Chamber and committees

Hello, and thank you, cabinet secretary. I acknowledge that you do not want to provide the budget allocation for NHS 24 until this afternoon’s statement, although I am disappointed to hear that. I raised NHS 24 capacity with you in October, and, at the time, you emphasised the additional recruitment that will take place to support that crucial service. Can you at least indicate this morning, cabinet secretary, how many new NHS 24 staff have been put in place since you made that pledge in October and how many you intend to recruit over the coming weeks?

Thank you.

Cabinet secretary, the total maintenance backlog bill across Scotland’s 14 health boards has, shockingly, reached more than £1.5 billion. What budgetary provision is in place to cover that bill? Why is the 2021 commitment to invest £10 billion over the next decade to replace and refurbish health infrastructure not mentioned in the 2022 programme for government or in the 2023-24 budget?

On Tuesday night, law-abiding women were threatened with arrest as they observed the proceedings from the Scottish Parliament’s public gallery. It will not end there.

As the parliamentary passage of the bill reaches its conclusion, I still believe that the intent behind it was good, but it remains the case for me that the unintended consequences for women, girls and young people will be far greater. From the age of application to access to single-sex spaces and safeguards against sex offenders exploiting the system, there are still massive question marks over the safety of the operation of the bill. For those reasons, I will be unable to support it when we vote on it.

Thank you for allowing an additional speaker today, Presiding Officer.

I spent many years helping organisations to improve inclusion in the workplace. It is part of my DNA. I have made sure in my job that everyone, whether they are female, male, gay, transitioning or with a disability, is physically and psychologically safe at work. As a human resources director and now as a legislator, the safety of others is my priority.

However, in recent months, I have been inundated with emails from people who are not just sceptical about the plans but deeply, deeply worried. They know that the bill is not just simplifying the process to get a piece of paper. They know that it makes it easier for people to legally change their sex and that it opens the door to single-sex spaces to an undefined group of people.

Women and girls are not victims, but they are victimised. This is not about a competition of rights. It is about creating the right conditions for the co-existence of those rights. This bill simply does not do that.

We have been told by the SNP that there is no need to press pause on the bill and examine the implications of a major intervention by the UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls or last week’s court ruling on the definition of a woman. Scrutiny and debate matter to the SNP only when that suits it. That is shameful. The sad truth is that the passage of the bill has shattered my confidence in our democratic institutions.

Women’s organisations were an afterthought prior to the introduction of the bill. Every party save the Scottish Conservatives is whipping the vote. At stage 1 and this week, a handful of SNP MSPs broke ranks, and they should be applauded for doing so. That was a much-needed departure from the authoritarian ideologues who preside over the SNP-Green Government. I say to those MSPs on the Labour and SNP benches who fear the reproaches from their party whips or the effect on their careers more than the repercussions of the bill for women and girls that there is still time to choose courage over cowardice. Collectivism should not trump their conscience.

My amendments yesterday would at least have placed a duty on ministers to report on the bill’s impact on women and girls, who risk being collateral damage in the SNP-Green Government’s single-minded pursuit of self-ID.

However, something else is happening—an insidious creep that started with women being branded as bigots and transphobes for raising concerns over their rights and safety. A few weeks ago, women wearing suffragette scarves were told to remove them or leave the meeting of a parliamentary committee that was scrutinising the bill in Scotland’s own seat of democracy. Last week, women were prevented from assembling in an academic institution to discuss the issues arising in the documentary “Adult Human Female”, their right to freedom of speech being not just curtailed, but cut off completely.

Will the cabinet secretary take an intervention?

I thank Gillian Martin for that, but I did not feel that they were robust enough. Gillian Martin and I both come from the energy sector, which looks at risk and risk management. It also really focuses on data and data reporting, which are the substance of my amendments.

The cabinet secretary objected not to the substance of the amendments, but to their drafting. As such, I instructed the bill team to make them clearer in order to address those concerns. There are some strong amendments in the group, and I am supportive of them all.

I will briefly highlight Brian Whittle’s amendments 58, 59 and 67 on sport. Statutory changes through the GRR bill will have a significant impact on sport. That is already happening, but the legislation will accelerate it. It has implications for the safety of competitors and for fairness. It is only right that that should be reviewed on a statutory basis, and it is the responsible thing to do.

My amendments are a bandage and a sticking plaster. I deeply regret the Scottish Government’s disastrous handling of this aspect of the process, but this is an opportunity to change course. Therefore, I strongly urge colleagues to support amendments 131 and 136.

I have evidence, and I will feed that to—

Does the member agree with Johann Lamont, who said that the proposed safeguards “are utterly risible”?

Does the member think that a public board that is 50 per cent men and 50 per cent transgender women is gender balanced?