Chamber and committees

To ask the First Minister whether he will join His Majesty the King and other world leaders in commemorating the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz extermination camp and offer his reflections on the theme of this year’s Holocaust memorial day, “For a Better Future”. (S6F-03762)

Eighty years ago, we were a world at war, and the consequence of that war was tens of millions of people dead around the world and the extermination of one third of the world’s Jewish population by Nazi Germany.

It was not the first holocaust of which I was aware. Despite growing up in a community where so much of the Jewish population in Scotland lived, they did not talk about it—it was just not mentioned. Members of families living next door to me had no idea that their parents had been involved in the Holocaust or that they had lost relatives in it.

In fact, the first holocaust of which I was aware was the holocaust in Cambodia: the genocide that took place there between 1975 and 1979. It was there in front of me on the television when I was growing up as a teenager. Twenty-five per cent of the population of that country were murdered by Pol Pot in the killing fields, often not with bullets but with a pickaxe through the head. Sixty per cent of those who died were executed. Many of the children who were not executed were abducted and indoctrinated and were then forced to commit the most appalling atrocities themselves.

That was the genocide with which I was most familiar. It was Dr Jacob Bronowski who first hinted, in his television series, “The Ascent of Man”, when he was allowed to visit Auschwitz concentration camp, which was then behind the iron curtain. He walked, overcome with emotion, fully suited, into puddles, picking up, as he thought, the ashes of those who died there, including most of his family. He called it “the tragedy of mankind”.

Since this Parliament first met, 1.2 million Scots have been born. The first Holocaust memorial day was in 2001. Why is it so important that we commemorate these events? It is because, for those young people, it is the testament and the determination of our generation to ensure that those events are not forgotten that is so important to them. I applaud the former Secretary of State for Scotland, Jim Murphy, and our former Presiding Officer, Ken Macintosh, who were instrumental in ensuring that there were visits to Auschwitz concentration camp for young people.

I commend the vision schools Scotland programme, promoted by Dr Paula Cowan and the University of the West of Scotland, which does so much for continuous Holocaust education and is now in every local authority across Scotland. I applaud the Scottish Government for the funding that it has made available to ensure that those educational programmes can continue. I am so pleased that nearly all our First Ministers, including John Swinney, the current First Minister, have stood, as I did, in Auschwitz and have been overwhelmed with the enormity and the emotions that will never leave any of us who have visited that place.

Antisemitism continues, which is why it is so important that such education continues. Ten years ago, there was the attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris. Danny Finkelstein, in his memoir, “Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad”, said that, for the first time—this was prescient, because it was published in the summer of the year before last—he worried and feared that events similar to the Holocaust could be unfolding again. In the past few days, he again brought to our attention his grandmother, who, 80 years ago, died as she was being liberated from Bergen-Belsen with her two daughters—one of whom was his mother—sitting by her side on the train. She had given everything to keep them safe and alive in Bergen-Belsen, and she literally expired from that effort as the train departed the camp.

In a local context, I am delighted that St Ninian’s high school in my Eastwood constituency is in the top three places in the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust’s secondary schools competition. Students were tasked with creating a memorial to the genocide in Bosnia. They created a wreath made of flowers from Srebrenica to commemorate the significant 30th anniversary of the genocide that took place there. Tonight, pupils from Mearns Castle high school are at an event in my constituency, which, unfortunately, I cannot attend because I am introducing this debate. Lexie, Sam and Anna, who are Anne Frank ambassadors, will tonight reflect on their experiences, and tomorrow they will be here when they participate in the Parliament’s Holocaust memorial event.

On various occasions in the past year, I have made reference to my late constituent Henry Wuga, who was the last of the Kindertransport children to survive. Today’s young people need to know about the Holocaust because it was young people like them who stood up and did what they could against Hitler and the Nazis. I give the example of the white rose campaign group at the University of Munich, among whom were the teenage brother and sister Hans and Sophie Scholl, who distributed literature to try to call a halt to what was happening. They were taken by the Nazis and beheaded, facing upwards, simply for campaigning against that genocide.

As those who have been there will know, the camp at Auschwitz was designed and run by Rudolf Höss, who had previously run Dachau concentration camp—the first camp that I visited. It was from there that he took the “Arbeit macht frei” slogan, because he felt that an easier way to lure people to their deaths was to make them think that they were doing something useful. As I am sure the First Minister did, anyone who has visited Auschwitz I—not the extermination camp, but Auschwitz I—and who has stood between blocks 10 and 11 will recognise that the people of all ages who were brought there, including children, were put up against a wall, had a bullet fired through them and were murdered for no reason other than that they were Jewish.

This week, His Majesty the King and other world leaders all stood in front of Auschwitz II’s entrance gateway. We have probably all seen those images. What struck me—and, I imagine, many others—was just how few of the survivors remain and how frail they now are. However, we could still see how disturbed they were, not just by the memory of having been there but by their fears for the future. That is why we have such a duty placed on us.

In this debate, I have not rehearsed many of the stories that I have told over all the years in which I have participated in similar debates since I was first elected. I know that other members will contribute their memories. My memories of that camp will never leave me, so I echo the words of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust:

“we must become the generations who carry forward the legacy of the witnesses, remember those who were murdered and challenge those who would distort or deny the past, or who discriminate and persecute today. We can all mark Holocaust Memorial Day 2025 and commit to making a better future for us all.”

One of the survivors said something that will strike home for all of us. They did not want their

“experience of man’s inhumanity to be the experience of any yet to come of man’s humanity.”

That is why it is so important that we remember, that we stand firmly and that the young people of this country who are so engaged continue to be so and stand with us to ensure that the Holocaust never happens again.

Thank you very much, Mr MacGregor. I will bring in colleagues in a second but, unusually, I would like to take the initiative here. The Scottish Government’s response is a cop-out, and I think that it is a dangerous cop-out. I will spare Mr Torrance, but I did not realise that Mr Ewing and I grew up in a golden age of public availability of swimming. I can recall swimming pools in communities everywhere back in those days, as well as outdoor pools. It is a great shame to revisit some of the places that used to have outdoor pools to find that they are now car parks or something completely different.

Touching on Mr MacGregor’s point about learning how to swim at primary school, I particularly remember that quite a lot of my classmates were terrified, but they were learning to swim together at an age when they could overcome that fear and learn how to swim. If you do not do it then, the peer-group pressure that builds up on you as an older person having to admit that you cannot swim or trying to learn to swim at a much later date is probably an obstacle to a number of people seeking to learn how to swim.

We are an island nation. We are surrounded by water, and people should have the ability to swim for their own self-preservation and because it might be vital in the saving of somebody else’s life—simply not having a fear of the water might mean that they could be moved to assist.

I am interested to hear colleagues’ contributions, but I am minded to keep the petition open and, potentially, to convene a round table on the subject at hand, to include Scottish Swimming. It would be helpful to have such a meeting, and I would be grateful for some suggestions from Mr Bibby and Mr MacGregor of others that we might think to include.

It would also be useful to have some idea from the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities of the pressures that councils feel are uniquely associated with swimming pools and the costs associated with that, because there will be a balance between long-established and newer facilities and those that are in schools.

We could give some additional thought to others that we might contact.

We can certainly do that. Scottish Swimming is underwriting the petition.

On a point that Mr Bibby made in his advice, the clerks inform me that, in its response to the petition, the Scottish Government told us that the Barnett consequentials were spent on a range of measures, including local government pay offers, additional costs relating to the resettlement of Ukrainians and additional capital funding for the national health service.

I gather that we are all content with those actions.

That brings us to PE2068, which was lodged by John Dare, and calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to commission an independent review of public sector salaries of more than £100,000 per annum and to introduce an appropriate cap.

We last considered the petition at our meeting on 20 March 2024, when we agreed to write to the Scottish Government seeking a fuller response to the issues that are raised in the petition. The Government response reiterates that pay restraint for the highest paid, and targeted uplifts for the lowest paid, have been key principles of the Scottish Government’s approach to public sector pay for many years and states that many public sector staff earning more than £100,000 are highly qualified and experienced.

The Scottish Government’s review of the chief executive framework was published in October 2024 and states that the framework will be updated with the review’s recommendations. The review found that pay restraint for higher-paid employees has been achieved and recommends that restraint should continue on a looser basis. The Scottish Government is of the view that undertaking an independent review of all senior pay of more than £100,000 across the public sector would, it itself, come at a significant cost and therefore does not feel that conducting an independent review would be a good use of public money at this time.

Do members have any comments or suggestions for action?

In the light of that, are we content to close the petition?

That is a fair and reasonable point. The same situation has occurred previously. The committee is not expressing a view about the merits or otherwise of the petition, with which we might be very sympathetic; the issue is whether, in light of the information that we have been able to gather, we feel that there is a route forward for the committee to advance the petition’s aims. Mr Torrance’s conclusion, which Mr Ewing supports, is that the blunt fact is that the Scottish Government is not minded to do anything on the issue. Therefore, there is nothing more that the committee can do, however much we may have direct sympathy with the petition’s aims and regret having to close it.

Mr Golden has made some suggestions. Do colleagues have any other suggestions? Are we content to proceed on the basis that Mr Golden has identified?

Members indicated agreement.

Agenda item 3 is consideration of new petitions. Mr Ruskell has been sitting very patiently with us, so I will go straight to the second of the two new petitions, so that he can be released from the meeting to attend to other business.

As I always do, I say to anyone who might be tuning in to the committee because their petition is being considered for the first time, that, in advance of consideration, the committee invites the Scottish Parliament’s independent research unit, the Scottish Parliament information centre, to give us an understanding of the issues that have been raised. We also invite the Scottish Government to give us a preliminary view on the issues that have been raised, which may or may not influence the committee’s conclusions. We do both those things because, historically, when the committee considered a petition for the first time, those were the two things that we said that we would do and that delayed our consideration. So, for those who are watching, those actions have already taken place.