Chamber and committees

Are those two things tied together?

I understand.

I have one final question. On the issue of a child who wants to share their story, which would mean going to court, can you give us any evidence as to what the court might consider?

If you are a publisher—a newspaper, for example—you might want to offer someone money in order for them to lift their anonymity. One might say, “Oh well, it’s up to the person if they want to do that”, but have they thought through all the consequences of sharing their story when the money looks good? Can you give us any evidence of what you think that the court would look at with regard to whether to allow anonymity to be waived in that case? Might they take what I have just described into consideration?

I come to my final question. You are quite correct to ask whether there should be more primary legislation on juryless trials. That is a controversial issue, as we know from the evidence that we have taken, and it has split views among members of the judiciary.

Should clear parameters be set as to what is being assessed? Let us say that the pilot—which is what it is called in the bill—is run for a year. As you have said, the Government is quite clear that we are not assessing the conviction rate. To be honest, I am not clear about how the Government will assess the pilot at the end of it and determine whether it is good or bad. I know that you cannot answer that but, in your opinion, should the criteria for assessment be clearly set out?

I am sorry, but I do not have time. I would have loved to bring in the member on this issue.

I am not out to specifically criticise anyone. I know that people had a heavy burden, but come on—really? Give us some evidence that we can believe and give us some answers that sound credible, because the accusation that the deletion of information was done on an industrial scale is a worry for this Parliament and for the law. What we have heard about gatekeeping in relation to freedom of information clearly exposes that that policy is not worth the paper that it is written on. Work must be done on that at a future date.

The culture of cover-up was present long before Covid-19—we saw it in relation to the Queen Elizabeth university hospital scandal, the ferries fiasco and the steel scandal—and it led the way to a lack of transparency during the most important period of Scotland’s modern times. We must do better than that. I call on everyone to co-operate with the inquiry and give the public the answers that they deserve.

On a point of order, Presiding Officer.

I want to put on the record that I did not intend, in any possible way, to imply in my speech that Bob Doris was not listening to the debate. The remark that I made is something that is said in a debate if the person is still listening. That is the only remark that I made about him.

I am honestly astounded that a member would come on and make that point. If, to safeguard his point, Bob Doris wishes it to be known that he watched the debate throughout, that is entirely different. I hope that the Presiding Officer accepts my response that I was in no way being disrespectful to him and never would be.

In early 2020, I wrote an article about a constituent who had done everything right—she had isolated with her husband and followed all the other rules religiously—but whose husband had contracted Covid, was struggling to breathe and was sent by ambulance to the Queen Elizabeth university hospital. He was there for 20 days. Each afternoon, she had to wait by the phone for a call to learn of his progress. She was not allowed to visit, she was not offered a Zoom call or any other way of seeing her husband, and she could not phone in—understandably, such were the pressures on the nursing staff. One day, while she was sitting alone in her home, she received a call to say that her husband had died from Covid.

Imagine the trauma of losing your husband of 20 years when you had no idea that he was dying until you got the call. There was no one present due to the restrictions, no follow up and no formal bereavement counselling until I got involved as her MSP. I vowed then, as I do now, to seek answers for people such as her. She will not get a specific answer, but she is entitled to bigger answers about the approach that was taken. I am aware that other hospitals, including some in England—although I am not clear why it was the case—allowed some families who were wearing PPE to visit their family members.

It is only by examining the circumstances of the Covid period, the decisions that we took, the principles that we applied, who took those decisions and how they were recorded that we will have any chance of understanding the lessons that we need to learn from that horrible period. The question of why the chief scientist said in evidence that the Government ignored its own advice, particularly in relation to schools, has to be answered. Furthermore, doctors made it clear to me that there was a policy during Covid of not referring those who were over the age of 65 to hospitals, but we still need to get answers on that from ministers. I felt that, when questioned, they were evasive, and they were also unable to answer a critical question that goes to the very heart of how human rights were applied during the Covid period: who took the decision on the “do not resuscitate” policy? We all desperately need answers to those questions. That is why we require to examine how decisions were made and how they were recorded.

I ask this question of Bob Doris, if he is still listening: who would be in the shoes of the former First Minister or Jason Leitch, the clinical director? I felt for them all during that period, because they had weighty decisions to make. However, they were the people who were in charge, making life-and-death decisions, and we must be able to examine every decision that they made, such as those about the size of weddings and funerals, health service arrangements and other issues that I have touched on, which resulted in serious consequences. They must be accountable, which means that they must be prepared to provide all the relevant evidence. Thousands of families across Scotland grieved the loss of a loved one, and people dealt with mental health issues but were denied treatment. It is really important to look back.

It seems that the people who were at the top—the First Minister, Government ministers and officials—deliberately and purposely deleted vital information, which it looks as though we will never see. What concerns me is that the way that that was done would seem not to have been just random, but to have been quite organised. For me, a central question for Government is, where did the policy on deleting messages come from? Why did some officials delete all their messages while some kept all their messages and others deleted some of their messages? Why is this such a mess? Why was there no policy?

I have always understood that a role of the civil service is to listen in to Government ministerial meetings in order to protect Government ministers and the Administration. All notion of that seems to have completely gone. How can we judge the handling of all decisions if we are not to be provided with that information? The WhatsApp deletion policy and the relaying of advice to ministers by the back door and by private accounts are not in the spirit of the Public Records (Scotland) Act 2011, the spirit of freedom of information or the spirit of what we were told back in 2020. There must be proper record keeping. I would have thought that there would have been at least one Cabinet discussion about the policy.

I am sorry, but who deletes their messages at bedtime? If someone is doing that, they are doing it for a reason. People are not stupid. It does not sound credible. The national clinical director and ministers—

Prison guard attacks have more than doubled in seven years, with nearly 4,000 weapons being discovered in the past 10 years. Those include homemade weapons such as knives that have been made from razor blades melted into toothbrushes. This week, Phil Fairlie from the Prison Officers Association Scotland said:

“The trend is growing at an alarming rate and coincides with an increase in assaults on staff and prisoners. We are heading towards record high population numbers and have more members of organised crime gangs inside our prisons than ever. ”

I agree with the First Minister that we have a high regard for our prison guards and the work that they do, but does he agree that they should not have to fear going to work? Indeed, prisoners should not fear being in prison. What discussions is the Scottish Government having to ascertain why those homemade weapons are circulating? Is the First Minister concerned that the increase might be symptomatic of severe overcrowding in Scottish prisons?

Although there has been an increase in fees, the profession still pays defence lawyers less than is paid to lawyers who work for the Government or the Crown Office. The issue is simple to understand: if we do not pay defence lawyers the same as is paid to Government or Crown Office lawyers, we will not attract talent into the profession.

Although Scottish Labour welcomes the Scottish Government’s commitment to independent legal representation for victims who are subject to section 275 in rape trials, the Law Society has already expressed concern about how it will fulfil that pledge if it does not resolve the unfairness of how defence lawyers are paid.