Chamber and committees

I am aware of and concerned by those issues. I reassure Meghan Gallacher and her constituents that all cases that are presented to Police Scotland are taken seriously, and that will be the case in relation to those examples.

It is patently obvious that criminal behaviour is involved, so there will be a need for that information to be handled within the criminal justice system, to ensure that those responsible can be prosecuted for the acts that they are taking forward.

With that caveat, I am happy to advise that the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs will raise the issue with the chief constable. However, the amount of information that can be made available will be constrained by the necessity to protect that information in order to support criminal prosecutions, which there should be in the cases of the behaviour that Meghan Gallacher has put to me today.

On all occasions, the welfare and safety of workforces must be paramount in any industrial activity in our country. That is why the Health and Safety Executive, which is a reserved agency, exercises its responsibilities and why I strongly support its work to ensure that the aspirations that Mercedes Villalba puts to me are reflected in working practices in all circumstances, particularly in the acutely serious context of offshore platforms.

I very much welcome the role of the HSE in protecting the safety of workers.

I am very keen to make sure that a deal is arrived at on whisky tariffs. As members will know, I have put significant effort into trying to ensure that the case is made directly to the President of the United States. However, as members also know, trade deals cannot be negotiated by the Scottish Government—they have to be negotiated by the United Kingdom Government.

I am waiting with expectation for the UK Government to do what it should have been doing all along, which is to give priority to Scotch whisky and to ensure that we are exempt from United States tariffs. We are waiting for the UK to deliver the action that we all expect it to deliver.

I very much associate myself with the comments that Douglas Ross has made.

Mr Ross will be aware that the Government relies on the advice from the UK National Screening Committee, as do all Governments across the United Kingdom. That is dispassionate advice, which the screening committee gathers and shares with us. Mr Ross will appreciate that, although many of us will be enormously sympathetic to the point of view that he puts forward, when we receive formal advice, we have to have good reason to depart from it.

At the request of Sir Chris Hoy, I chaired a discussion in Bute house a few weeks ago that drew together a range of different experts on prostate cancer. I wanted to challenge whether more could be done to expand screening, as Sir Chris Hoy was very much requesting, and which request I also heard strongly expressed in Kenny Macintyre’s contribution at the weekend.

We have asked the chief medical officer in Scotland to take forward further scrutiny and consideration of the issue, and ministers in the Scottish Government are very much open to looking afresh at that question. There will be further updates to share with Parliament in due course.

For today, I reinforce Mr Ross’s point and encourage any man who is concerned about this issue to pursue any testing that they think is necessary, given that we all know that the earlier such circumstances are identified, the better the outcomes are likely to be. I welcome Mr Ross’s contribution and assure him of the Government’s focused intervention to try to address the issue.

I acknowledge the importance of the services that are provided by Turning Point in Glasgow. Obviously, that is a local matter for Glasgow City Council, but I will inquire about the situation and identify, with the Minister for Drugs and Alcohol Policy and Sport, Maree Todd, whether there is any action that the Government can take. I am not familiar with all the transactions that are involved, but we will look into them and see what action it is possible to take.

The first thing that we have done is to press the Home Office to address those issues—the Home Office is the root cause of the issues and difficulties that Mr Harvie has raised in the Parliament today—and we are working collaboratively with Glasgow City Council in that respect.

Other steps that we have taken include increasing investment in housing and, in particular, ensuring that void accommodation is brought back into use. In our partnership with Glasgow City Council, we have seen much progress being made, and I commend it for the work that it is doing, including with registered social landlords, as part of that process.

As a consequence of the support that we make available to the council, particularly in relation to homelessness, we are working as effectively as we can to tackle the significant issues that Mr Harvie has raised.

The Government is working to address that issue. There is a range of competing financial pressures that we have to address, and we are working in collaboration with partners to do so.

I acknowledge the letter sent by a number of Labour Senedd members to the Prime Minister, expressing views that this Government would share about the unacceptability of the internal market act, which is a product of post-Brexit legislation from the Conservatives and is actively undermining the powers of this Parliament.

When that bill was passing through the United Kingdom Parliament, the Labour Party in Scotland—and, indeed, the Labour Party in the House of Commons—vigorously opposed it. Therefore, when the Labour Government was elected, it was our reasonable expectation that the internal market act would be abolished and that we would have a restoration of the powers of this Parliament.

As with so many other promises from the Labour Party, that was broken immediately after the election of the Labour Government, so we can have absolutely no confidence that the Labour Government is going to fulfil its promises to protect devolution and to abolish the internal market act.

Yes, I do. It was a reflection of the general comment that was being made about the issues at the time. As Mr Findlay knows, the Government was looking at a range of different issues in relation to the examination of the issue of childhood sexual abuse—which is building on the work that we have already undertaken in establishing the inquiry into those issues that is chaired by Lady Smith. In the debate on the issue yesterday, the Government set out further steps that we are taking. I welcome the participation of Professor Alexis Jay in the work that the Government is taking forward.

I recognise the significance and seriousness of the issue. It has been treated as such by my Government, which is why we have taken careful steps to do all the explanatory and investigative work and come to the right conclusion about whether an inquiry of the nature that Mr Findlay put to Parliament yesterday is appropriate and necessary.

Mr Findlay said that a collection of different organisations are marking their own homework. The organisations that I referred to were set up by statute and have to operate independently of Government. That is what the law requires of them. They are the Care Inspectorate, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Healthcare Improvement Scotland. It is really important that I, as First Minister, make it clear, openly to the public in Scotland, that I have absolute confidence in the independent decision making and scrutiny of those organisations, because that is vital for public confidence.

In recent weeks, we have seen reports from Healthcare Improvement Scotland that have challenged and been very critical of health boards in this country. That is because HIS is exercising independent and fearless scrutiny, as will Professor Alexis Jay as the independent chair of the national child sexual abuse and exploitation strategic group. That gives me confidence that we are going about the process in a serious and detailed fashion, to ensure that the perspective of victims is properly addressed as we consider this significant and serious issue.