Chamber and committees

No ferries have been running from Ardrossan harbour since January, and that will become permanent unless there is redevelopment. There has been no progress in redevelopment, despite that being agreed on more than seven years ago. This is a disaster for the local community. Does the First Minister agree that, if there is no progress, the process for a compulsory purchase of the harbour needs to start by the summer recess, so that redevelopment work can start?

I am pleased to open the debate on behalf of Scottish Labour. We, of course, welcome any and all action to improve the position of women and girls in society.

Although we have seen advances towards gender equality in many areas in recent years, some of the threats that women and girls have grown to cope with have become more insidious. Today’s debate, reflecting on the first annual report from the National Advisory Council on Women and Girls, is an opportunity to take stock of the constraints and challenges that women and girls continue to face.

We know that sexism, misogyny and, indeed, violence and threats against girls and female staff in our schools are not being adequately tackled. We believe that there is a particular need for more focus in that area. We support a cross-campus strategy to address sexism and misogyny in our schools. Our young people are our future, and tackling sexist attitudes and behaviour in our schools is key to creating a more equal Scotland. The cabinet secretary confirmed the importance of the younger generation in her response to Alex Cole-Hamilton earlier in the debate, when she spoke about the importance of the norms in our society.

On accountability, the National Advisory Council on Women and Girls calls for change in society’s attitudes towards sexual violence and domestic abuse, including evaluation of the cultural landscape around gender power dynamics.

Where are we? In 2023-24, Police Scotland recorded more than 63,000 incidents of domestic abuse, which was an increase of 3 per cent on the previous year, reversing the downward trend that had been observed since the start of the decade. The overwhelming majority of incidents involved a female victim and a male suspected perpetrator. The number of recorded sexual crimes has also risen significantly in the past decade.

Transport Scotland has reported that nearly all women very often or always feel unsafe on public transport, where they feel at risk of harassment, antisocial behaviour and unwanted comments. I have spoken with many women transport workers who have been assaulted or threatened. Indeed, members of the women’s committee of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers in Scotland were in the Parliament last week and spoke about some of their personal experiences.

We have heard multiple times in the chamber about alarming incidents of abuse and violence against female teachers in our schools and against pupils, as well as concerns about many boys’ idolisation of sexist social media personalities.

Scottish Women’s Aid and other groups have highlighted that any law that is not designed with misogyny in mind and does not have ensuring women’s safety at its core is limited in how it can be used to respond to the realities of life for women. I am therefore very disappointed that the Government decided to drop its proposed misogyny bill in its latest programme for government, because that would have been an opportunity for legislators to grasp the seriousness and complexity of the issue. However, let us be clear: misogyny should have been included in the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Bill from the outset.

Our justice system is not adequately equipped to protect women from the behaviour of men. In 2021, more than 7,000 domestic violence cases were stuck in court backlogs, with almost 70 per cent of the cases awaiting trial being sexual offence cases. The conviction rate for rape remains far lower than the rate for other crimes, with survivors often speaking of their experience of the justice system as retraumatising. Even our police force has admitted to having institutional and persistent problems with sexist bullying. We know that there is underreporting of sexual crimes and that victims simply do not have confidence in the justice system.

I highlight the advisory council’s calls for trauma-informed forensic medical examination, independent sexual advocacy and privacy for complainers to be embedded across the justice system. I very much hope that changes that might be introduced through the Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill will enable some of that to happen.

We need to look more closely at how women can be affected by multiple disadvantages due to factors such as race, sexuality and disability. I was pleased by what the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice said in relation to that. Ultimately, if we are to move towards gender equality, that means giving women more—

I am just about to conclude, so I am not sure whether it would be appropriate, but I am happy to take an intervention.

I congratulate Bill Kidd on securing the debate. I lodged a similar motion calling for the recognition of the Palestinian state, so I am very pleased that Bill Kidd’s motion has been selected and that we are debating the issue today. I very much hope that this Parliament is given the opportunity to vote to call for recognition of the Palestinian state, although that is obviously not possible in this members’ business debate.

As a Labour MP, I voted in favour of recognising the Palestinian state in 2014, when the House of Commons voted for recognition in a non-binding vote. I suspect that the Cabinet Secretary for Constitution, External Affairs and Culture may well have been with me in those lobbies. The UK Government should publicly call for the full recognition of Palestine, although I appreciate the point made by Liam McArthur that such actions will not be sufficient in themselves.

Like many members across the chamber, on an almost daily basis I receive emails from constituents expressing horror at the Israeli Government’s treatment of civilians in Palestine. Since 7 October 2023, Israel has carried out indiscriminate attacks on Gaza, with displacement of Palestinians from their homes through land grabs and demolition, and with the horror of the scenes of carnage, mutilation and death that we see so often on our television screens.

Pauline McNeill and Bill Kidd said that at least 56,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli military offensives, and some estimates are considerably higher. More than 14,000 people are said to be missing or presumed dead. It has now been over 15 weeks since Israel imposed a complete blockade on vital aid and supplies, which amounts to collective punishment and the use of starvation as a method of war against the population of Gaza. The World Health Organization has warned of the permanent impact of hunger on a generation of people in Gaza.

Israel’s co-ordinated attacks on and near hospitals have pushed Gaza’s healthcare system to the brink of total collapse, and we are far beyond the early days, when there was denial that hospitals were being targeted. Israel’s aggression on Gaza, in direct violation of international law and the International Court of Justice, has left many Palestinians in Gaza who have families across the world stranded without any safe or viable path to reunite with their loved ones, perpetuating the cycle of trauma faced by those individuals. Pathways to family reunification with relatives in the UK, for example, involve restrictive criteria, prolonged waits and hefty fees. That is the kind of issue that Britain could do more on. As of 24 March 2024, two Palestinians had died while waiting for the Home Office to decide on their applications.

I would therefore like to use this debate to highlight the calls of the Gaza families reunited campaign for the immediate implementation of a Gaza family scheme to enable Palestinians to reunite with their loved ones in the UK. Provisions under the scheme would involve deferring biometric enrolment until family members arrive in the UK and would require the Foreign Office to provide consular assistance to people accessing help. Importantly, that would not negate the Palestinians’ right to return but would uphold it by seeking to protect the lives of those in need now.

I am pleased to support the motion and the call for an immediate ceasefire, the release of all unjustly detained people, the unconditional lifting of all restrictions on the entry and distribution of humanitarian aid into Gaza, and the recognition of the Palestinian state. I also support the call that both the UK and Scottish Governments must divest from funding any organisation that enables the sale of weapons to Israel and that all arms exports to Israel must cease. That is very much in the interests of the people of both Israel and Palestine.

Care workers who are employed by Enable are on strike and have been demonstrating outside Parliament today. This year, Scottish care worker pay is being raised to £12.60 an hour. Does the First Minister agree that Enable care workers deserve a minimum wage of £15 per hour now?

I am pleased to speak to my amendments on freedom of information.

Significant amounts of money are spent on care in Scotland and the private sector care industry has grown significantly in recent years. Ownership structures have become ever more complex and opaque. For example, data obtained from Registers of Scotland by The Ferret shows that, at the end of 2019, at least 44 Scottish care homes were owned by companies based in tax havens including Jersey, the Isle of Man and Gibraltar.

I will speak more about that later in the debate in connection with my amendments on tax transparency, but I mention it now because it highlights the importance of changes in the sector that mean that more of the sector is now outwith the scope of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002.

The member seems to be arguing for contract compliance. Under freedom of information, it often happens that, when a local authority or the Scottish Government has to provide information that is requested, it will obtain that information from an organisation that it has contracted with. My amendments are about individual members of the public having a direct right to obtain information from an organisation that is providing a service that is paid for by the taxpayer.

The important point in relation to private companies is that only the services that are paid for by the taxpayer would have to be compliant with freedom of information. Anything else that the organisation did—for example, the same care home could contain a place that was paid for privately and in a different way—would not be within the scope of freedom of information. However, the reality is that many care homes only have places that are funded by the taxpayer.

During Covid, we saw that, where a care home was a local authority care home, information was provided to families, which was of great significance to them and gave them a great deal of comfort. We have a lack of transparency where services are provided by other types of organisation, such as a care home that is owned by a multinational. We know that many organisations have very vulnerable systems. Southern Cross Healthcare was perhaps the most noteworthy example of that. At the end of the day, it is the family and the person in care who suffer when such an organisation goes bust. I might have an opportunity to talk about that later when I speak to my amendments on tax transparency.

My amendments in group 2 seek to address the transparency deficit by extending the requirements of the 2002 act to the care sector. Amendment 54 seeks to designate the relevant care homes as defined under the Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act 2010.

Amendment 86 would require that the provisions would come into force two years after royal assent. The impact of the amendments would be that individuals would be able to exercise and enforce FOI rights directly with service providers; the amendments would also strengthen legal clarity for the Scottish Information Commissioner and indeed for designated bodies and requesters.

I hope to say a little bit more about the changing nature of the care sector later on in the debate, but I would argue that it is that changing nature that makes the amendments so important.

I appreciate that the Scottish Government is likely to say that it is not opposed in principle to the amendments but that it wishes to undertake a consultation with the sector. These amendments would enable consultation with the sector on how FOI rights are extended to it, not on whether they should be extended. I would say that it is a principle that, if it is the taxpayer who is paying for a service, the public should have that right to information. When the 2002 act was passed, it was always the intention that taxpayer-funded public services would be covered by FOI. After a 20-year delay, these amendments would guarantee that, within two years of royal assent, publicly funded care would be covered by FOI and the public would have more rights to know how their money was being spent.

I move amendment 54.

I press amendment 54.

The member makes an incredibly important point. The challenges of Covid demonstrated the importance of having an enforceable right to information. During Covid we saw that providers in the care sector, which care for some of our most vulnerable people, followed very different rules depending on whether ownership was in the public sector or elsewhere. We found that the families of those who were in care homes run by local authorities were able to access information but that it simply was not possible to get information from homes owned by private sector companies.

That is one reason why there is such a body of opinion in favour of extending freedom of information to cover the care sector. However, ministers have thus far refused to use their section 5 powers under the act.

I thank the minister for her time in discussions since stage 2 so that the drafting of amendments could be agreed on to improve transparency on tax and ownership. I am very grateful to her officials for their work on the drafting of the amendments.

Amendment 74 will require Scottish ministers to make publicly available a report on the state of the social care market in Scotland every three years. The report could contain information about

“the composition of the market by reference to such factors such as the scale of the economic operators in the market and their status as for-profit bodies, public bodies or third sector bodies”.

The report could also include information on

“the level of profit being made by operators in the market”

or the tax status of operators.

There are significant amounts of money in the Scottish care home sector. However, the sector also faces significant challenges with the quality of care, staffing resources and worker pay, which the Scottish Trades Union Congress indicates now lags behind that in the rest of the UK.

There has been a change in the nature of the sector, and on-going funding pressures are leading to the closure of a growing number of care homes, particularly in rural areas, with almost half of all care homes nationwide reporting a decrease in the number of placements.

As I said, there are significant amounts of money in the sector. Under amendment 75, Scottish ministers will be able to

“require a person to supply them with information that ... is in the person’s control, and ... may be relevant to the Scottish Ministers’ function of reporting”

on social care markets.

Amendment 85 will subject regulations to the affirmative procedure. All the amendments are about transparency, information and accountability to the taxpayer.