Chamber and committees

From my experience of being on the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee. I know that social workers are at the core of the system, but figures from the Scottish Association of Social Work paint an alarming picture. For example, 25 per cent of social workers leave the profession within six years of graduation, and 19 per cent of the profession is over the age of 55. The total vacancy rate is just under 10 per cent, and, in Angus, in my area, it is 15.7 per cent. Many of those vacancy rates are long standing. Social workers are at the core of the system, so that constant churn of social workers is alarming.

In your view, has the Scottish Government failed to follow up on the coming home implementation plan? The infrastructure, including the workforce, is simply not in place for it to do so.

I previously sat on the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, and we completed an inquiry into self-directed support last year. It is clear that the system is not working. SDS is not working, and vulnerable people are being badly let down. The SHRC report highlighted specific issues with self-directed support. What are your concerns about SDS, and how can they be remedied?

I am grateful to the committee for the opportunity to speak to PE2136. I pay tribute to the petitioner Fiona Drouet, who is here in the committee room. Fiona lost her daughter Emily in the most tragic circumstances after her boyfriend abused her while they were students at the University of Aberdeen. I first became aware of the devastating physical and psychological impact of choking a sexual partner during a parliamentary event that I held with the women’s support service, Beira’s Place, towards the end of last year.

The issue had not come to my attention before then, but once you know about such a thing, you have to do something about it. As you said, convener, there are devastating effects. Within six to eight seconds, a woman loses consciousness. After 15 seconds, her bladder will be incontinent. After 30 seconds, her bowels will open. She will be brain dead within four minutes.

As Fiona has said herself, no one—no woman or girl—could ever consent to this; indeed, there comes a point where a woman or girl is physically unable to do anything about it. How can you consent to something if you lose consciousness? It is not “breath play”—that is a euphemism that men use. They say, “Oh, it’s just breath play during sexual intimacy.” It is not; it is truly frightening, and it can be a predictor of dangerous and potentially fatal behaviour.

The petition, as you have rightly said, convener, calls for a stand-alone criminal offence for non-fatal strangulation. My view is that the common-law offence of assault does not adequately capture the complexity of what is a startling and ever-growing problem. In recognition of the fact that, as the committee has just heard, non-fatal strangulation can occur without obvious physical injury, England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Ireland have already introduced stand-alone offences with robust penalties.

I note, as does Fiona Drouet, the concerns expressed by the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs about unintended consequences and what she has said to the committee about having a separate law, especially its interaction with existing domestic abuse legislation. However, that response does not cover two key points. This is a form of abuse and control; it can be part of domestic abuse, but it is also part of violence against women. It is also a non-consensual act. So, although I acknowledge the need to stress test any changes to the current law in Scotland, I am massively concerned that the Scottish Government is kicking the can down the road. This feels like yet another issue impacting women that is being pushed to the bottom of the legislative agenda.

Finally, convener and committee, as a Parliament, we have a year to go—please do not allow this to be lost. We could be talking about your daughters or your nieces. Something needs to be done. The Scottish Government now has an opportunity to signal a zero-tolerance approach to non-fatal strangulation, and I urge it to act with the urgency that the issue deserves.

Finally, I have noted that you have said that you want to provide leadership on the PSED and that you want to put your money where your mouth is, yet 80 per cent of respondents to the committee’s call for evidence said that public bodies do not understand and have not implemented the PSED properly. So, there is an issue with public bodies. During the previous evidence session, the EHRC said that there was an issue with the education sector and we have highlighted an issue with hospitals. I have also talked about big issues with Police Scotland.

In relation to the lack of implementation of the PSED, your leadership and putting your money where your mouth is, should you and/or the Scottish Government not suspend the pay rises of the leadership of those public sector bodies that are allegedly in breach of their duties? As a head of HR, if there were a specific issue in a part of an organisation, I could not take money off people, but I could and would suspend pay rises. If you have concerns and you are providing leadership, would it not be a practical thing to say, “Hang on a minute, let’s just suspend pay increases and review the implementation of PSED?”

What is your view on whether the Scottish Government should provide guidance on the Equality Act 2010 in addition to the EHRC?

To follow up on that, you said that the numbers will be small. I will take women in hospital as an example, which is when they are their most vulnerable.

The NHS Tayside single-sex accommodation policy allows trans-identified males to be placed on women’s wards, which effectively creates mixed-sex provision. That policy is based on the patient’s presentation—the way that they dress, their name and the pronouns that they currently use. You say that the Scottish Government is providing leadership on the PSED, which is good. Does the Scottish Government support the principle of allocating people to hospital wards based on their gender identity, or does it believe that wards should be single sex?

So the data is important.

You used the word “balance” at the start, so my final question on this is, do you agree that when doing impact assessments—which are very important for the PSED—not taking into account the perspective of those who are directly affected leads to resentment, conflict and legal challenge?

Thank you.