Chamber and committees

I, too, thank Elena Whitham for securing this important debate. We must criminalise online pimping and paying for sex, while decriminalising victims and providing them with holistic support.

I want to confront some of the myths that are being peddled to urge policy makers to do nothing. Take the claim that criminalising paying for sex would simply make the problem worse because it would drive prostitution underground. Prostitution relies on men being able to locate women to exploit. Therefore, if those men can locate the women, so can support services and the police. The “underground” myth is illogical.

Then there is the claim that criminalising paying for sex would make it more dangerous because women would have less time to assess a potential sex buyer. That claim makes no sense in the case of street prostitution, where sex buyers are already criminalised. The claim also suggests that it is possible for a woman to assess how dangerous a man is simply by looking at him; she cannot. That was all too tragically illustrated by the case of Steve Wright, who murdered five women in Ipswich. Wright was a regular sex buyer and was known to women, locally. One woman described him as “an average, normal punter”. Alan Caton OBE, the chief superintendent who reformed policing of prostitution in Ipswich following the murders, recently wrote:

“too many still accept that as a society we should be a bystander to this form of violence against women—because of threats of what men may do if we try to stop them. It’s straight out of the perpetrator’s playbook.”

What unites the myths that are circulated to oppose criminalising online pimping and paying for sex is the same underlying message: “Do not intervene and do not try to prevent it. Just accept it and be a bystander.” It is time for Parliament to stop being a bystander.

Vested interests will oppose any attempt to shift the burden of criminality off victims and on to perpetrators, because that would undermine their ability to profit from sexual exploitation. There will also be groups that lobby for those interests, such as the Global Network of Sex Work Projects , which is based in Edinburgh. For years, that group has led an international campaign to remove all criminal laws relating to prostitution and to oppose attempts to criminalise paying for sex. In 2015, the group’s vice-president was exposed as a sex trafficker and jailed for 15 years. The organisation continues to lobby the Scottish Government not to criminalise paying for sex.

Then there is Umbrella Lane, which is also based in Scotland and which is regularly quoted in the media opposing calls to shift the burden of criminality off victims and on to those who perpetrate and profit from sexual exploitation. What is not usually mentioned, however, is that Umbrella Lane has previously accepted funding from Vivastreet, which is one of the UK’s biggest pimping websites. That site has repeatedly advertised victims of trafficking and it stands to lose substantial profits if Scotland outlaws its operations. Escort Scotland, which is another pimping website, also told the cross-party group on commercial sexual exploitation that it had provided funding to Umbrella Lane. I have no doubt that those organisations will try to frame their support as an act of corporate social responsibility, but let us be absolutely clear about what is happening: those commercial pimping operations are funding groups that lobby in their interests.

It is time for the Parliament to come together and stand against the vested interests of the sex industry and to stop being bystanders. It is time for a legal model to end commercial sexual exploitation in Scotland.

Patients and general practitioners are raising a high level of concern about the roll-out of Covid vaccine boosters and the uptake of flu vaccinations. At a time when health boards are grappling with additional staff shortages and an increasing number of resignations, GPs in Alness and Invergordon in my region have notified NHS Highland that they will be handing back their contract from early next year.

What is the Scottish Government doing to support GPs and health boards with those issues and to alleviate the pressures on hospitals before they face the even greater pressures of the winter?

I, too, congratulate Jamie Halcro Johnston on securing the debate.

Ferries are lifelines to our island communities. If they do not sail, that affects every aspect of island life. Over the weekend, I watched on in horror as there was a relentless stream of cancellations and disruptions. Some were due to Covid, but most were due to technical issues and dry docking, and the knock-on impact of those.

In addition, the ferries that are providing temporary cover for those routes are not designed for them and are therefore unable to sail in bad weather. We need ferries that are built and designed for several routes so that they are suitable to cover for ferries that have broken down or are having routine maintenance.

The current situation simply cannot go on. The Scottish Government has failed to manage the services effectively, and that failure is causing untold misery to those who live on our islands. This is just the beginning of the winter, but almost two thirds of the Clyde and Hebridean ferry routes have been subject to cancellation or change in the past few days. How on earth can people plan their lives with that level of disruption?

The motion pertains to the Clyde and Hebridean services, but issues in the northern isles have also been on-going for years, as Jamie Halcro Johnston and Liam McArthur said. The boats on the interisland ferry services need to be replaced, and the freight service to the mainland is not coping with demand—another failure on the part of the Scottish Government. The issues are not due to a lack of investment. Indeed, the amount of money that has been squandered by the Government is eye watering. Had it been spent properly, the whole fleet would have been replaced.

There is a huge degree of arrogance directed at the communities by the Scottish Government and its agencies. When communities make suggestions, their ideas are ignored. Given that they use the services, they are best placed to know what would work, yet they are ignored. The community on Mull found a vessel for itself. It had research carried out on how the ferry could be made fit for purpose, yet that was ignored. Another ferry has been procured for that route, which is of course welcome, but the ferry that the community identified would have been infinitely better.

When people on Lewis asked for two smaller ferries rather than one large one, they were ignored. However, if two smaller ferries had been provided, many of the issues that we now face would be negated. We would have had a spare ferry to cover drydocking in the winter, when one ferry would manage to cover the lower demand on the Stornoway to Ullapool route. That ferry, built for the Stornoway route, would have been able to withstand adverse weather conditions on almost every other route.

The figures showing cancellations due to weather give a false impression. Cancellations are not due to weather; rather, they are due to the ferries on the route not being designed to withstand winter conditions.

On behalf of my constituents, I continually warned the Scottish Government about the issues, but it has ignored everyone. It is that arrogance that has led to this sorry state.

However, it is not the Government that faces the brunt of the anger and frustration of the travelling public; sadly, the staff who provide services hear it. Even without having to face that anger and frustration, it is incredibly stressful for staff, especially if they are part of the community, to know first hand that services are being cancelled, preventing people from getting to hospital appointments, sick relatives or family funerals. Added to that, there are empty supermarket shelves, caused by missed deliveries.

It is simply not fair—the Scottish Government is letting down hard-working staff. I appeal to people not to take out their frustrations on staff whose own lives are impacted by the Government’s mismanagement. Instead, they should tell the Government about their frustrations and the impact of the mismanagement on their daily lives.

The Scottish Government’s answer to all this is to have a review—to kick the can further down the road—while our communities suffer. Everyone knows the issues and they do not need a review to tell them what is wrong. This is long past being an emergency and the minister must act to save communities from catastrophe.

I, too, congratulate Donald Cameron on securing the debate and join him in paying tribute to the campaign group. The Rest and Be Thankful is a crucial link for our constituents in Argyll and Bute. The disruption that closures bring impacts on the economy but also on people’s health, as we have just heard, and on people who depend on it for their social links as well as their livelihoods.

I believe that the whole Parliament takes the issue of depopulation seriously. It is an issue that the Scottish Government tells us is on its radar, but its failure to deal with the situation at the Rest and Be Thankful does not reassure me on that. I understand that, because of the route, the area could not compete for an investment of more than £700 million by the Scottish Salmon Company that would have created local jobs. Instead, the investment went to a place where transport links are much more secure. A manufacturer of kit houses is moving out of Dunoon

“due to the road connection being unreliable.”

The road haulage sector tells us that the disruption is costing it around £2.3 million a year. Donald Cameron mentioned other examples.

The area contributes 15 per cent of Scotland’s whisky and 26 per cent of its forestry, and those industries are hampered by the situation on the A83. Despite millions of pounds having been spent on the road, it is no safer. The amount of earth that is unstable and in danger of falling is terrifying. We have already lost one life to the road and, should that 100,000 tonnes of earth fall on to the road this winter, it could have catastrophic consequences.

It is also unacceptable that the road closes when there is a threat of bad weather, with traffic being rerouted to the old military road, which is not satisfactory. Until the Scottish Government fixes the route, we need a real-time warning system, whereby when bad weather is forecast, an amber light indicates that the road is liable to close, with a red light showing that it is closed. A similar system is used for our ferry services. A text alert system could give regular travellers real-time information on what was happening on the route.

We need a safer and more sustainable short-term alternative, because I fear for this winter. Thereafter, we need a long-term solution that serves the whole of Argyll and Bute. We need that urgently. Too much time has already elapsed. We cannot wait for the next election to get new promises—we need action now.

Transport Scotland tells us that it takes it a year to look at every temporary solution that is proposed. It should open the forestry road to take transport in the opposite direction of the old military road in the short term. It could do that now. It would still cause delays, but it would be much faster than the current solution.

Surely it is not too much to ask for a road that is open when it rains, that people can depend on and that they do not fear travelling on. I am sorry to say that the situation on the A83 at the Rest and Be Thankful is a catastrophe waiting to happen if no action is taken. The Scottish Government knows that, and it needs to act now.

Not necessarily. I think that policy people would have been working from home, as many of us were, and might have had more time to look at the proposal. However, given that there had already been a consultation on the good food nation bill, to which they might well have responded, they might have felt that they had put their views on the record, so there was no need to repeat the process.

I do not think that the number of responses was particularly low—71 people responded on behalf of organisations and 181 individuals responded, which is a reasonable level of response—but it should be borne in mind that this consultation followed on from the consultation on the proposed good food nation bill. A number of the people who responded to that—about a third of them, I think—recommended that there should be a right to food, so people had already responded clearly to one consultation on the issue. With a consultation on a Government bill, people expect the Government to introduce the bill whereas, with a member’s bill, they are not so sure that that will happen. I think that that accounts for the level of response.

I understand that Elaine Smith sent her consultation to a number of public bodies, such as local authorities and health boards, as well as the trade union movement and interested stakeholders. She made sure that it was out there, and it was well received. Although not every health board or council would respond to such a consultation, some did, and they responded very positively.

I should say that I am a member of the Co-op Party—that is in my entry in the register of members’ interests. The party is very keen on the proposal.

I am working with the Co-operative Party and with stakeholders; I have had meetings, reasonably regularly, with people who responded to the consultation on the previous bill proposal. A number of those people wanted to become much more involved, so we have set up a steering committee with organisations and individuals who are keen for the proposal to go forward and I am working closely with them.

I have been in touch with the respondents to the consultation and they are still incredibly keen. One of them—I should remember this—consulted recently and did some polling. The overwhelming support in the public for the introduction of a bill was there for all to see.

We all take food for granted, in a way. During the pandemic, many people realised that it could not be taken for granted. There were times when people were afraid to be tested because they were afraid that they would have to isolate and would not have food. Suddenly, people began to realise and live other people’s day-to-day experience of wondering where they would get their next meal. If anything, that has moved the right to food up in the public consciousness. Therefore, it is still as important, if not more important, to have a right to food.

The effect of consulting again would just be delay. We should have introduced a right to food in the previous parliamentary session. That is what people expected but the pandemic slowed the process down and stopped it happening. If we owe anything to the people who were hungry during the pandemic, it is to put the right processes in place to ensure that people are fed.

I am not entirely clear about how the Scottish Government intends to introduce its human rights bill, so I am not clear whether there will be a vehicle for delivery in it. People could argue that human rights are all our rights and that they already exist. However, we still have people who do not have a right to food in Scotland. My proposed bill is designed not only to enshrine the human right to food in Scottish legislation but to provide a vehicle for its delivery, because that is hugely important.

If you were to push me, I would say that I would have liked to have seen the right to food at the heart of a good food nation bill. That is why I spoke to the Scottish Government in the previous session. We already invest £100 million—huge amounts of public money—in our food system. I hear from workers in that system that the front-line producers of food are the people who are going hungry. They produce the food but still do not have a right to food.

I would have wanted to see a right to food at the heart of a good food nation bill. However, my proposed bill, which would have a vehicle for delivery, would work alongside that. It is not one thing; it is not about ticking a box. It will take some time to implement a right to food and to change the system, because our food system is so disjointed. That is why everyone has been calling for a good food nation bill, which would not only highlight our natural resource but ensure that the way that we produce food does not leave people behind. My proposal is part of that.

Including the right in a good food nation bill would be my preference, but it does not look like that is possible. I hope that, if we have a right to food bill, it will work alongside a good food nation bill and changes to our food system to ensure that everybody has a right to food.

I am sorry—that was a bit of a long way round to a short answer.

I will come on to the process points.

If the Government wishes to introduce the bill in another form, I do not think that anything that I propose today—that is, approving the right to go forward without another consultation—would interfere with that. I would certainly make sure that the bill’s aims were met through the Government’s human rights bill.

I will get Nick Hawthorne to cover the process.

Thank you for inviting me to appear before the committee to discuss the statement of reasons that accompanies my draft proposal for a right to food (Scotland) bill. It is quite fitting that we are talking about this in challenge poverty week.

The committee is being asked to determine whether it is content with the statement of reasons, which sets out why I consider it unnecessary to carry out a consultation on my proposal.

My proposal is, in effect, the same as the proposal that Elaine Smith lodged in the previous parliamentary session, that is, to incorporate the right to food into Scots law. Elaine Smith obtained the right to introduce a bill, but there was not enough time left in the session to do so. A consultation on her proposal ran for 12 weeks and received responses from a wide range of individuals and organisations from different sectors and backgrounds. The individual responses, and a summary of the responses, are publicly available online—the committee has probably seen them.

The variety of responses to the consultation from the public and other stakeholders across Scotland remain relevant to my proposal, as do many of the studies and papers that have been published on the right to food.

To repeat the consultation process for what is, in effect, the same bill proposal that Elaine Smith originally consulted on and lodged would be an unnecessary duplication of work, particularly given that the consultation closed only a little over a year ago, in September 2020, and such a timeframe fits with that of other bills.

Therefore, I hope that the committee agrees that further consultation is not required in this instance. I will be happy to answer any questions that committee members have.