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 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.

Indeed. The intention of the 2002 act was to provide transparency about public services—that is, services that are paid for by the taxpayer. My proposals relate to the activities of private companies only in so far as they provide public services. The intention of the 2002 act was always that it would be possible to designate care providers in the private and non-profit-making sectors. However, we have seen a failure by Governments over more than 20 years to extend into those areas. It was always envisaged that such services that are provided and paid for by the state would be covered by freedom of information, but in recent years we have seen the outsourcing of services and, increasingly, services being provided by organisations that are not public authorities such as local authorities.

Independent polling that the Scottish Information Commissioner undertook in 2024 confirmed that there is overwhelming public support for legal change, with 93 per cent believing that freedom of information should cover publicly funded services such as care homes. The essential point is that services that were originally provided in the private sector are now being provided by multinationals and care homes that are owned by offshore trusts.

Is the minister aware that Stagecoach drivers in West Scotland are the worst paid in the United Kingdom? The latest Stagecoach offer of a 4 per cent pay rise was rejected by 98 per cent of Unite bus drivers, on an 81 per cent turnout. The unions say that, even if that offer had been accepted, West Scotland drivers would still be the poorest paid across the UK. Does the minister agree that that is completely unacceptable, that Stagecoach is a very profitable company and that we need to ensure that it makes a better offer so that our constituents are able to use that service?

I press amendment 74.

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.