Chamber and committees

How often do you do that?

The cabinet secretary will know that seafarers in the marine directorate are significantly underpaid compared with other seafarers employed by the Scottish Government. Does the budget allow there to be parity between them and people who work with Caledonian MacBrayne, for example, rather than their being underpaid so significantly?

The cabinet secretary confirmed earlier that, in spite of the regulations, most anglers are now using catch and release as the norm, whether or not they are forced to by legislation. It seems to me that this is not the first time—certainly on this subject, and on other subjects, too—that we have been presented with an instrument for which the data and information do not stack up. We are being told by the Government that, because we are on a tight timescale, we need to accept the instrument. It seems that nothing changes. We, as a committee, need to take a stand to ensure that the evidence and information that we are getting to back up statutory instruments, which are legislation, merit the acceptance of that legislation.

Last month, the Parliament passed legislation to restrict calving intervals to 410 days to qualify for support, having been reassured by the minister that the force majeure clause would deal with issues such as weather and ferry cancellations. However, the Scottish Government guidance remains unchanged and quotes circumstances such as severe natural disasters to qualify. The minister will be aware that ferry cancellations are all too common, and the news that CalMac Ferries has said that it can no longer carry livestock on ferry journeys lasting more than three hours without a transport authorisation licence will simply make matters worse.

Will the minister now put on record the circumstances in which force majeure will come into play, giving my constituents the reassurance that they require to stay in the cattle industry?

To ask the Scottish Government how it is dealing with delayed discharge from hospitals in the Highlands and Islands. (S6O-04229)

Since 2022, Highland Council has lost 161 care home places, due to eight care homes closing. On top of that, care at home has declined significantly, which increases delayed discharge. Last October, NHS Highland reported that it had to reduce delayed discharge by 65 per cent just to meet national targets. What interventions are being put in place that are specifically tailored to the Highlands and Islands to provide more care places and packages so as to meet that challenge?

I thank members who signed my motion and allowed this important debate to take place. I also pay tribute to the Scottish Human Rights Commission for its spotlight report, “Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in the Highlands and Islands”.

In the past decade or so, our human rights have been eroded: we need food banks, there is a housing crisis and our national health service is at breaking point. Nowhere has that been felt more keenly than in the Highlands and Islands. Centralisation of services has led to poorer outcomes, even fewer houses being built and greater difficulty in accessing health services. All of that leads to depopulation. Citizens know that, so the Scottish Human Rights Commission findings were not a surprise. However, to be consulted and have their concerns validated is a significant step forward for my constituents. It was also striking to see all those findings in one report.

Across all the rights that the report examined,

“there is not a single human right that meets all the conditions of adequacy under international law. This means that there are significant failures in how policies and services are being designed and ... delivered.”

Too often, service design focuses on urban areas and fails to address the unique needs of rural communities. However, when services are designed to meet the needs of rural areas, they work effectively in all settings, regardless of whether they are in an urban area or a rural area.

The commission recommends that the Government should use a human rights-based budgeting approach to ensure that all citizens are provided with services that meet their needs, regardless of where they live. The report references cases in Argyll and Bute in which women who have been sexually assaulted need to travel long distances to access forensic examinations. They need to do that in the same clothes that they wore when they were assaulted. That is a common situation throughout the Highlands and Islands. The reason given for that inhumane treatment was that it would cost more to bring services to those women. A human rights-based approach would have come to a different conclusion, resulting in a process based on upholding the rights of the person who had been attacked.

Our human rights are just that: they are our rights. However, in Scots law, there is no redress if someone does not have access to their human rights. The proposed Scottish human rights bill was anticipated to address that but, unfortunately, it has been shelved. As a result, I still hope to pursue a right to food bill to enshrine the human right to food in Scots law. Everyone has the right to food so that they can feed themselves and their families. Emergency food should be required only in dire circumstances such as war and famine, but the report highlighted that access to food is a significant problem in the Highlands and Islands. It pointed out that, in some areas, food supplies could be at risk due to ferry failures and blocked roads disrupting supplies.

Food also costs much more in sparsely populated rural areas. Independent shops cannot make economies of scale, which means that the food that they sell is more expensive. There are also barriers to accessing emergency food in rural areas, because of issues around privacy and confidentiality. It is hard enough to access a food bank in an urban area because of stigma, so imagine doing that when the whole community will know. I know that food banks go to extraordinary lengths to disguise their interventions, but confidentiality is still a concern that stops many people accessing that support.

The report talks about choices being made between heating and eating. In rural areas, people also need to factor in the cost of running a car, because public transport is inadequate or non-existent. Therefore, they require fuel not only for heat but in order to access work, education, food and healthcare.

One proposal in the report that the Government could implement now is human rights-based budgeting. Will that be considered? That would address an awful lot of the concerns that were raised in the report.

I agree that a human rights-based approach to budgeting must be taken at all levels to meet people’s human rights. That was clear from the Scottish Human Rights Commission’s report.

I return to the issue of gynaecological services and maternity care in rural areas. It is unacceptable that mothers are having to travel 100 miles to give birth when they are in middle of labour. That is surely not a human rights-based approach. The situation is even worse when the roads are blocked.

Hospitals and services in the Highlands and Islands have been impacted by budget cuts. The Caithness health review is on hold, as is NHS Highland and NHS Grampian’s joint maternity redesign. We have had more positive news about the Belford, but the go-ahead for the replacement hospital has been given only for the planning and design stage. The planning and design stage for the new hospital on Barra was completed, but then the project was unceremoniously dropped by the Scottish Government. That provides cold comfort to the people of Lochaber in the context of the Belford, who must keep up the pressure for their hospital. In relation to Barra, the Scottish Government must reinstate its commitment to the Castlebay campus and provide people with the hospital that they need. I could cite many other issues.

I know that we are tight for time, but I want to turn to the Government-initiated Scottish graduate entry medicine programme. Although it aims to boost rural GP numbers, it has delivered only two trainee doctors in the Highlands since 2016. We know that allied health professionals are not available, so people cannot access services that are no longer provided by GPs. We need a review to be carried out of the GP contract, and we need that to be done with a vision for rural areas in mind. I urge the Government to do that as soon as possible.

I, too, start by paying tribute to Laura Hansler, who lodged the petition and has worked for so long to get improvements on the A9. I thank the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee for its report, which shines a light on the broken promises and the mismanagement of the project to dual the whole A9. The Scottish Government kept repeating a promise that it knew would never be kept, and the lack of transparency and honesty with the public and the Parliament was breathtaking. Because of that, the committee has recommended a duty of candour. This must never happen again. We must have regular updates on progress and timelines so that we cannot be hoodwinked for decades.

The committee recommends that there should be a committee with the sole responsibility of oversight of major projects. That was the case for the Queensferry crossing and it is surely good enough for the A9.