Chamber and committees

Unfortunately, on reflection, what has been achieved at the COP so far has been far from the rate of progress that our country and the planet as a whole needed to see, and it pains me to say that.

The agreements that have been made thus far, as is outlined in the communiqué, are predominantly ambiguously worded and full of platitudes, and they contain lofty ambitions with little to no concrete commitments. That said, there have been slivers of light. Last night’s agreement between the People’s Republic of China and the United States is the most important development that we have seen so far. Combined, those two countries emit more than half the world’s carbon. It is of crucial importance that they work together on the issue.

That development begs the question whether we should wrap up the conference in the next 24 hours. With the fate of the planet hanging in the balance and the diplomacy between the two biggest global emitters at a high point, should we not seek to extend the conference to see what other areas of co-operation might be possible as we go into the weekend?

I thank the member for that important intervention. Alok Sharma’s somewhat diplomatically worded phrase opens the door to such an extension. If we can see the light of a potential breakthrough over the weekend, we should press for that. I hope that the Scottish Government, although it is not formally represented at the talks, will press for the UK Government to extend the event, and I hope that the Scottish Conservatives and their colleagues in the British Government will do so if necessary.

A key area in which what has been achieved has been quite disappointing is deforestation. The commitments that have been made at the conference are welcome, but are they ambitious enough? The agreement gives a date of 2030 for stopping and reversing deforestation, but that is nine years away. The ink on the paper was not even dry before the Brazilian Government started backtracking. Indeed, the president of Brazil’s Federal Senate told the media that the focus of the Brazilian Government would be on curbing illegal deforestation, rather than deforestation that is sanctioned by the Government. Therefore, the indigenous people of Brazil, on whom deforestation has a devastating impact, just as it does on the lungs of the planet, are still in jeopardy.

Between August last year and July this year alone, the Amazon rainforest lost more than 10,000km², which is an area that is seven times bigger than London and 13 times the size of New York. If that amount of damage can be done in the space of a mere nine months, how much damage can be done in the next nine years?

I absolutely agree that economic justice goes hand in hand with the physical changes that we need to make in key industries.

Even after the agreement on deforestation was reached in 2014, no progress was made in physically stopping the practice. We must tie the commitments that are made to real action on the ground to ensure that that does not happen again. I would like the Scottish and British Governments, through their diplomatic channels, to put greater effort into pushing for tighter commitments from those Governments that have a critical responsibility across the rainforest belts of the Amazon, central Africa and Indonesia.

COP also begs a question about what role the UK plays in the world. This week of all weeks, the UK Government has been embroiled in sleaze allegations. Last night, we had the unedifying spectacle of the Prime Minister having to defend his Government from allegations of corruption. How did we get to that point at the heart of a conference at which the UK is on the world stage? At this time of all times, why did the Prime Minister expunge the remaining shreds of his credibility by trying to save the reputation of one of his members of Parliament?

Perhaps we should not be surprised at the lack of timing on the part of the UK Government. After all, it announced a tax cut on domestic flights two days before the climate conference kicked off. There has been a complete absence of leadership in the run-up to and during the conference, which includes Boris Johnson travelling from Glasgow to London by private jet and his continued embarrassing behaviour, and the distraction of the sleaze allegations.

We need to go much further much faster, and with much greater commitments. We need to focus on climate reparations. Fiona Hyslop mentioned the climate justice fund and the Scottish Government’s related commitments, but they represent just 0.01 per cent of Scotland’s gross domestic product and 0.02 per cent of public expenditure.

I want to quickly clarify our position. We are certainly not saying that the UK Government should not step up to the plate on the issue; we are merely saying that it is not necessarily a zero-sum game. We must have efforts to innovate at all levels of government to produce the best possible outcome. We are not precious about where that comes from; it is just about getting more resource into the sector.

It is an honour to be here to mark armistice day and to place on record my thanks to the people who have proudly served our country and those who, over the years, have made the ultimate sacrifice. As someone who has been a member of the Army reserves for more than a decade, I know the sacrifices that members of our armed forces make. We owe a debt of gratitude to them. It is a vocation that requires them to sacrifice spending time with family and friends and isolates them from everyday civilian life, yet time and again they continue to be the very best of our country.

This year, it feels apt to mention the work of service personnel at home, as well as abroad. They have been a key part of our Covid pandemic response. More than 100 personnel are currently deployed at mobile testing units across Scotland, and at one point 95 per cent of all testing facilities were being run by the Army. They were recently asked to help with the ambulance crisis in a number of Scottish health boards and last month approximately 200 servicemen and women helped to deliver petrol to garages across the country in an attempt to ease the fuel crisis.

Despite their personal sacrifice, they are often forgotten when they return from duty or leave the armed forces entirely. Those individuals are highly susceptible to experiencing mental health difficulties, drug and alcohol-related problems and, in many cases, homelessness. We often think of remembrance in the context of a century ago, but more than 100,000 people have served in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past two decades.

Remembrance is not about veterans of the world war two generation in isolation, but about people in my peer group—people in their 30s and 40s—who served in those theatres of conflict and have suffered terribly as a result of losing their friends. I think about some of the friends I lost in Afghanistan, far too young, and I recognise the trauma that that can cause for the people who are left behind. Yet, even though we know that to be the case, the support is not sufficient to alleviate those issues.

That plight has been exacerbated by the Covid restrictions and the recent calamitous withdrawal from Afghanistan. According to Help for Heroes, appeals for help rose sharply during the pandemic lockdowns and the mental health charity Combat Stress has experienced an increase of more than 50 per cent in its correspondence since the Taliban swept back to power in Afghanistan. Those mental health issues often lead to a reliance or dependence on alcohol and, to a lesser extent, drugs. A report published last year by the Forces in Mind Trust detailed the impact that alcohol and drug abuse can have on veterans and their families.

The research suggests that alcohol is the primary substance-misuse problem for veterans, with many developing a reliance during their service. One veteran described the drinking culture in the armed forces as a way of life. Knowing the damage that substance misuse can cause, I find that very concerning and I would like to see the problem addressed more robustly by the Ministry of Defence.

We know that drug misuse is prevalent in the armed forces, with data from the Ministry of Defence showing that, in 2019, 660 Army personnel were dismissed from their duties after failing a drugs test. We need to ask ourselves why that is happening and how we can create a system in which service personnel do not feel the need to turn to alcohol or drugs as a coping mechanism or a way of fitting in, only to lose their career as a result, with often devastating personal consequences that result in death or imprisonment.

Housing is another huge problem. A freedom of information request submitted to the Scottish Government last year revealed that almost 250 ex-service personnel were living in some form of temporary accommodation across Scotland. How can it be that in 2021 we still have veterans—men and women who have served their country in some of the harshest environments in the world—going without the basic human right of a permanent roof over their head? We very much need to get to grips with that issue

The problems faced by our veterans community are multifaceted. As a society, we owe it to them to confront those issues and find solutions, but Government support is very often marching in the opposite direction.

The British Government’s defence command paper that was published in March this year included plans to reduce the full-time established strength of the Army from 82,500 to 72,000 by 2025, leaving the UK with the smallest Army since 1714. Closures are planned at Fort George, Glencorse barracks and Redford barracks, cutting the number of regular soldiers and the footprint of the forces community in Scotland from 3,700 to just 2,000. There will also be a real-terms cut in revenue funding in the next four years. That means less money for forces recruitment, training, pay and families. It means a possible cut of 40 per cent to the budget of the office for veterans affairs.

Despite a recently announced across-the-board pay rise, members of the armed forces have faced a real-terms overall pay cut since 2010, with private soldiers’ pay down 7.5 per cent during the decade.

Additional funding from all levels of Government for mental health projects and those who are tackling substance misuse is urgently needed as a starting point, but we need more than that—we need a cultural and societal change.

I note the progress in establishing the climate justice fund, which we commend. However, to ratchet up the ambition, will the minister consider linking it to GDP as a key indicator? We should be distributing our wealth in the world as a way of making progress and scaling up our ambitions to what is needed.

I recognise that and I will come to a conclusion.

We have to increase the scale of our ambition. The numbers sound impressive but, given the legacy of Scotland’s industrial pollution, we need to go much further in the share of our national wealth and be much more rigorous in order to meet our net zero carbon emission targets.

I would rather not get into a debate about the economics of the Barnett formula, but there is on average 30 per cent higher per head public spending in Scotland than there is in England, so there is significant scope for the Government to do a lot in Scotland. It is not about what the Government is doing, which I commend—there is much more that we can push the envelope on in Scotland than might be recognised by the Government.

Although I recognise that work is being done, we need to go further with societal change and place an emphasis on the value that veterans can bring to communities, as Mr Mountain said. Once someone’s service is complete, they can offer so much to society. I would like to see more work being done by the Scottish Government when it comes to housing and mental health support.

Although I appreciate that constraints are placed on the Government when it comes to areas such as drug misuse, there can be no such excuses when it comes to homelessness or a lack of access to mental health services, and the extra £800,000 announced by the minister just does not go far enough to help charities to address the scale of the challenge in Scotland.

I assure both Governments that they will have my full support and the support of Labour members for any measures that are taken to improve the lives of ex-servicemen and women. In many areas, however, the Governments are found wanting.

To ask the First Minister what the Scottish Government’s response is to Glasgow City Council cleansing workers taking strike action from 1 November and throughout COP26 due to low pay. (S6F-00412)

As a member of the GMB trade union, I think that Glasgow City Council threatening to union bust by using anti-trade union laws and busing in blackleg private contractors to try to break the strike is disgraceful and a paltry short-term fix to this long-running dispute. If the First Minister agrees with that position, will she please intervene and provide the leadership that has sorely been lacking so far and, if necessary, commit additional financial resources so that COSLA and Glasgow City Council can settle that dispute, pay those key workers fairly and treat them with respect?