Chamber and committees

I take the opportunity to convey my deep heartfelt sympathies to the family and friends of Adrienne McCartney.

Police and prosecutors operate independently of Government, so I will not go into details that would stray into their independent roles. I will say, and have said many times before, that I do not believe that Scotland—or any country, for that matter—yet does enough when it comes to preventing and responding to domestic abuse. The justice system has a very large part to play in that, but—I reflected on this earlier—we need to do more to tackle the behaviours that cause domestic abuse in order to prevent it in the first place. The Lord Advocate is a big advocate for and champion of doing that. The justice system also has to respond better to support victims of domestic abuse; I know that that is a real priority for her.

More widely, I have already spoken about the Helena Kennedy report on misogyny. We also have proposals from Lady Dorrian in relation to how the justice system deals with cases of sexual violence and sexual offences, which will include domestic abuse. The Government will take forward many of those proposals in legislative form during the remainder of this parliamentary session. Some of them will be controversial, so I expect very rigorous debate and scrutiny in Parliament. However, I hope that, as we consider those proposals, Jamie Greene’s very good question will stay in our minds, and that we find ways to unite to make the necessary improvements to our justice system so that victims of domestic abuse are not let down, as they are too often, here in Scotland and across the world.

I thank Clare Adamson for raising an issue that is not just important but is extremely sensitive. We welcomed regulation of the sector, for which we had been pressing the UK Government for some time. The UK Government’s action, however welcome it is, has come rather late—too late for some people.

I understand that Dignity Funerals is currently honouring plans that were made with Safe Hands Funeral Plans, and I welcome that support. Of course, regulation is a reserved matter, so I encourage the UK Government to look at the situation and consider whether it should provide additional support. If Clare Adamson wishes to pass on details of her affected constituents, I will ensure that the relevant minister looks at the issue and raises it with the UK Government. The Scottish Government also provides support for funeral costs through the funeral support payment; I encourage anyone who might be eligible to apply.

No teacher should ever experience abuse in the classroom. I hope that that unites us across the chamber.

The employers of teachers are local authorities. I expect them to have support in place for teachers and to support teachers’ wellbeing. I know that local authorities take that seriously. I will meet the president of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities later today, when we will happily discuss what more the Scottish Government can do to support that.

It is vital that we support teachers in a range of ways—and, indeed, that we support other public sector workers and workers generally who interact with the public, to ensure that they are free and safe from abuse or attacks.

My understanding of Scotland’s energy potential is as it has always been. Scotland is blessed with vast renewable energy potential. The Government will focus not just on talking it up instead of talking it down, as so many of the other parties in the chamber do, but on supporting growth of renewable energy, offshore and on-shore wind, and green hydrogen energy.

The fact of the matter is that Scotland is one of the luckiest countries in the world when it comes to energy. It is our job to maximise that potential.

Respectfully, Presiding Officer, even by Douglas Ross’s own standards, this is a pretty lame and pathetic line of questioning. He talks about a two-tier health service, but perhaps he is talking about the one that already exists where the Conservatives are in government in England. There will not be a two-tier health service while this Government is in office in Scotland, because we are committed to the founding principles of the national health service and always will be. NHS leaders are entitled to discuss what they want, but they do not make Government policy. The Government makes Government policy—I could not be clearer about that.

I was health secretary in the early years of this Government, so I know that this is the Government that reversed the privatisation of our health service where it had taken place. I was the health secretary who brought Stracathro hospital back into the public sector after Labour had privatised it, and we were the Government that ended the contracting out of cleaning and catering services and which moved away from the ruinously expensive Tory-Labour public-private partnership/private finance initiative contracts. Of course, we were also the Government that ended prescription charges in Scotland. We did that, because we support the founding principles of the NHS, and we always will.

I am happy to look into that and of course it is important that those principles are included in all the work that the Scottish Government does as well.

The member is right to raise the issue of the climate emergency, because these severe weather events are being caused by climate change, and it is really important that everything that we do recognises that. The climate emergency is central to all our infrastructure planning work and it is important that we continue to develop our work in that way. However, I will certainly ask the minister concerned to write to the member with further detail on how we will liaise with the UK Government in relation to that particular proposal.

This is an extremely important issue. Baroness Helena Kennedy’s report on misogyny and the criminal law, which was commissioned by the Government and published earlier this year, made several recommendations on gaps in the law that could be addressed by new criminal offences to tackle misogynistic behaviour. Some of those recommendations are controversial, and we are committed to consulting on proposals that would give effect to them in this parliamentary year.

The TUC’s report underscores the importance of ensuring that victims of misogynistic behaviour feel empowered to report it with confidence that their concerns will be taken seriously by their employers and, where criminal activity is alleged, by the police.

I believe that people who are responsible for violent attacks against women are those who perpetrate those attacks. Where, as is very often the case, those are violent men, it is violent men who we should be focusing on. They continue to pose the biggest risk to women, and I do not believe that we should further stigmatise the trans community because of the actions of violent men. At the moment, violent men who want to access women-only spaces do not need a gender recognition certificate to do that. Let us focus on the problem. When the problem is violent men, that is what we should focus on.

We will respond in full to the comments that were made by the person from the UN, although I am not sure that they were quite as they were characterised in the question. However, the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Housing and Local Government will respond in detail to the issues that were raised. Many of those issues have already been discussed and addressed by the Parliament during stages 1 and 2 of the consideration of the bill. Of course, the Parliament will shortly have the opportunity to discuss the bill again during stage 3 of the legislative process.

At the start of the pandemic, we took the decision to provide mobile phones to people in custody to allow them to maintain vital family communication, including, and perhaps especially, with children during what was an incredibly challenging period when normal visiting was not possible. Between then and April 2022, the amount that has been spent is £4.12 million.

It is not democratic and it is not sustainable. Let us have a proper process and let the people of Scotland decide our own future.