Chamber and committees

The First Minister will also be aware of the concerns raised by those who live near wind turbines. Does he agree with me that the regulations on them need to be updated? What more does he believe could be done so that those who live near wind turbines get more benefits?

I am pleased to close the debate on behalf of Scottish Labour. I am grateful to the people’s panel for its time and engagement in considering this national emergency, and to the committees for commissioning the work.

As Bob Doris said, the panel was asked to come to a consensus on an issue that has been identified as a national emergency for a number of years, and on proposals that have been discussed in the chamber on a number of occasions. The report is very interesting in showing us what a group of that nature made of the issue.

Although the issue has been identified as a national emergency for a number of years, the latest figures show a 12 per cent increase in drug deaths from the previous year. As the cabinet secretary said, we lost 1,172 people to drug-related deaths in 2023, and we all know that those deaths were preventable. We owe it to the loved ones of those people who have died to take immediate and radical action. That is what members expects from the Scottish Government.

As a number of members have said, Scotland remains the worst nation in Europe for drug deaths. An emergency of such severity is the result not only of underfunding of drug prevention and rehabilitation services, the criminal legal framework and our health services, but of a far wider societal crisis.

The cabinet secretary accepted the link to deprivation. Carol Mochan spoke about the range of factors involved and the complex nature of the challenges. It will come as no surprise to anyone in the chamber that the mortality rate of people who live in the poorest areas is more than double the Scottish average. The council areas that are bearing the brunt of the crisis are the urban centres and the post-industrial heartlands that have also suffered the sharpest decline in their public services following years of austerity.

It is political choices that cause communities to crumble. People in desperate situations sometimes see no other option than to turn to drugs, and that is where Governments have let them down. The cabinet secretary and Elena Whitham spoke of the highly toxic drug supply that is in circulation, particularly in Scotland. I welcome the opening of Thistle, the United Kingdom’s first safer drug consumption facility, which I hope will prevent further deaths and create a rise in the number of people who choose to move towards rehabilitation. However, we must recognise that the facility is in Glasgow and it will do little to help those outside Glasgow city who suffer from addiction. As Annie Wells pointed out, the Thistle is a small part of the solution, and the real challenge is how we address the root causes.

I am pleased that the people’s panel made 19 recommendations and that the Scottish Government and the cabinet secretary have indicated acceptance of them all. However, I agree with Maggie Chapman that the problem is not that we do not know what needs to be done but that we need political will.

Alex Cole-Hamilton spoke of the consensus, and I think that there is a consensus across the chamber about what needs to be done. Clare Haughey made an important point about the need for multiyear packages. It is impossible for organisations to plan if they do not know what their funding is. Collette Stevenson spoke about trusted relationships and the importance of lived experience, and that point was also made by Sue Webber. Members have previously discussed the significant issue of stigma.

Audrey Nicoll spoke specifically about the criminal justice aspect. As a member of the Criminal Justice Committee, I am aware of the massive challenge that drugs pose in our justice system.

This is a complex debate. However, we cannot say that we accept what the Scottish Government is doing on the issue. The reality is that the number of deaths continues to get higher, and urgent action needs to be taken to address that.

It has recently been reported that almost 10 per cent of the 2,000 women who have died at the hands of men in the United Kingdom over the past 15 years have been killed by their own sons. What more does the First Minister believe the Scottish Government can do to raise awareness of that risk and improve support for women?

I welcome the motion from the Greens and will vote for it if we are given the opportunity to do so later today. I also welcome the indication from the Scottish Government that it will support the Scottish Labour amendment

“to review ... due diligence checks”.

It is fitting that we are debating the funding of companies that supply arms and munitions that are used in human rights abuses in Gaza. The Parliament has previously voted for a ceasefire, and I hope that, today, a clear message will be sent in support of international law, and that it is unacceptable that Government agencies should give financial support to companies that supply arms that risk being used as part of multiple and repeated contraventions of international law, which have been, and are, taking place in Gaza and the West Bank.

With regard to the specific companies to which the motion refers, we know that Leonardo manufactured 30 Aermacchi M-345 aircraft for the Israeli Air Force, and that Raytheon supplies smart bombs for the IDF—weapons that are among the most lethal targeting technologies to have been used on Gaza’s so-called safe zones. We know that those companies are among a string of US arms firms that have seen dramatic jumps in their stock prices from the onset of the war. Indeed, executives of those firms have described the past 14 months as a business opportunity.

Not a single company has failed any of the 199 human rights checks that Scottish Enterprise has conducted since 2021, nor indeed any of the 178 checks that were conducted between 2019 and 2020. That includes companies, for example, that the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights has named for potential complicity in unlawful air strikes in Yemen.

The test that the UK Government applies in relation to arms export licences is whether the use of a component is likely to lead to the abuse of human rights or to be used in a way that is in breach of international law. We know that the targeting of civilians and of facilities such as hospitals, the bombardment of Gaza, the illegal settlements in the West Bank, the use of white phosphorus and the blockade of essential supplies are among the breaches of international law that have taken place in Gaza and the West Bank.

According to responses to freedom of information requests from Amnesty International, in the due diligence process that Scottish Enterprise carries out, the level of checks that it performs on a company is measured only against

“the level of financial support it receives, rather than the company’s involvement with or links to human rights abuses.”

That due diligence process seems to go against the United Nations guiding principles on business and human rights and neglects consideration of the end use of components, which is the central issue. I listened with interest to Richard Lochhead’s contribution in that regard.

I very much hope that, as a result of the debate and the focus that it has brought to the issue, the Government will ensure that there is a full review of the due diligence processes that are used by Scottish Enterprise. The Parliament must be clear in the message that we send that we will honour international law and that we stand in support of human rights and with the people of Palestine.

Thank you, Presiding Officer, for the opportunity to close the debate on behalf of Scottish Labour. We believe that there is a consensus, across the Parliament and the Criminal Justice Committee, on many of the issues that we are debating. The real challenge is why the consensus that exists and has existed for many decades on how our courts deal with criminal behaviour has not been implemented.

Ben Macpherson rightly raised the issue of why we have high levels of crime, particularly violent crime, in Scotland, and those are issues that the Parliament should be engaging with. However, today’s debate is more about how we deal with offending behaviour once it has happened. As the cabinet secretary said, there has been a 60 per cent increase in Scotland’s prison population since 1990. It reduced slightly as a result of a change in policy in relation to young offenders, who were largely taken out of the criminal justice system, but the population has since increased. Scottish Labour does not accept that we have a sustainable prison population. Per capita, we have the highest number of people in prison in Europe and the highest number of people on remand, which is not sustainable.

Little rehabilitation happens in prison. Prisoners do not have access to the programmes that they need that might mean that they do not reoffend, and prison staff are under massive pressure. Many prisoners who are held on remand are either found not guilty or are immediately released when found guilty at trial due to the length of time that they have already spent in custody. We have high levels of reoffending by people who go through the justice system. As Liam Kerr said, that issue is not being dealt with with any urgency.

Our criminal justice system is in crisis, and our view is that that is not sustainable. As has been said by many speakers in the debate, including Rona Mackay, Liam McArthur, Maggie Chapman, Fulton MacGregor and, indeed, the cabinet secretary, the evidence suggests that, for most crimes, non-custodial sentences are the most effective in preventing reoffending. The Parliament has received, and the Scottish Government has commissioned, many reports, statements and policy documents to that effect.

The cabinet secretary spoke about some of the negative impacts of being in prison. I listened to her opening contribution with interest, particularly in relation to the review, because I have to say that the justice team for Scottish Labour became aware of this work only when the motion was lodged, and the only detail that we have had was in the cabinet secretary’s contribution today. There needs to be a genuine open discussion in the Parliament about these issues, and the framework of the justice system in Scotland often prevents that from happening. For example, some of the policy on the sentencing of young offenders—under-25s—was not debated with any seriousness or consequence by this Parliament. I agree with the cabinet secretary’s motion, which says that

“the Parliament has an important role to play in discussing the use of imprisonment and the best means for addressing offending behaviour”.

I hope that that discussion will happen more in the future.

I agree with what the cabinet secretary said about the approach in many Scandinavian countries and what we need to learn from international experience. However, her speech simply repeated what has been said in the chamber on many occasions since the creation of this Parliament. In 2008, the Scottish Prisons Commission, which was also known as the McLeish commission, published its report, “Scotland’s Choice”. The commission examined Scotland’s prison system and prison population and the factors that influence those. It set a target to reduce the prison population to 5,000 people per day and to use more community sentences.

It is unclear how the work that is being proposed today differs from that and other pieces of work that have been commissioned. It would be helpful if the cabinet secretary could respond to that in her summing-up speech. There are not significant differences between Scottish Labour’s position and the Scottish Government’s policy on the use of prison. However, it is clear that the Scottish Government has not taken the action that is required to implement that policy. It would be useful to know why the cabinet secretary believes that the piece of work that she is suggesting today will make the shift to get the action that is needed.

As predicted, the Scottish Government’s recent early prison releases led to high reoffending rates, due to the failure to allow time for effective planning. As Pauline McNeill said, work with offenders in the prison system is vital for offenders who need to be incarcerated, but the courts need to have the confidence to use community disposals, which will be the appropriate disposal on many occasions. The evidence that the Criminal Justice Committee has heard on a number of occasions is that that confidence simply does not exist in the judiciary and the sheriffdoms.

We know that community justice budgets make up less than 5 per cent of the total justice budget. I was pleased that there has been an increase this year, but we know that it still does not provide the levels of funding that are needed to match the ambitions that the Scottish Government has set out over many decades. From responses to freedom of information requests, we also know that, in many cases in which community disposals are made by the courts, they are never implemented.

As Pauline McNeill said, Scottish Labour will give our full co-operation to any attempt to drive the use of community disposals in Scotland where they are appropriate. In particular, we will support any attempts to increase community justice budgets. We are pleased that the debate is happening today, but we are concerned about the lack of focus on victims and the need for restorative justice. Jamie Greene was correct when he said that the word “victim” was not used at all in the cabinet secretary’s opening speech. The cabinet secretary spoke about international comparisons. One of the significant differences between our system and those of many of the countries that she referred to is the role of the victim.

As I said, I believe that there is a great deal of consensus in the debate. I very much hope that we will be able to focus on how the Parliament can start to deliver on that consensus and on making sure that we make the changes in the criminal justice system that will make a difference to communities in Scotland.

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on what action it is taking to help local authorities to move families with children out of temporary accommodation into suitable permanent homes. (S6O-04339)

I welcome the work that is being undertaken. The Scottish Government has declared a housing emergency, as have many local authorities. When does the minister believe that they will be in a position to report that no children in Scotland are living in unsuitable temporary accommodation?

I welcome the cabinet secretary’s announcement today. As she is well aware, it was agreed seven years ago that Ardrossan would continue as the main port to Arran, and it has been clear for a number of years that Peel Ports, as the owner, seems to be the obstacle. Labour in North Ayrshire has been calling for municipal ownership or a form of public ownership in order to break the logjam.

Has the cabinet secretary now come to the conclusion that it will not be possible to conclude a deal with Peel, or is she continuing to consider that?

The new Ardrossan academy was originally estimated to cost £31.5 million but, by last year’s budget, that cost had more than doubled, to £75 million. What more can be done to support councils that are having to meet the soaring construction costs that are required for new projects, and how is that taken into account in budget allocation?

Given the specialist roles that many police officers now undertake, does the cabinet secretary agree that the most effective way of improving the visibility of the police in our communities and the service that our constituents receive is to increase police numbers?