Chamber and committees

Tuesday.

We will consider any reasonable proposal. As people will know from her background, the new Lord Advocate has a very strong interest in ensuring that victims of domestic abuse and women who are victims of male violence get appropriate and speedy access to justice. I know that she is very keen to ensure that all the Crown Office’s policies and procedures are helping to ensure that that ithate case.

I have commented on the underlying driving reasons for domestic abuse and violence against women and girls. When women and girls experience them—it is important to recognise that some men experience domestic abuse, but the majority of people who do are women—it is important that the justice system responds appropriately.

Although the numbers are deeply troubling—that anyone is a victim of such crimes is deeply troubling—the increases in the numbers might mean that people are now feeling that they are more able to come forward and report such crimes, which we should welcome. In addition, of course, Parliament, to its great credit, passed a new law that made criminal certain behaviour—coercive and controlling abuse—that was not previously criminal. We must bear those factors in mind when we look at the numbers.

However, making sure that people have access to justice is an important part of our overall approach to reducing the impact of domestic abuse and violence on women.

These are serious matters that the Government has taken and continues to take seriously. The Government commissioned the independent review, and I do not accept that it is discredited, although the Government also accepted that there had to be further process to ensure that parents and families who had been affected by what happened at the Queen Elizabeth hospital knew that it had been fully and properly investigated. The Government established the public inquiry that is under way. It will take its course and is completely independent of Government and, of course, of NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde. As Anas Sarwar has said, there is also a live police investigation into some of the cases that have been discussed in the chamber before.

For all those reasons, it would not be right, appropriate or helpful to the families concerned for me to get further into the detail of any of those cases, given the independent processes that are under way. However, as I have said before, I want to leave no one in any doubt about how seriously the Government and I take these issues, or about how determined we are, through the processes that we have established in the form of the public inquiry, to get to the answers and the truth. Then all of us, as a Parliament, will have the opportunity to reflect on those findings and consider what further action is necessary.

I agree: that is important. Every reasonable person recognises the impact of Covid on not only libraries, but many of the other services that local authorities deliver. There will be a period of getting back to normal and of again reconfiguring services that had to be reconfigured at the start of Covid. It is important that libraries fully re-open, unless there is a very good reason why that cannot happen, such as a need for refurbishment or use as a test centre.

It is important that libraries give people—especially young people—access to books. It was access to a library that fuelled my own love of reading when I was young. That is vitally important. Libraries are also used for many other things these days. It is important that that community provision is there. In Glasgow, where my constituency is, the vast majority of libraries are open again, as is the case across the country, and that is welcome. It is important that we support councils to open the remaining libraries as quickly as possible.

Yes. It was deeply regrettable that the Prime Minister treated the very serious issues of animal welfare with such disdain on Sunday, just as it was outrageous that he made an entire speech to his party conference yesterday and did not mention the fact that his Government took away £20 a week from the poorest families across the country on that very day.

The Government is monitoring the specific issue that Jim Fairlie raised very carefully. At the heart of that issue is labour shortages, which are impacting on many sectors of our economy. Those labour shortages have been significantly exacerbated by the ending of freedom of movement that came about because of Brexit.

Although we will do what we can through employability and skills work to try to address that, fundamentally, the answers and the solutions have to lie with the United Kingdom Government. I call on it to take urgent action to ensure that the problems that are already being experienced do not get even worse as the winter progresses.

I believe that the health secretary has met long Covid patients and am sure that he would be more than willing to meet others. It is a serious issue, the impact of which we will be living with for some time.

I am not going to comment, because I am not an expert on the arrangements south of the border, but I suspect that they do not in detail live up to how they are talked about in the chamber—but that is another matter.

We have published the long Covid strategy to which Alex Cole-Hamilton referred. There are 16 commitments in it that are backed by a £10 million funding commitment. Part of that is for furthering our understanding of the reasons for and the implications of long Covid, so that the services that are developed properly address them. There is nothing to stop health boards from establishing specialist provision right now, but we also want to make sure that, throughout more general national health service provision, clinicians are capable of addressing the impacts of long Covid as they present.

The issue is serious now and will continue to be an obligation on the Government, which is why the commitments in the strategy are so important.

I would expect the SQA and all bodies, whether they are Government agencies or otherwise, to have equality at the heart of everything that they do. That has been impressed on the SQA, as I said in my opening answer. As I also said, the EHRC’s finding refers to historical omissions. Over the last period—indeed, since the current chief executive was appointed—any new SQA policy or practice that has been introduced has been subject to an equality impact assessment in line with duties under the Equality Act 2010. The SQA is right, now, to go back and make sure that that applies to all current policies and practices, and the Government expects it fully to do so in line with its action plan.

Libraries week is an opportunity to celebrate the contribution that libraries make to our communities. A small number of libraries across the country have not yet reopened after the Covid closures. I understand that there are a number of reasons for that, including the fact that some are still being used as Covid test centres and some are co-located within schools, and in some cases there is a requirement for refurbishment before reopening. However, I hope that most of the others will reopen soon.

Of the 481 libraries across Scotland, 432 are open as of Monday, and a further 24 have announced reopening dates that will be forthcoming. Therefore, well over 90 per cent of all libraries across the country are already open, and I think that we should welcome that.

In the programme for government, we announced a £1.25 million public library Covid support fund, which is intended to give local authorities and libraries support in getting open again and staying open, because libraries are a vital and integral part of communities across our country.

I am genuinely trying to be helpful and to build some agreement here. I have said twice that I understand the process that Douglas Ross is going through. My comments are not meant to be a criticism. I would simply ask him, in return, to understand the proper and due process that any responsible Government has to go through in considering legislation. I cannot engage with a bill that does not yet exist, for the reasons that we have heard. We will engage with the proposals in the consultation. There is one that, having looked at it briefly already this morning, I would immediately welcome. For example, when it comes to treatment, the consultation document seems to recognise that we need a range of different interventions and services and that there cannot be a one-size-fits-all approach.

That is a welcome step forward from the Conservatives, who previously have appeared to suggest that the only solution was residential rehabilitation. Already, I see the emergence of some common ground and I genuinely want to treat the consultation with the respect that it deserves. However, equally, Douglas Ross must know that I cannot stand here and say that I will vote for a bill—giving it carte blanche—when, by his own admission and for understandable reasons, that bill does not yet exist. Therefore, let us try and move forward with a genuine determination to build consensus where we can.

My final point is one that I made earlier: there is a real need to move forward at pace with this work. With the best will in the world—as we are demonstrating today—legislation takes time and it does so for good reason. I do not want to wait for legislation, however merited or otherwise it might turn out to be. We have set out a very detailed plan of action, which is backed by significant additional resources and has, at its heart, guaranteed standards of treatment, including access to same-day treatment. We will get on with that plan and if, as a Parliament, we think that legislation can help to underpin it in the future, I am open minded about that, as I have said many times. However, if we want to build consensus, let us both understand the processes that we have to go through, in order that—hopefully, in the interests of people across the country—we can get there.

I think that Douglas Ross has accepted that I am genuinely trying not to make this exchange politically divisive, because, although we do not agree on all the detail or the background, we all agree that this Parliament and Government have much work to do.

I will try and make some progress here. I cannot agree to vote for a bill that does not yet exist, because I do not know what the bill will say in detail. I received the consultation only this morning and I will study it in more detail later, but I have had a chance to have a brief look at it and, if its broad proposals translate into the general principles of a bill, it is likely that we will want to give that bill a fair wind through Parliament, in order to see whether we can reach consensus on the detail. Given that we are talking about a bill that is not yet in existence, any reasonable person would think that that is a reasonable response from a First Minister who has a duty to make sure that we go through all the right processes. I hope that we can agree that that is a reasonable starting point.

With regard to the fact that we have a duty—which I feel very strongly—to make sure that what has not worked well in our drug treatment services in the past is rectified for the future, we also have an obligation to make sure that we listen to lived experience and use it to drive proposals. My condolences and sympathies are with Vicky on the loss of Stewart and with every other family who has lost someone to drugs. They are the ones we must keep in mind, but part of keeping them in mind and living up to our responsibility to them is making sure that we think seriously about what has to be done. We are demonstrating today the time that it takes, understandably, even to get a draft bill before Parliament so, while we consider that legislation, we are moving on with various measures now. That is the commitment that the Government has given and will continue to take forward.