Chamber and committees

Members’ business debates are a brilliant opportunity for MSPs to raise issues that matter to their constituents. However, during my debate last month, constituents from Angus and Aberdeenshire were unable to hear my opening remarks because they were still filing in, which was disappointing for them because they had travelled so far.

I have attended other members’ business debates at which visitors were seated at the back of the gallery, as is the case today, with plenty of seats at the front remaining unused, which we can also see today. I welcome the points about experience and safety, but we can clearly see that the situation is not acceptable. Will the corporate body consider reviewing processes in the people’s Parliament to ensure that opening speeches do not begin until all visitors are seated, and that better use is made of the seating arrangements?

This is a complex topic with varied and sometimes polarising points of view. As we have heard today, however, the bill is not about abortion; it is about women being able to access the healthcare that they need at what can be a vulnerable, isolating and difficult time. Like other members of the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, I thank the convener, clerks, witnesses and all those who submitted evidence during the passage of the bill. The Parliament has handled the issue with both sensitivity and security in mind, and I thank everyone who has been involved in this undertaking.

The Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones) (Scotland) Bill has achieved cross-party consensus, and I am pleased to support it at stage 3 today. As the Law Society of Scotland emphasises, any restriction on articles 8, 9, 10 or 11 of the European convention on human rights is a “careful balancing exercise”. I am a staunch defender of free speech, but I recognise that that must not come at the expense of women’s health or our right to access medical services free of prejudice. Women have a right to access reproductive healthcare unimpeded by protests. They also have a right to privacy, especially when it comes to their own health.

I was struck by a story that was shared by Back Off Scotland at the start of the bill’s parliamentary passage, which was about a pregnant mum. She received the devastating diagnosis at her 20-week scan that her baby had something seriously wrong with her heart. She said:

“I had to make the decision whether to finish the pregnancy and allow her to die, or to terminate.”

She added that the protesters made her

“feel like a monster for making the decision”

to have an abortion, and that she suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder—PTSD. She continued:

“Terminations are a much-needed service for many reasons, and no-one should be made to feel like a monster for using the service.”

Her experience is a sobering reminder of why we are here today. We know that at least 12 hospitals and clinics have been targeted across Scotland since 2017, including Aberdeen maternity hospital in my region. It is clear that the existing legislative framework has not prevented such protests. Scotland is the only part of the UK not to have safe access zone legislation in place, with Westminster legislating last year and Stormont back in 2021.

Against that background, it is right that we legislate on the issue and it was right, too, that we strengthened the bill as much as possible so that it will protect women not just when it is enacted but in the years to come. That is why, with my amendments at stages 2 and 3, I focused on post-legislative scrutiny, and I am pleased that the Scottish Government was receptive to those changes. The test will now be in how the bill’s provisions are enforced and in the impact that they will have on women accessing abortion services and on the staff who support them. We will be watching.

Will the minister take an intervention?

At stage 2, I lodged an amendment on reporting on and reviewing the act in order to facilitate post-legislative scrutiny as a means of implementing the recommendations of the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee’s stage 1 report. I agreed with the minister and Gillian Mackay that we would work collaboratively on the issue prior to stage 3, and I thank them for their shared working and engagement with me.

Amendment 9 revisits the issue of information on the use of the new offences that the act will create. I understand from the minister that the standard range of reporting measures for those offences will be available and that she anticipates that such details should be included in the post-legislative review report. However, “should” is not “must”, and my amendment introduces a requirement to include data on the number of arrests, criminal proceedings and convictions in such a report.

Given the balance of rights involved in the legislation, I discussed with the minister and Gillian Mackay the possibility of reducing the review period from five to three years. I am really pleased that my suggestion has been taken forward by the Scottish Government and by Rachael Hamilton in amendment 11.

Amendment 10, which I have worked on with the Scottish Government and Ms Mackay, would put beyond doubt that enforcement agencies must be consulted during the review process. The effect would be that Scottish ministers, when undertaking a review, must consult Police Scotland and the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, operators of protected premises or their representatives and such other persons as are considered appropriate.

I move amendment 9.

I will be brief. I thank the minister for her remarks on the recording and reporting of offences, and I welcome the fact that they are on the official record. Nonetheless, I intend to press amendment 9.

I also welcome the cross-party working on amendment 10. Given the issues involved and the rights affected, it is important that any review of the act is robust. I therefore urge members to support that amendment.

The Scottish Government has said that it is led by evidence. The evidence is that GP surgeries in rural Scotland are closing at more than twice the rate of those in many central belt health boards. In NHS Grampian, GPs have been damning in their assessment of primary care under the Scottish Government. Here are just some recent quotes from GPs to their representative body in that area. One practice said:

“We had to switch off our phones yesterday for the first time, as we have reached our safe limit ... we felt we had no option. Feels unmanageable just now.”

Another said:

“The current situation cannot continue; staff are completely exhausted, and morale is very low.”

Another GP said:

“There has to be an easier way to make a living than this!”

I see that the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care is talking to the Deputy First Minister and giving her feedback. I am glad of that, because we cannot afford to lose more surgeries. GPs and patients across rural communities are watching and listening today.

To ask the Deputy First Minister how the Scottish Government will prevent further GP practice closures, in light of reports that the number of surgeries has declined in every NHS board since 2015. (S6F-03209)

What answer can the Deputy First Minister give them now? They are at breaking point.

I am sorry, but I do not have time. I would normally take an intervention.

During this week’s STV debate, John Swinney and Anas Sarwar both tried to swerve questions about the North Sea, but it was as clear as could be that the SNP and Labour still do not support new oil and gas licences or North Sea exploration. That has a direct impact on the energy sector in Scotland and investment in it.

The energy transition survey that was published just last week by the Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce lays out, in the starkest of terms, what the situation looks like. It reports that confidence among companies that work on the UK continental shelf is now lower than it was during the financial crash and the pandemic, when oil prices were as low as $16 a barrel. A presumption against new licences would force us to import more oil and gas from overseas, at higher cost and with a greater carbon footprint, eroding our energy security at the same time.

However we look at it, the approach taken by the SNP and Labour does not make sense—it is economically and environmentally illiterate. It is a double blow for the north-east, because those communities are bearing the brunt of the new transmission infrastructure that is puncturing our countryside and decimating our prime productive arable land.

The Scottish Conservatives will keep standing up for our oil and gas industry. This week, Douglas Ross was, once again, unwavering in his support, while Anas Sarwar and John Swinney were all at sea. We are the only party that supports new oil and gas licences and, at the same time, supports the growth of highly skilled and highly paid roles in the renewables sector. We will not allow the oil and gas industry to be shut down, and we will not abandon the North Sea workers whose livelihoods depend on it.

Thousands of livelihoods across the north-east rely on the oil and gas industry, not to mention the wider supply chain across Scotland. The industry supports the Scottish economy to the tune of almost £19 billion, and upwards of 94,000 jobs—that is massive by any standard.

People would be forgiven for expecting SNP and Labour politicians to want to safeguard such an important sector. However, the SNP, Labour, the Lib Dems and the Greens want to turn off the taps in the North Sea and turn their backs on oil and gas. Hard-working and highly skilled North Sea workers would pay the price of political virtue signalling, with calls for the fastest possible transition to net zero.

Patrick Harvie has demonstrated that he lives in a bubble. I invite him to come up to the north-east and say what he said today to the hard-working families who would lose their livelihoods and their jobs. He and the SNP would create a cliff edge in the energy transition and devastate communities across my region.

The north-east economy is well and truly on the line, which is why we need a sensible and pragmatic approach to the energy transition. However, the SNP still has not published a proper energy strategy. It does not have a plan, but it has found the time to release independence paper after independence paper.