Chamber and committees

The theme for this year’s human rights day is “our rights, our future, right now”. That is timely, given the Scottish Human Rights Commission report “Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in the Highlands and Islands” which paints a very poor picture of people’s access to human rights in my region.

Across all nine areas researched, people in the Highlands and Islands did not have any single human right delivered to them in a way that meets all the conditions for adequacy under international law, which is not something to be taken lightly.

On housing, the report says:

“The Commission’s evidence indicates that a significant number of people across the Highlands and Islands are living in conditions of rooflessness (with no temporary accommodation or shelter). This includes individuals in temporary caravans, camping pods, and those ‘sofa-surfing’.”

The report highlights that the cost of renting and buying

“is a significant barrier, particularly for young people.”

If people cannot find a place to live, they leave, which adds to depopulation. The report also states that social housing is inadequate to meet local needs, yet the Scottish Government used funds that were earmarked for rural housing to build around cities.

On the right to health, the commission expresses critical concerns about

“the lack of local health services”.

As Alex Cole-Hamilton said, people have to travel long distances to access healthcare, as they must do to access maternity services in Caithness, but the concern is about basic health needs as well as complex ones. The commission tells us:

“For young people in Sutherland, face-to-face mental health services are virtually non-existent.”

Those are our young people. The commission also found that people are not accessing health services because of distance and costs, which mean that people become very ill and need hospital care for conditions that could have been treated locally, had services been available.

The right to culture might appear less important in comparison with health, but the report’s findings on that issue are also stark.

The lack of public transport stops people participating in cultural activities. The report highlights that children in Kinlochbervie

“faced a 120-mile round trip”

to access football training.

I have been pursuing making our right to food a reality. On that issue, the commission says:

“Measures implemented so far have not been sufficient to effectively reduce hunger or address the deterioration of the right to food.”

The Scottish Labour Party has come forward with proposals to deal with heating. The Scottish Government gives a flat-rate cold weather payment of £50 to everybody, regardless of where they live and whether their bill is £1,000 or £100. I ask the member to look at his party’s record before casting aspersions on ours.

The report goes on to say:

“testimonies demonstrate that a significant number of people in the Highlands and Islands are currently deprived of sufficient food due to high costs and general poverty conditions.”

The report also draws attention to unstocked shops due to ferry cancellations. Every islander knows to keep a freezer stocked for an emergency, but the people who are living hand to mouth go hungry when shops are empty.

I will continue to pursue the right to food bill to realise every citizen’s right to food. It is essential that we ensure that people have their right to food, because poor nutrition impacts directly on health and life expectancy. Although the work of food banks is a lifeline and those who deliver those services must be applauded, it is dehumanising to be forced to depend on them.

We have heard that the Scottish Government’s promised human rights bill could have been a catalyst to put right those wrongs, but it has been shelved. I again ask the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care to allow the introduction of a human rights bill by making available to the non-Government bill unit the Government’s findings from when it was pursuing the bill.

The Scottish Government has levers to hand to realise human rights. It has power over housing, health and food. It could use procurement powers to ensure that people are paid the real living wage and do not have zero-hour contracts. It could also use agricultural subsidies to ensure that food is produced as locally as possible, making sure that there are no food deserts where the only food available is of low quality. The Scottish Government should also review the patient transport scheme to ensure that nobody finds it too expensive to access healthcare.

With the powers that the Scottish Government has, it could make a huge difference to people’s lives and realise many of their human rights. The Scottish Human Rights Commission’s report says:

“As Minimum Core Obligations must be met at all times and under all circumstances, efforts should be focused on addressing these shortcomings.”

I look forward to the Scottish Government’s response to the report.

Yesterday, we heard that Sutherland spaceport has been mothballed by Orbex. The spaceport was a positive development for the Sutherland community, bringing 40 jobs and economic benefits to a part of the Highlands that has suffered from depopulation. Orbex has received £14.6 million of public investment for the spaceport. Will the First Minister intervene to ensure that the development continues? If that is not possible, will he ensure that the public investment can be recouped and used to bring jobs and an economic boost to that part of the Highlands?

I will.

I agree that that is a huge problem for Highland Hospice. I commend its fundraising effort and the communities that support it, but things should not be that way, and I hope that they will not be in the future if statutory services help the hospice.

Wasting days in hospital really helps nobody, and especially not those who are in their final moments.

Yes, indeed. That is a common situation in the Highlands and Islands, where it is very difficult for families who want to spend time with loved ones.

Highland Hospice knows that and it is leading the charge in Highland. It has formed partnerships with services and the third sector and delivered a 24/7 helpline for people with palliative end-of-life care needs. That alone has saved NHS Highland £2.3 million, while providing support for 415 people in just six months. Kenny Steele, who is the chief executive officer at Highland Hospice, says that delivering better planned and co-ordinated care towards the end of life will result in less unscheduled care in hospital and deliver better value and high-quality care.

However, we need the statutory services to be on board to make sure that that model works. It saves money but, most important, it allows families to enrich the final days of their loved ones, who can live their lives to the end. When days are few, life is precious.

I, too, thank Paul Sweeney for securing this debate on palliative care. I commend Marie Curie for its report “Dying in Poverty in Scotland 2024”, which shines a light on the very difficult situations that many people find themselves in at the end of life. People who are facing terminal illness often lose their incomes and move on to benefits. That can be difficult when someone is facing the end of life, and more so if English is not their first language.

There are many excellent support services out there that help people—Marie Curie, Macmillan Cancer Support and the like—and there are also small local charities that provide support. An example is Western Isles Cancer Care Initiative. WICCI advocates for all people with cancer—something that is even more important for those with a terminal diagnosis—provides small grants and helps people to access support. However, not everyone is lucky enough to be able to access such excellent services.

For people who live in the Highlands and Islands, fuel poverty is also an issue. When people are unwell, they need to be warm, and if there are concerns about the cost of heating that simply adds to the stress. We can only imagine the stress of dying. We will all face it, but it is difficult to imagine. I am sure that we have all faced the stress of losing someone close to us—worrying about their wellbeing and trying to make sure that their last precious days are comfortable and free from worry and that they can live them well. If financial constraints prevent families from ensuring a good death, that adds to their distress and the grief that they have to deal with.

Hospices are crying out for funding, and hospice-at-home services are desperately needed. Most people want to die at home, yet 70 per cent of us will end up in hospital towards the end of our lives, and many who go to hospital will die there because of a lack of hospice care in the community. Such people make up much of the delayed discharge figures, as we have heard. In Highland, £45 million is spent yearly on end-of-life care in hospital, while only just over £11 million is spent on end-of-life care elsewhere. I support Miles Briggs’s proposed member’s bill to improve end-of-life care in Scotland.

My questions will go back over some issues and address one other thing that is more substantive.

You all talked about urban land reform and the way that that could be incorporated in the bill by categorising land as being of community significance. Does that need to go in the bill separately, or could the categorisation be used for rural land as well?

I have a very brief question—and it will probably get brief answers. We talked about land management plans and how communities engage with them. How do we empower communities to engage? We have heard about the costs for landowners but how can the many individuals who live in communities on that land engage properly, given that they will be beholden to the landowner at some point?

My other question is around natural capital, which we have not really tackled. We know that people invest in planting trees and so on, and they use that to offset bad behaviour elsewhere. Those people can buy leases or control of the land for quite a long period of time—they might not own the land, but they control it. Therefore, should the bill cover how the land is controlled? It is certainly not in the public interest for people to control land to offset polluting behaviour elsewhere. Is the bill an opportunity to tackle that and, if so, how should it do so?