Chamber and committees

It was an enormous privilege to be involved, as minister for biodiversity, in the early drafting of this bill, and I am glad to see it finally come to the chamber. There is so much potential here. Scotland has the aim of stopping nature loss by 2030 and of being on a path to nature recovery in the decades after that.

We have made a start in some areas, through the reintroduction of beavers, which are a keystone species; legislation to reduce herbivore numbers; the nature restoration fund; national planning framework 4, which considers biodiversity; and reforms to support farmers to improve soil health and adopt nature-friendly practices.

We are now only five years away from the point at which the Scottish Government has committed to stewarding Scotland towards a future of nature abundance and diversity instead of decline and extinction. Scotland will become a more wooded country, with bare hills populated by native trees. Scotland can become a country where endangered species can live safely and extinct animals can be reintroduced. Scotland can become a country where the sea is seen as not just a resource to exploit, but a vital and valuable ecosystem in its own right.

This bill is our opportunity to set the stage for that change of direction, and that starts with setting targets for nature recovery. The Scottish Government has signed up to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity—which is where the 30 by 30 target comes from—to protect Scotland’s land, water and seas for nature by 2030. I hope to see that made into Scottish law and supported by parties across the chamber, but there are other targets in the same UN convention that Scotland has already signed up to—for example, a commitment to ensure that, by 2030, at least 30 per cent of areas of degraded terrestrial, inland water and marine and coastal ecosystems are under effective restoration, in order to enhance biodiversity and ecosystem functions and services, ecological integrity and connectivity. Given how degraded Scotland is, it would make a difference if 30 per cent of it was under active restoration. Capturing that in statute and putting in place the actions to accomplish it would make a difference.

At the conference of the parties—COP—in Montreal, the Scottish Government members were all happy to say that they supported that UN convention. I challenge the Scottish Government to make the legislation now to carry out that intention.

I am supportive of the bill’s intentions around deer management, but I am concerned that they do not go far enough. Reducing Scotland’s deer population is an urgent matter, and previous interventions have been wildly insufficient. The first measures to reduce deer numbers were taken in the 1950s and failed utterly. Deer numbers have doubled twice since that time. We cannot be serious about recovering Scotland’s lost biodiversity until deer numbers are brought low enough to allow nature to recover. Deer constantly nibbling away prevents Scots pine, rowan, oak and other beautiful and iconic native trees from growing. With sufficiently low deer numbers, native forests have a chance to recover on their own, without the need for expensive fencing and planting. We need to modernise the system of deer management and must give NatureScot enhanced powers to intervene when deer are out of control in ecologically sensitive areas.

I am also supportive of the bill’s intentions on national parks, as gutted as I am that Galloway will not benefit from the estimated £10 million a year that would have come its way with a new national park, along with all the jobs, tourism and support for local businesses and communities. What a missed opportunity that was.

However, the bill leaves a glaring gap: Scotland’s seas. At the time of the previous election, political parties across the chamber were signed up to enhanced marine protection. Aside from new powers for ministers to actually weaken environmental impact assessment, our waters and the species that depend on them barely feature. Lines on a map are not enough, and even where the most destructive fishing is banned, enforcement is weak.

At stage 2, the Greens will seek practical improvements: stronger enforcement to protect marine habitats and the fishers who follow the rules; protection for wrasse, which are still taken in the spawning season and inside protected areas; and steps towards a transition to a sustainable fishing fleet.

The bill is an excellent opportunity to make progress on two concerns that I know are shared by many stakeholders and are close to me personally. The first is the matter of Sitka seeding from commercial plantations into ecologically sensitive areas. For the past two summers, my husband and I have volunteered on Tombane farm, which is the home of a site of special scientific interest for damselfly habitat. Now is the moment to declare to the chamber that I am the species champion for the northern damselfly. My husband and I use hand tools to cut down as many of the invading Sitka as we can. Similar cases are occurring all over Scotland, where Sitka seeding from commercial plantations is causing damage to nearby habitat and to restored peatland and is costing land managers money to address the problem. The people who profit from planting Sitka, not the landowners who are being harmed by it, should pay for the damage.

My second concern, which energises me enormously, is the matter of pheasant releases. It blows my mind that, in Scotland, a licence and 40 pages of paperwork are needed to relocate a single native red squirrel from one part of Scotland to another yet anyone, anywhere, can release any number of tropical birds as long as they are pheasants. Pheasants might be carrying bird flu, they are probably eating the eggs of native reptiles and they are almost certainly feeding our fox population, with its attendant management issues. No consideration is given to the welfare of the birds or the livelihoods of the poultry farmers whose birds might be infected by the diseases that the pheasants are carrying. We do not know who does this, where they are releasing them or how many are being released. It is extraordinary that the release of these tropical birds into Scotland is not licensed.

Scottish youngsters are unlikely to have ever seen a red kite, a puffin or a sea eagle, but everybody has seen a pheasant, and that must change.

NHS Lothian has responded to the HIS inspection report, citing its improvement plan and apologising to staff for the working culture and staff shortages. Although I am sure that we all welcome the recruitment of 70 new midwives, that is a staggering level of understaffing—NHS Lothian was short of more than 70 midwives, and whistleblowers had to sound the alarm about patient and staff safety. How did the Scottish Government not know what was happening in our maternity services? How will the minister take us from an NHS culture of reacting to bad news, to a culture of proactively assessing and evaluating the state of our NHS services so that we do not end up in this situation again?

Just two weeks ago, our capital city and my home town, Edinburgh, backed Scottish Green councillors’ calls to ensure that no public money is being used to bankroll Israel’s genocide. That comes more than a month after our Parliament voted to back our calls for boycott, divestment and sanctions against the genocidal Israeli regime.

What additional legislative changes will the Scottish Government pursue to enable local authorities such as the City of Edinburgh Council to legally adopt the BDS policies that the Parliament has agreed to support?

The Scottish Greens have serious concerns about the Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill. The bill provides sweeping powers to investigate the bank accounts of those who claim social security, yet the DWP already has powers to tackle fraud. Concerns have been raised by disabled people’s organisations, Citizens Advice Scotland and even the banks themselves that people’s privacy rights will be further intruded on as a result of the changes. There has been no clear justification that the currently held powers are insufficient and that further change is needed.

The bill fails to distinguish between overpayment due to error on the part of the DWP or on the part of the recipient and overpayment due to fraud. Although some overpayments cannot reasonably be noticed by the recipient, the bill would allow unjust investigations and could result in the money that claimants depend on being withdrawn. It appears that the DWP has not learned its lesson from those who have been pushed into poverty by universal credit deductions.

Today’s LCM relates to clause 78 of and schedule 4 to the bill, as well as to clauses 90, 98 and 99, on non-benefit payments. With regard to clauses 90, 98 and 99, the memorandum notes:

“the UK Government has confirmed that there is no intent to use these powers in relation to devolved payments”

and that

“the provisions are not intended to interact with devolved functions and would relate to payments for which UK Government has responsibility.”

Although the current Government might not intend to do so, we are not comfortable simply taking the UK Government’s word for it, and who knows what a future UK Government may make of the powers? The Government could have explicitly exempted Scotland from the provisions, as it has from other parts of the bill, but it did not.

In bringing non-benefit payment into scope, the intent appears to be to apply investigatory powers to grants as well as to social security payments. However, the definition of non-benefit payment is extremely broad—a concern that is also noted in the memorandum.

For those reasons, as well as the wider concerns raised by the third sector, the Scottish Greens suggest that we do not grant legislative consent.

Will the member take an intervention?

I share Craig Hoy’s frustration with the lack of transparency around how apprenticeship levy funds are handled. However, he should note that those funds are not kept ring fenced in any way and end up as part of the block grant to the Scottish Government, so they must be accounted for in the budget. Of course we all understand the budget constraints that the Scottish Government is under, but I understand the member’s frustration.

I have been encouraged by the current impetus for increasing and improving workplace learning. I certainly felt that I learned more in the years that I spent working for engineering firms, as part of my university’s co-op programme, than I ever did in any classroom.

In addition to providing valuable experience, workplace learning is an opportunity for employers, businesses and organisations to contribute to skills development in Scotland for the benefit of their own businesses. All the heavy lifting cannot and should not be done through the public purse. There should be an expectation on employers and investors to take some responsibility for the training and development of their staff. After all, they are the ones who are generating profit from their staff. Investing in their people is for their own benefit.

In my region and in portfolio work, I hear many good things from employers about the value of taking on apprentices, and I hear many good things from apprentices, but I also hear frustrations. Employers are frustrated that colleges are inflexible in their offerings, which means that apprentices have to wait months for the school year to start in order to get the course that they need.

It is on a point of agreement, I think. The member will recall that the Economy and Fair Work Committee heard evidence that apprenticeship and other college students have a much higher rate than university students of working in the field for which they have studied. There is something to be said for the success of apprenticeships and college places in producing people who are able to work in the field for which they study.

We can all agree on the vital importance of skills and training. We know that the ability to obtain them substantially determines a person’s opportunities in life and, collectively, the success and dynamism of our economy. What we are debating is how best to use public funds and resources to support skills and training. There is no doubt that, in times of constrained public spending, more money cannot be the only answer. We need to properly explore the art of the possible and how to make the most impact with the resources that are available.

—that people graduating from those courses do not achieve well-paid work.

I move amendment S6M-19253.2, to leave out from “that future” to end and insert:

“the transformative power of education and training, and the vital roles that colleges and apprenticeships play in supporting young people and building resilient communities, including in a just transition away from fossil fuels; acknowledges the importance of having college facilities located close to where people live, ensuring accessibility and inclusion; believes that improved college governance is essential to prevent poor management decisions and to safeguard the quality of provision; acknowledges the work of EIS-FELA and UNISON in campaigning for better further education provision and supporting college staff across the country who face uncertainty about the future; calls for enhanced outcomes for women, students and apprentices, to ensure that they are not disproportionately channelled into low-waged sectors; urges colleges to align their skills offerings with the ambitions of the National Performance Framework; supports the introduction of regulated minimum training hours and standards for apprenticeships; believes that colleges must be living wage employers and exemplars of fair work practices, and calls for all apprentices to be paid a living wage.”

I am sorry, but I need to make some headway.

The courses are offered on limited and inflexible days, so apprentices’ work weeks are inefficient, and their travel and childcare expenses are increased as a result. Employers that can afford to do so have therefore started using private training providers to overcome those problems and to develop bespoke courses. Private training providers can afford the latest equipment and will teach specific skills, such as how to install a heat pump, for example, rather than the college doing so. The college will include heat pumps as part of a broader plumbing course that does not necessarily meet the needs of that apprentice. In some cases private training provision is questionable, while in other cases it works well.

I spoke to one apprentice who was apprenticed to a local authority. The local authority had designated itself as both employer and training provider. The apprentice had no formal training standards or provision, and she had no one to turn to in order to complain about that state of affairs. She had no independent evaluation of her learning or of the quality of training that she was receiving. If she complained to the local authority about the poor training provision, she risked failing her apprenticeship—and we are failing apprentices like her.

I have already spoken in the chamber about the gender disparities among apprenticeships and, I suspect, in college course provision, too. Men get apprenticeships that put them into well-paid sectors. Women are channelled into low-paid sectors, which may trap them for a lifetime of inequality. We cannot support that on the public dime.

Mechanisms must be put in place to ensure that women have an equal opportunity to gain skills and employment in well-paid sectors. It begs the question of why we use public money to support certain apprenticeship and college courses at all, if the result is—