear.