Chamber and committees

Culture is one of the sectors that have been hit hardest by the pandemic. What lessons has the Scottish Government learned from the experience of Covid in order to shield the culture sector from the impact of future pandemics?

Does the Scottish Government agree that the school curriculum should contain education on racism and colonialism and that such reforms are not party political, but are sensible and reflective measures on our common history?

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. My system went down. I would have voted yes.

The minister said that all who flee conflict and seek refuge should get the care, compassion and support to which they are entitled. However, in Edinburgh, we still have hundreds of refugees from Syria and Afghanistan who are stuck in hotels and other temporary accommodation. There is no suitable permanent housing. Homes for Ukraine is welcome, but not everyone will fall within that scheme. How will the Government ensure that the refugee housing crisis does not continue?

I commend the committee and its members for their hard work in producing the report. It provides a good overview of the benefits and problems of the draft planning framework.

The framework will set the stage for Scotland’s development in the coming years as a nation that is committed to sustainability, biodiversity and tackling the climate crisis, and the committee clearly recognises the importance of getting it right. That is partly why I and my colleagues on the Scottish Labour benches find the lack of detail in the framework particularly concerning.

If NPF4 is to be successful, planning authorities across Scotland must have clarity, both in terms of their priorities and the definitions of the areas that they are to prioritise. Such clarity is particularly important because of the emphasis that the Scottish Government is putting on the climate emergency. Of course, we welcome that emphasis, but the authorities that will be operating under the framework must have confidence that they are following it as it was intended to be followed. Any lack of clarity defeats the point of having a national planning framework in the first place and invites piecemeal implementation across local authorities.

We must also ensure that people have confidence in the planning system and the role of local development plans. In the Lothian region, I have heard that the Scottish Government has not provided robust interim guidance on the issue of effective land supply. Reporters have also been given requirements that have led to their approving speculative sites that do not fit with local development plans. In such circumstances, how are local populations and local authorities to be brought along with the planning and development process? Any national framework must be a collaborative process that brings along local populations and local authorities and does not alienate them.

If we are to ensure a truly national planning framework, we must have a commitment from the Scottish Government to properly funded planning departments. After years of real-terms cuts to local authorities, we have a situation in which planning departments have been cut back to their bare minimum. How do we expect the framework to work at a national level, when its implementation will depend on how, or whether, local authorities across Scotland have been able to shield their planning departments from nearly a decade of cuts?

It is crucial that we get answers to those questions right now, so that we do not have to chase solutions to them years down the line and risk wasting yet more time and resources in pursuing goals that are not clearly set out. Therefore, I join my colleagues in calling for a pause to the process, so that those points can be addressed.

Good morning, minister. I have a couple of questions. What can the Scottish Government do to clarify the definition of kinship care? Will legislative change be considered?

I am sorry, convener—I came in late.

Good morning, minister. My question is more or less the same as the questions asked by my colleagues Jeremy Balfour and Emma Roddick. What can the Scottish Government do to give clarity to the definition of kinship care? Will the Government consider legislative change?

What steps is the Scottish Government taking to ensure that international students are not subject to racial profiling when trying to access accommodation in Scotland?

The motion sets out something for Scotland to aspire to, but, as always, the devil will be in the detail and in the Scottish Government’s commitment to follow up in practice the aims that it has set out in principle. In order to judge the merits of the implementation plan, we must first look at the context in which it comes to us.

I cannot address all aspects of the Promise in the time that I have, so I will focus instead on a couple of key parts. One of the focuses of the Promise and the implementation plan is, of course, support for the workforce who are involved in care. People in poverty are overrepresented in kinship care. We must wonder how we have fallen into that situation in the first place while also welcoming any commitment to addressing it.

The motion notes

“the additional challenges that have emerged”

due to the pandemic, but challenges existed in the care system well before the pandemic.

I will focus on kinship care, where some of the least represented people in society are overrepresented in the care system. People from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds are overrepresented in kinship care. If we are to tackle structural inequalities, we need to understand how they were built up and how they interact. As we proceed with keeping the Promise, we must be assured that people who have been forgotten before will not be forgotten again.

That takes me to my next point. A point that jumped out at me as I read the reports of the independent care review is one that I have noticed again and again during my time as a member of this Parliament, usually in the context of considering the most vulnerable people in society: there is not enough data. As well as addressing the structural inequalities in the system, keeping the Promise must include a commitment to not just keeping data on people in care but publishing and analysing that data, so that we, in this Parliament, and the Scottish public can have confidence that the plan is on track.

The Scottish Labour amendment addresses that point. The targets and outcomes to do with the care plan must be measurable so that progress can be evaluated, with the full transparency that the people in our care system deserve.

I have said before that this Parliament cannot operate in the dark. On an issue as important as this, we must have confidence that we are keeping the Promise, not keeping a secret.