Chamber and committees

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?

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.

I will make two points. First, it is important to state that the corporate body is not a committee of the Parliament. In committees of the Parliament and in the parliamentary chamber, politicians are able to debate the rights and wrongs of any ruling that is made by the Supreme Court or any other organisation. However, the corporate body is an executive body with legal responsibilities and the personal liability of the members who sit on it. Even though we are politicians, our job is not to debate the politics of an issue, but to ensure that we are implementing the law as the law is communicated to us.

Having said that, we recognise that the interim stance to fulfil those legal responsibilities is a change. Let me acknowledge on behalf of the SPCB that, for some, that has proved both upsetting and a cause for anxiety and concern for their own wellbeing. With that in mind, managers were asked to immediately engage with their teams to discuss the interim stance, identify any concerns about its impact and support individuals who might be personally affected. It is an on-going process, and our commitment to the wider wellbeing of our staff is embedded in a number of our policies and our management approach.

I understand that the SPCB’s response to the Supreme Court ruling has been discussed at recent partnership group meetings, and I am sure that trade union side colleagues will continue to use that forum to raise anything further that they consider would be appropriate for the SPCB to do to support its staff.

This morning, the corporate body signed off the next phase of work looking at how to improve inclusivity for all those with protected characteristics working at and visiting Holyrood. We will engage Holyrood passholders and external organisations representing those with specific protected characteristics as part of that work. That will inform any further changes and will take account of the Equality and Human Rights Commission statutory code, once it is finalised later this year.

That is the responsibility of the corporate body. As I said, there are committees and a chamber in which the political issues around such judgments can be debated, but the corporate body is an executive body that is liable and responsible for implementing the law as it stands, and that is what it has done.

How other organisations respond is up to them, but it is the responsibility of the corporate body to implement the law and the advice that we receive. That is the corporate body’s duty. I have said, of course, that it is an interim position, that a consultation is taking place and that we remain committed to inclusivity. That is the primary objective of the work that we are doing.

I thank Mr Ruskell for his question—and I apologise to Christine Grahame, whose stick I have just knocked off its plinth. I also thank Mr Ruskell for his continuing interest in the matter. Although there has been a delay—I acknowledge that—to the anticipated timescale for considering the matter, the corporate body remains committed to carrying out a review of terms and conditions for members’ staff. We will consider the matter during the course of this year.

Although I cannot give any commitments on the outcomes of the review, after we have considered them, the corporate body undertakes to ensure that members and their staff are provided with a full update as soon as possible. Any changes that the SPCB may agree will be implemented in time for the commencement of the next session of Parliament.