Chamber and committees

I appreciate that point, but I expect that the Netanyahu Government will have to face not just the judgment of the international community but that of the people in Israel, too, many of whom are deeply concerned by the actions of that Government but, nonetheless, believe in their implicit right to exist as a state.

Presiding Officer, I realise that I am out of time. I have listened carefully to the debate and to the speeches that have been made. Unfortunately, I believe that, in supporting a motion without timing, our side would be seen to be supporting the immediate recognition of Palestine, when we believe that that should be in the context of a wider settlement. We will not vote against the motion, but we will abstain.

I have just recognised that there was an intransigence on all sides that stopped them from finally implementing an agreement that would have taken matters forward. It was not an intransigence from one side; ultimately, the accords collapsed because the negotiations between the lead parties could not be supported by the communities that they represented.

Mr Cole-Hamilton also said that there should not be a reward. One of the chilling things that I heard over the summer was a representative of the Palestinian people saying that

“one of the fruits of October 7”

was the decision of Governments to unconditionally recognise the state of Palestine. That is chilling, because it implies that the actions of 7 October were justified and have brought about a successful outcome. I think that we should all be concerned by that, irrespective of the view that we might come to in the debate.

Patrick Harvie rose—

The First Minister knows how much I appreciate his comments.

I take issue with one thing that Pauline McNeill has said, although I possibly understand her motivation. She said that Israel is no longer a democracy. A key right in a democracy is the right to protest. There have been widespread protests in Israel involving hundreds of thousands of people who are challenging the actions of the current Government. I doubt that anyone who is protesting in Gaza against Hamas is treated with the same leniency or tolerance, should they choose to protest.

The First Minister will understand that there will be differences between us on some aspects of the actions that he has outlined this afternoon. Will he join Scottish politicians of several parties who have drawn a distinction between the state of Israel and the present Government of Israel with its Netanyahu Administration? Israel is a democracy in which, at successive elections, a majority has not voted in favour of Mr Netanyahu’s Government or some of the extreme coalition partners in it. The conflation in language, in talking of the state of Israel and its prosecution of the atrocities in Gaza, is one that is used by others who have a much more malign intent towards the state of Israel itself.

It is almost a year to the day that we learned of the untimely loss to cancer of Professor Alison Britton, an outstanding public servant, the timing of whose death meant that her contribution to public life in Scotland was not properly recognised by the Parliament. Not least of that contribution was her two groundbreaking landmark reports on transvaginal mesh that were commissioned by the Scottish Government. Her loss is keenly felt by me, by all her colleagues and by those who worked for her, but particularly by the thousands of women who suffered the injustice of mesh and who saw in her championship leadership.

Will the First Minister undertake to revisit the two reports and the many recommendations that the Government accepted in full, which I do not believe have yet been fully implemented, and update Parliament on the progress with that? Will he also ask the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care to work with the Labour Government at Westminster to revisit the recommendations of the Hughes report into compensation for the women who suffered the mesh injustice and who have waited far too long?

Yes, I have heard of that first hand.

I thank you and your colleagues for your attendance.

Cabinet secretary, do you know whether those new powers have been deployed? Have they been used?

I want to turn the conversation around to the victims. I should say that one thing has changed over the lifetime of this Parliament—well, actually, two things have changed. First of all, the fact is that, since we began to consider the petition on youth violence in 2022, the committee itself has evolved, and not everybody who is on it now was on it then.

However, I was a member at the time, and I was able to go out to various places and hear from people who were victims. The other thing that has changed in the lifetime of my being a member of this Parliament is the use of smartphones and digital technology. What everybody thought at one time would be a great asset to life is, in all the cases that I heard about, now being used by young people to glorify the violence that is perpetrated. They feel free of prosecution, because of their age, but victims find that the humiliation, grief and suffering that they experienced are permanently accessible, and they feel that no weight gets attached to their on-going suffering.

I am interested in getting a general sense of the support, protection and information that are currently available through both the criminal justice and children’s hearings systems for victims of offences committed by children, and in hearing what you think will change as a result of the 2024 act. Secondly, do you think that the protection of victims in the longer term is keeping up with the way in which the digital environment and, indeed, the world in which they operate and live are moving forward at pace?

Thank you very much. When we began, I was struck that, in response to Mr Golden, you made the reasonable point that prosecution is just one part of the way in which all this has to be dealt with. I do not suppose that there is a right answer to my question, but I am interested in your opinion.

Shortly before he died, I did a programme with the late former First Minister. One of the questions that was asked before we went on air—it was a preamble—was about the use of digital technology and devices to intimidate children, leading to bullying, exploitation or whatever. It was interesting that the panel of adults all said what they had to say and the audience all did their usual, “Yes, that sounds very reasonable” and applauded, but after it was over some young people who had been in the audience came up to me and said, “You adults haven’t got a clue as to what is actually going on any longer in the digital era. You’re all too old. You don’t really understand the pace at which the technology and the apps and the ways in which they can be used are developing.” They felt that we were approaching the issue in a very noble way, but in complete ignorance of what is going on on the ground and of the way in which apps are being deployed and how things move from one day to the next. Standing there as a 66-year-old adult, I realised that that was probably true. I do not have the faintest idea how all those things are deployed.

In the challenge that you set of wider society understanding the harms and the ways in which violence is being perpetrated and digital technology being deployed, is the justice system, is the COPFS—are we—able to keep up with any of this? Is it moving at a pace that presents a challenge, the scale of which it is very difficult to grapple with or know how to properly respond to?