Chamber and committees

I add my thanks to Michelle Thomson for lodging the motion and opening the debate; I recognise the way that we have engaged across parties in the chamber to ensure that the debate could take place today. I also pay tribute to the excellent work of Beyond Srebrenica Scotland and to its chair, Sabina Kadic-Mackenzie, for all her efforts in ensuring that we protect the memory of Srebrenica and educate people about what happened there 30 years ago.

To that end, I urge colleagues to join the events in Parliament today. There will be a drop-in in the Fleming room, where some of the young people whom Karen Adam referenced will talk to members, and a photograph will be taken outside at quarter past 2. I hope that colleagues will be able to join us in those endeavours.

Like Michelle Thomson, I was honoured to take part in the delegation to Bosnia and Herzegovina in March, along with minister Siobhian Brown and many others from across public life in Scotland. It was one of the most profound things that I have done as an MSP and, as Michelle Thomson referenced, a great opportunity to understand and encounter people who lived through those horrendous experiences 30 years ago.

When I was in that delegation, each evening I tried to write something to capture my thoughts and experiences. In the speaking time that I have, I will read to colleagues one of the reflections that I wrote on the day that we came back from Srebrenica:

The sun is slowly dipping below the hill. There has been some warmth today and all around are hints of spring, but as evening falls there is a chill that seems to reach down to us from the mountains. Nzad has just finished speaking to us. He is framed by row upon row of white gravestones. He survived a mass execution as a child and walked with bullet wounds to his head and stomach for days to reach safety. He is a softly spoken man. He speaks calmly and generously answers our questions. He speaks about his daughters, who just yesterday played with Bosnian Serb girls in the local volleyball team.

Despite the horrors done to him and to those he loved, he wants a better future for his children. A silent reverence lingers before we rise to walk one last time in the fading light around the thousands of graves, touching the names etched into the grey stone on the Srebrenica genocide memorial—each a son, a father, a brother, a husband.

There is something incomprehensible here—something that makes me want to stay longer, to try to understand, to cry out, to do something, although nothing seems to meet the enormity. The journey here reminded us of the fragility of the peace agreement and the prevalence of denial of the genocide in the Republika Srpska. In each service station and each town, there would be people who had turned on their neighbours, people who had stayed silent in the face of what was happening, and people who even carried out those unspeakable acts. They are walking these roads, sipping coffee, watching our bus pass.

We visited the memorial centre at the battery factory, which was the Dutch UN base at Potocari, and we retraced the footsteps of those days in July 1995. We were all rendered speechless by video footage of what happened after the UN allowed the Bosnian Serb forces to separate boys and men from women and girls. Promises of safe passage to free Bosnian territory were a lie.

In the video, filmed by their executioners, we watched six men shot dead. The two youngest were spared until they had dragged the four bodies of their comrades into a shallow grave. There are no words. We all reach out to each other without speaking as we climb the stairs to meet the directors of the centre.

Before we left, we met Mother Fadala. She speaks to us at her shop, selling flowers, books and memorial items. Like all the mothers, she lost everything. The shop is her defiance, her reason to go on. The authorities of the Republika Srpska do not want her here, but this unassuming, smiling small lady in her 80s is a rock, unmovable, strong. She tells us that soon she will travel to the United Nations in New York to call for the international community not to forget and to do more. This is what the mothers do. They stand because others cannot.

In the darkness of our journey back to Sarajevo, there is much to process. I think of the sun setting on those rows and rows of white stones and the words that are written in the books held in common by the Abrahamic faith. What have you done? Listen—your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground.

That was a very comprehensive and helpful answer.

Clearly, what happens at the moment is that people often fall through the gaps. You are describing what is perhaps a more comprehensive approach to make sure that that does not happen. When considering any disadvantages of a mixed model, are there still risks of gaps in provision and the most vulnerable not being able to readily access a service?

Throughout our inquiry, we have been looking at the mixed model as proposed in the Government’s discussion paper. We had a bit of a discussion with the previous panel on the finance and the money that is put into legal aid by the Government. Is it your view that a mixed model would save money?

The Law Society gave evidence on its frustrations, but it also spoke about the opportunity that it sees because of where we are now and because things are beginning to move. It was hopeful that certain proposals, which I think it described as tweaks to the system, might be implemented in the summer, before the end of the parliamentary session. Are you working towards that?

Okay. The committee will be keen to follow that up.

Over a number of weeks, including in this morning’s session, we have been discussing the mixed model of payment and delivery, which the Government’s discussion paper calls for. The sense is that it could address some of the issues of identifying and meeting needs in the current system. However, to help to inform our work, it would be useful to get a sense on what panel members’ feelings are about the advantages and disadvantages of that mixed model.

Obviously, there are concerns about the amount of money in the system in general, and the risk with any model is that people fall through the cracks. Can you say something about what the Government is doing to ensure sufficiency of funding? I take the point about trying to move to a multiyear settlement, but what is the Government doing to ensure that people do not fall through the cracks in a mixed model?

Funding is one part of reform, but there are larger issues. There are short-term issues and issues that appear to be longer-term, which might require legislation. Do you understand the frustrations that people have with the time that this has taken and will take? I appreciate that we need to get things right, but throughout our evidence taking, the committee has heard a degree of frustration with the slow pace and with us not achieving as much as we hoped to during this session of Parliament.

Sure. As I said, I appreciate that responsibility for legal aid sits with the minister’s justice colleagues. Nevertheless, from an equalities point of view, this committee and the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee have heard evidence that women who are leaving an abusive relationship very often have to go round 10s and 10s of solicitors to access support. Very often, they miss out on support because of financial thresholds, or because their abusive partner finds a way to intervene to prevent them from accessing that assistance.

Given your equalities brief, do you share the concerns of this committee and the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee? What do you view as being your role in helping to drive forward the review in order to make a change? I appreciate what you say about not being able to compel solicitors, but there is clearly a role for the Government to work with SLAB to push that forward.