Chamber and committees

So, you are content to support those.

The evidence was not just from Glasgow—we heard from a pupil from St Andrews in Fife. Therefore, it seems a bit easy to say—

It is interesting that you talk about the period since 2000. Smartphones and iPads are much more recent than that, really—the first iPad did not appear until 2010. As I said in my opening remarks, in the examples that we heard about, one of the disturbing characteristics was the violence by appointment. We heard about people filming violence deliberately and posting it on social media to allow the perpetrators to self-aggrandise and create reputations for themselves that were designed to intimidate others. That seems to me to be a new and slightly sinister development. What have you found in relation to that, if anything?

One of the examples that the committee heard was of a youngster who was in a shopping centre who realised that violence was impending. They sought support from the security staff and contacted their parents, and the security staff said, “There’s absolutely nothing we can do to protect your child until the violence actually occurs.” The security staff said that, if they intervened, they would be charged as a result of having intervened, potentially for restraining the individual who was going to perpetrate the violence before the violence had actually been perpetrated. The evidence suggested that the people who were committing the violence were perfectly aware of the fact that nothing could be done to protect that individual. Is there a greater degree of knowledge of the parameters of the system in current society, which people exploit in the knowledge that they can act again with impunity?

Thank you; that is very interesting. In the course of the discussion, we have covered one or two of the other questions that we were going to ask, so I will throw it back to you and ask whether there is anything that we have not discussed that you might have volunteered by way of testimony and that would be useful to us.

The next continued petition is PE1854, to review the adult disability payment eligibility criteria for people with motability needs—sorry, I mean mobility needs. “Motability” is from my old motor trade days, which crept into my vocabulary there. The petition, which was lodged by Keith Park on behalf of the MS Society, calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to remove the 20m rule from the proposed adult disability payment eligibility criteria or identify an alternative form of support for people with mobility needs.

We have been considering the petition for some time. We last considered it a year ago, on 26 October 2022, when we agreed to write to the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Housing and Local Government, and to the MS Society.

The Scottish Government has undertaken a consultation on the eligibility criteria for the mobility component of adult disability payment. It found that respondents frequently argued for the reform or elimination of distance-based mobility tests, including the 20m rule. The consultation responses will inform the independent review of ADP. The independent review is due to commence later this year and, according to the petitioner’s recent written submission, the Scottish Government has started the recruitment process to identify the lead for the work.

The cabinet secretary’s written submission highlights the current financial challenges facing Government, stating that any significant changes that result in new additional spending will not be deliverable within the current parliamentary session. The petitioner has expressed disappointment at the Scottish Government’s incorporation of deliverability and affordability considerations into both the consultation and upcoming review. He states that such considerations should not limit the scope of the independent review or any recommendations relating to eligibility criteria. The petitioner argues that the purpose of the review should be to make recommendations that would enable the design of a disability assistance benefit that will meet the needs of disabled people.

We have held the petition open for some of that work to advance.

Do colleagues have any comments or suggestions?

That might very well be something that we can incorporate into our final consideration, given that the Government has said that it will engage with the petitioner on the aims of the petition.

I begin by thanking, through clenched teeth, my colleagues for keeping me up past my bedtime before we have been able to start the debate this evening.

Before I do anything further, I immediately indicate that the debate is very much a joint effort by me and Paul O’Kane. He came to me and suggested that, given everything else that was happening in relation to the international situation, it would be nice for the Parliament to talk about something positive involving the Jewish community in Scotland, which raised their effort and contribution to society above all the division elsewhere.

That is the reason why we are having this debate. I mused to my team today, rather shooting myself in the foot, “Do you know, I hadn’t actually realised that Calderwood Lodge was founded only in the early 60s?” They said, “Well, that’s why you’re moving a motion congratulating them on their 60th anniversary,” which I suppose is a very obvious fact.

However, I said that more because—having commented before in the chamber that, when I was growing up, so many of my neighbours were Jewish—I can remember, as a five-year-old, that some of them went to Calderwood Lodge. Imagine my being told, as a five-year-old boy who was reading Enid Blyton at the time, that my friends were going to a place called Calderwood Lodge! It sounded very exciting, and it was in a place apparently called “New Lands”.

One of my friends said that they had met a very important man who was a teddy. I thought, “This is where I want to go.” That was Teddy Taylor, who had apparently visited the school. Whether people now—or then, or at any other time—would think that that was a highlight is a matter of conjecture. To me, however, my friends had a teddy, they were in a place called “New Lands”, and it was a lodge. It sounded so much more exciting than the school that I was at—Belmont House school—which was notorious for being the childhood home of Margaret, Duchess of Argyll. As members who know their history will understand, her reputation was slightly more racy than anything else.

Calderwood Lodge primary school was founded in the 1960s in Newlands, in Glasgow, and it was the first Jewish school in Scotland. One can imagine how small it must have been, because, at its inception, there was just one year group in one class. It took a number of years, with each year adding to the numbers, before it had a school roll.

The 60th anniversary celebration was delightful. It was much more modern, I would say, than the 50th anniversary celebration—that was a black tie dinner in the constituency, in the now-defunct Newton Mearns synagogue, which has since merged with the one in Giffnock. The 60th celebration was a morning tea party with the families of those who had been at the school. What was so nice was that it was not just the original pupils who were present—it was their children and their grandchildren, who were also going to the school.

There were a lot of activities and things going on to celebrate the occasion. Among those who were there was the former headmistress Dianna Wolfson, who had been a teacher and who spoke at the event. I have to say that it looked to me as though a shiver still went down the spine of some of the former pupils; I do not know how formidable an entity she must have been, but they certainly sat upright, with posture straight, and listened carefully when she was speaking.

Among the former pupils who were there was Gillian Field, who is the daughter of Henry and Ingrid Wuga. Henry Wuga, who will be known to many members, is 99 years old and heading for his centenary—he is the last of the Kindertransport survivors whom we have in the community.

The school has been absolutely central to the lives of so many of my constituents. Paul O’Kane will know more about this, because he was, in his former guise as a councillor in East Renfrewshire Council, responsible for education, and he actually opened the school when it moved to its new campus. The old school in Newlands has now been converted into flats. There are a few remaining—Patrick Harvie might want to know about that, given the housing crisis. The remaining flats are available from £415,000 to £575,000, so I do not know whether they are immediately available for access to everybody. The school buildings there are partly demolished, but the original house lives on.

The important thing, however, is that the school has now moved to the new campus. The tales of the people who were at the old school were much the same as the tales of any of us who have gone to school over the years. They had fancy-dress parties. I do not know whether this is true, but apparently it was suggested, for one such party, that the rabbi should come in fancy dress—rather imaginatively, he came as a rabbi, perhaps not entering fully into the spirit of the occasion. Those tales all featured the same kind of colour and activity.

Moreover, the school did not consist exclusively of Jewish pupils; there were other pupils there, too. In particular, the school was very generous in the support that it provided, and the effort that it went to, for disabled pupils. At a time when other schools might not have given quite the same level of support, it went to extraordinary lengths to make sure that, in a small school, disabled pupils, including severely disabled pupils, had a safe and secure environment.

The 60th anniversary was celebrated, and the Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, was there for the occasion. It really is remarkable. The school was opened in 2017 by the Chief Rabbi and by Bishop John Keenan from Paisley. Is it a unique example in the world? It has two faiths working on a shared campus, with shared collective resources at its centre and other aspects that appeal to each of the different faiths. Much more importantly still, anyone who visits the campus will notice that, because many members of the Muslim population value a faith-based education, there are lots of Muslim pupils there, too, and they will see Jewish children, Catholic children and Muslim children playing together. It reminds me of lyrics from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “South Pacific” that I quoted in a debate, perhaps a decade ago, on a different issue and which I find extremely apposite:

“You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear,
You’ve got to be taught from year to year,
It’s got to be drummed in your dear little ear,
You’ve got to be carefully taught.

You’ve got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff’rent shade,
You’ve got to be carefully taught.

You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You’ve got to be carefully taught!”

We are teaching all these young children to live together, to work together and to be educated together. Is it not through education and the example of Calderwood Lodge that Scotland’s real hope for community cohesion exists?

Congratulations to Calderwood Lodge. I salute and celebrate its 60th anniversary and wish all those who have been educated there, and all those who will be, every success in the future.

Will the member give way?

I must say that I approached today’s debate with a tremendous sense of trepidation. I have been overwhelmed with emotion since the events on 7 October. Yes, it is true that I represent Eastwood and that half of Scotland’s Jewish population live in my constituency. However, I have an equally large Muslim population, a Sikh population, a growing Hindu population and constituents who are of no faith at all. I represent them all. Yes, I feel a special duty to the Jewish community, because few members have that population or that immediate contact and understanding, and I feel a need to speak up and represent their voice.

I took enormous encouragement from my political opponents, particularly the First Minister and Anas Sarwar, whom I respect and admire and, indeed, have an affection for. I admire the way in which they have risen to the top of their parties and, in one case, to the top of Government. When we first discussed the events in question in their immediate aftermath, I said that I had not seen the First Minister be more impressive, and I continue to believe that. I admire the way in which he approached this afternoon’s debate. In fact, I do not know that I disagreed with any of what he had to say except his final conclusion. I tried to answer the question, “What does a ceasefire mean?” when I intervened on Mr Brown. In some ways, it is an easy question to answer, but for me it is more complicated.

This summer, I read what I still think is the book of the year: “Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad: A Family Memoir of Miraculous Survival” by Danny Finkelstein. I was stopped by the foreword, even before I got to the main part of book. The author is the same age as me, and he articulated my sentiments exactly when he said that, for all of his lifetime, we have said, “Never again” in relation to the Holocaust but that, for the first time in his lifetime, although he did not think that it was probable that it could happen again, he thought that it was suddenly possible that it could happen again.

That summed up my fear as well. All the optimism that I had when the Berlin wall came down and when the peace in Northern Ireland was achieved has, in many respects, evaporated. The last time there was real hope for Israel was when the Oslo accord was agreed by Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat and the PLO, with the involvement of Bill Clinton. It is a tragedy that we did not build on that. I will come back to that, because the Palestinian people have been betrayed and let down in so many different ways in the decades since, and in the centuries and millennia before that.

On that day of 7 October, as the First Minister said, more Jews were killed—murdered—than on any single day since the Holocaust. I do not know whether the chamber fully understands the trauma to the entire population of the state of Israel. There is not anyone in Israel who does not know somebody who was murdered on that date. Those of us—Neil Bibby referred to it—who have seen the bodycam footage recovered from the people who committed those acts will have seen the bestiality and the defilement of the corpses.