Chamber and committees

I will comment briefly on the debate about the debate, if I can put it that way, in relation to timescale and emergency legislation. I recognise what the Conservatives are saying: they are drawing our attention to the fact that the actual deadline is the end of September, not the beginning. However, when we debate a bill in Parliament, we are not speaking magic words; it is only part of a process. Let us imagine the alternative timeline.

If the Government introduced the bill in, say, the first week of September, we might debate it in the second week, might pass it in the third and might just about get royal assent by the end of the month. Then all the legislation’s measures would need to be implemented. We would be leaving the many people around Scotland who have been working hard to adapt and respond to unprecedented circumstances simply guessing what was to be required of them just days before the emergency measures were either extended or allowed to expire.

I suggest that colleagues such as Stephen Kerr and Annie Wells, who have been genuinely concerned about that issue, should be very glad that they are not working in such roles in these circumstances, trying to keep our public services running. Actually, I am quite glad that they are not in such roles, too.

A number of members have mentioned business support and housing. Clearly, business support will need to continue. However, as Lorna Slater said, we also have an unprecedented opportunity to reshape the economy—and reshape how we deliver that support. Conditionality will be absolutely vital. Indiscriminate support for business owners, regardless of how they treat their workers, customers and communities, or the wider world, would exacerbate the inequalities and injustices of the pre-Covid economy. We have an opportunity to do much better.

On housing, the idea of providing loans to tenants has been widely criticised. There was a suggestion that people facing the prospect of losing their job over the coming months would be willing to take on debt in the interests of their landlords, but that clearly would not work. I am glad that we are moving to grants, not loans. Like others, I question how quickly a £10 million fund might be used up if the furlough scheme winds up over the coming months. Jackie Baillie made important points about that issue.

I think that encouraging good practice, as Mr Swinney put it, simply will not be good enough. I have no doubt that Miles Briggs, given his comments, would remind me that some landlords have gone out of their way to support their tenants. However, we know that there are also landlords who will take every opportunity to put their own interests ahead of the tenant’s right to a home. Simply encouraging good practice will not be enough.

Some members have said that having a grant is the wrong solution and that we should be looking to other solutions. That argument seems to come from those who have a track record of voting against strengthening tenants’ rights and who also clearly intend to vote against rent controls. Those who suggest that we look to other solutions fully intend to vote against those measures. Access to housing is a human right; access to investment income is not. I am keen to see what amendments it may be possible to lodge—Jackie Baillie has something in mind on that.

I want to look forward. As members of all parties have mentioned, there are aspects of the situation that we have lived through for the past year and a half and the response to it that have value in the longer term. Covid will be with us for a long time. It might never disappear, but the emergency that it caused will. That emergency has prompted us to make changes in our society from which we must learn. It has shown us how quickly we can address a crisis when we treat it like a crisis.

Even before Covid, inequality was already a crisis; job insecurity was already a crisis; housing was already a crisis; and, in many ways, the state of our public health was already a crisis. Of course, the world also faces a climate and ecological emergency that, at a conservative estimate, is already costing a quarter of a million lives annually, and the figure is rising. It is an existential threat to human existence and the living world around us.

In that context, we must look to the changes that we have made in response to Covid and ask ourselves two questions. First, which of the changes—for example, in relation to secure homes and incomes, sustainable transport and travel patterns and public health infrastructure—should stay because they offer lasting benefits beyond Covid? For example, can working online bring benefits for accessibility, and can continuous teacher assessment offer improvements to our education system, replacing high-pressure, high-stakes exams? We should be willing to ask what changes could bring a permanent benefit.

Beyond that, and more deeply, we must ask ourselves a second question. As a society, how ready are we for the next crisis? For example, how resilient is our economy, how responsive are our public services, how has our political culture acquitted itself in this crisis and, therefore, how ready are we for the next? I hope that the Government will return to those themes in a permanence bill.

I join others in once again expressing my condolences to those who have lost a loved one and those whose health and wellbeing has been seriously harmed for the long term by the virus. I also share the sense of hope that we might, finally, after such a long and difficult period, be coming to the end of the restrictions.

I want to ask about the change of strategic approach from the Scottish Government—in particular, about the fact that the strategic intention to suppress the virus to the lowest possible level is no longer the Government’s position. Does that imply that the Scottish Government is open to what Matt Hancock proposes, which is ending the requirement of international travel quarantine for vaccinated people and replacing self-isolation with lateral flow testing, which has been criticised by public health experts? Or does the First Minister share my concern that, wherever in the world more dangerous variants emerged, that approach would almost guarantee that those variants would be imported and spread?

I am not so fussed about being further ahead of the rest of the UK, because I do not think that that would be any great boast. I want to us be further ahead of where our own targets say we should be.

If we take farming and land use as one example, at the moment, Scottish farmers are facing a perfect storm. They need to make even bigger emission cuts to make up for the wasted years, they need to adapt to a changing climate and protect wildlife—and the UK Climate Change Committee said this week that both the Scottish and UK Governments are failing on that agenda—and now they face an Australian trade deal that threatens to flood the country with cheap imports. We need to radically reform agricultural subsidies to meet those challenges, but the Scottish Government currently intends to put off doing so until 2024. Does the First Minister accept that that is simply too late for not only the next half-dozen climate targets but the rural communities that need to see change if they are to have a sustainable future?

I congratulate Tom Arthur on his appointment as a minister. There is no doubt that it is a difficult job, but there is a concern that the Scottish Government, in managing its finances, has put some of the pressure down the chain to local government and arm’s-length bodies such as Glasgow Life. What more does the Scottish Government intend to do to ensure that facilities that are run by those bodies—such as Whiteinch library, on which decisions are being made this afternoon, as well as many other libraries, leisure centres and community centres—are not lost as we see Covid recovery? What more will the Government do to ensure that those services are protected?

During the election, the First Minister had to explain why her Government had missed two climate targets in a row. This week, a third annual climate target came and went, and Scotland is falling even further behind. On home energy use, transport, farming and land use, the Government is failing to live up to the rhetoric about world-leading targets. Year after year, the Greens propose stronger action and, year after year, we are told, “Don’t worry, we have a new climate plan.” With this third year of missed targets, the only difference is that the Government has had to admit, just months after the publication of its new plan, that that too needs to be replaced. That is not the bold leadership that we need. What does the First Minister think that her Government is doing wrong?

I am grateful for that answer, although I am still not clear when ministers last met any tenants unions. Nationally and locally, tenants unions such as Living Rent have been playing a critical role in protecting tenants from abuse of power by irresponsible landlords. That has been especially important during the pandemic, yet there is no tenant organisation on the private rented sector resilience group. Perhaps that is why, at its last meeting, the group was looking forward to the end of the eviction ban when it should have been discussing how to extend the protection for tenants. Will the cabinet secretary give an assurance that the voices of Living Rent and other tenants unions will be central to the development of the new strategy, instead of once again allowing the interests of landlords to be dominant?

As other members have done, I welcome Richard Lochhead to his new role, and I also welcome the expression of priorities in his motion. Although the Scottish Government might once have placed all the emphasis on narrow ideas such as economic growth, it is good that the motion prioritises addressing inequality, “creating fairer workplaces” and “an inclusive, green recovery”.

The Government has taken some criticism for even bringing a motion that acknowledges the direct harm from Brexit, but it is absolutely necessary to identify and name the problem, however uncomfortable the Conservatives are about taking responsibility for what they have done.

Although we oppose the Conservatives’ amendment, I acknowledge that they are not all enthusiasts for Brexit like Mr Mundell; others are merely apologists for it. Some of the Conservative speeches today were vaguely coherent, but none appeared to take responsibility for the profound harm that Brexit has done; nor did they acknowledge that pro-independence parties were returned with a strengthened mandate in the election just six weeks ago, so their concern about needless disruption to the labour market can hardly be taken seriously.

The Conservatives’ position is that disruption arising from their anti-European obsession is just fine, even when 62 per cent of the people voted against it. Yet, at the same time, even considering asking the people about independence is somehow intolerable disruption. There is not the slightest hint of consistency in that position. Mr Mundell’s threat of a hard border at Gretna is just one more reminder that it is the Conservatives who seek hard borders, because they want borders to be things that divide and control people, rather than free and open places where people can meet and mix as they wish.

The Greens certainly have common ground with much of the Labour amendment, from the need for wider trade union recognition to stronger action to improve standards of living, and we will vote for it at decision time. I know that Paul Sweeney wants to see deep changes to the UK Government’s immigration system, but I wonder whether he really thinks that years—even decades—of anti-immigrant policy from successive UK Governments will disappear if we just ask for humane immigration policies. If the UK Government was remotely interested in ending its anti-immigrant stance, we could work together to achieve a lot of what Paul Sweeney seeks, but I do not think that Mr Sweeney imagines that Priti Patel would even pick up the phone to discuss that.

Ross Greer set out clearly what a fundamental betrayal of EU citizens the EU settlement scheme represents. I hope that Stephen Kerr now has some understanding of the harmful impact that his Government has had on EU citizens in Scotland and throughout the UK. Ross Greer also mentioned other issues that were raised in the Green amendment that was not selected for debate. At the moment, there is ambiguity from the Scottish Government on the idea of a physical token in relation to the EU settled status scheme. When we raised it before the election, the Scottish Government appeared to be generally sceptical about the idea, but its manifesto subsequently opened the door to that policy. I am still unclear whether it will proceed, and, surely, that decision should have been taken by now.

EU citizens in Scotland make a critical contribution to our society, especially in sectors that suffer from widespread job insecurity, low pay and poor working conditions, as multiple speakers have recognised. We seek action to fix those long-standing problems, not only because so many people’s work is vital to our wellbeing as a society, but because nobody should be expected to live with exploitative working conditions.

The cabinet secretary responded to a challenge from Daniel Johnson on that issue by saying that sectors such as hospitality also offer positive opportunities. However, that risks implying that we should give undiscriminating support to employers, regardless of how they treat their workers. We need to address individual abuses—such as those suffered by staff at the Glasgow bars AdLib and Blue Dog, who are owed hundreds of thousands of pounds in unpaid furlough—but we also need a systemic approach. That requires determination from Government to intervene in order to raise standards across sectors such as hospitality, retail, social care and further and higher education, because those abusive and exploitative conditions are at least as much of a problem in recruitment as are any of the other factors that members have discussed today.

People are clearly suffering because of Brexit and because of the deliberate policy choices of the UK Government, but they are also suffering because of their treatment by employers. Because all employers are now dependent on state intervention in the Covid recovery, there is an unprecedented opportunity for the state to clearly set the conditions for that support, in order to raise standards. If we want an economic recovery that works for everyone, it is vital that we do not miss that opportunity.

To ask the Scottish Government when ministers last met with tenants unions to discuss the development of the rented sector strategy. (S6O-00025)

The First Minister referred again, as she has done in the past, to the race between the vaccine and the virus. It should be clear to us all by now that a global pandemic is the kind of race that we win only when everybody wins—we are safe only when everybody is safe.

Does the First Minister therefore support the open letter written by UNICEF and supporters to the leaders of the G7 about the global vaccination programme for developing countries? The letter points out that the Covid-19 vaccines global access—COVAX—initiative is 190 million doses short of where it needs to be and that developing countries with a more limited health infrastructure are getting a large number of vaccine doses late. That will not lead to mass vaccination; it will lead to mass wastage.

What response does the First Minister hope will come from the G7 leaders to that call for earlier, larger-scale and more predictable donations of vaccine from rich countries to developing countries? How can Scotland’s voice be added to the call for greater ambition on the global aspects of the pandemic?

The campaign was launched only today but, just so that the First Minister and everybody in Parliament is aware of the concerns that are being raised about the accommodation for mothers and babies in Glasgow, I note that the campaign says that the rooms are cramped and inadequately furnished; that there is virtually no floor space in the rooms for children to play or move around safely in; that there are multiple safety issues with the living, cooking and sleeping areas; that there is no respect for privacy; and that alleged infractions against the rules are posted publicly, humiliating the mothers. It says that all of that breaches the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the health and care standards and the current Care Inspectorate space standards.

The Scottish Greens have long argued that responsibility for housing asylum seekers should lie with local authorities, which are much better placed and, frankly, more inclined than the institutionally racist Home Office to provide appropriate accommodation. In the Smith commission, the UK Government and every political party committed to discussions on powers on asylum housing and support services coming to Scotland. More than six years later, those discussions have still not taken place. Will the Scottish Government put that issue on the agenda for the next joint ministerial committee and work with Glasgow City Council and charities to develop a public sector bid for those services so that Scotland can provide them to a standard that we can be proud of, instead of allowing a shameful situation to continue?