Chamber and committees

Will the member take an intervention on that point?

A protest is under way outside the Scottish Parliament against the monster pylon pathway proposed by the transmission operator, Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks, for the north of Scotland. Communities are alarmed and anxious.

The First Minister says that he does not want waffle, so will he commit to sit down with campaigners and explain how his Government will use its devolved powers to respond to their concerns?

Yes, we need to listen to the farmers. We are talking about productive land—once it is gone, it cannot come back. Food security is just as important as energy security.

I am glad that Mairi Gougeon raised that issue, because she is a minister in the Scottish Government and, as I said at First Minister’s question time, the Scottish Government needs to use its devolved powers. It cannot, as the Minister for Energy, Just Transition and Fair Work did, wash its hands of the consultation and of this process.

My background is in the energy sector. I know the importance of proper consultation, and SSEN’s consultation has fallen woefully short of an appropriate standard. It has totally and utterly dropped the ball. The anxiety and stress that it has caused my constituents is simply unacceptable. Yesterday, SSEN committed to consider alignments that are proposed by communities and landowners and confirmed that it has delayed the overhead line alignment consultation. It is such a shame that it has taken a very visible demonstration from community groups to push SSEN into landowner and community consultation.

Affected residents know that, once SSEN has made its choices, the final decision will not rest with local councils. The buck, as I have said, will stop with the Scottish Government’s energy consents unit, and that is what terrifies those residents. That is because many communities have already gone through the trauma of being steamrollered, with industrial-sized wind farms being put on their doorsteps.

That is bad enough, but, last year, SNP MP Alan Brown even tried to remove the right of local planning authorities to have a public inquiry into situations such as this. That has not been lost on local communities. That change was averted thanks to Andrew Bowie, the Scottish Conservative MP for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine, who stopped it in its tracks. We will fight to retain the right to have a public local inquiry where the developer and the community are not able to agree terms.

Just last week, the Minister for Energy, Just Transition and Fair Work washed her hands of the whole issue. She said that it was up to the transmission operators to bring the affected communities with them. That will be hard for her constituents in Turriff and New Deer to hear.

The reality is that this is the wrong kit in the wrong location. It is perfectly possible to put infrastructure underground or offshore, and that needs to be an option.

I support the communities behind Save Our Mearns, Angus Pylon Action Group and Deeside Against Pylons in their petition to change the SNP Government’s approach to what will be a generational change in our landscape. [Applause.]

Will the member take an intervention?

The minister raised the issue of mandatory consultation, which is important. Does she agree that the quality of that consultation is extremely important? Will she support the Save our Mearns petition on that point?

Good morning, minister. You said that you have a number of avenues. How will the Scottish Government work with the UK Government on the matter?

We know that the SNP Government has form for legislating outwith the Scottish Parliament’s competence. [Interruption.] Members should just look at the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill. However, as Monica Lennon highlighted, the Supreme Court judgment in Northern Ireland demonstrates that the approach has already been tested. As we have heard, Scotland is the last part of the UK to implement buffer zones, so it is right that these measures progress with close scrutiny. I heard groans from across the chamber, but that is a fact.

We welcome the committee’s recommendation that post-legislative scrutiny will be key to the continued operation of the legislation once it completes its parliamentary passage. It is important that a review should be built into the bill.

To ensure robust and proportionate law, two further areas of the bill will require consideration, the first of which is the size of the buffer zone. At 200m, it is 50m bigger than the English equivalent. I welcome the minister’s commitment to reflect on whether that is proportionate.

The second area, as Sandesh Gulhane and Ruth Maguire highlighted, is the bill’s impact on silent prayer. Committee members discussed that at length. The key points include the human rights implications of policing silent prayer and the feasibility of enforcement. The stage 1 report reflects the differences of opinion that emerged on that issue, and we will certainly need to return to that at stage 2.

In closing—

It nevertheless remains the case that women should not feel that they are being stigmatised or discouraged from accessing abortion services. Fear of judgment or intimidation should not act as a barrier to reproductive healthcare.

The Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones) (Scotland) Bill achieved cross-party consensus in the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee. I thank the committee’s convener and clerks, as well as the Scottish Parliament information centre, for their sensitive and careful handling of the bill as members heard evidence on its provisions. I also thank the stakeholders and witnesses who contributed to the committee’s scrutiny of the bill at stage 1.

Women must not be harassed or intimidated for exercising their legal right to freely access abortion services, nor for accessing other reproductive health services that are delivered on the same premises. The same goes for NHS staff, who must not be targeted simply for doing their jobs and providing women with the care that they need. As we have heard in the debate, the UK Parliament voted in favour of the Public Order Act 2023, which establishes buffer zones of 150m in England and Wales.

As my colleagues Meghan Gallacher, Dr Sandesh Gulhane and Annie Wells have confirmed, the Scottish Conservatives will support the general principles of Gillian Mackay’s abortion buffer zone bill at decision time. In doing so, however, we recognise that this is a difficult and complex topic. We also recognise that parliamentarians are increasingly making decisions about the balance of rights—in this case, the right to access healthcare and the right to protest.

As we have heard in the debate, those are not easy decisions. Against the background of the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021, some members are understandably concerned about the precedent that the bill could set in relation to protest. Perhaps that should give the Scottish National Party pause to reflect on its policy agenda to date. However, the Law Society of Scotland does not believe that the bill is a slippery slope to curtailing the right to protest in different circumstances. The legislation is narrowly drawn, and the committee was reassured that any similar prohibition would require separate primary legislation and parliamentary scrutiny.

As a staunch advocate of free speech, I also recognise the rights of women who face an often challenging, personal and extremely private decision. They have a right to access reproductive healthcare unimpeded by protests, however peaceful those protests may be. They also have a right to privacy. Those rights should not be overlooked or ignored.

As Meghan Gallacher highlighted, it is a very sad fact that women fight every single day for their rights to be upheld.