Chamber and committees

I will drill down to one small aspect. Fuel poverty is a huge problem for our islands. The small islands will be a good test bed for Government policy on fuel poverty. I am talking specifically about boiler replacement and insulation. Has work been done on that that we can roll out quickly? To me, that speaks of changes to national Government policy rather than being something that is specific to those wee islands. However, if we could test the policy there, it would be a win-win if we could then roll it out to other islands.

I have a couple of quick questions about depopulation. Kevin Stewart was told that the impact of what is happening with ferries just now is worse for the economy of the islands than the impact of Covid, which is pretty horrendous. What can you do in your role? The Scottish Government has policies for stopping depopulation, so what can be done in that regard?

I am also interested in the impact of depopulation on Gaelic. At the moment, young native Gaelic speakers and Gaelic-speaking families are leaving the islands. Although we can try to bring new people in, they will not speak Gaelic, which means that, within a generation, we could lose the whole language. I am not saying that we should not increase the number of people coming in or that we should not encourage people to do so, but we need to keep our own.

You talked about funding and how we are going to get it. Is the islands programme providing any funding for this? Can the national islands plan play a role?

I am concerned because we need to reach net zero as a country and these are small islands. You seemed to indicate that we can get to grips with how much carbon there is, but I was not so confident when you talked about the plans that are coming from the islands—you talked about dreams, funding and cost. If we cannot do this on a tiny scale in the islands, what hope do we have of reaching the greater goal of Scotland becoming carbon neutral?

The Scottish Government’s motion is factually correct; however, we have concerns about its tone, which is complacent and passes the buck.

The Trussell Trust distributed 259,744 emergency food parcels in Scotland between 1 April 2022 and 31 March 2023—that is more than a quarter of a million, and almost one third of them were delivered to families with children. That is the largest amount of parcels that it has ever distributed and represents a 30 per cent increase on the year before. Those statistics represent families that are unable to feed their children. They represent people desperate for food—people who will have their health and life expectancy damaged because of poor nutrition. Can any one of us imagine what it must be like to be so desperate for food that you need to go to a food bank?

Although the work of food banks is a lifeline—and I pay tribute to the organisations and volunteers who provide that lifeline—it is dehumanising to be forced to depend on them. It is equally unacceptable that many of the people who do also work in industries that provide the food that we eat. The Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union has surveyed its members and found that a third depend on family and friends for food and 17 per cent had used food banks. Imagine working in a bakery and smelling bread baking but going home to empty shelves and hungry children.

The Scottish Government has levers to change that. It has promised a national plan for ending the need for food banks. It published the consultation responses in January 2022. At that time, it promised a final plan to end food banks that winter. That has still not been published. In the circumstances we face, that is not good enough. The Government must urgently produce its plan to end the need for food banks in Scotland.

During the passage of the Good Food Nation (Scotland) Act 2022, the Scottish Government also had the opportunity to enshrine the human right to food in our legislation, but SNP and Green members voted that down. They also voted down empowering the Scottish food commission to realise that ambition. That could have made a practical difference, but they voted it down.

We agree with the motion that the Conservative Government should do much more. We also agree that Brexit has been deeply damaging. However, we cannot turn the clock back, and re-entry to the EU is not an option at this time. The SNP knows that, but Brexit and independence are simply two sides of the one nationalist coin. For the Scottish Government simply to blame the UK Government without doing everything in its power to change the stark situation that our citizens face is hypocritical.

That is slightly above my pay grade because I am not standing for the UK Parliament and neither do I intend to next year. I will leave the matter to colleagues who are better placed to do those negotiations.

We support the Liberal Democrat amendment. It points out the importance of our seas to providing food security and rightly points out that it is undermined by the Scottish Government’s HPMA plans.

The Conservative amendment appears to be taking a leaf out of the SNP-Green Government’s playbook by being very self-congratulatory in the face of the grim reality that is faced by our citizens. Although there are things in the amendment that we would support, there are others that we cannot. The Conservatives appear to blame the war in Ukraine for all our inflation problems. That is clearly not the case, so we cannot support their amendment.

I move amendment S6M-09014.2, to insert at end:

“; believes that it is unacceptable in the 21st century, in a resource rich nation, that so many people are living in food poverty and relying on food banks; notes that many of those who are living in food poverty are those who work in the food industry; urges more action on addressing low pay, zero-hours contracts and insecure work for those producing Scottish food; recognises the powers that the Scottish Government has that could be used to mitigate the cost of living crisis; believes that food production and a sustainable environment can work hand in hand for the benefit of both, and do not need to be at the expense of one or the other, and further believes that the right to food should be enshrined in Scots law, and that the Scottish Food Commission should be empowered to realise that policy urgently.”

For one thing, I do not think that it would have us back.

The Scottish Government could use procurement to ensure that people are paid the real living wage. It could insist that companies with which it contracts pay at that level and do not use zero-hours contracts or subcontract to companies that do. With one stroke of a pen, that would change the low-wage, insecure work patterns in Scotland—practices that force workers to food banks.

Although energy costs and the energy market fall to the UK Government, the Scottish Government has failed to use its powers to protect the poorest in society. Energy usage is very much in the hands of the Scottish Government. The fastest way out of fuel poverty is to reduce energy usage, but the Scottish Government does not have a strategy for that. It offers insulation loans, but people who live in fuel poverty and are dependent on food banks do not have the money to pay off loans. Instead, the Scottish Government insists that any heating assistance is invested in heat pumps, which simply do not work in homes that are not well insulated.

The Scottish Government set a ceiling for ScotWind licences, forgoing billions of pounds. It also did not insist on community benefit. Had it done so, that money could have been used to provide low-cost fuel for communities and funds to insulate homes.

The Government could also use its procurement powers, as well as agricultural subsidies, to ensure that food is procured as locally as possible and sustainably. That would not only cut carbon used to transport food long distances but sustain local farmers and crofters.

With the powers that the Scottish Government has, it could make a huge difference to people’s lives, but it does not.

I was speaking about the Scottish Government using its own powers. For example, its consultation on ending the need for food banks in Scotland was supposed to come forward with a plan of work last winter and it has not. When will we see that plan of work?

I have a short supplementary question on that. In crofting counties, there are a lot of common grazings, where different crofters use the same area to graze their cattle. Would what is proposed have an impact on that? Obviously, someone will go out and give advice to the crofter or farmer on how to isolate infected cattle. It is unlikely that neighbours would not be aware that something was happening, but, in the strange event that they did not know and their cattle were still moving about with the infected cattle, would they be badly penalised, given that they had not done anything wrong? It was simply that they did not have the information, and somebody else had put them at risk.

We, as members of the Scottish Parliament, have the privilege of serving the people of Scotland. We must do that in their best interests and as transparently as possible. It is right that they know of any interests that we may have that could influence our decision making. While we must not allow those interests to influence our work, we need to go further. We need to be clear and transparent about interests where a member of the public could reasonably believe that those interests would influence our decision making. It is very easy for us to make a judgment about what does or does not influence our activities, but that might not be apparent to an onlooker.

I do not think anyone in the chamber would believe that they are influenced by the things that we declare in our entry in the register of members’ interests. It is quite the opposite—we would all avoid things that would in any way compromise our ability to act freely.

However, we must understand that our constituents do not know us personally. We must also recognise how they might reasonably believe that we could be influenced by certain interests. That is why we have a register of interests and why we as MSPs must take every step to ensure that we abide by the rules regarding the register of interests and the declaration of those interests.

I thank the committee and the commissioner for their work on this case. I note that the report was agreed unanimously by the committee and that the penalty that it proposes is not overly detrimental. However, it provides a useful reminder to us all to be meticulous in registering and declaring our interests. For that reason, I will support the committee’s recommendations and urge colleagues to do the same.

The cabinet secretary says that she is consulting on the 10 per cent level, but that figure is included in the Bute house agreement. Is it up for negotiation or is it set in stone?