Chamber and committees

I am an ardent supporter of renewable energy, but communities must have a real say in what happens around them. People in Tweedsmuir, a community in my region, are, to put it frankly, fed up. In their locality, they now have four wind farms built or under development, with more potentially on the way. When large infrastructure projects enter the planning system, the legal process and paperwork involved in engaging with and challenging developers can be prohibitively complex for a group of volunteers. What support can be made available to communities to access professional and legal expertise so that they can make their case and be involved on a level playing field?

To ask the Scottish Government what steps it is taking to ensure that communities hosting multiple onshore wind developments, including Tweedsmuir, receive a fair and lasting share of the benefits arising from those developments. (S7O-00357)

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. I would have voted no.

To ask the Scottish Government what commitment it will give to extending the Borders railway beyond Tweedbank to Hawick and Carlisle. (S7O-00328)

Bill McLaren famously said that a day out of Hawick is a day wasted. He would surely have championed extending the Borders railway to Hawick and beyond that to Carlisle, opening up the region to visitors, businesses and investment.

Back in the 2010s, it was the Liberal Democrats who delivered the reintroduction of the railway to the Borders. Although I welcome the feasibility study that is under way, campaigners have been kept waiting on the platform for too long and they are frustrated by the timescales for the three phases of the process. Can the cabinet secretary give a commitment to provide clear timeframes to get the project off the drawing board and on to the rails?

My constituent Victor King has spent a year in hospital after a stroke because not one care provider covers his rural address in Kirkpatrick Durham in Dumfriesshire. NHS boards often cite social care shortages as the main driver behind delayed discharge, yet social care is a council responsibility. What assessment has the cabinet secretary made of how the reorganisation of health boards and councils will affect locally delivered care for people such as Mr King in Dumfriesshire?

A child who was six when Scotland announced its care review is now 16—in essence, that is a childhood. Today, the independent oversight board has again warned that progress is still too slow but said that properly scrutinising premature deaths in the care-experienced community could improve outcomes. Last week’s appalling drug deaths figures will include many care-experienced people. However, we cannot say how many, because the Scottish Government chooses not to track them. I ask the First Minister again—please—when will his Government start publishing the premature death rate for all care-experienced people?

Yes.

I am worried about what is going on—really worried about our narrative and our politics. My appeal in these times, when politics is getting more and more extreme and volatile in Europe and the UK, is that we stop giving it oxygen in Scotland. Let us stop inviting the tiger in for tea. Instead, I ask members to focus their energies on unleashing the positivity that can come from trusting communities by giving them real power via the devolution agenda. If they want to claim more powers from Westminster, our door has always been open to pursuing federalism and they will have allies here.

My most basic purpose in life is to make sure that my family never has to choose between the Scottish dad and the English mum, as so many of my Bosnian friends had to do. I say, please stop continuously gambling with our safety and security, and park the motion.

16:56

I want to talk about an issue that is uncomfortable to raise: the risk of conflict that is associated with nationalism. Let me be clear at the outset that I do not think that anyone in this chamber is going to take up arms. However, although today’s display by Reform members might be mocked, it worries me.

When Parliament divides and stops listening and debating, it is a dangerous signifier of what could come if we look only at what makes us different. Just look at history. The reason I say that is because I lived and worked across the former Yugoslavia for four years, in peace building. I count as friends people of every nationality, whether Croat, Bosniak, Kosovan, Albanian, Montenegrin, Macedonian, Jewish or Serb—civilised, educated and generous people who are similar to many of us in the chamber today. They lived through their country spiralling into ethnic violence. The collapse of Yugoslavia began in 1980, when Josip Tito died. He had been the leader for 35 years. In his place, nationalist leaders in Milosevic and Tuđman came into power in Serbia and Croatia. Their muscles were increasingly flexed, they blamed others for their plight, and it ended with the ravaging and splintering of a European nation.

On 1 May 1991, my friends were Yugoslavs who believed in brotherhood and unity. By mid-June the same year, it was their surname and ethnic identity that mattered. In simple terms, Catholics were branded Croat, orthodox Christians as Serbs, and Bosniaks as Muslim. With wicked speed, by July, war had arrived, turning previously mixed and trusted neighbourhoods into places where fear was cultivated and living together became dangerous. I will give one horrific example, of which I have many.

I will, after I finish my example—[Interruption.] Oh, God—I have dropped my speech notes. I am falling to bits.

I will take the member’s intervention.