Chamber and committees

I will use the short time available to me to outline some concerns about the failure, to date, to take the necessary steps to ensure that we create the green jobs that we need. Despite ambitious targets, jobs have not been created in the numbers and with the terms and conditions required to make a just transition possible. Unless we see seismic change, there will be no just transition.

There is no doubt that we need a jobs and workers-led transition, with the trade unions at the heart of the debate in all sectors. The Scottish Government promised 130,000 green jobs by 2020. However, as has been said previously, the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics show that an estimated 21,400 direct full-time equivalent jobs were created in the low carbon and renewables economy in 2019—the most recent year for which we have figures. That was a fall from 23,100 the previous year and the lowest direct employment since 2014. My concern is that a strategy has not been presented to us today to describe how we will create those new, high-quality jobs.

The Conservative Party amendment welcomes the UK Government’s North Sea transition deal, which includes a commitment to work with employers to secure joint investment of £16 billion to retrain their workforces, but that deal fails to recognise that many of the workforce are contractors, who will therefore not benefit from it.

The recent debate on offshore training passports outlined the transferable skills that many oil and gas workers have. A Robert Gordon University review found that

“over 90% of the UK’s oil and gas workforce have medium to high skills transferability and are well positioned to work in adjacent energy sectors.”

The review projected that 100,000 of the jobs in adjacent energy sectors are likely

“to be filled by people transferring from existing oil and gas jobs to offshore renewable roles”.

However, we are talking about only approximately half of the workforce. The announcement on Cambo makes it clear that change is coming, but well-paid green jobs are not currently being created in the numbers required, and much more needs to be done by both Governments to make them a reality.

Scotland has, of course, huge potential to lead the way in renewable energy. However, our history is one of innovation and invention, but then failure to turn that into mass production. That is, of course, what has happened in the renewables sector in recent decades.

We need an industrial strategy that lays out how domestic industrial capacity will ensure growth in renewable energy production and new jobs in Scotland. As a first step, we need to create a publicly owned energy company, but we also need to look at municipal energy production, such as the solar energy farms that are being created by North Ayrshire Council. The model of public energy provision is mainstream in many other parts of the world, including Germany and the USA.

I welcome the debate on all sides. However, to deliver a just transition, we need to be more radical.

The cabinet secretary said that he agrees “in principle” with the key recommendation of the report that a separate independent investigation should be undertaken into each death in custody. Does he agree that, as part of that, it is vital that an independent investigator has early access to all witnesses, while events are still fresh in their minds?

I was asking for information for MSPs about how the Scottish Government evaluates how the trials worked and, in particular, how victims and survivors felt that the trials worked for them. I would like information on whether the specialist courts dealt with cases better in certain ways; on the impact on sentencing, including whether the sentencing outcomes were the same in the specialist domestic abuse courts as in the more traditional way of dealing with such cases; and on whether cases were dealt with more speedily.

Violence against girls and women needs to be looked at in the context of wider gender inequality. In the previous session, Parliament passed hate crime legislation in relation to other groups. We need to consider how our legal system works and what more can be done to create criminal offences that tackle misogynistic behaviour.

I hope that the misogyny working group makes recommendations on how the law can be changed. Although, in recent years, there have been many changes in how the courts work, in many ways, they still operate similarly to how they operated a century ago. Therefore, we need to look at making radical changes to our legal system.

Women who are victims of such offences still feel and know that the justice system fails them. It is our responsibility to create a justice system that recognises the power relationship between men and women in society, as well as the widespread sexist and misogynistic attitudes that exist, and to provide a way of delivering justice for women and girls.

The statistics on violence against women and girls make sombre reading. The number of sexual crimes reported to Police Scotland, including rape and attempted rape, has gone up by 114 per cent over the past 10 years. Since 2010-11, the number of other sexual crimes, including internet-based crimes such as communicating indecently and taking, possessing and distributing indecent photographs of children, has increased by 238 per cent.

According to Rape Crisis Scotland, on a typical day in Scotland in 2019, the number of survivors of sexual violence who were waiting for access to what it calls life-saving rape crisis support had almost doubled since the year before. Only 43 per cent of rape and attempted rape cases lead to a conviction compared with 88 per cent for other crimes. Disturbingly, at least 40 per cent of all sexual crimes recorded in 2019-20 related to a victim who was under the age of 18.

Many women will never report their abusers. Those who do report these crimes experience a legal system that fails them, and many speak of the further trauma that is caused to them due to their treatment by the police, the courts, the legal profession and the wider judicial system.

Domestic violence against women and girls is endemic. The figures that were released today show that, for the fifth year in a row, there has been an increase in the number of domestic abuse incidents that are reported to the police.

Specialist domestic violence courts have been trialled, and we ask the Scottish Government to provide an evaluation so that we know how the courts worked. We need to know whether those who had suffered domestic abuse felt that the specialist courts dealt with cases better.

Like others, I have been contacted over the past few weeks by a number of constituents who are eligible for the booster but have had difficulty accessing it, despite the helpline. Can the First Minister provide a detailed breakdown by age group of those who have been offered and have received the booster? If she feels that mass vaccination centres and drop-in centres are not the best way forward at the moment, will she outline what can be done to put resources in to make it easier for people to get their booster?

It is a pleasure to speak in the debate and I welcome the bill. I congratulate all those who have campaigned for the legislation over such a long time. I also welcome all the contributions that have been made so powerfully to the debate.

Like others, I have met mesh survivors and I have found that even hearing about some of the experiences of the women who have been directly affected is harrowing. The details of the massive and life-changing implications, which they have often said ruined their lives, and the considerable pain that the women have endured as a result of the use of mesh are difficult to forget. Therefore, the bill is clearly very welcome. I hope that it will help the women who have been affected and, in particular, I hope that it will be welcomed by the Scottish Mesh Survivors. I hope that all the women who have been affected by the use of vaginal mesh will receive treatment and the appropriate expenses in the way that I believe members of the Scottish Parliament wish to happen.

However, there are many other mesh survivors who are not covered by this legislation and we must not forget them. Another petition has been lodged with the Scottish Parliament, which refers to some of the other women, and also men, who have been affected by the use of other mesh procedures such as

“hernia mesh, rectomesh and mesh used in hysterectomies”.

I have been contacted—as I suspect other members will have been—by constituents who have been adversely affected by those types of procedures and are asking for action similar to that proposed in the bill. I hope that the Government will listen to what they are saying and agree to the request for a review of all those procedures, too. I also hope that the Government will adopt a similar approach to those individuals as it has to the women affected by vaginal mesh who we are discussing today.

This issue was first raised in this Parliament in 2013 and has been raised regularly since then. That it has taken so long to get to a point at which we have a bill before us is an important point.

The independent medicines and medical devices safety review, which Baroness Cumberlege led, looked at the issues, and much of what the Scottish Government is putting into effect is based on the recommendations in the review report.

An issue that the review group considered was the way in which women are treated when they raise health concerns. We have heard how women were not believed or listened to. Of course, that is not just an issue in relation to the mesh procedure; it is an issue of which many of us are aware—indeed, it is something that many of us have experienced over the years. There are many lessons that we must all learn, and which Government must learn, about the way in which the women who were given vaginal mesh were treated that are relevant to many other situations that women face in the health service.

Another recommendation in the review report was that manufacturers should contribute to the cost of redress. However, it does not look as though the Scottish Government will get any money from manufacturers. Let me use Ethicon, which is one of those manufacturers, as an example; the company is a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson. We know that it is losing court cases and that at one time it faced more than 40,000 lawsuits, based on its negligence in relation to not just transvaginal mesh devices but bladder sling complications. A number of those lawsuits have been successful. According to the company’s 2020 annual report, 14,900 pelvic mesh lawsuits were still outstanding. In October 2019, the company agreed to pay $117 million in 41 states and the District of Columbia, in the United States of America, to settle claims in relation to deceptive marketing of pelvic mesh products.

The bill is in its initial stages. During its passage, I very much hope that we will consider all the issues that have been raised in this debate, including manufacturers’ responsibilities and how we ensure that women who were affected by the procedures and are in difficult situations get justice from the Government and from other parties that were negligent and failed to respect them and provide them with adequate services. I hope that we will be able to explore those issues and strengthen the bill.

The First Minister knows that the vaccine starts waning around 10 weeks after the second dose. Given that and the number of people who are still waiting for their booster dose, does she accept that testing is a safer option?

Does the minister think that ScotRail’s proposal to cut 300 train services a day is consistent with our meeting our net zero targets?

To ask the Scottish Government how it plans to encourage people to use public transport rather than cars. (S6O-00382)

To ask the Scottish Government, in light of reports of a legal opinion stating that local authorities cannot use their byelaw powers to implement buffer zones at national health service reproductive health facilities, how it will ensure that women have access to these services free from harassment. (S6T-00293)