Chamber and committees

The Scottish Fiscal Commission has forecast that spending on IIDB will be £84 million this year, falling to £81 million in 2027-28. Does the cabinet secretary recognise that the budget saving there is, in essence, because people are dying? People are not able to make a claim and they are dying. Does she recognise that that is a serious issue?

I was pleased to lead the members’ business debate on the dying in the margins report, which Ruth Maguire referenced. Last week, there was the publication of the state of caring report for 2023, which shows that there are gaps. People who are in receipt of certain income replacement benefits cannot access carers allowance supplement because they are not in receipt of carers allowance. Has the Government done any assessment of the number of carers in Scotland, particularly those who support someone with a terminal illness, who might be falling through the cracks in the system and of the impact that that is having on them?

I am pleased to follow Ben Macpherson in the debate. I will start where he left off, by saying that it is important to note, from the outset, that although we mark 16 days of activism, our activism against gender-based violence must take place every day and every year.

We have heard a number of rich speeches in the debate; I hope that I will continue in that vein. I pay tribute to colleagues in the chamber who have campaigned tirelessly over many years and have worked deeply on such issues. In particular, I pay tribute to members on my party’s front bench, Pauline McNeill and Katy Clark, for their work on the matter and on the Scottish Labour Party’s consultation and subsequent report about how we tackle and end violence against women and girls, which was published at the party’s women’s conference this weekend. The report lays bare some of the challenges that are faced by women and girls and sets out some of the ways in which we can go about addressing the issues. Once again, I thank them and everyone who contributed to that work for all their efforts.

Like many of my male colleagues who have spoken this afternoon, I am clear in my mind that the burden of ending violence against women and girls cannot fall only on women and girls. Women and girls campaign actively and work tirelessly to raise the issues and often have to call out the perpetrators of the violence against themselves and share their own stories. It is important that we show them respect, stand in solidarity with them and offer them our support, but we must also be absolutely clear about the role that men must play in taking action to tackle violence against women and girls.

When I read the report that was prepared by Scottish Labour, a quote stood out for me as being critical. A respondent said:

“It is men who are missing in conversations focusing on tackling”

violence against women and

“it is men who need the courage to call out bad behaviour when they see male peers engaging in it.”

As men, we must be responsible for our actions and for ensuring that we do not engage in or perpetrate behaviour that normalises gender-based violence. Men must be responsible for calling out their friends and colleagues and they must be active bystanders when they see other men engaging in misogyny and violent behaviour.

What all the numbers that we are hearing today and all the crime figures and reporting demonstrate to me is that we must get much more serious about educating young boys about misogyny and gender-based violence, and we must do it much earlier. We need to ensure that schools have the resources and confidence to tackle such behaviour wherever it manifests, to educate both children and staff, and to ensure that female staff and students feel safe enough to report and challenge such behaviour.

I have been proud and pleased throughout my career in a council and in Parliament to support organisations such as White Ribbon Scotland. I commend White Ribbon on the work that it does to ensure that the root causes of violence against women and girls—namely, harmful and dominant misogyny—are effectively challenged. We need to change long-established attitudes and behaviours, and to take a preventative approach in order to stop violence against women and girls from occurring in the first place, rather than trying to deal with its consequences.

I close this speech where I began. I remind people that taking action on violence against women and girls does not end at the close of the 16 days of activism—it has to be an on-going effort. It has to be us, as men, who examine our own behaviours, listen to the experience of women and girls, and challenge the actions of the men around us. Only with that level of effort will we change the experiences of women and girls.

I am grateful to your lordships.

The Government will lodge amendments, we think. In a sense, that is the known unknown. We have had that discussion with other witnesses.

Can the bill be amended? You said that a compromise will not satisfy everyone. Are there amendments that could be made that would move the bill to a place where we could get more consensus? There was a view that perhaps the Lord President did not feel as consulted in your review as he could have been. I am keen to get your view on that. Could the legal profession have contributed more to your review and got us to a position of consensus?

Thank you, convener, and good morning to Ms Roberton. I am particularly interested in the regulatory role for the Lord President that might have been envisaged by your review. If there was an independent regulator, what role would the Lord President play? In evidence over the preceding weeks and this morning, we have heard the view that the Lord President is an independent regulator. Will you expand on that for the committee?

At the beginning of your remarks, you spoke about the bill’s being imperfect, to put it kindly. In your view, could there have been a different version of legislation that would have created something that was independent but that had a role for the Lord President, which could have been developed in concert between the parties, essentially?

Is it your view that, given the current bill, compromise will be impossible—or really difficult to achieve?

Obviously, the bill will be amended, we believe—

Sure.