Chamber and committees

The chief superintendent for Highlands and Islands division has stated that, due to centralised decision making, rural policing is facing a massive challenge. He quotes an example. Following an incident in Benbecula last year, staffing shortages meant that it had to be dealt with by two off-duty officers. The only two officers on duty on Lewis and Harris were also required to deal with the incident the following day, meaning that there was no police cover on the islands. That would be absolutely unacceptable in the central belt, but it is allowed to happen on our islands. What actions is the cabinet secretary taking to ensure that rural policing has the resources that it needs to keep people safe?

To ask the Scottish Government what action is being taken to tackle any police staffing shortages and operational capacity issues in the Highlands and Islands. (S6O-03033)

The First Minister will be aware that the northern part of the A9 has been closed several times recently, cutting off Caithness from the remainder of the mainland and from specialist maternity services. The First Minister also knows that Raigmore hospital’s maternity unit cannot cope, which has led to women being asked to leave the unit, with nowhere to go and 100 miles from home as their labour progresses. Despite that, the Scottish Government has paused the Caithness healthcare redesign and the Raigmore maternity unit redevelopment. Will the First Minister revisit the downgrade and continue the redesign so that women who require specialist maternity care are never again abandoned?

No concerns about that have been expressed to us, but it could be that, when the guidance is changed in the future, we do get concerns about it, especially when there is no consultation with the committee. What would we do in that case? Would the minister appear in front of the committee to discuss those concerns?

It is good to have that backstop.

What does the cabinet secretary have to say to patients whose multidisciplinary teams can be 60 miles away, which worsens health inequalities? Indeed, those who face the bigger barriers find it more difficult to travel to centralised locations.

I will address two things today—first, the ScotWind leases; secondly, the opportunities that community energy can deliver.

Like other members, I cannot comprehend why the Scottish Government set an arbitrary maximum for bids for ScotWind projects. It was absolutely senseless. The maximum was well below what was bid in later international auctions. The Scottish Government massively undervalued Scotland’s natural resources. Since the ScotWind auctions, three offshore wind auctions have been completed—two in the United States and one in England—and Common Weal estimates that they raised up to 40 times as much as the ScotWind auctions. The UK Crown Estate ran a similar auction in 2022 with annual fees rather than a block sum and without an arbitrary bid cap. If Scotland had followed a similar model, ScotWind would have raised £28 billion over the next decade—enough to cover the budget shortfall and more than £1 billion a year to invest in our public services and a just transition.

As other members have said, very few supply chain jobs have come to Scotland from those auctions. Sarah Boyack quoted the STUC, which made it clear that the Scottish Government was quick to state its ambitions for economic benefits but

“without setting the necessary policies and funding to realise them.”

There is no industrial strategy. We see workers who are in danger of losing their jobs at Grangemouth. That is not a just transition.

It is a disgrace that the Scottish Government has squandered the opportunity that ScotWind brought. If that was not bad enough, we now learn that the sums that the Government raised from ScotWind will be used to fill a black hole in its budget that was created by its mismanagement. It is disingenuous of the cabinet secretary to criticise those who are not yet in Government and so do not have the tools and levers that the Government has when the Scottish Government has squandered its tools and levers.

I contrast this Government’s incompetence with what communities have achieved. Communities that have had the opportunity to develop their own renewables have built their local economies and laid down the foundations to address depopulation. Energy companies that develop renewables will create community funds, but the amounts that are given are paltry and they often come with caveats that prevent communities from investing in what they need. Assisting communities to develop their own renewable generation means that the profits stay local and the communities have control over how they are spent.

I will give members some examples. Point and Sandwick Trust found that community returns from community-owned wind farms are 34 times the standard industry community benefit payment. The figure is £170,000 per megawatt per annum, compared with the £5,000 per megawatt per annum that would otherwise have been received in community benefit. On the Orkney island of Westray, a 0.9MW community-owned turbine has returned to the community approximately £299,057 per megawatt per annum, and it is expected to contribute £6.8 million to the community over its 25-year lifespan.

The Knoydart hydro scheme, which is owned by the community foundation that owns the Knoydart estate, is not connected to the national grid, so it supplies its energy to the 120 local residents using a 280kW hydropower system, which was recently upgraded. That has allowed a new micro brewery to be connected, which will create new local jobs, and new property developments will be able to benefit from the electricity. The lower energy prices that the scheme charges the community mean that the micro brewery is able to thrive and is not paying the colossal energy costs that other micro breweries have to pay.

In Kinlochbervie, there is a wholly locally owned hydroelectric scheme. It is estimated that it has saved more than 13,000 tonnes of carbon emissions and contributed £1 million in community benefit over its lifetime. Investment has been made in training local people in maintenance of the scheme, which has created local skills and ensured that the community has energy security.

Those examples and the many others contrast starkly with the Government’s efforts and its management of resources. It is time that we invested in communities and enabled them to develop their own projects. That will not only help us to meet our targets but provide investment in the economies of our local communities.

The Scottish Government still owes Scottish farmers £46 million. Why is it cutting the budget for agriculture when it still owes that amount of money?

I was glad to be able to attend the rural and islands youth parliament in Fort William. To see so many young people there was really refreshing. The parliament gives them the opportunity to talk about the issues that have had an impact on them. It is very important that we listen to young people, because they are the very people we need to retain in our rural and island communities to address depopulation.

I welcome the tone of the cabinet secretary’s comments in that regard, and I hope that they lead to a step change in dealing with young people’s very real concerns. At the moment, we are forcing them out of rural and island communities, rather than retaining them.

Rightly, housing was one of the main issues that the youth parliament talked about, and it called for reform of the housing market to meet the needs of rural and island communities. The market is failing those communities, and there needs to be a rebalancing of power between communities and the market. Those communities need to be empowered. They need affordable housing. However, by “affordable housing”, we are not talking about what urban communities would see as housing association housing or council housing, although rural and island communities need that, too. The truth is that price inflation is so great that it does not reflect the market conditions in those areas, and it does not reflect the average wages there. A lot of people in rural and island areas simply want to buy, like everybody else, and to be able to enter the market.

On top of that, we need to consider a range of options, such as council housing, affordable housing through housing associations and croft housing. However, the croft housing grant does not allow for such things as an office, an extra room for bed and breakfast or a room to work as a weaver. It does not allow for remote working from the croft house. We need to consider different solutions for different people, and there has to be a diverse range of solutions for young people.

Investing in housing is good at the moment, and that can have an impact on one person. However, if we do not consider ways to retain that housing for the population who live and work in rural and island areas, we are wasting that money. We need to take rural housing burdens into account to ensure that the houses cannot be sold on as second homes or holiday homes.

The young people at the youth parliament rightly talked about health and wellbeing. We can understand why when we listen to young people talking about their access to health services and their distance from them. The parliament focused a lot on mental health—as young people do—and talked about self-help and online support. There is no such thing as privacy in a rural area. There is no access to public transport. People cannot go to access services on their own. They need to involve others, and that comes with stigma.

The youth parliament talked about the desperately long waiting lists for CAMHS and about young people’s transitions to adult services. My colleague Pam Duncan-Glancy tried to address that issue through her Disabled Children and Young People (Transitions to Adulthood) (Scotland) Bill. Sadly, this Parliament voted it down, but it would have addressed some of the young people’s concerns.

We also need to look at transport in relation to health. Once again, the A9 north is blocked because of the snow. Imagine being in labour and giving birth while on the A9 when it is blocked because of a snowdrift. That is a possibility. We have been told that it is unsafe for any pregnant women with complications to give birth in Wick. We need to make sure that local services are in place so that people never face that situation.

It is the same with ferries and buses. There are very few buses, and ferries are often cancelled, which means that young people cannot access the services that they need.

However, it was not all doom and gloom. The young people talked about there being lots of opportunities. They saw themselves as being involved in reform to address the problems. They wanted to be directly involved in the reform of education, which does not meet their needs. They were very clear that there are opportunities, not just in traditional industries but in new technologies, which they want to be able to access. There is no reason why they cannot do that, because of the way in which those are delivered. That would give them a huge opportunity to be able to stay in their communities and access not just traditional jobs but new and different jobs.

The Scottish Labour Party brings those issues to the Parliament every week. We need the Scottish Government to listen to young people and to support them to attain their ambitions for themselves. Their ambitions are for the survival of our rural and island communities, because, without young people, those communities will not survive.

I move amendment S6M-11896.1, to insert at end:

“; considers that access to health services, homes and opportunities are essential to young people in rural and island areas; believes that young people who live in these areas are best placed to advise on what is needed, and urges the Scottish Government to address the issues highlighted and put in place a strategy and timeline to address them, as it is vital to halt depopulation and retain young people in rural areas.”

I, too, thank Ruth Maguire for bringing forward the debate, and I pay tribute to the work of Diane Martin.

I, too, am a proud member of the steering group for the campaign, which has produced a number of reports, of which “International Insights” is the latest. That report highlights what Scotland can learn from other countries to combat commercial sexual exploitation. Commercial sexual exploitation is international, so it is important that we work together. We can learn from other countries.

Back in 1999, Sweden became the first country to combat commercial sexual exploitation by criminalising paying for sex. In 1996, 12.7 per cent of men in Sweden paid for sex. In 2008, the figure was 7.6 per cent. That is almost a halving of the number, just because of that change in the law.

Ruth Maguire talked about other countries. Among our nearest neighbours, France shifted the burden of criminality in 2016 and Ireland did the same the following year. In 2017, the USA tackled pimping websites and there was a huge decrease in the number of people who used those websites, and in demand. That was highlighted by A Model for Scotland’s report on online pimping, which is well worth a read for those who are interested in that area.

It is essential that we deal with demand, because trafficking for sexual exploitation is the most profitable form of modern slavery in the world and is fuelled by demand. It is a global industry of more than $100 billion per year. In countries that take the more liberal approach of normalising prostitution, there are higher levels of trafficking. In those that take the opposite approach, human trafficking has decreased as a consequence.

We can learn four important lessons from the countries that have tackled the issue. It is crucial to support those who exit prostitution. In France, 600 women have benefited from the exiting programme that was set up in conjunction with the laws that were made in 2016. Support from that programme includes financial support, accommodation support, support for the damages that are caused by prostitution and help for people to get their lives back on an even keel.

We have also learned that training for law enforcement, including the police, is essential. In Sweden, that was perhaps not done as well as it could have been, given that it was the first country to promote such a law. It has since learned from that and put in place training. It is essential that law enforcement agencies know how to tackle the issue and how to prosecute.

We also have to make sure that online pimping websites are tackled, because that really reduces demand, given that those who use such websites can hide behind their computer.

We also need strong political leadership to do those things, because, in every other country that has tackled the issue, politicians have faced strong opposition to change. There are societal pressures, in that some people believe that a woman’s place in society is lower than a man’s. However, it is also the case that the industry is huge—people make a lot of money from the exploitation of others.

Ruth Maguire pointed out our international obligations to tackle violence against women, trafficking and exploitation, and it is important that we take that lead. The Scottish Government must bring forward a framework to challenge men’s demand for prostitution. That framework needs to set out legislation to address demand and to put in place assistance for those who are exploited. Most of all, it needs to stop Scotland’s provision of a favourable environment for exploitation.