Chamber and committees

I would like to move us on to sections 16 and 17 of the bill, which relate to trustees’ powers of investment. The committee heard suggestions from the Law Society of Scotland and the academic Yvonne Evans that, in view of Scotland’s increasing emphasis on net zero goals, sections 16 and 17 should be amended to explicitly allow trusts to adopt environmentally friendly investment policies, particularly when those might underperform compared with other investments.

We are interested to hear from everyone on that proposal. Would an amendment to the bill in that regard help to reassure trustees that that kind of investment is allowed, or is the current wording satisfactory? It would also be helpful to hear about any experience that you have had in relation to investment decisions.

I move us on to sections 65 and 66 of the bill, which relate to expenses of litigation.

The committee has heard from the Law Society of Scotland and some other legal stakeholders, who are concerned about the current policy underpinning section 65. This section provides principles to determine how legal bills are paid for in trust cases. Specifically, it provides that trustees will be “personally liable” for those expenses in certain situations, including when the trust fund does not have enough resources to cover them.

The Law Society thinks that section 65 will deter people from becoming trustees and may lead trustees to unfavourably settle or abandon legal proceedings for fear of personal liability.

We are keen to hear whether you share those concerns, or whether you can offer the committee any reassurance. As a follow-up, do you think that the availability of insurance helps to mitigate the risks that the Law Society has identified?

Scotland’s natural environment is not just the envy of the world; it is vital to our health. Therefore, it is no surprise that reports of more than 14,000 sewage spills have prompted protests across the country, including one this Saturday in Stonehaven, which is in my region. In December 2021, Scottish Water vowed to increase the number of storm drain monitors to more than 1,000 by the end of 2024. However, according to a freedom of information response obtained by the i newspaper, as of 1 March this year, not a single new device had been installed. Can the First Minister tell us exactly how many of those 1,000 storm drain monitors he expects to be installed by the end of this year?

It is telling that the intervention from the SNP back bencher focuses on Westminster politics. It demonstrates that the SNP knows that, at the next election, there is a choice between only two parties and it can continue to support the rotten Tory Government or get behind Labour and give Scotland the Government that it needs.

We heard from Rachael Hamilton that our food security issues are entirely the fault of events elsewhere—never mind the Tory Government’s decimation of the economy, its unwillingness to tackle the gross inequalities that are at the heart of our economic system and its overseeing of the rising food bank use that shames us all.

Food producers, agriculture workers and every single one of our friends and neighbours who are donating to and accessing food banks weekly have one thing in common—failed Tory economics that allow supermarket profits to soar unchecked while children go hungry, and which allow our food producers to be undercut by the party’s disastrous post-Brexit trade agreements. Tories then have the audacity to stand up in Parliament and claim to advocate for rural mental health and rural repopulation and livelihoods. Whether it is denial or delusion, that is utterly shameful.

We welcome the Scottish Government coming behind Labour on our call for that increase.

As I was saying before that intervention, we cannot call ourselves a good food nation until no child in Scotland is hungry and no food banks are needed. That is why Labour is calling for the right to food to be enshrined in law and empowered through the food commission, and why the next Labour Government will end use of the zero-hour contracts that so blight our food supply chains and economy.

Labour would see every child fed, every worker heard and every flower bloom.

In their opening remarks, the cabinet secretary and her colleagues laid the blame for harvests rotting on the vine on Brexit and its impacts. It is, to be frank, embarrassing that seven years since that vote the Scottish Government continues to wring its hands instead of rolling up its sleeves and getting to work.

Scottish Government ministers know that a country’s economy cannot be based on importing labour from overseas. Of course, we must always welcome new neighbours, but that must be in addition to, not instead of, developing our own labour strategy, because without an industrial strategy for a sustainable food supply chain that recruits, trains and values workers through unionised jobs and excellent pay and conditions, we will all go hungry.

It has everything to do with the economy. Mr Mundell’s Party is totally failing in that regard.

It does not have to be this way. Many of our producers are leading the way with high nature value farming, conservation grazing and a wide range of measures that will have a positive impact on the local and global environments and the economy.

However, the current systems do not reward those steps enough. We need radical actions to address the injustice and harm that our current system is doing, because until no child in Scotland is hungry and no food banks are needed, we cannot call ourselves a good food nation.

To ask the Scottish Government how many fines have been issued by courts to companies for breaches of health and safety rules, resulting in workers’ deaths, in the last five years. (S6O-02242)

The Health and Safety Executive found that, of all the United Kingdom nations, Scotland has the highest rate of deaths in the workplace caused by fatal injuries, so it is highly concerning that no cases have been prosecuted in Scotland under the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 despite 164 companies having been legally deemed responsible for workers’ deaths. Although that law is reserved, will the Scottish Government review why those cases are not being brought as corporate manslaughter cases and how it can make that option more accessible for victims’ loved ones?

We have a similar set of questions for this panel as we had for the previous panel. Sections 16 and 17 relate to trustees’ powers of investment. Some of the witnesses will have heard me asking a question about that. Both the Law Society and the academic Yvonne Evans, who we heard from last week, have suggested that, in view of Scotland’s increasing emphasis on net zero, sections 16 and 17 could be amended to allow trusts to adopt environmentally friendly investment policies, particularly when those investments might underperform other investments.

As I asked the previous panel, it would be helpful for the committee to hear your views on that idea. Do you support it in principle and do you think that sections 16 and 17 could be amended or tweaked in order to make it clearer to trustees that they have the power to make those sorts of investments?