Chamber and committees

Thank you very much. That is all of our questions. Is there anything that you would like to add or have we covered the ground that you were hoping that we would cover this morning?

The earliest petition was submitted in 2022, but the evidence that we took subsequently was to illustrate the issues raised by the petitions rather than about the petitions themselves.

Very quickly—the cabinet secretary is waiting.

Thank you very much for that, cabinet secretary. Mr Foysol Choudhury will lead the questions, and I think that he will start with an issue that relates to the figures for 2023-2024 figures—although you have just given us updated figures for 2024-2025.

That would be helpful, as long as we keep it all very anonymised, because we are trying to talk in general terms without identifying anybody.

That is a perfectly reasonable request from Mr Ruskell. The corporate body would not want to prejudge the outcome of our discussions, but I think that we understand that our provision is not as generous as that for our Westminster and Senedd colleagues.

I confirm that we will be considering the terms and conditions of staff who are employed by comparator employers, including other Parliaments. We will also consider the cost and productivity implications of increasing leave entitlements under the minimum terms and conditions.

It is open to MSPs, where budget allows, to offer any enhanced leave that they choose to offer from within their provision. However, I recognise that that is not the ideal route by which these matters should be addressed. We hope to come back to Parliament on the issue in due course.

Our obligation was to implement the ruling, based on the legal advice that we received. As I said, we have today signed off the next phase of consultation by the corporate body. We announced the interim stance and agreed to conduct a consultation. Together with officials, the corporate body has been considering its approach to that consultation and, earlier today, we agreed the next steps.

Various activities were already under way to review our facilities and policies to better support people with protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010. Those various workstreams, including the consultation, will now come together under the inclusive Parliament review. We will engage Holyrood passholders and external organisations representing people with specific protected characteristics as part of that work.

I find it almost extraordinary that it has been about 18 years since I was first able to contribute to a debate on mesothelioma. That debate was led by Gil Paterson, Marie McNair’s predecessor in Clydebank, and at this point, I want to pay tribute to Clydebank Asbestos Group. Its sustained focus, and the fact that its members turn out in numbers when the condition is discussed, are quite remarkable and to be commended, as is the compassion that its members bring to the work and to the lives of those who subsequently suffer.

Is it not extraordinary that this is yet another of those conditions, such as aortic aneurysms or Duchenne muscular dystrophy, that seem, all too tragically, to have a home in Scotland? Of the 2,700 new cases diagnosed each year, about 200 are in Scotland, and our nation endures one of the highest incidence rates of mesothelioma anywhere in the world.

When I last participated in a debate on this issue, little did I know that my uncle would die of mesothelioma, which he did a few years ago. Alan Carlaw was in the motor industry, as was I. He had the British Leyland franchise, and we had the Ford franchise, which proved to be the more reliable of the two in the fullness of time. Those businesses, like many others, were housed in architecture that was built at a time when asbestos was a prevailing building material. It was back in the 1970s that our business sought to clear the asbestos out of our buildings, and we saw just how ridiculously it had been used as a manufacturing substance and how it had deteriorated. I remember that one could see the asbestos dust in the air.

Many people were involved in industries in which being around asbestos was absolutely part of their working day. They built Scotland in good faith, not recognising that they were doing so in an environment that would subsequently kill them. That is a great injustice and a huge tragedy, not least because for many people, including my uncle, pleural plaques did not manifest as part of the disease until they were much older—that happened decades after my uncle’s exposure to asbestos. I was in the motor industry, too, so perhaps I, too, have pleural plaques—I just do not know.

Dying in the way that my uncle did was such an unjust way for anyone to end their life. For those people who end up having to suffer and die of mesothelioma, it is an absolutely ghastly experience. We know that they drown, in effect, in great distress. There is no soft answer, and there is no cure.

Members might not imagine this to be true, but East Renfrewshire, where my leafy constituency of Eastwood lies, has the fourth-highest ratio of mesothelioma deaths to road traffic deaths in the country. However, the public focus on road traffic deaths, road traffic management and road traffic accident prevention is huge. When we consider the incidence of mesothelioma that we are still seeing each year, the lack of public awareness of the disease and the suggestion that it is just a Scottish disease—well, not a Scottish disease as such, but a disease that, along with certain other conditions, has a higher incidence in Scotland than elsewhere—should not be obstacles to our making a renewed national effort to ensure that appropriate research is undertaken and our seeking to get to a point at which there is, indeed, a cure.

The absence of a cure, the on-going lack of awareness of the condition and the lack of energy and urgency behind an attempt to find a cure are nothing short of a national disgrace. The people who built Scotland deserve better, and the people who might yet contract mesothelioma ought to know that a national effort is being undertaken to make it possible for them to survive the disease, should it manifest itself, through the identification and implementation of a cure.

Another benefit in relation to maternity, paternity and adoption leave is that members’ staff can take shared parental leave and receive shared parental pay. Shared parental leave enables a member of staff and their partner, as co-parents, to share leave and pay entitlements that are otherwise available to the birth mother under the maternity policy. When shared parental leave is applied for, the mother or primary carer of a child can convert up to 50 weeks—as Mr Whitfield suggests—of their 52-week maternity or adoption leave entitlement to shared parental leave, which they can share with their partner. That enables fathers or primary carers to take extended leave to care for their child. That is a separate provision, over and above that to which Mr Ruskell alluded, which the corporate body will also look at.

However, the corporate body tries to ensure that, in the round, we are a family-friendly Parliament and that we have policies that reflect that.

The corporate body has received correspondence from five organisations and individuals since it implemented its interim stance on facilities at Holyrood to fulfil its legal responsibilities as an employer, workplace provider, service provider and public authority.

The member will be aware of letters made public by the Good Law Project and Scottish Trans, which is part of the Equality Network. Otherwise, SPCB officials have responded directly to organisations but have respected the confidentiality of that correspondence.