Chamber and committees

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on the steps it is taking to tackle violence against women. (S6O-01459)

I thank the cabinet secretary for providing prior sight of the statement.

My constituents in Moray are extremely concerned that model 4 is unsafe and is, at best, a distraction from delivering model 6. At worst, it could become the permanent solution. Those concerns are backed up by the clinicians at Raigmore hospital, who tell us that the service at Raigmore is currently unsafe and cannot take an additional 190 patients, far less the 650 to 900 that they predict. The gulf in those numbers is because the Government’s estimate is based on United Kingdom-wide figures and not remote and rural figures, which demand a more risk-averse approach, given the distances that patients have to travel in an emergency.

The cabinet secretary is saying that he hears those concerns, but he has given no indication in his statement of how they will be resolved. He will have a plan at the end of December, but can I ask for the detail of how and, more importantly, when model 6—not just the plan—will be delivered?

In the midst of this mess are people, as Katy Clark has pointed out: people who are trying to live their lives, work and run their businesses. It is almost impossible for them to do that with ferry services that are not working.

When the Lochboisdale ferry business impact group looked at the economic effect of losing the Lochboisdale to Mallaig ferry services for a short period and surveyed business regarding losses, it concluded that, in 14 days, there had been an estimated loss of £658,000 to the local economy, with no compensation. That is just what happened over 14 days, on a route that tends to be the first sacrificed when there is disruption.

We have to look only at the level of disruption on all the west coast routes to understand the economic damage that is being done to fragile island communities. Yesterday we debated depopulation—we need look no further to see the reasons for that.

We want these routes to remain in public ownership, as my colleague Neil Bibby has said. We believe that people should come before profit on lifeline services. However, that does not mean that we believe that this Government is doing a good job—far from it. The Scottish Government needs to confirm that there will be no more expensive tendering processes on the island routes. Years of failure on the part of the Scottish Government are coming home to roost, and the Government needs to find a workable solution now.

There has been a drip-drip of scandal about what went wrong with the Arran and Harris-Uist ferry procurement process. It beggars belief, yet we are no closer to understanding what happened. That procurement needs independent scrutiny of every detail of the process. Willie Rennie is right—no one is taking responsibility. At best, this is an incompetent Government; at worst, it is dishonest.

Our amendment talks about the workforce at Ferguson’s, who, sadly, have also been let down, as Neil Bibby has said. The Government must support the Ferguson’s workforce to rebuild its reputation and grow in confidence.

What is also unbelievable about all this is that the Government fines CalMac when services are cancelled and unreliable, although the Government itself is responsible. Maybe the Government should use some of those fines to compensate businesses and the people who face the cost of cancellations.

Katy Clark has said that we need urgent action, but the minister says that she cannot act because she needs to consult islanders. However, the minister’s Government failed to consult initially. We all know that islanders wanted smaller and faster boats, with more sailings and more flexibility in the fleet. They did not get that.

There must be an independent inquiry. We have little confidence that the Scottish Government will furnish Audit Scotland with the information that it needs to investigate. We know that in the past the Government has withheld information, making it impossible for Audit Scotland to do its job.

The winter is coming, when disruption is at its highest. Islanders cannot wait for action. The minister blames weather, but frankly the issue is not the weather, but the wrong ferry on the wrong route in the winter. This is Scotland, after all—we expect bad weather in the winter.

Islanders need good, reliable boats to serve communities, so that people can work, build businesses and get to family and health appointments. Islanders have suffered too long. This incompetent Government needs to act now.

What is being trailed by the BBC is very worrying, as is the Deputy First Minister’s answer about being unable to find any exchange of documents. The Auditor General struggled to investigate the procurement process previously. What changes has the Deputy First Minister made? What information will he make available to allow the Auditor General to investigate thoroughly? In the interests of full transparency, will he now agree to an independent public inquiry into the whole fiasco and, indeed, to call in the police if corruption is suspected?

The length of speeches is growing.

Indeed; inflationary speeches.

I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests.

Population decline is complex and demographics are changing; Daniel Johnson and Richard Leonard explored many of those issues in their speeches. We all welcome long life, so it is hugely disappointing that Scottish life expectancy is falling for the first time in generations, which is a point that Donald Cameron made. We also have falling birth rates, which is not surprising given that the cost of living is rising, affordable housing is lacking and support for working families is sparse, which is a point that Daniel Johnson made.

In the areas that are most affected by skills shortages—rural Scotland—childcare is almost non-existent. We are all aware of skills shortages in our rural communities and of hotels and pubs shutting because of a lack of staff. Pauline McNeill pointed out that 25 per cent of the EU workforce has been lost in the industry, and that there has been a 28 per cent drop in the EU workforce in agriculture. Crops are rotting in the ground in the face of a food shortage, because the migrant workforce are struggling to get work visas to allow them to come into the country and harvest the crops. Those points were made by a number of speakers, including Paul McLennan.

Richard Leonard is right to say that it is often the sectors that pay less that suffer the greatest labour shortages, but shortages are not being met with higher pay. Sadly, they are being met in many areas by the growth of illegal trafficking. I join with him in paying tribute to the late Jim Sheridan for his work on combating labour exploitation.

Those skills shortages have led to long waiting lists to access care in the community and hospitals closing their doors due to a lack of staff. That is not always because staff do not want to work in our rural communities or there are too few staff, but often because staff cannot afford to live there.

That has been made worse by Brexit and having a one-size-fits-all immigration policy that does not fit all areas of the UK. As Pauline McNeill points out, those issues were there before, but Brexit made them worse.

We must also remember that there are other issues that are just as impactful on population retention, such as housing, jobs and services. I think that every speaker mentioned those issues in some measure.

I know from my casework that young people would stay in rural communities—Emma Roddick and others made that point. Most of them desperately want to stay in their communities, but they are being forced out. This generation faces not only a lack of jobs; it faces a lack of housing. Houses come on the market, but they sell at prices that are way beyond the means of young people. People who are retiring from the cities can buy with cash at prices that are way over the values of the properties, and that is inflating all rural house prices. We have communities in which over half of the houses are second homes or holiday lets. Communities cannot sustain that level of absenteeism. Let me be clear: I am not against holiday lets or second homes, but they have to be proportional to the community that they are in.

The island bond was rightly scrapped because all that it would have done would have been to inflate house prices on islands by an additional £50,000, as those moving into the area would also have had access to that money. It would be much better to make that money available to local people—to young people—to build their own homes, and to protect that investment by public purse with a burden that the house remains within the community as a full-time home.

Jim Hunter has called for a Highlands and Islands housing authority. I believe that that requires consideration. That such an approach is being called for highlights the urgency of the problem.

Yes. We need jobs and services. We also need good-quality homes, because we often see that the houses that are lying empty are wrecked. They cannot be heated because they are draughty old houses. Investment in those houses is needed as well as investment in the people who live in them to ensure that jobs and services are available. We cannot attract people into communities without that.

When we look at having visas to encourage repopulation, we need to consider having a finessed system. I live in Inverness, which continues to grow to the point that schools and facilities are overstretched. A report on demographic challenges in the Highlands and Islands pointed out that areas such as Argyll and Bute, the Outer Hebrides, Caithness and Sutherland are in need of intervention. It is projected that Highland in general will have a small population growth of around 1.4 per cent, whereas the populations in fragile communities such as Caithness will fall by more than 21 per cent, the population in Easter Ross will come down by nearly 14 per cent, and the population of Sutherland will come down by almost 12 per cent. We need to guard against swapping one broad-brush policy for another, and we should perhaps look at identifying repopulation zones.

I agree with Angus Robertson that those who migrate need to be able to take family with them. I know families who found it absolutely unsustainable to stay, which is a problem especially if they had elderly relatives who needed care at home and they could not bring them with them. That also impacts on grown-up children of the family. The bespoke immigration policy that Donald Cameron speaks about needs to take that into account. The policy has to attract the skills that we have shortages of, but it also has to take into account the family and their social needs.

Beatrice Wishart talked about broadband connectivity in rural areas. There are more opportunities to get high-quality jobs into rural areas, but that is dependent on having connectivity. We all work differently because of the pandemic, and home working is available to an extent. However, we need to ensure that there is connectivity. I know of cases in which families are considering leaving because they cannot work as a result of the lack of connectivity.

Kenny Gibson and Brian Whittle talked about urbanisation and about depopulation impacting on rural areas when urban areas are growing, which is an issue everywhere. We must think about how we support our rural communities with services to address that. We recently debated the centralisation of health services in the Highlands and Islands. For basic healthcare, some of my constituents travel the equivalent of a journey from Edinburgh to Newcastle.

Public transport needs to be available in rural areas, as Brian Whittle said, because, otherwise, people are dependent on cars. We know that the cost of living in rural areas was already 20 to 40 per cent higher than in other areas, and that is getting worse with the economic policies that the Conservative Government in London is pursuing, as Richard Leonard and Pauline McNeill said. Those policies are atrocious; they will impact on all of us and push the cost of living even higher for those who are low paid. Scottish Government back benchers have said that independence is the only response to all that, but what we need is proper devolution of migration policies and a Scottish Government that focuses on jobs, housing and services, which are all within its reach.

People are essential to our economy. If we do not have workers, our economy fails. They work and pay taxes. We need inward migration, but we also need to provide homes, jobs and services to keep our own young people, at the same time as attracting fresh talent into our depopulated areas.

As someone who is pretty much chained to my Samsung—not my iPhone, I have to say—I do not think that I would like that. I would feel absolutely bereft if those devices were to be banned from the chamber. I am owning up to that.

I thank my colleague for supporting me.

In the previous session, a number of women stood down because the Parliament was not family friendly; it did not allow them to bring up their children in the way that they were happy with and be parliamentarians at the same time. That is disappointing.

However, rather than responding to that positively to find solutions, the Parliament appears to have become even less family friendly. Here we are in a new session, yet late sittings and variable decision times are causing members real problems. A decision time that runs a few minutes late can have an impact on what train a member, or, indeed, a member of staff, can catch and whether they can pick up their children as organised, as can adding statements at the last minute and pushing decision time way back.

We should adhere to a set decision time if we are going to be family friendly. The Scottish Government needs to be more organised with regard to business planning and it needs to support the family friendly ethos that the Parliament was set up to deliver. I really do not want to see a system where those who have caring responsibilities need to remain remote because the Scottish Parliament cannot be more disciplined.

As I have said, people who are working remotely lose out on the other activities of the Parliament, so they must have choice and flexibility. Due to fluctuating decision times, a number of members have indicated to me that they drive rather than take the train—I include myself in that. For people who live away from home while attending the Parliament, it has never been family friendly. Remote working could provide an alternative.

If I may, I will turn quickly to proxy voting. I believe that there is a place for it within our system. We currently have a pairing system for those who are on maternity leave, but a proxy system could work just as well, and it could also be used during sick leave and compassionate leave, when remote voting does not work. I am pleased that the committee is going to pursue that, albeit with some caution.

I am also pleased that the committee is keeping an eye on future developments and what the Parliament should look like in 10 years. One of the advantages of having a new Parliament was that there were no traditions or cultures. Over the years, I have seen that each new Parliament is very different from the previous one—and I like that. I hope that the Scottish Parliament continues to evolve as a result of circumstances and challenges, and that it remains fresh and modern while retaining its founding ethos.

I start by thanking the committee for the report. It is right that the Parliament keeps its procedures under review and ensures that they are modernised as required. That said, none of us could possibly have foreseen the impact of Covid-19 on our procedures. That the Parliament successfully found and implemented a system that enabled people to participate in parliamentary business so quickly is down to our support staff—those people behind the scenes who work hard to find solutions. On behalf of the Scottish Labour Party—I am sure other parties would concur—I thank them for that. I also want to thank them for their patience while we all got the hang of the system. Given that some of us are still grappling with it, they must be so looking forward to the new system coming online.

There is a balance to be struck with regard to meeting online in a hybrid format or meeting in person. Each system has benefits and drawbacks. We took meeting in person for granted but, as we saw during the pandemic, there are times when that is not possible or even safe. Before the pandemic, people came into the building when they were unwell, simply because they had to do that in order to take part in proceedings. Colds and viruses spread because of that but, if people did not come in, they were not able to represent their constituents. Because we now have the hybrid system that was set up to deal with Covid-19, people who would otherwise not have been able to participate can do so. However, those taking part remotely lose out—the flow of the debate is stilted and it is difficult for them to get a feel for the mood of the debate. I hope that the new system will enable people online to intervene on people in the chamber, and people in the chamber to intervene on people online.

What cannot be replicated is meeting people in the time around the debate and exchanging more information that way, or even having informal chats with ministers and cabinet secretaries. All of those activities are useful in terms of enabling us to represent our constituents.

We need to balance that against the benefit of enabling people who are unwell or who have caring responsibilities to take part. Certainly, from my point of view, allowing people who are at a distance to take part in giving evidence to committees has been successful. I would often suggest the names of people from the Highlands and Islands to come to committees, only to discover that they could not commit the time. Allowing remote contributions also allows the Parliament to open up and take evidence from all over Scotland.