Chamber and committees

To ask the Scottish Government whether it plans to review planning laws regarding the provision of private purpose-built student accommodation, in light of reported concerns over the concentration of student accommodation in certain localities and objections from local residents. (S6O-04851)

Scotland needs good, affordable student accommodation, but the way that planning consents are being granted in Glasgow makes it seem as if they are being handed out as an easy fix for gap sites. We are seeing oversaturation because purpose-built student accommodation is currently favoured by investors due to the ability to charge high rents. Last week, a proposed nine-storey student accommodation block was approved on the site of the former O2 ABC iconic music venue, but that is just one of many student developments that have been heavily objected to by local residents and community groups.

Does the minister share my concerns about the volume of applications for purpose-built student accommodation where there is already saturation? Does he agree that there should be a right to challenge overprovision—a right that does not exist now?

For stabbing a man, Alexandria Stewart, formerly known as Alan Baker, is serving a life sentence in Greenock prison’s women’s wing. Lawyer Paul Lynch was forced to ask four times for the criminal record of that offender, whose offences disappeared when they changed their name, due to the self-identification policy that has been in existence. Mr Lynch was told by the Crown Office that Stewart had no previous convictions. Only after Paul Lynch sent a link to an online news story about Baker’s murder conviction was the error rectified.

The policy has done deep damage. Does the cabinet secretary agree that a full investigation should be conducted to ensure that the impact of the policy is fully rectified so that criminal records are disclosed to the courts and are as accurate as they should have been in the first place?

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. My app did not connect. I would have voted yes.

I thank Bill Kidd for giving Parliament an opportunity to discuss the horrific and enduring suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza, most of whom are victims of an 18-year blockade.

Life in Gaza has become hopeless. People—trapped and living mostly in tents, with some sleeping on the bare roads—are now dying the most horrible deaths while the world is watching live, in real time, and is literally doing nothing to stop what is happening.

We have had 20 months of that. Israel’s war on the Palestinian people has become a well-planned operation to clear the land and to ethnically cleanse Gaza and the West Bank of their people. It is like nothing that we have witnessed in our lifetime. At least 56,000 people are dead, with the actual total probably much higher, and yet the hostages are still in danger because of that strategy. This is not self-defence. I, and most members in the chamber, have condemned the atrocities of 7 October, but, 20 months on, nothing—nothing—can justify what has happened to the Palestinians in Gaza.

Rafah, with its population of 275,000, has gone; Jabalia had 56,000 residents—now all gone; and Beit Lahiya had a population of 108,000. They are now in ruins. Israel stands out as being amongst the most extreme war cases in modern history right now. Nonetheless, there have been many brave people—too many to mention—who have been witnesses to this genocide, risking their own lives to save other people.

Dr Victoria Rose served for more than months in Gaza. She talks of a three-month blockade of food—for three months, Israel deliberately blocked food from going into the Gaza strip. She talks of the children whose muscles are wasting, with a loss of fat and a lack of essential nutrients. They are not healing, and they have infections as a result of their poor immune systems. There has been no medical aid since 2 March. Hospitals have run out of 47 per cent of all drugs, and the antibiotics that they have are not the ones that they need.

Why are no journalists allowed into Gaza to report any of that? Of the ones who have been reporting, 200 are already dead, and we are losing count. Who has not cried at these scenes? Gaza is completely on fire—it is flattened, and its children are under the rubble, with no adequate equipment to rescue them. It is unforgivable, but crying does nothing to stop it.

My dear friends Ahmed Al-Nasar and Dr Khamis Elessi message me most days from Gaza. They say that the fire and the bombs are relentless every hour of every day. They cannot sleep, and they all know that, one time, it is going to be them. Nasser hospital has been forced to transport wounded people on public transport. If we want to imagine the unimaginable, we are seeing it in Gaza right now. The speed and the scale of the bombs make them the most powerful weaponry in the world, and they are being used against the poorest women and children.

This is about not just the actions of one Government, but the actions of all the European Governments and what they are not doing to stop the genocide. The Labour Government has suspended 30 arms export licences; that is an important move, but we need to go further. Indeed, I do not believe that we should be supplying any weapons or parts for F-35 planes.

We should stand up and be counted—we should be trying to stop the slaughter. The future of the region depends on it. If we believe in peace in the region, we have to stop what is happening in Gaza. We have to realise that the morality of the west depends on it. We cannot say that we are a nation of people who believe in morality if we are not prepared to do something to stop what is happening in Gaza.

As Bill Kidd was saying, there is death by starvation. On 16 June, nearly 200 people were killed at a Gaza aid centre when an Israeli tank opened fire—it was witnessed and documented. The International Committee of the Red Cross said on Monday that its field hospital in Gaza had received 200 patients, marking the highest number that the hospital had received. Before the aid distribution centres were set up, people were at least being fed. However, since they have been set up, people are not being fed, and children who go to get a bag of flour to feed their families are risking their lives.

The deliberate starvation of a population is a war crime, but to kill them while they are risking their lives to get food aid goes beyond even that. Words are not enough—only actions count here. There are clear breaches of international law on several counts. Israel, as the occupier, has an obligation to the people that it is responsible for, but it has not taken those responsibilities seriously.

The world can clearly see that this is a bid to destroy an entire people, and anyone who does not see that is not watching closely enough. We need to ask ourselves this: what platform are we using to stop it? Ordinary Israelis and significant Israeli figures know that the future of Israel actually depends on stopping Netanyahu from doing this. They believe in their country, and they believe that it is time to join forces with everybody else in the world who wants to stop it.

We, as politicians, must stand up and be counted, because we will be asked by our children and our grandchildren, when they see the horrors that have happened in the past 20 months, “What did you do to stop the genocide? What did you do to promote peace in the region of the middle east?” I, for one, have always said that I want peace for Israelis and security for Israel, but I want a sovereign, independent Palestinian state, too. I demand justice for the Palestinians.

Stephen Kerr said that Israel has a right to defend itself. How does he feel about the deliberate starvation of the Palestinian population in Gaza? In my speech, I said that there is evidence from eye witnesses that Israel has shot at people who have been queuing up for aid, and it is common knowledge, as reported in the Haaretz newspaper, that Israel has paid armed gangs to cause chaos at so-called humanitarian food distribution centres. Surely he is not justifying that.

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. I could not connect. I would have voted yes.

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. My vote was a yes.

The Flamingo Land development clearly resonates across the country as a national concern, and the Scottish Government only just seems to have realised that. Like other members, I have had many emails objecting to the proposed huge theme park. There is widespread public dismay at the prospect of a theme park on the shores of one of Scotland’s national treasures and in an area of great beauty and a national park that the Parliament fought for.

The application is no ordinary one, and it is a pretence to suggest otherwise. Whether people are for or against it, it is clear that it will restrict full access to activities for people who visit Loch Lomond for the day. As Ross Greer said, the scale of the project is the most important consideration, against the backdrop of something that the country loves. That is the primary reason why the Government should have paid more attention to the issue—there is a lot to lose. According to a poll of Radio Times readers, Loch Lomond is the sixth-greatest natural wonder in Britain—and I can see that Jackie Baillie agrees with that.

It is questionable whether the proposal should have been given the go-ahead by the Scottish Government’s reporter after the plans were unanimously rejected by the national park board and opposed by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, the National Trust for Scotland, the Woodland Trust and members of the local community. That the proposal met the planning criteria in the first place is questionable. Stuart Pearce, the director of place for the Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park Authority said that it created an “unacceptable risk” of flooding of the River Leven. Why was that ignored? More than 178,000 people signed a petition against the project. Of course, under planning law, those people have no right of appeal.

The scale of the objections should have told the reporter how controversial the development is. The objections also demonstrate that the decision needs to be properly justified, rather than, as has happened, leaving it open to question whether it is in fact a commercial one and not a planning one.

A single person was, perfectly lawfully, able to overturn all those objections from respected organisations, and in particular the national park board, as well as a large public petition. That begs a question about planning law. I think that it would have been perfectly competent to have a planning inquiry instead of a single decision maker, and that would have been more transparent. A public inquiry would have told us what the primary considerations were in coming to any conclusion. Now that the Government has called in the application, it has an opportunity to make the final decision more transparent and to show the public that it has listened to all the voices that have objected to what is, in my opinion, a dreadful proposal.

I had a look at Flamingo Land in North Yorkshire. Last year, a survey found that people thought that it was quite a disappointing theme park. If people turn up on the day, a family ticket for two adults and two children is £224. This is just my guess, but I suggest that, if the proposal gets the go-ahead, because the theme park will be in Loch Lomond and the Trossachs national park, the charge will be more than £224. Some reviews of the North Yorkshire park on Tripadvisor from May this year read quite grimly. Many people say that the park is overpriced and in need of upgrading—of course, it is a bit older—and, apparently, the animals look “tired” and “bored”. That made me laugh a bit.

There is a lot to think about. It might be appropriate for the development to be placed somewhere else rather than next to a national treasure.

It is clear that most people reject such a theme park being developed on the shores of Scotland’s best-known and most iconic loch. I realise that the issue is not only whether a majority is for or against the development. If the Government grants consent after bringing it in, it must show the public that it has fairly and transparently looked at the criteria for the application, which I look forward to reading.

The position is far from clear. There are reports in the press that there is widespread confusion and unease among staff about how suspects who identify as transgender are recorded in official systems. Many staff say that they have to record someone and, indeed, search them based on how they present, even if that is at the moment of arrest. It appears that there is no official guidance, so staff are left to navigate sensitive and legally significant decisions without clear guidance.

A whistleblower said that that is

“putting officers and staff in a situation where they are having to do things where no one knows where this decision is coming from, and there is not an actual policy. People are just feeling kind of coerced into doing it.”

Given the press reports, is the cabinet secretary concerned about the apparent lack of clarity that is being experienced by officers on the front line about how to record the sex and gender of suspected serious sexual offenders?