Chamber and committees

I declare my interest as a member of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers.

Does the minister agree that it is critically important to improve Sunday services across Scotland in order to give people more choices in public transport? Even in central Scotland, services can be as infrequent as one every two hours. As the minister said, it is a six-day service that is run on the seventh day—Sunday—entirely by the workforce volunteers, who are paid overtime.

Will the minister commit to rebuilding trust with all four rail unions, which is necessary in order for them to enter into discussions about the other conditions that would be necessary? Further, does the minister accept that those other conditions include investment in the new staff who would be required to improve services on Sundays for the public?

I re-emphasise Russell Findlay’s points. It is not clear what the blue-light collaboration means and whether it is practical. My major concern is the roll-out of body-worn cameras. We have talked to the Scottish Police Federation, and there is a need for body-worn cameras in the Scottish police force, but the length of time that it will take to roll them out is concerning. I am also concerned that it will be done division by division. That would indicate that one division will benefit from the roll-out straight away but another division will not benefit until the end of the programme.

That speaks to my concerns about the overall police budget. Police numbers, although not as bad as they could have been, have fallen to the levels that have been announced. I have a deep concern about where we have ended up on the overall police budget.

I thank Russell Findlay for bringing those cases to the attention of the committee.

Would you agree that the accounts that you have given seem to cross over into the area of how police officers are treated in the disciplinary process? You have outlined more than one thing. It is a cause of concern to me if it can be two years into an internal process before any allegation is made. I can understand how that would affect officers’ mental health. Is there another element to what you have outlined, which is that the internal processes of disciplinary action against police officers should not take two years?

Sorry, I could not see the clock. I will conclude by saying that the Scottish Government must be more open and accountable for the sake of the people of Scotland.

As someone who has fought hard for this devolved Parliament, I care about how it looks 20-plus years on. Right now, it looks to most people as though the current procedures are failing to help to hold the Government to account. One of the areas in which Scottish Labour believes that change is needed is that the Presiding Officers should have more powers to compel more accurate answers from ministers, where necessary, instead of the self-policing circus that we have at the moment, whereby ministers can avoid answering questions or can provide inaccurate or inadequate answers. The only current route for politicians now—I know that this is a matter that the Presiding Officers are concerned about—is points of order. The current framework is not fit for purpose and it must change if we care about this Parliament at all.

There is a pressing duty on this Government to change the quality of parliamentary answers, and change course on its poor financial management and commit to a culture of openness and transparency that shows taxpayers clearly where all their money is allocated and spent. That is the case more now than ever. Ordinary people, as Michael Marra has said, question the Government more than ever. They have seen their party of government laid bare in recent weeks in scenes that have rocked the governing party to its core. Unfortunately, that has impacted on the standing and reputation of this Parliament.

I say to the SNP that it owes it to the people of Scotland to overhaul its approach to openness and accountability in this Parliament and in its finances. A culture of secrecy in Scotland’s finances has developed in the Scottish Government for far too long.

The words that I am quoting here are from the Scottish Parliament information centre. It said:

“Audit Scotland have repeatedly called on the SNP Government to improve transparency and accountability in recent years, and the Finance and Public Administration Committee have also urged the government to improve budget transparency.”

In recent years, the Finance and Public Administration Committee has also urged the Government to improve budget transparency. When the Government published its resource spending review in May 2022, it committed to publishing details around planning for public service reform, including the direction of travel for public sector employment. However, the expected plans were notable omissions from this year’s budget, which is another barrier to parliamentary scrutiny, as has been said already.

Public sector pay accounts for £22 billion of the Scottish Government’s budget. Not having a steer on pay parameters leads people to question why the Government was not open in the first place, given that we have had more than a decade of wage stagnation. The unions and the public want to know where the Government stands on its allocation of budget for something so important to the people of Scotland.

For anyone interested in a higher standard of parliamentary scrutiny of our human rights budgeting approach, the need for transparency means that we have to do an awful lot better than what we are faced with now. In the main budget documentation for this year, there is little comment on or description of the data underpinning budget decisions or how the decisions impact on different groups. There are no accompanying documents that are aimed specifically at accessibility, and none with a simple breakdown of the budget. Many supporting documents are not linked to and are hard to find on the website. As a Parliament we have to do better, and the Government needs to do better.

The Scottish Government needs to do more to improve the quality and transparency of its financial and performance reporting. One example in my justice portfolio is the rolling out of body-worn cameras, which is a fundamental requirement for police accountability. We cannot see whether there could have been a decision to make the roll-out happen quicker. Now we have the only force in the UK that will not fully use body-worn cameras. It is time for change.

The oversecretive approach of the Government—

I begin by expressing my concern for the people of Sudan and the UK nationals who are trapped there. About 70 doctors are trying to get back to the UK; they are part of our diverse work force. If any of them had tried, under the bill, to get to the UK to seek asylum from war-torn Sudan and its regime, they would have failed.

The Illegal Migration Bill is morally unacceptable; I join with the others who have said that. It is also practically unworkable and, as with immigration deterrence policy, it is very likely to fail on its own terms and not to achieve its stated objectives.

As we have heard in the chamber, the bill intends, in effect, to abolish the asylum system for almost everyone who currently uses and needs it. Instead, the UK Government will detain people and remove them to either Rwanda or another so-called safe third country.

The bill will grant unwarranted and unaccountable powers to the Home Secretary and will enable huge public moneys to be lost to private profit in detention and institutional accommodation. The bill, in effect, entirely abolishes the right to seek asylum or to have support or protection from trafficking for all those who arrive irregularly.

Such unofficial arrivals are necessarily and solely due to the UK Government’s having refused to create safe travel arrangements—especially from the countries that we have a legal obligation to help due to British involvement in war and conflict—thereby abandoning people to acute risk. Tragically, as other members have said, we know that people have lost their lives at sea, in the backs of lorries and in other unsafe conditions. Hundreds have already lost their lives.

Even the most hard-line Conservative Governments in the past would never have attempted to set an immigration policy in such a draconian way. The policy is the centrepiece of a party in government that is completely out of ideas and is trying to stir up hostility against the most vulnerable and marginalised people in our society. Suella Braverman has been allowed to continue with a hostile immigration policy from Boris Johnson’s Government to Rishi Sunak’s Government, even though there have been significant attacks on immigration centres across England. That further highlights how cruel the bill is.

Suella Braverman appeared at a select committee meeting in which she attempted to answer a simple question from her Tory MP colleague Tim Loughton, about how a 16-year-old African who is facing persecution could make an application to come to the UK legally. She and her official stumbled over the answer, and they eventually had to concede that it was not possible to do that from some countries. That is acutely embarrassing and is a complete failure of the policy.

The bill will also give the Home Secretary the power to take charge of the care of unaccompanied children, rather than that sitting—rightly—with child protection experts in local authorities. That is despite 222 lone children—that we know of—having recently gone missing from Home Office hotels. Many of them have most likely been trafficked for exploitation. Many members have pointed that out. How Britain proposes, under the bill, to treat children who come to this country is one of the most devastating things about the bill.

There is no doubt that the human consequences of the bill will be utterly devastating. The bill means that a family who are fleeing from the Taliban in Afghanistan, a woman who is fleeing from violence under the Iranian regime or a child who is escaping from forced labour in Sudan would not have their claims for asylum considered.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has said that the bill is

“a clear breach of the Refugee Convention”,

and that the bill would

“amount to an asylum ban—extinguishing the right to seek refugee protection in the United Kingdom for those who arrive irregularly, no matter how genuine and compelling their claim may be, and with no consideration of their individual circumstances.”

Most shocking, perhaps, is the fact that the Home Secretary has confirmed that she cannot declare the compatibility of the bill with human rights obligations. That is the incredible reality.

The bill is derisive of both constitutional international law—not merely the European convention on human rights—and domestic legal principle. At its worst, it appears to purposely seek conflict with the European Court of Human Rights and our independent judicial system. The Home Secretary has repeatedly suggested that legal rights, due process and the decisions of independent courts are in some sense an illegitimate impediment to Government attempts to respond to irregular migration. I say to the Tories: how can Britain possibly set an example in the democratic world when it will not accept the rule of law itself? Even the most hard-line Tories must reflect on how that diminishes Britain’s standing on the international stage.

Let me be clear: we do not need new laws to prevent people from taking dangerous journeys. We simply need to provide safe, dignified and legal routes from all countries in the world for survivors of oppressive regimes and organised crime. We desperately need a compassionate alternative at the UK level. In Scotland, we cannot merely stand by and watch the UK Government strip vulnerable people of their human rights and dignity. I certainly will not do that.

UK Labour has voted against the bill at various stages, and we will join others in voting against it. We will also join the cross-party efforts to campaign against this inhumanity. I call on the new First Minster to live up to the promises that the Scottish Government made to refugees and asylum seekers who are already in Scotland, to make their lives better and give them hope of a better life, by living up to much better standards.

I thank the minister for that thorough answer. Barclays bank decided to invest in Glasgow in 2018, and JP Morgan agreed to expand and become tenants of the new office in Argyle Street in 2019, but there does not appear to have been much progress since then. In November last year, Avison Young reported that, of the 655,000 square feet of development under construction in Glasgow, only 55 per cent had been pre-let or pre-sold. There is a concern that Glasgow remains low in that regard compared with pre-Covid levels.

What is important is that prospective occupiers are looking for grade A office space, so will the minister outline how a pipeline of grade A office space is being ensured? What specific inward investment pitches have been made to investors over the past year? How many notes of interest have been submitted? If he cannot give me an answer today, I would appreciate a follow-up response, if possible.

To ask the Scottish Government what steps it has taken to support the development and expansion of Glasgow’s international financial services district in the past year. (S6O-02124)

But I am asking why—is that 93 per cent reduction a coincidence?

But the question that I am asking is: why is that, and are you confident that that trend will continue? What I was trying to get at in my first question was whether you have planned adequately for your policy position, which I fully support. If you are saying in your evidence to the committee, “We’ve got a good starting point, because the policy is resulting in vacancies,” I just want to be clear that that is the case.