Chamber and committees

Fergus Ewing has a final thought.

Monica Lennon, would you care to ask a couple of questions?

The graphics on your screen came around the right way eventually, so we can now see them without needing a scribe. Thank you very much for joining us.

I suspend the meeting briefly while we change witnesses.

We will continue taking evidence on PE2099, which is on stopping the proposed centralisation of specialist neonatal units in NHS Scotland. For the second evidence session this morning, I am delighted to welcome Jim Crombie, co-chair of the perinatal sub-group of the best start implementation programme board; and Dr Andrew Murray, co-chair of the perinatal sub-group. Are there two co-chairs, or are there other co-chairs who are not with us?

I meant the ScotSTAR service itself. At the moment there are eight centres, but if there were only three, might the call on that resource, for transferring people to just three centres that are further away, be greater than is case at present, when there are eight?

Fine. Thank you very much.

Could you give us clarity on the intention of the best start report with regard to the final number of units? Obviously, we have eight, and there was a recommendation to move to between three and five, and the recommendation ended up at three. The committee is concerned to know whether there is scope to move beyond that figure of three towards the five that was within the range of parameters that were discussed.

What about the question whether there should be three, four or five units?

I have not come with a prepared speech, because I wanted to contribute to the evolving argument in the chamber.

As I start, I reflect that we hope that, were any of the provisions to make their way into legislation, they would not have to be used, even decades from now. We should be anticipating that we are making legislation on the basis that we will not want to use it at a later date.

We might consider ourselves reasonable. I started out in life as a thrusting, hard-line Thatcherite and I am now a mellow, cuddly Thatcherite—if that is not an oxymoron. However, I ask members to consider that, years from now, this might not be a Parliament of the reasonable, and whatever we put in place ought to be something that cannot be abused or manipulated in a party-political way.

There have been some excellent speeches. I was amused at Mr Cole-Hamilton’s line that members should not be disbarred for switching parties. If that had been the case historically, his would have been the only party that abolished itself—when the Liberal Party merged with the Social Democratic Party, every Liberal would have had to resign from elected office everywhere in the country. Therefore, I can understand why he would be nervous about such a provision in particular.

I very much enjoyed the principles outlined by Richard Leonard. I thought that they really were magnificent tests by which anything should be judged.

I know that this will cause him great offence and disharmony, but I enjoyed and agreed with a great deal of what Patrick Harvie had to say as well, particularly in relation to prison sentences. He is absolutely right that crimes can be fashionable. Much longer sentences can be given for breaches of the law that I might think are relatively minor, and shorter sentences can be given for breaches that I think are considerably more important. Therefore, moving the test around is quite a dangerous principle.

The reality of my position is such that my welcome of the bill is, in the end, superficial. Like Mr Harvie, I have reservations about whether we can frame legislation that, understanding the narrow issue that it seeks to address, does not bring with it unforeseen consequences.

I want to talk about the variation in equality between regional and first-past-the-post members. I have always understood the principle to be that, by whichever means someone is elected, once they become a member of this Parliament, their status is no different from that of any other member. We are all equal members of the Scottish Parliament.

However, the recall proposal is quite different. Through the recall of a constituency member, the political complexion of this chamber could be changed. Through the recall of a regional member, the political complexion of this chamber could not be changed, except that, as I understand it, if a regional member defected to another party, the political complexion of the chamber would be reinstated to how the electorate originally intended it.

My point is that, through the recall mechanism, a Government could fall on the basis of the recall of a constituency member, but not on the basis of the recall of a regional member. If we had a Parliament of the unreasonable, or an external campaign—

I make the point that some people are not able to work with certain categories of individuals not necessarily because of any malicious or criminal circumstance but because of, for example, reasons relating to their own mental wellbeing. Is the member suggesting that people in that category should also be disbarred from standing or being allowed to be members of this Parliament?