Chamber and committees

I thank Douglas Ross for securing the motion for debate and for the joint working that we have done, and the Minister for Agriculture and Connectivity for his engagement.

Gulls behaving naturally are a menace to humans. If a gull, a gigantic creature, swoops on an elderly person with poor balance and they fall over and break a hip, their mortality might be reduced by 18 months and they might be housebound. Infants in a pram or a buggy who get guano droppings on their hands or near them will put that in their mouth, which can cause all sorts of diseases—histoplasmosis, cryptococcosis, psittacosis, ornithosis, salmonellosis and E coli—I will give the Official Report the spellings. Those diseases are potentially lethal.

What survey analysis has been done by NatureScot or the health sections of the Scottish Government about the health risk? I am very serious about that. I believe that there has been no analysis whatsoever. If that is so, and there is a fatality, the Government will be held responsible, because it has not looked into the issue.

Under section 4 of the Regulatory Reform (Scotland) Act 2014—I know, because I wrote it—there is a duty on all quangos to take account of the economic impact of their decisions. The economic impact on the business improvement districts is that they have to pay tens of thousands of pounds; instead of improving business, which is their role, they are having to sweep up the mess for NatureScot.

However, I will set out the real problem, which I mentioned in my intervention on Mr Ruskell. Incidentally, I have met NatureScot several times. We have been in lengthy correspondence, and I am fortunate to have had sight of a lengthy freedom of information response that a constituent received. I cannot read it all out—I do not have the time—but I will sum it up.

NatureScot has made its assertions constantly. Understandably, the minister has to rely on the advice that he gets—that is true, to a certain extent. However, once he reads that FOI response, he will see that there is no reliable data for the urban gull population. There were repeated requests for that data in 2021, 2023 and 2024—I could read those out, but I do not have the time—but it never came.

When officials raised the issue with the Joint Nature Conservation Committee of the UK Government, they said that “unfortunately” it had been raised again by an MSP. Why on earth are officials expressing a view that it is wrong for a parliamentarian to raise a concern? I say to the minister that they do that repeatedly. There is bias behind the scenes. The system is fundamentally flawed.

The summit should be chaired by an independent person, it should be open to the public, and it should have presentations from Lorraine McBride, Lucy Harding and others who have done sterling work but who should not have to have done so. As the minister knows, I profoundly believe that. I am not saying it for any effect other than to solve the problem in Scotland. That is what we are here for.

The system is defective. It is flawed from top to bottom. It needs to be completely redrawn. NatureScot should have nothing to do with licences, because there is a clear conflict of interest between that responsibility and its responsibilities for the conservancy of species.

It has just been stated that the populations of herring gulls and urban black gulls—the two main species—have declined, but there is no evidence for that. In fact, NatureScot now admits that there is no such evidence regarding the populations of the urban-based species. Therefore, the whole debate is proceeding on a false assertion.

Will the minister address the point that I made that the basis of the restriction on licensing was that NatureScot argued—wrongly, I believe—that the populations of the two species that I named were in decline when, in fact, there is no evidence of that? Will the minister study the FOI responses if I send them to him? They prove beyond any doubt that there is no evidence that the populations are in decline. Therefore, what he said to me in his letter of 12 June is simply incorrect and the whole business is proceeding on the basis of a false assertion by NatureScot.

I thank Douglas Ross for securing the motion for debate and for the joint working that we have done, and the Minister for Agriculture and Connectivity for his engagement.

Gulls behaving naturally are a menace to humans. If a gull, a gigantic creature, swoops on an elderly person with poor balance and they fall over and break a hip, their mortality might be reduced by 18 months and they might be housebound. Infants in a pram or a buggy who get guano droppings on their hands or near them will put that in their mouth, which can cause all sorts of diseases—histoplasmosis, cryptococcosis, psittacosis, ornithosis, salmonellosis and E coli—I will give the Official Report the spellings. Those diseases are potentially lethal.

What survey analysis has been done by NatureScot or the health sections of the Scottish Government about the health risk? I am very serious about that. I believe that there has been no analysis whatsoever. If that is so, and there is a fatality, the Government will be held responsible, because it has not looked into the issue.

Under section 4 of the Regulatory Reform (Scotland) Act 2014—I know, because I wrote it—there is a duty on all quangos to take account of the economic impact of their decisions. The economic impact on the business improvement districts is that they have to pay tens of thousands of pounds; instead of improving business, which is their role, they are having to sweep up the mess for NatureScot.

However, I will set out the real problem, which I mentioned in my intervention on Mr Ruskell. Incidentally, I have met NatureScot several times. We have been in lengthy correspondence, and I am fortunate to have had sight of a lengthy freedom of information response that a constituent received. I cannot read it all out—I do not have the time—but I will sum it up.

NatureScot has made its assertions constantly. Understandably, the minister has to rely on the advice that he gets—that is true, to a certain extent. However, once he reads that FOI response, he will see that there is no reliable data for the urban gull population. There were repeated requests for that data in 2021, 2023 and 2024—I could read those out, but I do not have the time—but it never came.

When officials raised the issue with the Joint Nature Conservation Committee of the UK Government, they said that “unfortunately” it had been raised again by an MSP. Why on earth are officials expressing a view that it is wrong for a parliamentarian to raise a concern? I say to the minister that they do that repeatedly. There is bias behind the scenes. The system is fundamentally flawed.

The summit should be chaired by an independent person, it should be open to the public, and it should have presentations from Lorraine McBride, Lucy Harding and others who have done sterling work but who should not have to have done so. As the minister knows, I profoundly believe that. I am not saying it for any effect other than to solve the problem in Scotland. That is what we are here for.

The system is defective. It is flawed from top to bottom. It needs to be completely redrawn. NatureScot should have nothing to do with licences, because there is a clear conflict of interest between that responsibility and its responsibilities for the conservancy of species.

The building at 48 South Street, Elgin was worth £275,000, yet the minister’s predecessor spent £3.5 million on decarbonising it. That was by no means a lone example of a project that was an utter waste of money, and the minister agreed that that was the case. Therefore, why has phase 2 of the funding been approved? Why is it going ahead? Applications closed at the end of May. Before making any decisions on how to spend that money, will the minister report to the Parliament on how he proposes that it should be spent? Would it not be better to spend it on dualling the A9?

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. I seek your guidance. From my hearing of what the cabinet secretary said, she told Parliament that there is representation from small businesses on the board of UK DMO board. I believe that not to be true—the reason being that the Scottish Grocers Federation, which sought to be on that board, was refused, and its contention is that there is no small business representation on the board, despite the fact that small grocery shops around the UK do not have the space to put in reverse vending machines and do not have the logistical capacity to deal viably with the scheme, and that all the flaws—I believe that there are around 40—in the Scottish scheme are manifest in the UK scheme. If it is the case that the cabinet secretary has misinformed the Parliament, what remedies do I have to correct that important error?

To ask the Scottish Government when general practitioner vaccination services will be fully restored to GPs in NHS Highland, in light of reported concerns that the proposed hybrid model is less safe and more expensive. (S6O-04785)

I warmly congratulate Colin Smyth on his dogged pursuit of this issue and on the speech that he gave today, which is one of the finest that we have heard in this session of Parliament. I also commend members across all the main parties—Mr Cole-Hamilton, Mr Golden, Mr Greene and many others—who have supported the Fornethy victims in the meetings of the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee and in the chamber. It is a matter of some shame that this debate is so poorly attended. It reflects badly on us all.

Presiding Officer, you have given a ruling that we cannot talk about the abuse that was inflicted on these innocent girls. I will respect that, but, having read through the histories of abuse and the lifelong impacts that that has had on the girls as adults and for the whole of their lives, it is plain to me that this Parliament, if it stands for anything, must redress that injustice. I hope that we can all unite behind that.

The sad fact is that the palpable, egregious and serious injustice that was caused to the most innocent girls in the country over a sustained period of more than 30 years, for several weeks at a time, which is the truth of the matter, has still not been redressed by either the Glasgow Corporation or the Scottish Government. The Scottish Government must take the lead. We must accept the responsibility to do that. How it is done is a mere detail. If it requires legislative reform, that must be done. If it requires an executive direction to Redress Scotland, that must be done. We cannot hide behind legalistic arguments.

The idea that these children were put there for a holiday or respite care is an insult. As well as being an insult, it is factually wrong. Fornethy was a residential school. The corporation advertised for teachers. What do teachers do? They teach in schools. Therefore, that argument is just an insult to the victims. It is platitudinous, pedantic, nitpicking and legalistic, and I do not think for one moment that the current Deputy First Minister would seek to invoke or stand behind it.

The other argument, as Mr Smyth has said, is that the girls did not cease to be under parental control. Are people really saying that the parents consented to the abuse that their children suffered? What arrant nonsense. What an absurd argument. The indisputable fact is that the girls were sent there by Glasgow Corporation. Glasgow Corporation owned the school. It was part of the state. The state is responsible for the abuse. It was young children who were abused. Abuse is always unacceptable, but it is despicable when it happens to young children.

With respect, Presiding Officer, I am not convinced that the sub judice law applies here in respect of the ability of the Government to provide a solution. It cannot hide behind that.

I was going to read from what the Deputy First Minister’s predecessor said two years ago, but I will note only that she said that a solution would be found. That was two years ago. Why has a solution not been found?

The Government must admit its mistake and say, “We got it wrong.” It takes guts to do that, and I believe that the Deputy First Minister has guts. All her colleagues are decent human beings. It is time for them to act, because, as Marcus Aurelius said,

“you can also commit injustice by doing nothing”.

Over the past three or four years, I have raised with the cabinet secretary and his two predecessors that a GP-run service would save millions of pounds a year—a fact that the cabinet secretary appears to ignore. More important, it would be safer because, as the cabinet secretary well knows, we have already lost the life of one infant, because of the negligence of a centralised national health service system. Given the concerns and the fact that the vaccination service will not, even now, be returned to GPs for this winter, will the cabinet secretary intervene and demand that NHS Highland return the service to GPs before any more damage is caused to patients in my constituency in the Highlands?

I note what the Deputy First Minister says in relation to the sub judice rule. However, the sub judice rule relates to a criminal case that is due to be heard in the High Court in September. If nothing happens until after that case is over, nothing will happen in this session of Parliament. In any event, is it not the case that the current legal proceedings may prevent us from discussing aspects today, but what they do not do—and what they cannot do—is fetter the powers of the Government to bring forward a solution? Therefore, with respect, Deputy First Minister, you cannot hide behind the sub judice rule.