Chamber and committees

First, I express my condolences to the royal family on the loss of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth. She will be greatly missed.

I had the honour of meeting the Queen when I was a kid, when my sister and my cousin presented flowers to Her Majesty. She made us feel at ease. Such fond emotions resurfaced when I met the Queen again at a royal garden party with my wife and, after that, as a politician. I am very grateful for those memories.

Today, we celebrate not only the Queen’s legacy in this country but her role in bringing our family of nations and their people ever closer together in friendship and peace. After reflecting over the past week on the loss of Her Majesty, I will focus particularly on her legacy of the Commonwealth.

I was an infant when the founding father of Bangladesh, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, took a newly independent Bangladesh into the Commonwealth of Nations. It was the first international organisation that Bangladesh joined, such was the offer of partnership that it presented.

Queen Elizabeth oversaw the building of that partnership. In 1953, she defined the Commonwealth as

“an entirely new conception, built on ... qualities of friendship, loyalty and the desire for freedom and peace.”

Her Majesty pledged to give her heart and soul to that new partnership of nations, every day of her life. I think that we can say that she did just that.

In her note of condolence, Bangladesh’s Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, described Her late Majesty as a “motherly figure” and recalled her personal memories of the Queen. It is the loss of such personal connections that we mourn, as well as the loss of our Queen.

The dignity and grace with which the late Queen held herself have been a steadying hand across the Commonwealth for 70 years. We are thankful for her long life of service and we offer our prayers to her family and our new King.

I thank Kaukab Stewart for bringing this very important matter to the chamber.

Here we go again. Another investigation, another organisation found to be institutionally racist, and a long list of actions to be taken. In 1999, the Macpherson report noted that institutional racism is

“The collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin.”

Since then, positive steps towards equality have been taken. I applaud the work of campaigns, including Show Racism the Red Card and Kick it Out, which encourage the end of racism within sport. Twenty-three years after the 1999 Macpherson report, however, racism is still present across society.

Recently, we have seen stark inequalities laid bare in the Scottish Government’s equality impact assessment of its “Scottish Government Race Recruitment and Retention Action Plan”. Now, institutional racism in sport, most recently within Cricket Scotland, has been brought to light.

Institutions that receive Government funding must be held to account and must promote anti-racist equality practice. Institutions and their boards must not be given awards while failing to uphold standards of fairness, equality and accountability for those whom they serve. It is unacceptable that Cricket Scotland was winning diversity awards while 448 cases of institutional racism were happening.

The report detailed allegations of favouritism within Cricket Scotland towards white children from public schools. I commend those who shared their lived experiences of racism within the sport, including former Scotland internationals Majid Haq and Qasim Sheikh. Their doing so has helped to expose the realities that racism does still exist in Scotland and that something needs to be done now. I hope that, in the future, it will be easier for other victims of racism to share their experiences and be supported in doing so.

I welcome reports that many clubs support diversity and equality. However, more needs to be done so that the culture of equality is present within all clubs and, indeed, across all sports. Institutional change is needed to weed out institutional racism, so the introduction of diversity officer roles and independent complaints mechanisms within sport could be a good start.

The Plan4Sport report, while it is shocking and extremely disappointing, is a wake-up call to the reality of racism in sport in Scotland today. We need to use this opportunity to influence the future for Cricket Scotland and other sports bodies and institutions in Scotland. Now is the chance for the Scottish Government to prove that it takes institutional racism seriously and that, instead of offering piecemeal recommendations that do not go far enough, it is committed to overhauling racist institutions and practices throughout the nation and within its own institutions.

This is a time for us all to work together. I am committed to joining any discussions that the Scottish Government might have to influence meaningful action that could end institutional racism in Scotland and in Scottish sport.

I am a cricket lover and have played the game, myself. Sport should be an exciting, enjoyable pursuit for children and adults alike, and we should not be allowing a culture to exist in which people feel that they cannot succeed in, or enjoy, sport because of institutional barriers against their skin colour, religion, or cultural background. I want to see strict laws monitoring methods to ensure change.

Racism in Scotland has gone on long enough. Now is the time to deliver change.

In the past two weeks, I have received many reports from constituents who are serving police officers in the Lothian region. As they are serving officers, I shall not name them. They include a single mother who has been hit hard by rising childcare, food and energy costs that she can meet only by borrowing from her parents; a young police officer who has been forced to move back in with his parents because he cannot afford rent; and police officers forced to rely on food banks. Does the First Minister think that having a police force in that state is healthy in a developed nation, and what is the Scottish Government going to do about it?

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. It is the same here—I could not connect. I would have voted no.

Thank you, convener. I was just sending a message to say that Pam Duncan-Glancy has asked my question, too. I am sorry that I cannot be with you guys in the Parliament.

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. I was struggling to log in. I would have voted yes.

The impact of the announcement of a budget freeze will paralyse the justice system, which is already struggling. The weight of the court backlog from the Covid period is already harming access to justice and this will only threaten any recovery. In recent months, people across the Lothian region have been caught up in a mixture of court backlogs and industrial action from the legal profession in protest at frozen pay. There is delayed justice and strike action, and people across Scotland are stuck without access to legal representation. Is this the reality of the Scottish Government’s new vision for justice?

To ask the Scottish Government how it will ensure fair access to justice in light of its recent resource spending review reportedly freezing legal aid spending for the next five years. (S6O-01256)

It is a pleasure to open the debate for Scottish Labour and to celebrate UN world refugee day. I welcome the fact that the motion before us highlights the contribution made to our society by refugees and those who have sought asylum here. That is incredibly important to note at a time when refugees and asylum seekers are under daily attack from certain political quarters and quarters of our media. It is important for people to hear how many prior generations of refugees have contributed to and enriched our country and our society, from the displaced of world war 2 onwards, and how many continue to do so. However, the picture is increasingly divided.

In the first instance, we can all be proud of the will to help those who have been displaced by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and grateful for those who have already been helped. However, those who arrive here are, all too often, being failed by inadequate preparation.

Last week, the Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee heard from the Ukrainian consul general that hundreds of Ukrainians have been stuck in temporary accommodation for months on end. He pointed out that there are many sponsor applicants and many people who require sponsors but that far too many people are unable to join those dots with no apparent fault on either side. The Scottish Government must ensure that it knows what success looks like in its supersponsor scheme and how it can iron out those problems to avoid further misery.

However, the darker side of the refugee story is that, although we can be thankful for what is being done for the people who have been displaced from Ukraine, the help that is being given to them throws into sharp contrast the treatment of other refugees who have arrived here.

Although people from Ukraine can work and access public funds, people who have fled from, for example, Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan cannot. I highlight those countries because they are the ones to which we have a particular obligation, given our foreign policy in recent years. Many of the refugees from those countries have been stuck in temporary accommodation not just for months but for years, with only £8 a week on which to get by. Many cannot get a school for their children and are not legally allowed to work.

I do not mention that to argue that those displaced by the Ukraine conflict should be given less, but to show how much more support could have been given to those fleeing other conflict zones. We need to be careful to avoid the appearance that some may feel of there being a racist double standard in our approach to supporting refugees.

That is all without even mentioning the latest attack from the UK Government on asylum seekers: the horrendous policy of sending those who cross the channel seeking refuge here to Rwanda. That is a costly exercise, both in monetary terms and in our moral standing as a nation.

The UK Government is intent on sending people trying to flee from a range of conflict zones to a country in the middle of Africa from which we have previously accepted refugees. It is reminiscent of a transportation policy from Britain’s colonial past. However, it is also, fundamentally, a policy where the UK, as a developed nation, is paying off a poorer nation on another continent to deal with what our Government considers to be a problem. At the very least, the policy represents a colonial state of mind from the Tory Government in Westminster.

I and my Scottish Labour colleagues continue to call on the UK Government to drop that horrendous policy, which has not even been put before the Westminster Parliament. I hope that future UN world refugee days will be marked without the national embarrassment of such a grotesque policy, and I hope that, as a result, we will be able to more easily celebrate the many ways in which our national compassion has benefited our national life.

Scottish Labour will support the motion, but we do not feel that it represents the full reality of the situation for refugees in Scotland.

I have asked this question many times before, but are we doing anything for all the other refugees who have been stuck in hotels for years?