Chamber and committees

Will the member give way?

I want to say in public what I have said in private: the work that you have done is tremendous and I thank you for it.

I am on record as voting for sex to be an aggravator in the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Bill. I felt strongly that that was missing from the legislation. However, I think that the rationale for not doing that seems to make sense. What problems do you think that we, as legislators, might come up against when we have to define something that is not already defined? The simple part of it is that sex is defined in the Equality Act 2010, whereas we will have to look at the idea of misogyny in some detail.

The working group’s definition of misogyny includes

“male entitlement, while subordinating women”,

and it is important that you talk about male power. To me, that is central to everything that the committee is doing, not only on this legislation but as it looks at the range of things that the Parliament should do. I know that you agree.

Do you have any concerns about how we go about defining? We obviously have to define misogyny and I presume that we also have to define ideas such as the subordination of women. We have an ordinary understanding of what that means, but we know that, when it comes to legislation, things may not be as simple as they first appear to be. Do you want to say anything about that to the committee? We will be dealing with it further down the line.

I thank Jamie Greene for raising the issue. The policy note could have been clearer. It refers to

“two further ways in which a person on bail can have conditions varied.”

I am struggling to determine what those two variations are. If that is the substance of the SSI, I do not understand why that has not been set out to the committee.

It looks as though the Government is saying that the instrument will just make a technical change, that we do not need to worry about it and that, as Jamie Greene has suggested, we just need to rubber stamp it. I suggest that the Government should note for future reference that, when we get an SSI policy note, there needs to be a bit more information in it. We need to know what we are being asked to sign off.

I was going to ask you about international examples, but you said that Scotland would be groundbreaking if we introduced such legislation.

To illustrate what you have told the committee, I note that there was another example of male power yesterday—the case of Tim Westwood, who has been a well-known DJ for 30 years. There are such examples every day. It is a global issue.

Can you point to any countries that are doing something similar? You mentioned Mona Rishmawi from the United Nations. If the committee wanted, could we get access to her through you? If Scotland is going to be groundbreaking, it would be helpful to get an international perspective, because it is a global issue.

I thank Graham Simpson for a really excellent motion on a very important subject.

I have a great deal of respect for emergency workers. In fact my husband, Joe, was a serving police officer in the criminal investigation department when I first met him. I confess that my heart was in my mouth when he was called out to an incident and went out with his handcuffs and his baton, not knowing when he would come back. I understand how that feels.

I have represented ambulance workers through the GMB Scotland for a while. I was genuinely shocked at the amount of risk that is taken by ambulance workers on a daily basis. We can never be thankful enough for the risks that emergency workers take.

I did not feel that police officers got the full recognition that they deserved during the pandemic for displaying bravery every day on the front line when the Covid virus was at its height.

The number of police officers who are subjected to assaults every year is rising. The latest figures from Police Scotland indicate that more than 3,000 police officers and police staff were victims of assault each year over the past five years.

As we have heard, the murders of Constable George Taylor and Detective Sergeant William Ross Hunt while on duty are shocking reminders of what the police can face simply for doing their job. I commend the work of the Lanarkshire Police Historical Society—and that of Graham Simpson—in leading the campaign for posthumous bravery awards for those two officers.

Campaigners believe that both Constable George Taylor and Detective Sergeant William Ross Hunt are entitled to a variety of honours, including the George medal and the Queen’s gallantry medal. I understand that the campaign is supported by Chief Constable Iain Livingstone, who has backed the families and offered a chief constable’s bravery commendation.

I also understand that a UK Government spokesman has said that

“the rules on posthumous gallantry awards stipulate that the event must have taken place in the past five years. This means, regrettably, it is not possible for either case to be formally recognised.”

I do not think that that is good enough. It is clear that the sacrifice of all officers, past and present, who die in the line of duty must be recognised, no matter when their deaths took place. I believe that the pandemic awakened us to their incredible bravery.

I agree with the motion that we need a new award for police officers, firefighters, paramedics and prison officers who are killed in service. Although nothing can ever truly make up for a lost life, at the very least an emergency services medal should be received by the immediate family of those who die in the execution of their duties to acknowledge their sacrifice.

I apologise to the chamber: because I have to be at a cross-party group meeting this evening, I will not be able to stay for the cabinet secretary’s summing up, but I wanted to say that I fully support Graham Simpson and his work.

On a point of order, Presiding Officer.

An amendment has been lodged in Parliament concerning a breach of standing orders in relation to the five-day requirement. Although the minister responded on other issues, he did not give Parliament an explanation of why it is necessary to breach standing orders. I have yet to hear what the minister has to say about that. Why could he not have scheduled the debate for Wednesday? If he had done that, an amendment to the motion would probably not have been lodged. Surely any member who speaks in such a debate must address the substantive point and not dance around it.

As the Deputy First Minister highlighted, young people between the ages of 18 and 24 have been at the sharp end of the pandemic, but they are the most likely to have experienced extended worklessness during it, especially if they shielded and gave up their jobs. Youth unemployment in Glasgow sits at 9 per cent, which is almost three times the national average, and young people who return to work are more likely than the average person to be in insecure work and not to be in a union.

Does the cabinet secretary agree that more needs to be done to protect young people who are in work, as there are some scandalous stories of their poor treatment, not just in Glasgow but across the country? How is the Scottish Government ensuring that young people in Glasgow and across the country can access decent and secure jobs that provide them with the ability to develop good-quality careers?

Presiding Officer, Labour will support the amendment to the business motion. I would like it to be noted, however, that that is no reflection whatsoever on the hard work of the committee members.

As Jamie Greene set out, the Criminal Justice Committee was asked to scrutinise the Fireworks and Pyrotechnic Articles (Scotland) Bill using a fast-tracked timetable so that we could bring in the new much-needed offence of supplying fireworks to a person who is under the age of 18 in enough time for the November bonfire season. I agreed, while not fully realising that other aspects of the bill would require much deeper scrutiny than was first thought, including aspects in the stage 1 report that was signed off today around the complexities in the creation of a new licensing scheme, which will require close consideration.

Had I known that the Government would not allow for the usual five days prior to the stage 1 debate, as is required under standing orders, I would have made more objections in the first place against a shortened timetable for completion of the stage 1 report. It does not set a good precedent not to comply with standing order rule 9.6.3A.

As Jamie Greene has done for his party, I place on the record that we support the intentions of the Fireworks and Pyrotechnic Articles (Scotland) Bill, and commend the work of the Government and stakeholders. However, we must be prepared to uphold the integrity of the scrutiny process, and it should not be squeezed into a stage 1 debate on Tuesday when stakeholders will not have had time to respond, and we only have the Government’s promise that we will see what it has to say before we have that debate. It is quite unprecedented that the committee report will be published tomorrow afternoon, as the May day holiday is a potential barrier to many who will want to brief members of Parliament who might want to take part in the debate. It is completely unsatisfactory.

The debate could be held on Wednesday; I am not clear why it cannot be. This is one of the first pieces of legislation that has been made in session 6 of the Parliament, and we should be seen to be treating it with respect.

The committee struggled to get data on the crime of fireworks misuse—on which I think the Parliament is unanimous—so that it can understand the picture across Scotland. The data came so late that we cannot influence the stage 1 reports.

Members can see that many factors are making it difficult for the committee to properly scrutinise this important bill. It is therefore unhelpful that, at the end of the process, the Government has chosen to give us no time to consider our response to the report. I hope that there is a way of saying how we intend to go forward in this parliamentary session, which is still in its early stages, and that we will do the right thing and oppose the business motion. Let us let stakeholders give a proper response to the Fireworks and Pyrotechnic Articles (Scotland) Bill. Let us scrutinise it properly. I ask all members, please, not to make an assumption that, just because there is a stage 1 report, the Government has got everything right. I assure members that they will want to discuss quite a number of things when they see the report.

To ask the Scottish Government how its policies across government will support young people living in Glasgow to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic. (S6O-00996)

Can I clarify something? Death in custody is covered on page 24. There is a statement about the cabinet secretary accepting all the recommendations on 2 February and providing an update by the summer of 2022. I have nothing to say about that, other than to highlight the importance of that statement.

If I recall correctly, accepting all the recommendations means that deaths in custody would be dealt with more quickly and that, regardless of whether there was a police investigation, immediate access would be provided to all the relevant information. I am very surprised that neither Police Scotland nor the Crown Office has said anything about that. That would mean that two things would be running in parallel. Let us look at recent cases in which there might have been criminal behaviour, such as the Allan Marshall case. If there had been “unfettered access” to the prison and the staff to find out what happened, would that have sat well with the current arrangements, which is that we wait to see whether there is a fatal accident inquiry or a police prosecution?

I am in favour of the recommendations, but I was expecting clarification to be provided on whether those two processes can sit alongside each other. Given the number of deaths that we have had in custody, that is quite an important issue.