Chamber and committees

It is not. It is just that some witnesses, and people with an interest, have said that they have had discussions with the Government about their views on corroboration. There has also been recent commentary from the judiciary. Who knows where we will end up on that? I just point out that there has been talk.

Imagine a Scotland without gender-based violence, as the motion says, and imagine a world without violence against women and girls. Scottish Labour is pleased to support the Government motion today.

Sadly, sexual crimes in Scotland have increased by 8 per cent in the past four years, and one woman is killed by her partner or ex-partner every six weeks. It is still the case that a quarter of women and girls in Scotland will experience physical or sexual violence in their lifetime. We are, indeed, further away from our goals, not nearer, unfortunately.

It is clear that we need a significant shift in social and cultural norms, as well as a legal reform framework. It is also clear that our work begins with talking to boys in school settings if we are to have any chance of breaking the cycle.

I look forward to the refresh of the equally safe strategy, which we will get a chance to debate next week. Last week, Scottish Labour launched its own report on how to tackle violence against women and girls. During a year’s consultation that we conducted, we heard how prevalent misogyny is in our society—not surprisingly. We heard from some amazing women and organisations. I sincerely thank them for their involvement, and I put on record our thanks to Scottish Government officials for attending our round-table discussions.

It will not be a shock to any woman that the report found that the justice system continues to fail women and that more needs to be done to invest in and diversify far-reaching services that support women and girls who are affected by sexual harassment and abuse. Educating boys and young men is key to long-term change. Getting men involved in our conversations from a young age is one way that we can start to make serious steps towards tackling the epidemic of male violence. For too long, as the minister, Siobhan Brown, said, the onus has been placed on women and girls to regulate their behaviour to accommodate boys and men.

Sharon Dowey referenced the report by the NASUWT, so I will not go over the points that she already made. Suffice it to say that, although I am not in any way downplaying the extreme violence in our schools towards male teachers, female teachers experience more violence than male teachers do. In the past 12 months alone, one in five women teachers reported being hit or punched by pupils. Some have been spat at or headbutted. Meanwhile, 64 per cent of girls and young women report that they have been sexually harassed at school over the past year.

The online environment plays a huge part in teaching boys that that behaviour is okay. As we have discussed many times in debates, social media influencers who use platforms to spread misogyny pave the way for a growing rape culture. That is precisely why we need a comprehensive cross-campus strategy that includes lessons to educate boys and young men on the links between gender stereotypes and violence. How many more discussions can we have that are only women talking to women? We need more male role models to step up and challenge other men when they witness women and girls being harassed and abused. That applies to online environments as well as everyday life.

As we know, it is also a global fight. As the minister said, the theme for the 16 days of activism is “Invest to prevent violence against women and girls”. The need for prevention is increasingly clear. Human trafficking, female genital mutilation and child marriage are ruining the lives of hundreds of millions of girls across the world. Child marriage, for example, is rooted in gender inequality. It limits access to women and girls’ health and education and their political participation. It limits the amount of control that they have over their own bodies and increases their risk of experiencing gender-based violence.

However, those problems are happening in our communities. The number of human trafficking cases in Scotland is at its highest since records began. Seventy-two per cent of trafficking victims are women and girls, who are often trafficked for sexual exploitation. In trying to address the issue, we face criminal gangs that are running on a global scale. In 2023, a large number of women who are trafficked to Scotland are found to be Albanian or Vietnamese. They are sometimes held in a network that spans the length and breadth of the United Kingdom.

At the Scottish Police Federation reception last week, one police officer told me that there was an incident in which one person in London was directing men to residential properties around Glasgow. That was not uncommon. In fact, some of the call centres have operated in Glasgow. Human trafficking has been identified in all 32 local authorities in Scotland. Those groups are organised and have a formal structure that operates in plain sight. It is important that we recognise how horrific the crime is. The youngest person involved was just 13 years old.

As I have said in previous debates, I will continue my own work on image-based abuses. We need to have clearer law on men who abuse private images. The Women’s Support Project, which some people had a chance to talk to—it is an incredible charity—talks about many incidents of that. I will mention how images on the OnlyFans website are misused. There have been countless cases of creators’ content being screenshotted, recorded or hacked. It is important to note that, although they consented at the time, a lot of those child and adult performers are sadly haunted by those images for the rest of their lives.

It is important to debate this important issue in Parliament. Scottish Labour is delighted to support the motion.

15:54  

I have a point about FAIs. It goes back to the profile of the 86 deaths, and it applies only to a few cases. In the case of Allan Marshall, the family was distraught because they felt that there was a cover-up and they could not get any information about how he had died. We know that there was immunity from prosecution, and the Lord Advocate is taking that forward.

One of the recommendations was that families get unfettered access to prison to get information about how their loved ones died because, previously, they have not had that. They have had to wait for the FAI and, if the FAI takes years, the family gets no real answers or contact. I have asked the same question at every opportunity: will families get unfettered access? I do appreciate the situation—can you make that commitment and, at the same time, not compromise the case where there might be an allegation of criminality, such as in the case of Allan Marshall? Can you make such a commitment without that interfering with the Crown doing its job? I have never had an answer to that. On John Swinney’s point about establishing the approach to FAIs, I would say yes, if the system worked, but let us see whether we can make FAIs shorter.

However, there is this other scenario, such as in the case of the death of Allan Marshall. Families should get unfettered access to go and speak to prison governors and see where their family member died. Families should get all that. Why should they not? When the state has detained that person, why should the family be blocked from finding out as much as they would like to know about their loved one’s death? I have not had any answers to those questions but I feel strongly about that in such cases. I realise that those are a tiny percentage of the cases.

It is quite hard, reading through our papers, to get a sense of what we are addressing here. I am trying to focus my mind on the deaths in custody that I know about, where there has been a suicide or a death. It would be helpful to get a profile of what the causes of the 86 deaths were. Otherwise, I do not know whether we can make an assessment of whether the response is adequate.

I will be honest: in reading through the papers, I found so much management speak that it was driving me nuts. I was trying to get to what people were actually trying to say to the committee.

On a positive note, I would like to examine what Teresa Medhurst said in her letter a bit more, particularly about contact with families. The proposal on that is a critical step. The families of Katie Allan and William Brown were concerned about them. They knew that their family members were at risk and they phoned the prison, but they did not get answers. That was one of the issues, from my recollection. It would be worth following that up with Teresa Medhurst, asking how the proposed installation of phone lines is going to work and asking for her assessment of whether it will make a difference. I think that it could make a difference.

I agree with Russell Findlay in that Gill Imery is one of the best witnesses that we have ever had. She does not pull her punches at all. We have a horrendous record on deaths in custody. It is a problem for Scotland’s prisons in detaining people, and I imagine that things must now be even more difficult for the Prison Service, given the numbers. I feel quite concerned about that and the implications for the running of the service. That is a really important aspect of the work that the committee does.

In summary, I would like to see a profile of the 86 deaths with information about the causes, and further information about the installation of phone lines and family contact. I agree that Gill Imery should be able to continue her work until we are satisfied that we have made significant progress on preventing further deaths in Scottish prisons.

Will the member take an intervention?

In addition to what the member has said, Labour has challenged several times whether the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service needs up to 260 days to prepare a case for indictment. If we pass the instrument tonight, that measure—for which there has been no justification—will be extended again to 2025-26.

I dearly hope that there can be agreement among political parties today to unite behind an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. It is that action that will show the Palestinians that we are watching, that they are not alone and that Scotland will be part of a wider international call. It is a call that recognises the best chance for the release of the Israeli hostages; it recognises, equally, that the world should not forget or forgive the terror attacks on Israelis on 7 October.

I agree with Donald Cameron on one thing—on a few things, actually: that only dialogue will lead to long-term peace, because violence can only breed violence. Today we have heard reports that there may well be a five-day ceasefire—still to be confirmed. I hope that that opportunity, if it arises, will be grasped, because we have witnessed nothing like this human catastrophe in our lives. I certainly have not. The daily unrelenting, indiscriminate enormous firepower, the carpet bombing of hospitals, schools and people’s homes, and not least the loss of life, including that of 5,000 children, the inhumane withdrawal of food and water and internet and the deliberate dismantling of the Gaza healthcare system constitute completely disproportionate action. It is a slaughter—a massacre of an entire people who were already under siege. It is a clear breach of international law.

The events of 7 October in Israel are also events that I wholly condemn without reservation, and for which there should be full accountability in the International Criminal Court, but absolutely nothing can justify the response by Israel: the deliberate targeting of civilians, aid workers, journalists, children still trapped and hurt under the rubble, and babies needlessly denied the care that they need in hospitals.

What if it was your child and you cannot get an ambulance or treatment for your child, so you have to watch them die? You cannot even flee from that violence, because you are trapped in the biggest prison in the world, along with 2.3 million other people, who are going through exactly the same as you. Meanwhile, world leaders and the EU procrastinate about whether they are going to call for a ceasefire.

Today, in one of the many stories that I have read, a surgeon reported that he was left with no choice but to perform an amputation on his own child, and the child died. Children with no surviving parents are one of the biggest phenomena that we are seeing right now. I am clear in my own mind that we are witnessing an attempt to wipe out an entire population.

Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister of Israel, said that it is an “entire nation” that is responsible for the Hamas attacks. The Israeli defence minister, Yoav Gallant, said:

“We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly.”

Heritage minister Amichai Eliyahu said that one of the possibilities was to drop a nuclear bomb on Gaza, and that anyone waving a Palestinian or Hamas flag

“shouldn’t continue to live on the face of the earth.”

However, a United Nations special reporter has warned that the Palestinians are in grave danger of mass ethnic cleansing and that what we are witnessing might well be a repeat of the 1948 Nakba. The powerful speech by Nada Tarbush, the Palestinian observer to the UN for the state of Palestine, quoted Israel’s finance minister, who said:

“there’s no such thing as the Palestinian people”.

In fact, at the same meeting of the UN, the current Prime Minister, Netanyahu, held up a map of the middle east that showed Palestine deleted from the map. The UN reporter also summarised Israel’s position as being that all Palestinians in Gaza are

“either terrorists or terrorist sympathizers or human shields”.

With some notable exceptions, Israel’s current and past leaders have singularly failed to establish a path to peace for the Palestinians in 75 years. As we speak during this period, more than 200 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied west bank, and settlers, who are illegal in the west bank, are being armed with rifles and left free to kill. I am sure that everyone has noticed that that has been happening in the past four weeks.

I have worked with brave former Israel Defense Forces soldiers through Breaking the Silence, an organisation that speaks out. Ariel Bernstein and Benzion Sanders served in the ground incursion into Gaza in 2014. After they fought in that war, they reflected on what they learned. They said that their leaders had lied to them that the conflict could be managed and that there was no need to strive for dialogue with any part of Palestinian society, not even the moderates. I know that to be true because I was an observer in 2006 and I met Isaac Herzog in the Knesset. Eventually, he said that it is true to say that Mahmoud Abbas and the Fatah moderates were humiliated by the Israeli Government and that the PLO was dismissed over that period. For 30 years, they have been trying to reach peace through a two-state solution.

I have had the privilege of discussing Palestine with world leaders in Qatar, Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Tunisia, and I have to say that there has been too much rhetoric and not enough action. I believe with all my heart that the only way for Israel to live within its secure borders and for ordinary Israelis to live in peace, which I want, is for the international community to press Israel to withdraw from the occupation and for there to be a dialogue about an end game that means that there are two sovereign states. That is the only way forward and the only way for peace. I hope that the Scottish Parliament can start on that some time soon. I support the First Minister and the statement that he made earlier, which is to recognise the state of Palestine right now.

The city of Glasgow, as the most locked-down city in the United Kingdom, desperately needs people to return to the night-time economy. Taxis are key to ensuring that people have confidence that they will be able to get home, but taxi drivers have had to fight for every concession to help them to comply with the LEZ. Taxi drivers tell me that there is only one garage that will help them to comply and the waiting list goes as far as 2026, but they have only a year to comply. Given that, as the First Minister said, other cities will face the same challenges, will he look into having a national grant scheme? What else can be done to help the taxi trade to comply? Given that Scotland’s largest city needs to come out of the pandemic and recover, it is very important to deal with this.

Good morning. I will begin by stating what I have already said on record: I have never been keen on having a lot of commissioners. I struggle to see how the proposal would actually make any difference to victims. However, I am trying to keep an open mind.

My first question follows on from Russell Findlay’s. The rule of law dictates separation between Parliament and the courts. As you have said, the Lord Advocate has a statutory legal function and is independent. Therefore, it is not possible to create a commission that has powers to challenge those statutory bodies. If it did that, it would be interfering with the rule of law and the independence of the Crown. Is not that the first problem?

Thank you for the quality of your evidence and for how loudly you are voicing what I think is probably the most serious operational issue for Police Scotland. The work that you have done is critical. I suppose that the way forward is not that easy.

Craig Naylor, I was really struck by what you said about individual officers being terrified to make these decisions. At that moment, they are trying to save a life and carry out their duties, but then there is an investigation of whether they did the right thing. That seems grossly unfair to me.

What will prevent that from happening? Does it lie in what you say on page 11 of your thematic review that

“Demand is passed to Police Scotland from partner agencies towards the end of the working day and working week.”?

I think that Sharon Dowey asked you that question. I cannot see any way around this other than other agencies changing the way in which they work. Am I getting it right?