Chamber and committees

That should be the case for the A9, because many aspects of it would benefit from having a committee to look at issues and monitor progress.

Many members talked about the loss of life on the A9. Emma Roddick described graphically the dangers of driving on the road, and Foysol Choudhury and Claire Baker talked about the high and unacceptable numbers of fatalities. Every fatality brings heartbreak for a family. These are not just numbers or statistics; they are human beings who have been at the heart of their communities and are a loss to them, too.

That is why Foysol Choudhury mentioned that Laura Hansler, the petitioner, is keen to have a memorial to those people. Maybe if we had a committee to look at the A9, it could lead progress on a memorial for those who have lost their lives.

Claire Baker talked about the economic impact that the A9 situation is having on the far north. Jackson Carlaw spoke about the number of organisations that are waiting for the road to be dualled, because SSE and others—such as those involved in renewables—need to use the A9 to operate projects.

Fergus Ewing turned that on its head by saying that other projects that are happening will require a huge workforce, that having one contract would be much more attractive to those who might bid to complete the A9 and that all the contractors will be competing for the same workforce. There is a risk in not trying to speed up the A9 work because, if it coincides with those other developments, that might force prices up as well as slowing things down because there is a lack of a workforce. I ask the cabinet secretary to consider that.

Emma Roddick highlighted that most of those who responded to the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee were keen for the timing to be sped up. The committee was told that the main reason for the delay and for not meeting the 2025 deadline was funding. Foysol Choudhury pointed out that the Government knew as far back as 2014 that the NPD funding route would not work. Claire Baker told us that the Government had been warned in 2018 by Transport Scotland that there would be a delay. Fergus Ewing laid out the timeframes in which those decisions were made and said that the Moy to Tomatin stretch of the A9 could take more than eight years from procurement to build.

It has become quite obvious that it should have been known a decade ago that the promised timeframe would never be met, yet it took until 2023 for that to be admitted. Covid was blamed for the delay, rather than the Government admitting that the issues had started a long time before that. There may be delays ahead, because the cabinet secretary said that she was not sure that the MIM contract will work. There are contingencies but, if the problem is again funding, that will build in a delay to the 2035 deadline.

I am grateful for that assurance, and I hope that the issue will not cause a delay. Past experience has been that funding mechanisms led to the delay that has already taken place.

Mark Ruskell and others talked about safety and improvements, which it is important to have in place. Roads are there to mitigate risk to drivers, and it is important that we have a dual carriageway, because that is the best form of mitigation.

Beatrice Wishart and others talked about the A9 north. That is not part of today’s debate, but we need to ensure that safety measures are put in place for the A9 north, which has been blocked on a number of occasions. Imagine being pregnant and in labour, being driven more than 100 miles to Inverness maternity unit from Caithness and coming up against a road closure. The road is partially closed at Scrabster, which is one of the main ports and economic drivers in the far north. To protect the economy of Caithness, we need to ensure that that is not ignored.

We hoped to celebrate the opening of the dual carriageway between Inverness and Perth this year, but Highland communities have been badly let down. The Government needs to level with people. It should stop hoodwinking them with promises that it knows it cannot keep, and it needs to pull out all the stops to deliver by 2035 or earlier.

I agree with the cabinet secretary—people in the area are dependent on vehicles, and I note that some of the measures that are used to pinpoint poverty take the view that someone who owns a car is not living in poverty, but the very opposite is true in many rural areas, where a car is a necessity.

The report finds that the lack of affordable housing is also a main concern of young people, many of whom are not able to remain in their local areas or to return to live there after leaving. We know that many people in the Highlands and Islands leave to access education with the full intention of returning but are often unable to do so. That fuels depopulation and the loss of the Gaelic language and is adding to an increasing age demographic.

Second homes and holiday homes bring tension, because they take away homes from local people, but, on the other hand, they bring tourism. Therefore, there needs to be a balance between family homes and the holiday rental sector.

The cost of building small numbers of affordable houses in a community is expensive due to the lack of economies of scale so, when we add the cost of materials and labour, it is little wonder that rural housing money is being spent on the outskirts of cities. That is why we must protect local housing, especially homes that are built at public expense.

Indeed. Co-operatives are already used in rural areas. Crofting, which is the agricultural system in place in rural areas, is based on co-operative working. Many people know that they need to work co-operatively in rural areas simply in order to exist.

The report also highlights access to health and social care. There are many campaigns in the Highlands and Islands regarding access to health care, from the Caithness Health Action Team and the keep MUM—maternity unit for Moray—campaign, which fights for local maternity services, to the Hopeman and Burghead groups that campaign for local general practice surgeries. Those groups are not surprised by the commission’s report, but they are appreciative of it highlighting issues that they have been campaigning on for years.

Mental health services in the region are poor, especially for young people. The waiting list for child and adolescent mental health services in NHS Highland is stubbornly high, and services are provided centrally, which means that young people need to take more time away from school and make long journeys to access them. The costs of travel and accommodation are also barriers to accessing healthcare. We desperately need a review of the outdated patient travelling expenses scheme for reimbursements.

Many other issues are addressed by the Scottish Human Rights Commission report—more than I can do credit to today. I thank it for carrying out that important work. We, in the Parliament, owe it to the commission to act on its findings. We wish it well in presenting its findings to the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights next month.

I brought forward this debate to highlight the report’s findings and to ask the Scottish Government to respond to it and say whether it will use human rights-based budgeting to protect all our human rights, including the human rights of people in the Highlands and Islands, in the future.

I, too, thank Tim Eagle for securing the debate.

Access to health and social care in the Highlands and Islands is poor, which is borne out by the Scottish Human Rights Commission spotlight report that we debated earlier today. The availability of social care is declining. Since 2022, 218 social care beds have been lost in the Highland Council area alone, and the lack of social care is putting pressure on primary care when people await discharge to suitable accommodation. The lack of suitable support or accommodation means that people are trapped in hospital and, because of that, hospitals cannot admit other people for treatment, which leads to lengthening waiting lists all over the place.

Back in 2021, the Feeley review recommended a human rights-based approach, whereby people are aware of and can advocate for their rights, and can easily access and maintain the care that they need. That recommendation has not been met and, sadly, things have simply got worse. The situation is even more distressing for those who are in their final days. Time that should be spent at home, surrounded by loved ones, is spent trapped in hospital.

The Scottish Human Rights Commission recommends human rights-based budgeting that provides services that fit the needs of the people who access them. The lack of access to gynaecological services and maternity care in rural areas is unacceptable.

I am a Labour MSP for the Highlands and Islands.

We have heard a lot about whether the Government has the right targets that will deliver the right trees in the right places. Given that those targets are broad brush, will the available funding deliver them? If not, what do we have to change? We have heard that the targets may need to be more specific. What do we need to change to ensure that the targets are met and that the funds are available?

Just to sum up what people are saying, there seem to be two very separate reasons for the development of forestry. One reason is the storing of carbon, which could be done through natural regeneration, but there is also the timber industry issue, whereby we are importing lots of timber from places that we are not so sure about.

Is it right that we are trying to fund those two different things from one pot, and with one target? Should we look at them separately and recognise that the timber industry is a carbon store, especially if we use timber for products that have a long shelf life?

They are being operated by the guy over there.

We recognise the valuable contribution that is made by those who migrate to Scotland. In every walk of life, new Scots provide new knowledge and experience. However, that is not unique to Scotland. Indeed, Scots have travelled extensively around the globe and made their mark, and that still happens today.

We know that a large proportion of those we train as doctors go abroad to seek better conditions and training opportunities. That has happened for years, but we have not addressed that loss of talent. Instead, we continue to do the same in attracting doctors, medical staff and carers to move to Scotland to fill our vacancies. Many of them have trained in countries that are less wealthy than Scotland, and that has a social and financial cost to those countries, as well.

The fresh talent initiative, which was launched by Jack McConnell’s Administration in 204, demonstrated that Scottish Labour is not against inward migration. The success of that initiative, which was also known as the working in Scotland scheme, was down to the collaboration between the Scottish and UK Governments at that time. By working together rather than separately, policies can be developed to serve Scotland well, and I was really pleased to hear that the minister committed to working with the UK Government on that issue.

In relation to workers and graduates, we should be training our own staff and taking steps to ensure that we retain them in our own workforce. Workforce planning should never be dependent on inward migration. The problems are more acute in rural Scotland, as populations are declining. The fundamental issue with attracting more workers to rural Scotland is not the mechanism by which we attract them but the ability for those people to stay, live and work in rural Scotland. There is a lack of housing, there is poor access to services and there is very little infrastructure. That situation is a result of Scottish Government policy. Such neglect forces people to leave. Therefore, even if we could attract inward migration, the very issues that force local people out will prevent incomers from settling.

That reality was highlighted by the Scottish Human Rights Commission’s report. The SHRC said that, across all the rights that it examined, no human right was delivered in a way that met all the conditions of adequacy under international law. Although that report focused on the Highlands and Islands, much of rural Scotland faces similar challenges, and, because of that, it faces depopulation.

While the Scottish Government seeks to import skilled workers, it does nothing to skill our own people. Colleges are no longer able to reskill the workforce, as the part-time courses that used to enable them to do so have been totally decimated.

I will give an example. The University of the Highlands and Islands used to run a midwife conversion course that allowed trained nurses in the region to retrain as midwives. That course, which was run locally, worked well for nurses who had already settled in communities in the Highland and Islands and who could not move to access training in the central belt. However, that course was discontinued in the Highlands and moved south.

That pattern is all too familiar to those of us who live and work in rural Scotland. Local education and training are virtually non-existent, which means that young people are forced to move away to gain skills and qualifications at a time in their lives when they are more likely to put down roots and meet their life partner. When that happens, they seldom move back. Even if there was a career available for them, there might not be one available for their partner, and that stops them coming back, which fractures our communities.

The reports that have been published on the decline of the Gaelic language highlight those issues. Young people in particular are being forced out of their communities, taking their language skills with them. That explains the decline in the number of native Gaelic speakers. Scottish Labour understands that, if we are to support, sustain and grow the Gaelic language, we must support and sustain Gaelic communities, which means putting economic prosperity front and centre.

Lack of basic infrastructure also causes problems. Even now, there are digital not-spots throughout Scotland. That is especially the case in rural Scotland. That prevents people from working from home, setting up businesses and accessing services, all of which makes it more difficult for them to live and remain in a community.

An ageing ferry fleet makes travel uncertain. When people are unable to confidently plan travel that is necessary for business, health or social reasons, that makes life much more difficult, and we end up in a position in which only the very determined remain in such communities.

Therefore, my question is: how on earth can we deal with that through inward migration? Migrants need homes, access to services and jobs for their partners, and—even more than locals—they must be able to travel to stay in touch with family and friends.

Let us be honest: this debate is the usual SNP Government tactic of creating a diversion and passing the buck when it fails. It can provide the skills, housing and infrastructure that would allow our communities to thrive, retain our workforce and make Scotland—and, more importantly, rural Scotland—a confident and growing community.

Scottish Labour would do just that. We would invest in skills, homes and infrastructure to ensure thriving communities that can retain their own as well as welcome new talent.

I move amendment S6M-16034.3, to leave out from “thanks” to end and insert:

“that there have previously been successful models of differentiated migration schemes, tailored to Scotland’s specific needs, such as Fresh Talent; recognises the impact of rural depopulation on Scotland’s communities and their sustainability, including the survival of the Gaelic language; calls on the Scottish Government to use its existing powers to encourage population retention and internal migration where it would benefit Scotland’s communities and economy; understands that the conditions in Scotland’s rural and island communities are challenging due to the centralisation of services and the degradation of infrastructure, and that migration alone will not fix these systemic problems, and calls on the Scottish Government to build homes, provide high quality public services, provide local education and ensure sustainable transport links in rural and island communities in order to ensure that populations are sustainable in the long term.”