Chamber and committees

That is fine. It is fairly difficult to defend wanting to remove any reference to the Council of Europe and the European convention on human rights, but there we go. The Tories are under new management at UK and Scottish levels, so perhaps that is what we have come to expect.

In concluding, I want to be clear that Scottish Labour wants the Scottish Government and the UK Government—and the United Kingdom and Scotland—to lead the way not just in putting down rights on paper but in ensuring that we implement and deliver those rights properly. When we talk about people’s rights not being realised or upheld right now, we are talking about children who are struggling, families who are struggling to get a roof over their heads and all the consequences that flow from policy decisions.

I welcome the chance that today’s debate gives us to recognise human rights day 2024, but what matters is that we make significant change to ensure that long-promised action is put into effect by all of us in the chamber, and by Governments across these islands, to give people their dignity and their rights.

I am pleased to open on behalf of Scottish Labour in this debate marking human rights day.

Presiding Officer,

“it is right and proper, that today is also a day that is associated internationally with the support of peace and work for peace because the basis of peace and stability, in any society, has to be the fullest respect for the human rights of all its people.”

Those are, of course, not my words but the words of the late, great John Hume, as he received the Nobel peace prize on this day in 1998 in Oslo, along with David Trimble. I say to colleagues across the chamber, as I often do, that we can learn a lot from people such as John Hume and David Trimble on building bridges, opening doors and protecting fundamental human rights.

I am proud of my party’s place in the story of taking action to protect and defend human rights. It was a Labour Government that introduced the Human Rights Act 1998, ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and ensured that the Human Rights Act 1998 was built into the Scotland Act 1998 and the foundational documents of the Scottish Parliament.

This year’s theme for human rights day, “our rights, our future, right now”, is a timely reminder of the importance of advancing human rights at home and abroad as a route to addressing many of the issues that we face in our world in a dignified and equitable way. In opening the debate, the cabinet secretary referred to some of the corners of the world where we know that human rights have been under threat and said that the international community must do more to protect human rights, not least in Ukraine, the middle east and Syria.

In opening the debate for Scottish Labour, I am pleased to speak about the many areas in which we have been able to work constructively with the Scottish Government to do more to advance human rights in Scotland where we can. That is particularly the case around advocacy for children’s rights, as seen in the cross-party support for actions such as the incorporation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child into Scots law and the establishment of the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland.

It is important that, when there is consensus, we work across parties. In the cabinet secretary’s opening speech, she talked about how we can do more to advance human rights in Scotland. I very much welcome the spirit and tenor of the discussion with the new UK Government.

I thank the cabinet secretary for her intervention. I have more to say about the Conservative amendment and the prevailing attitude of the Conservatives towards human rights and access to them.

We have more to do. We cannot just talk the talk on human rights—we need to make sure that we are also walking the walk.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights speaks to us about the fundamental rights of people to adequate standards of living to ensure their health and wellbeing, including food, clothing, housing and medical care. Those are all issues that we debate every week in the Parliament. I do not think that we will find much disagreement across the chamber about those principles, yet we have to face the facts of the challenges that exist in Scotland right now with regard to many of those issues.

On adequate housing, we know that there are record levels of homelessness, a housing emergency and families who are trapped in temporary accommodation.

On medical care, we know that one in six Scots is stuck on a waiting list for national health service treatment. We know that particularly vulnerable groups, such as people who have a learning disability, face serious challenges to access healthcare. Through recent freedom of information requests, we have found that people who have a learning disability, who were promised health checks, have not been able to access them, despite the Government’s investment.

I will mention briefly the right to food and my colleague Rhoda Grant’s work in leading on that issue, not least through her member’s bill. She was hopeful, as were other members who have an interest in various aspects of human rights policy, that much of that would have been covered in a human rights bill.

In our exchanges today, we have already heard about the challenge of the withdrawal of the proposal for that bill and I am sure that we will hear more about it as the debate progresses. I hear what the cabinet secretary has said, and I have said to her previously that I appreciate that she wishes to take more time, but there is serious disappointment out there among those who have been invested in the bill process, who have done the research work and who have worked extremely hard to bring us to a place where we can consider all the issues in the round. It is clear that we must see more action to progress the issues.

Professor Angela O’Hagan, the chair of the Scottish Human Rights Commission, said that John Swinney and the Government have made it clear that human rights are not a priority for them. The Government will have to reflect on that and on how we go forward in the next 18 months. I recognise that the Scottish Green Party amendment, which was not selected, sought to outline much of that in many of its points.

I have been encouraged by the broad joint working on the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee on many of the issues.

I turn to the Conservative amendment—I will make this point before I take an intervention.

It is disappointing that the Conservative amendment would remove any reference at all to the Council of Europe and its role in upholding human rights. To be honest, I do not think that previous leaders of the Conservative Party, who understood the importance of co-operation on rights and freedoms, would have done that. The Tories appear more interested in clinging to Farage’s coat tails than in listening to people such as John Major.

I will take an intervention from Ms Gosal, if she wishes to intervene.

The committee has also spoken about how we estimate poverty levels and how we consider a range of actions, as you have touched on.

We know that there are some challenges in relation to the family resources survey, and I think that that is true in several nations in the UK. We have seen interactions with the DWP in other parts of the UK to try to get more detailed data, and we have seen that at the local level—that happened in Glasgow, so that people could look at ward-level data.

It would be good to understand your engagement with the DWP to drill down into some of the data on a more local level. [Interruption.]

That is not something that I have trouble with, cabinet secretary. [Laughter.]

I am sure that the committee will look forward to having further discussion about that.

I will move on to my substantive questions, which are about statistics and data in relation to the Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017, which colleagues will also want to cover. In the cabinet secretary’s opening statement and her responses to other questions, she referred to the Scottish child payment. She will know that I have been talking for some time about the need for data on the impact and effect of it, and I think that everyone shares that view. She spoke about the Government’s modelling. Is she content that the modelling will help us to understand the impact of the benefit?

We know that various models have been used that have suggested that 100,000 children have been lifted out of poverty, but I think that that is more about the number of children who have been kept out of poverty. Modelling is based on a projection of a number of different issues and different things that are done by the Scottish Government or other Governments, such as the uprating of benefits at a UK level. Does the cabinet secretary believe that we need to do more work to fully understand the impact that the Scottish child payment is having? Obviously, the child payment is supported across the Parliament.

For clarity, was the Government’s decision taken one week and one day ago?

The committee has also spoken about how we estimate poverty levels and how we consider a range of actions, as you have touched on.

We know that there are some challenges in relation to the family resources survey, and I think that that is true in several nations in the UK. We have seen interactions with the DWP in other parts of the UK to try to get more detailed data, and we have seen that at the local level—that happened in Glasgow, so that people could look at ward-level data.

It would be good to understand your engagement with the DWP to drill down into some of the data on a more local level.

That is helpful, and it is something that the committee will be keen to follow up on.

Finally, I want to ask about local data. Mr Doris touched on this point, in relation to the work in Glasgow that has been effective in identifying gaps in data, particularly on uptake of different social security payments. What more support can be given to local areas to improve their data sets, and what work might be done, potentially through the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, to support local authorities in that?