Chamber and committees

When the Scottish Government consulted on its proposals for land reform, we were told:

“The Bill will be ambitious. It will address long-standing concerns about the highly concentrated pattern of land ownership in rural areas of Scotland.”

However, the Government’s bill defines large landholdings as those of more than 3,000 hectares, which is nearly three and a half times the size of Glasgow city. Even then, that land will be subject to only a transfer test, not a public interest test. My proposed bill would have set a presumed limit of 500 hectares on sales and transfers and would have made transfers over that limit subject to a public interest test. With that in mind, is the cabinet secretary open to reducing the area of land that is defined as a large landholding in the Government’s bill?

Good evening, Presiding Officer, and thank you for calling me to speak in tonight’s debate on compensation for the WASPI women.

I am privileged to represent the North East Scotland region, which is home to Linda Carmichael, who is the WASPI Scotland chair. I am grateful to Linda and the other WASPI delegates for travelling to the Parliament last month and for speaking to me about their campaign for pension justice. I heard from them at first hand about the hardship of needing to find unexpected work to make ends meet and the impact that seeing the retirement for which they had worked so hard slip further and further away has had on their faith in the system. Of course, that has not affected only them. It has meant that they have had less time to spend with their grandchildren and on volunteering, and it has imposed restrictions on their spending, all of which has had an impact on their communities and the local economy.

However, those women to whom I spoke also had hope, and it was clear that, through their work on the campaign, they had found kindred spirits, a strengthened belief in what they could achieve together and a contagious confidence in their cause. That is the power of collective organising, which is a power that is available to us all, whatever our circumstance. I put on record my thanks to every member of the campaign in Scotland and across the UK for their determination and persistence in the face of injustice. I welcome the women in the gallery and say to them how glad we are that they are here.

I know that the WASPI campaigners will not give up, and neither will we, because, as we have heard, women who were born in the 1950s were not properly informed of the rise in their state pension age. The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman investigation found that the Department for Work and Pensions failed to communicate the changes accurately, adequately and in a timely manner, and it concluded that the women affected are owed compensation on the grounds of maladministration by the DWP. That is why it was right for the UK Government to recognise the injustice suffered by those women and to apologise for that maladministration, which has affected hundreds of thousands of women in Scotland and across the UK.

Although the steps that the Government has set out to ensure that that does not happen again are welcome, an apology is simply not enough. That is why I support the motion that my colleague Katy Clark has lodged, which calls on the UK Government to reconsider its decision not to award compensation for women against state pension inequality and to look at options to provide those women with a compensation award. When we speak about the WASPI campaign or the WASPI injustice, we are not talking only about an injustice to 1950s women; we are talking about an injustice to all of us, to our communities and to our society, because the issue is one that affects us all. When the WASPI women win, we will all win.

A number of my constituents in North East Scotland, including in Banff and Buchan, have contacted me with concerns about the impact of local government funding changes on local services. In particular, the issue of library closures in Aberdeenshire has been raised repeatedly with me in response to reports that branches may close due to supposed reduced footfall.

I cannot stress enough to the minister how crucial public libraries are to our communities, and that they must be protected. Does the minister agree that meaningful public consultation is vital before any decisions are taken on library closures?

I thank the minister for his encouraging words in support of the work of Belmont Community Cinema Ltd, and I add Labour’s support for that endeavour.

I ask the cabinet secretary to outline exactly how much funding will be allocated to the reopening of the Belmont cinema. I hear him talking about additional funding going to the culture budget, with £2 million being set aside for Screen Scotland, but is he able to give a figure for what the Government will provide to support the Belmont cinema?

Five young activists are currently serving sentences in Scottish prisons for taking part in a non-violent Palestine solidarity protest at the Thales weapons factory in Glasgow. It is rare for activists to be imprisoned in Scotland, and a different policing approach seems to have been taken to protests at the Leonardo weapons factory in Edinburgh.

What discussions has the Scottish Government had with the chief constable of Police Scotland regarding the policing of protests at weapons factories, and on any apparent discrepancies in the approach to them? Does the minister recognise the right to protest and its importance in a democratic society?

The National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers has highlighted that more than 200,000 jobs have already been lost across the offshore oil and gas industry in the past decade. I am sure that the cabinet secretary will agree that we need offshore workers in the north-east for our green energy transition—we need their experience, knowledge and skills. Does she agree that we cannot expect those workers to pay the cost of the transition? If so, can she tell those workers how the new hub will remove the cost to them of retraining and skills passporting to the green transition?

The minister will be aware that NatureScot estimates that an increase of 50,000 in the national cull of deer each year will be needed to meet the targets in the Scottish biodiversity strategy. What discussions has she or the Government had with supermarkets about bringing that abundant resource from our natural larder to the Scottish public?

To ask the Scottish Government what action it has taken to develop a wealth tax. (S6O-02873)

In September, the First Minister said that he would consider a wealth tax, but his Government has already had 16 years in power and wealth remains concentrated in the hands of a few. Can the minister confirm what discussions the Scottish Government has had with the Scottish Trades Union Congress about its wealth tax proposals and when the First Minister’s consideration will turn into real action on a wealth tax? [Interruption.]

I thank Kaukab Stewart for securing the debate to enable us, as a Parliament, to mark the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

It is 75 years since the UN adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, yet to this day, human rights abuses are being committed around the world. In Palestine, Israeli authorities carry out inhumane acts against Palestinians, seemingly with impunity. According to Human Rights Watch, those acts include sweeping movement restrictions such as the siege of Gaza, the erection of a separation barrier on Palestinian land and hundreds of checkpoints across the West Bank, as well as land confiscation, forcible transfer, denial of residency rights and suspension of civil rights.

However, that is not news. The reality is that Palestinians in the West Bank and in Gaza have been denied basic rights for decades. Now, as the eyes of the world are once more on what was Mandatory Palestine under British administration, we must take every opportunity to hold the UK Government to account for its role in the occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestine from then to this day. That means supporting an immediate ceasefire, stopping the arms trade with Israel and ending the illegal occupation, the siege and the settlements.

Since Israel began its latest offensive on Gaza, 18,000 Palestinians have been killed, more than 7,000 of them children. That has led to the UN secretary general describing Gaza as

“becoming a graveyard for children.”

Each life is mourned by that person’s family, each life is a loss to the world and each life is entitled to the human rights that we should be celebrating today.

However, too many lives are being swept into statistics. The organisation We Are Not Numbers was set up to pair aspiring Palestinian writers with mentors around the world. It was co-founded by Professor Alareer, a Palestinian academic and poet who was killed last week in an Israeli air strike on Gaza. I would like to take some time to share one of his poems with the chamber. This is “If I Must Die”, by Refaat Alareer:

“If I must die,
you must live
to tell my story
to sell my things
to buy a piece of cloth
and some strings,
(make it white with a long tail)
so that a child, somewhere in Gaza
while looking heaven in the eye
awaiting his dad who left in a blaze—
and bid no one farewell
not even to his flesh
not even to himself—
sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above
and thinks for a moment an angel is there
bringing back love
If I must die
let it bring hope
let it be a tale”.

Palestinians are not numbers—no human being is a number. Palestinians are not nameless or faceless—none of us is. Their humanity is our humanity and Israel’s assault on their human rights is an assault on all of our rights.

So, when we see a people massacred, we must name it genocide; when we see a people displaced and forced from their land, we must name it ethnic cleansing; and when we see a people dominated and oppressed, we must name it apartheid. That is because if we allow a people to be stripped of their rights, to be described as “unhuman” and to be treated inhumanely, we concede our own humanity, and it is because human rights can be described as such only if they apply to all of us—every single one of us—equally.