Chamber and committees

Katy Clark said that our justice system works for male perpetrators rather than female victims. As a society, we have to share the blame for that.

Martin Whitfield noted that 43 per cent of rape and attempted rape cases reach convictions, and he compared that with a figure of 88 per cent for other cases. That is a huge gap and it shows us what is wrong with our system. It is a wake-up call to all of us that the system is not working. He also spoke about the large number of cases that never reach court.

Katy Clark talked about the impact on victims of the backlog in our courts. Again, given that 70 per cent of High Court cases are to do with sexual violence, we can see that that backlog will have a disproportionate impact on women. It is difficult for those victims, because they are waiting for an outcome that is not forthcoming. Of course, when rape or attempted rape cases reach court, 44 per cent of them end up in a not proven verdict compared with 20 per cent of others. That is another wake-up call for us. Surely we can all see the difference.

Katy Clark also talked about Lady Dorrian’s review and discussed training for juries. It is right to address that issue, because Martin Whitfield talked about how easy it is for juries to use the not proven verdict as an opt-out. Maggie Chapman talked about jury members’ lack of understanding of the verdict and about prosecutors being discouraged from explaining it to them.

We all know that certain cases are difficult. Liam McArthur talked about how cross-examination in sexual violence cases retraumatises and belittles victims. It actually trashes their characters and makes them out to be liars, because those cases come down to one person’s word against another’s.

We need to make a justice system that is safe for victims. If we do that, we will get greater reporting. The justice system should be there for victims and not just for the sake of the justice system itself.

We support the motion, but we also believe that we need to make a big change to the justice system so that trials are conducted properly. We need there to be a step change in how cases are prosecuted. It is wrong that trials retraumatise victims rather than promote closure. We all have a duty to put that right.

The debate has been interesting, but the issue has been debated for a long time and it is a bit disappointing that the Government is hiding behind further consultation rather than providing leadership on the matter.

We support the abolition of the not proven verdict, but we recognise that that in itself is not a resolution. Victims will still be let down if a not proven verdict simply becomes a not guilty verdict. We need a justice system that protects victims and brings perpetrators to justice.

We see an increase in sexual violence. Katy Clark and others talked about the fact that 70 per cent of the workload of the High Court is made up of sexual offences. Is that because we are not prosecuting those offences properly and offenders get off? Why is that type of offence on the increase? Is it because young people are getting their sex education from pornography? Is it because we live in a society where attitudes to sexual violence are strange and victim blaming is common? [Interruption.]

The First Minister will be aware of the recent appointments to the board of David MacBrayne group, which include the appointment of a chairman who is famed for presiding over the ferry fiasco at Caledonian Maritime Assets Ltd, and of three non-executive directors, none of whom has island links. Many islanders have seafaring experience, yet the Scottish Government seemed unable to find one to appoint to the board. Why are islanders being overlooked by her Government?

I, too, welcome the review. I feel for families, who are rightly frustrated by delays. It would be good to have a clear indication of the timeframe for the restoration of full maternity services at Dr Gray’s hospital. In the meantime, what accommodation and childminding support is available to families who have to travel to Aberdeen or Inverness for maternity services?

We are now almost two years into the pandemic, yet the only advice that we can offer children and teachers who are freezing in school is to wear outdoor clothes inside. When we were children, we were always being lectured about wearing our coats inside, because, we were told, we would not get the benefit when we went out. Children today deserve to live their lives in the same way.

We knew many months ago that the pandemic was here for the long term. The Scottish Government should have acted then to protect the health of our pupils and staff. It is not reasonable to expect teachers to open a window, crank up the heat and make believe that that is appropriate ventilation for a school. We are facing rising fuel bills, which is putting a strain on local authority budgets. Pupils who have missed so much school already are facing rising Covid numbers in their classes. We have an education system that is in disarray and is failing our young people, and the attainment gap is widening. It is crucial for children, especially those living in difficult circumstances, to get to school. School is often the only place where children can be warm and have a hot meal; for some, school is their safe place. For some children, putting extra clothes on to keep themselves warm inside the classroom is simply not an option. Their clothes are worn and they are fast outgrowing them. There is no money at home to replace their clothes, far less buy warm clothes for a cold and draughty school. Imagine being cold and hungry at home and then coming to school and being even colder. How can young people learn in those circumstances?

Last winter, Comhairle nan Eilean Siar immediately doubled the clothing grant for low-income families to help them to buy additional clothing. The Scottish Government should have done that. Furthermore, this summer, it should have been working on the supply of adequate air purifying equipment to schools in order to keep children and teachers safe and warm this winter. It is normal in Scotland that we have cold weather and storms in the winter. In my constituency, we have seen the impact of storm Arwen on our schools. The pupils and staff of Wick high school had a lucky escape when a huge chunk of the wall was blown off. This is a new Scottish Government flagship school; sadly, it was not built to cope with winter weather. Schools must be safe and built to withstand winter weather, and they must be places where our children can thrive.

Low winter temperatures are already hitting us hard, and children cannot reasonably be expected to learn while sitting in the cold. It also puts their health at additional risk, because we know that the cold weakens immune systems, so low temperatures could lead to a rise in Covid cases. The Scottish Government must not forget that schools are workplaces, which must adhere to health and safety guidelines in the same way as other workplaces do. The Scottish Government has put £10 million into schemes to improve ventilation in schools, but it is not enough. We know that no two schools are the same: some children are in brand new buildings, while some are still learning in portakabins.

As Willie Rennie said, last year the Scottish Government created a £25 million business ventilation fund. That was the right thing to do, but will it now provide adequate funding for ventilation in our schools for our children? The Scottish Government must act now to keep young people safe and warm so that they can learn. Children should not have to wait for another year.

We expect our justice system to protect all citizens, but the case of Sharon Dowey’s constituent shows us that it does not.

Despite the progress that the Parliament has made since Maureen Macmillan piloted through it the first committee bill, which provided more protection to victims of domestic abuse, we still find that our laws and justice system are letting women down.

Women who are exploited in prostitution face sanction and a criminal record while the pimps and managers evade sanction. The sex buyers who create the demand face no sanction at all; neither do websites such as Vivastreet that sell women, a practice that is legal in Scotland. The business is so lucrative that such websites fund organisations that lobby to decriminalise managers and pimps in order to ensure that they will not face sanction in future.

That has to change and our law needs to catch up. We need to live in a country where women are equal and are not for sale, where those who exploit them are brought to book, and where those whose sense of entitlement and power leads them to buy other human beings are punished.

We also need to help those who find themselves exploited in that way; we need to help them get out, rebuild their lives and recover from the harm that has been caused to them. However, the way that we stop that exploitation from happening in the first place is to ensure that women are truly equal. Sadly, when the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Bill was debated, they were not. How many women have been murdered by misogynists since then?

We allow those who abuse their partners to continue to exercise power over them. Women who have escaped domestic abuse are forced to interact with their abuser by the family courts, which value an abusive man’s rights to access his children more than a woman’s right to safety. It is not just the women who are harmed by that; the children are harmed, too. They become pawns and weapons to inflict the greatest amount of harm and control, which prevents victims from becoming survivors. Our courts are actively pulling them back into the cycle of abuse and despair. No parent who is an abuser should have rights of access to children of that relationship, because they have demonstrated by their abuse that the welfare of their children does not come first. They should be granted access only when they can demonstrate that they have changed their behaviour.

The two issues that I have highlighted are caused by women’s inequality. Women are unequal in society and therefore pay the price. We need to legislate on those issues, to stop men—I stress that I am talking about a minority of men—abusing women. In doing so, we must redouble our efforts to create a truly equal country in which the work that is done by women is valued to the same extent as that which is done by men, and in which women can leave their home at any time, day or night, and not feel unsafe. If we do that, we will eliminate violence against women.

I did so at the start of my speech, but I am happy to move it again.

I move amendment S6M-02158.3, to leave out from “infringe” to end and insert:

“circumvents the devolved settlement; recognises that gender inequality remains stubbornly high; notes that there are increasing regional inequalities across Scotland, including in health, child poverty, income and economic opportunities, which neither the UK Government nor the Scottish Government is adequately tackling, and calls on the Scottish Government to reinstate the previously scrapped regional equality targets to direct government action and funding of local authorities to urgently address this injustice across the country.”

I move the amendment in my name.

There is a danger that the debate is set to focus on constitutional wrangling rather than the needs of our constituents. I appeal to SNP and Conservative members not to do that.

Of course, the funds should have been devolved, but the SNP cannot sit on the side of the angels on this matter. When it came into power, the first thing that it did was centralise EU funds that had previously been devolved to local government.

That said, we in the Scottish Labour Party want both of our Governments to work together with councils and communities to tackle the wealth divide. Poverty is increasing—that fact has hardly merited a mention so far in the debate. We want to create a country in which everyone can live life to their full potential, free from the blight of poverty. Therefore, the debate must be about levelling up the regions and tackling age-old wealth divides.

It is fitting that the debate is taking place on international equal pay day, which marks the day in the year when women, on average, effectively stop earning relative to men because of the gender pay gap. It is not just about equal pay for the same job; it is about the fact that jobs that are done predominantly by women are lower paid than those that are done predominantly by men.

The situation is made even worse because women bear the brunt of caring costs. Only last week, in a members’ business debate, we heard how women have been disproportionately affected by long Covid. The week before, we heard about delays in the rolling out of funding for childcare, which is affecting women up and down the country and their ability to work. Women carry out the bulk of caring responsibilities, leading them to be more likely to leave work during the pandemic. They are also more likely to be in part-time work, which is lower paid. The recent cut in universal credit has disproportionately impacted on women because they are more likely to depend on it.

In the Scottish Government’s gender pay gap action plan annual report for 2021, its analysis suggests that the pandemic

“could exacerbate existing labour market inequalities for protected groups including women”.

The report goes on to say:

“As we recover from the pandemic we must ensure that gender equality is mainstreamed into policy design and services so that we protect and advance women’s equality, particularly in relation to tackling poverty, promoting access to and progression within good jobs, and supporting business growth.”

We must tackle regional disparities. The cost of living is significantly higher in rural areas than it is in urban areas. Additional minimum living costs for households in remote rural Scotland can add 15 to 30 per cent to a household budget. Poverty is rife but hidden. Childcare is limited and often difficult to access due to a lack of public transport and a lack of provision. Children get free bus travel to school, to access education, but not for nursery education.

The Scottish Government has recommendations, research, advice and reports on how to improve equality. It must act.

In an attempt to narrow regional inequalities, inclusive growth has been a feature of Scottish Government economic strategies since 2007, yet, as we approach 2022, the SNP Government is no closer to achieving it. Regional inequality in Scotland is not currently being sufficiently addressed by investment from the UK Government’s levelling up fund or by the Scottish Government. That is why Scottish Labour is calling on the Scottish Government to implement new regional equality targets in the national performance framework, in order to tackle employment and skills gaps across regions. Maybe—just maybe—if the SNP had worked with local government on a strategy for levelling up bids, we could have made some progress.

Another drawback is the fact that both of our Governments depend on flawed indicators to identify poverty. Those work well in urban areas but are, frankly, useless in rural areas, where poverty is largely hidden because the very poor live in the same postcode areas as the very rich and are therefore cancelled out.

The levelling up funds are set to replace EU funding, but what they miss—which the EU understood—is the issue of peripherality. We are now in a situation whereby Highland Council and Western Isles Council, with huge pockets of hidden rural poverty, have been downgraded and will not receive funding comparable to what they received in the past from Europe. There must be a better way to ensure that levelling up happens everywhere. In order to have levelling up, there must also be levelling down.

What is not clear is how we must redistribute wealth to ensure that our society receives the levelling that it needs. It is heartbreaking to see people struggle in the grip of poverty while others accrue obscene wealth. The recent debate about second jobs for members of Parliament and members of the Scottish Parliament has brought that into sharp relief. Our society has become more polarised between extreme wealth and extreme poverty, and our public services are no longer coping. Now is the time for action.

We, in the Scottish Labour Party, are asking both of our Governments to set aside their constitutional wrangling, put the best interests of our constituents to the fore and work together to ensure that levelling up becomes a reality for all.

I mentioned flying clubs and people who use recreational aircraft. It might be worth trying to contact some of them to find out what their concerns are. When the remote tower model was first mooted, there were concerns about how the airspace would be managed and how that would impact on their activities. There is a flying club based at Inverness, but there will be other such organisations throughout the area.