Chamber and committees

I am sure that the committee would welcome more information on the cross-cutting nature of stigma and what more the Government can do to deal with it. I am sure that your ministerial colleagues must see that it is an issue for everyone; not just people who are in health roles.

I want to touch on the HIV transmission elimination delivery plan and the extent to which individual plans across the country obtain data that will help us to understand the timescales. It sounds as though it will be some time before Public Health Scotland will be able to track the progress of such plans and ensure that rich data is available from them. What more can the Government do to expedite capacity at Public Health Scotland to move matters forward? We know that that is crucial, and that understanding the progress of such plans is crucial to seeing how we are doing.

Do you recognise people’s frustration about the need to go faster and to have a better and clearer picture? If we are serious about the ambitious targets that we have set, we will need to have data. As I said in my previous question, we need to be able to mark our own homework, look at our progress and understand where the gaps are. Throughout our evidence sessions the committee has heard that we need to have that data. I was encouraged by the response to my previous question about providing further information, but do you recognise and understand that frustration?

The committee is particularly interested in what data we have and how we use it to inform the actions that we take. We have heard from Terence Higgins Trust about the lack of data on stigma and how that prevents us from properly tracking our efforts to tackle it. Does the Government plan to assess nationally how stigma is experienced by people living with HIV in different geographical areas? We have heard a lot of evidence about how stigma manifests itself for someone who is living in a rural community and it being different from what happens in urban communities.

We have also heard a lot this morning and throughout the evidence that we have taken about people who use the different public services and the way that stigma is experienced there. Obviously, the Government can receive reporting from the various public services. What work will be done in that space?

Having information about what is happening in public services is very important. I appreciate that you spoke for health boards there. However, from the evidence I have head, it is clear to me that stigma exists across the public sector. I have had conversations with people who have dealt with the police and found it very difficult. We know that Police Scotland is facing a number of challenges at the moment. There is a degree to which we need to reflect on how well training is given in parts of public services. We have also heard about people in education settings, for example, where stigma still persists.

Will you expand on what can be done outwith health settings so that people can report their experience and for that information to be properly collated? My concern is that we do not have a good picture of what is happening across the services that the Government is responsible for delivering.

I do not intend to detain the chamber for too much longer in having to listen to me, given that I opened for the Labour Party at the beginning of the debate. I will simply reflect on some of the contributions that have been made and then offer again our view on the requirement that the bill be on the statute book and on the lessons to be learned.

I put on record my thanks to the legislation team who prepared the bill and briefed the committee, the legal officers from the Government who gave evidence to the committee, and those who responded to the call for views and gave their opinions on the bill—and, perhaps, on wider issues, which I am keen not to relitigate today, as I have said.

Carol Mochan spoke powerfully, as did Evelyn Tweed and others, about the 2018 act, which was debated in the previous parliamentary session, and the importance of pursuing that further equality in our public bodies in order to ensure that they are more representative of the country and that mechanisms are in place to support that.

I recognise the contributions that were made about what the act does and what it does not do when it comes to the statute book. I reiterate the fact that Labour previously supported and continues to support the fundamental principles of the act, but we are acutely aware of the need to respect the decision of the court and to ensure that the statute book reflects that decision, given that that is now the way in which the law has to be conducted in practice.

In opening, I asked the cabinet secretary for a number of points of clarification on the lessons that can be learned from this process. That is important for both the Government and the Parliament, not least when it comes to how we might avoid such situations but also in relation to how we might learn from the opportunities that we have to clarify and tidy up the statute book before we come to the process of passing a stand-alone bill. I hope that, in her summing up, the cabinet secretary will reflect on the questions that I have asked in good faith, and on the need to ensure that all our processes in this Parliament are well scrutinised and reflected on, so that we do not have to revisit legislation in this way.

I will leave my comments there, Deputy Presiding Officer. I am very grateful for your indulgence this afternoon.

I am pleased to open on behalf of Scottish Labour in the debate. Scottish Labour supported the Gender Representation on Public Boards (Scotland) Act 2018 and we continue to support the principle of the act. It is an important step towards achieving gender parity and increasing the representation of women through a robust level to promote equality.

However, we fully acknowledge that the amendment is necessary and therefore welcome the stage 1 debate and process. We recognise what previous speakers have said about the technical nature of the bill and that it has been introduced to tidy up the statute book. Recognising that fact and considering all the judgments that were passed down is the reason why the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee, of which I am a member, produced what is perhaps one of the smallest reports that I have seen for stage 1 of a bill. It is an accurate reflection of the purpose of the bill.

I do not intend to try to rehearse the debates that we had during the passage of the bill, and I note that I was not a member of the Parliament at that time. Today is about acknowledging the judgments of the court and ensuring that we do our job to tidy up the statute book to deflect the possibility of any potential future confusion.

It is important to reflect on the fact that the bill does not change what is currently operating on the ground, because the definition in the 2018 act has become defunct since Lady Dorrian’s initial judgment, and the Scottish Government’s revised guidance has been in effect since its introduction. We are not changing anything today; we are just tidying up the statute book.

In the spirit of constructive criticism for the Scottish Government and for Parliament as a whole, as the convener and others have said, there are opportunities for reflection on some of the issues that the process has raised. We need to reflect on whether the confusion that often arises in legal cases could be avoided in the first place. Nobody wants legislation to end up in the courts, particularly in areas in which it is deemed to be outwith the legislative competence of the Parliament. We need to reflect on that more broadly in respect of a number of pieces of legislation and think about how we deal with those issues, particularly in the drafting process.

Another issue—we have heard this already—is whether this change to the statute book could have been achieved sooner. I appreciate what the cabinet secretary has said today and in committee about waiting to see whether there were alternative vehicles through which the amendment could have been made, rather than through this stand-alone bill. Obviously, the Government has come to the conclusion that there was no opportunity to do that before starting this process, but I note that this is not the first time that we have had to wait quite a while to tidy up legislation or to react to the rulings of the court—we can think back to the process around the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Incorporation) (Scotland) Bill. It is worth thinking about what we can do procedurally to speed up changes to ensure that issues do not sit unresolved for longer than needed.

Like the bill and its accompanying stage 1 report, I will be brief and leave my remarks there. I look forward to hearing the rest of the debate and hope that we can move forward at pace to update the legislation.

This is a very serious report, and I thank all the women who have contributed to it and campaigned over many years. Now that the report has been published, will the cabinet secretary take the opportunity to outline what steps she is taking to discuss its implications for WASPI women in Scotland with the relevant UK ministers? I am sure that she agrees that a swift response from this UK Government is extremely important in terms of the next steps, as is listening to the views of all those who are impacted.

Given that poverty and inequality statistics published last week—to which I think the cabinet secretary referred—show static and rising poverty rates among pensioners over the past decade, what more will the Scottish Government do, within its powers, to support pensioners?

The bill requires DWP appointees to be authorised by Social Security Scotland

“as soon as reasonably practical”.

What are your general expectations about how long it should take Social Security Scotland to authorise an appointee? We had a discussion with other witnesses about timescales and expectations, so it would be good to get your sense of that.

Good morning. I will start with a broad question. What experience do you have of the existing appointee system under the DWP and Social Security Scotland? What has been your experience of that process?

Those answers are helpful. On some of the practical suggestions, I am sensing frustration about blockages, if I can use that expression, in the system. The bill will create empowering opportunities, but a lot of the detail comes down to how the system operates in practice. Is Social Security Scotland engaging with some of the suggestions that Vicki Cahill made or with the conversation about a more automated process, as Fiona Collie suggested?