Chamber and committees

The point was about—

For clarity, is there no equality impact assessment of that £27 million cut? Has that not been done?

I am particularly interested in the £60 million commitment in the affordable housing supply programme for the national acquisition plan, to increase the supply of affordable homes. What progress has been made on spending that money? Given some of the commentary that we have heard this week from various people in the housing sector about the need to speed up our acquisitions, it would be useful for the committee to understand what progress is being made.

I certainly will.

Given what the cabinet secretary has said about her intention to maintain the target for house build starts, and given this week’s report by Homes for Scotland about the unrealistic nature of that target, is it her intention to review it with key stakeholders in the sector to ensure that the target is as realistic as possible? The West of Scotland Housing Association has said that the Government’s budget decisions mean that it has essentially surrendered in this area.

You have maintained the target, but stakeholders are asking for engagement.

I am grateful, convener. Good morning, cabinet secretary.

I return to the matter of employability funding and the reductions in the lines for that. In the programme for government, the First Minister made much of economic growth being the hallmark of his Government, and its importance in poverty reduction. Would you reflect on the fact that reducing employability funding does not contribute to the overall strategy of economic growth? In fact, is it not a rather short-termist approach, given what we are trying to do to get people back into work and drive growth in the economy?

Was an analysis done of the specific cut to the housing supply budget?

It is a privilege to open today’s debate to mark Holocaust memorial day 2024 and to follow the debates in previous years that were led by Jackson Carlaw and Fergus Ewing, which show the strong cross-party commitment to this motion in the Parliament.

Now, as ever, it remains incredibly important to come together to pause, reflect and remember the six million Jews who were murdered by the Nazis, alongside millions of others, including Roma and Sinti people, disabled people and LGBT people. We also call to mind the millions of others who lived through and survived the Holocaust but lost everything—family, dignity, health and home.

Now, as in years gone by, we recommit ourselves and our efforts to the statement, “Never again”, but we know that, tragically, since the Holocaust, humanity has not lived up to that statement in many places across the globe, including Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur. We remember those people today, too.

“Never again” is a phrase that should apply not only to genocide but to the hate and persecution that surround the horrific acts of mass murder that we have seen.

The theme developed by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust for this year’s commemorations is “Fragility of Freedom”. The horrors of the Holocaust—indeed, the horrors of most genocides in humanity’s collective history—do not come from nowhere. Acts of targeted mass murder are preceded by an erosion of freedoms in order to control populations and make the terrors that follow easier to perpetrate.

In the lead-up to the Holocaust, Jews and other groups that were targeted by the Nazis had many of their freedoms and rights restricted and removed. The freedom to study, work and live wherever they wanted was restricted. Jews were removed from educational establishments, had their businesses attacked and destroyed and were forced into ghettos. The freedoms of self-identity, religion and marriage were limited, as Jews became a defined class for discrimination under the Nuremberg laws, which restricted whom they could marry. The freedom to engage in leisure and other activities was also restricted, as Jews were banned from cinemas, theatres and sports facilities.

Those are all freedoms that we often take for granted in the modern era. Although many of us cannot conceive of losing a single one of those freedoms, they are fragile, and, in recent times, our world has become a more uncertain place in that regard.

It is not only the freedoms of groups targeted by those carrying out genocidal acts that are restricted—frequently, the freedoms of all people are limited to prevent people from speaking out. During the Holocaust, the targeting of opposition politicians, journalists and dissenting voices of the Nazi regime ensured that information control and propaganda in the population stopped people speaking out and opposing atrocities. We have seen that pattern repeated in other genocides, such as that in Rwanda, where the infamous Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines spewed hatred against the Tutsis to lay the ground, through propaganda, for what would follow.

Ultimately, the Holocaust and other crimes of genocide result in the loss of that fundamental freedom—the freedom to live. Now more than ever, it is important for survivors and people born after the Holocaust and other genocides to recognise that, just because the atrocities have stopped and society begins to normalise, freedom does not always fully return, and survivors have to live with the reality of what they have experienced.

Growing up in East Renfrewshire, I have had the privilege of meeting and hearing at first hand from a number of survivors. Their children now carry on the work of telling their story, because so few survivors now remain. On Monday evening, at the East Renfrewshire commemoration event, I had the privilege to, once again, hear the story of Marianne Grant, who survived a number of camps, including Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. Marianne was a painter who literally painted for her life—she was forced to record images of the horrendous experiments of the angel of death, Dr Josef Mengele. Marianne’s story is the very embodiment of the fragility of freedom.

For those who have lived through such times, freedom as it once was does not fully return. People lose livelihoods and homes. They often have no choice but to move to new countries, as so many Jewish people have done. People are restricted by the mental and physical trauma of what they have experienced. It can be hard to trust. Understandably, after all that has been experienced, it is hard for people to trust those in their new country, to trust that their freedoms will be guaranteed and to trust that they have complete freedom.

For many groups, the entrenched stigma and hate that are drilled into people through those periods remain, and their freedom remains less than that of their fellow citizens. For example, it was not until many decades later that gay men who had been imprisoned by the Nazis and around the world gained full rights and stopped being viewed as criminals.

The legacy of hate hurts not just those who survived but members of persecuted groups who are born long after. In the context of the Holocaust, Jews in our communities, including in East Renfrewshire, still have to face the vile words and actions of antisemitism and Holocaust denialism. For many, the lessons of the Holocaust—the ways in which Jews and others were victimised, othered and expelled—have still not been learned.

It is incumbent on us all, as representatives of the people of Scotland in this Parliament, to stand up and to recommit to combating antisemitism, racism, hatred and attacks on people’s freedoms without equivocation. This year, let us once again redouble our focus on protecting those fragile freedoms, watch our own words and deeds, and watch the words and deeds of others, whether in our community, in this Parliament or elsewhere, so that we do not allow the fragile freedoms to shatter any further.

We must ensure that we, with one voice, say, “Never again”, and that we have a Scotland where all people can walk free of hatred and fear. [Applause.]

This week, Homes for Scotland’s “Existing Housing Needs in Scotland” report showed that 85,000 households are living in properties that do not have the required adaptations or support for the disabled people who live in them. The 27 per cent cut to the housing budget will not help to drive forward the progress that we need on aids and adaptations. Will the minister who has responsibility for equality tell the chamber what assessment was made of the impact that the cut will have on disabled people across Scotland?

Thank you, Presiding Officer. I am happy to have the opportunity to speak on this important matter.

Go raibh maith agat, a Cheann Comhairle. Tá áthas orm deis a bheith agam labhairt ar an ábhar tábhachtach seo.

I felt it appropriate to begin my speech in both English and Irish this evening. I am sure that the official report will correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that that is perhaps the first use of the Irish language in a debate in the Scottish Parliament. I say “in a debate” because I am very conscious of the speech of Uachtarán na hÉireann Michael D Higgins in 2016, and I would not want to claim to be the first, given that such an august speaker used Irish in this chamber. However, as someone who has both British and Irish citizenship, I wanted to use cúpla focal in recognition of the values of the institution that we debate this evening. Those values are co-operation, building relationships, building respect and understanding. We seek to co-operate across our islands; we seek to build relationships of family, politics and business; and we seek to show respect for our shared heritage and our commonality as well as understanding of our differing traditions.

Through the power of dialogue, debate and agreement, we can find solutions to common problems for the people whom we represent across these islands. It is a pleasure to follow many fine speeches in that regard, and I pay tribute in particular to Emma Harper for bringing the motion to the chamber. I also pay tribute to all the members of the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly, the associate members—I declare an interest, as one of those associates—all the staff and all those who help to make the Assembly work so well, including those who have done so in the Scottish Parliament since the beginning of the Parliament almost 25 years ago.

I will use my time this evening to focus on the vital work of the institution in securing and sustaining peace in Northern Ireland. We are now 25 years on from the Good Friday agreement. Last year, I was proud to lead commemorations in this Parliament of that historic moment, with the support of the Irish consul, Mr Jerry O’Donovan, the John Smith Centre at the University of Glasgow and the John and Pat Hume Foundation.

It was wonderful to hear mention of the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition—Monica McWilliams, who was a founding member of that coalition, was here in the Parliament and spoke passionately about her work. However, I want to focus on John Hume because, without his vision, his total commitment to dialogue and his forbearance, there would be no peace in Northern Ireland, and there would be no British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly as we know it.

As we have heard, the peace process did not begin and end on Good Friday in 1998. It was a long journey, where windows of light let chinks into the darkness along the way, until finally the door of agreement was reached and opened. We had the Anglo-Irish agreement of 1985, the establishment of the British-Irish Inter-Parliamentary Body in 1990, the Downing Street declaration in 1993 and so on—all those moments were crucial on the journey to 1998, and they were all inspired by the architecture of John Hume.

In 1980, John Hume met Humphrey Atkins, who was then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Mr Hume was accompanied by his Social Democratic and Labour Party colleagues Austin Currie and Hugh Logue—with regard to whom I should declare an interest, as he is my father’s cousin. They told the secretary of state that there were three important elements in any political talks: relationships between the people of Northern Ireland, relationships between the people of the north and south of the island of Ireland and relations between Britain and Ireland. Those would become the defining three strands of the Good Friday agreement.

John Hume envisaged that new bodies would help to foster the conditions for a lasting settlement and an enduring peace. It is clear to me that BIPA embodies those three strands: supporting dialogue between the parties and people in Northern Ireland, supporting dialogue north and south on the island of Ireland and supporting dialogue east and west between these islands. The work that colleagues do today is vital in continuing the on-going business of building better futures for us all.

Even as we face the difficult challenges that we have heard about, both domestic and international, it is clear that BIPA is needed more than ever. As our colleagues in the Northern Ireland Assembly have not sat for two years and the institutions of the Good Friday agreement are threatened, it is clear that we must continue to do all that we can to bring people together. We must protect what has been built and offer that east-west hand of friendship, because it matters to so many of us in the diaspora here in Scotland and beyond.

I will end with the words of John Hume, who said:

“When people are divided, the only solution is agreement.”

Therefore, long may the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly be a forum for the solution that is found in dialogue, respect and agreement.

Thank you. Go raibh maith agat.