Chamber and committees

Surely there is a distinction between someone who was elected on the basis of their controversial stance on issues that some people find offensive and someone who was elected on the basis of supporting basic climate science, for example, but who then moves to a political party that openly promotes climate change denial. Surely there is a distinction between the former and someone who switches from representing the views of the people who put them into Parliament to representing the polar opposite.

It would be rude of me not to start by returning the kind remarks that Jackson Carlaw made earlier. There are probably very few issues—aside from 60-year-old sci-fi—that Jackson Carlaw and I agree on; indeed, there is a great deal that we profoundly disagree on. However, his speech exposed accurately some of the real concerns that exist about what might be unintended consequences of the bill, and we need to give careful thought to such scenarios before making decisions on the shape of the bill before it reaches stage 3 or on how we vote on the bill at that stage.

In particular, Jackson Carlaw mentioned aspects of today’s political, social and media context that would not have occurred to us, had the matter been debated here or elsewhere 10, 15 or 20 years ago. We are seeing the genuine threat of an explicitly far-right Government in the UK. We are looking across to the US, a country that is now in the grip of post-reality politics, with a Government that still works with the mantra to “flood the zone with”—I will not complete the quotation, but we all know how it ends. Essentially, it involves taking an approach to politics that is about undermining anybody’s ability to believe in such a thing as objective truth.

We are seeing figures such as Elon Musk, who is in control of a powerful social media platform, explicitly advocating for political violence in this country, and we are seeing large parts of the media and prominent politicians clearly trying to normalise the idea that black and brown people cannot be British—or English or Scottish. They are not only advocating that those people should have no place in the Government or the Parliament, but arguing for mass deportations. That is a context in which the mechanisms that we are debating are at far more risk of being weaponised—not only politicised, but weaponised—and I am very concerned about that.

Forgive me if I am paraphrasing too much: Ruth Maguire seemed to argue that, if we are to have a recall system, we should be designing it for the Scottish context, rather than copying and pasting one from elsewhere. I agree strongly with that. I am not wholly convinced that the bill offers the route to a system that, ultimately, I will support, but if there is to be a system, we should be looking at our context rather than doing a copy-and-paste job.

In his speech, Mark Griffin frequently used the word “trust”. His speech gave much more emphasis to the question of trust in politics than any other speech did. Trust is important and he clearly expressed that. It matters that we acknowledge that trust is not easily earned. There has never been a moment in my time in politics when people thought that trust in politics was at a high point. We have always gone through cycles of recognising that a great many people have a low degree of trust in politics and in the political process. However, when there are fundamental issues of trust and of whether people trust their politicians in a general sense, if people judge us poorly in those general terms, the election is the means of holding us to account.

What is missing at the moment is an objective test for identifying when an individual’s behaviour has sunk so low that they have reached the point when, in any other workplace, they would be subject to a disciplinary process and could lose their job. That is missing from the arrangements that we currently work within. That is not really about trust; it is about an objective assessment of someone’s behaviour.

That goes back to the points raised in relation to Kevin Stewart’s amendment about a sanctions process and how complaints can be made and should be handled. That is where the objective tests of behaviour would come in—as opposed to in a petitions process that is open to politicisation.

I have a couple of comments on switching parties, which is an issue that many members have talked about. I emphasise again that many different circumstances can give rise to somebody switching party and can affect the way in which people might judge a member who has switched party. Of course, some people do that because they feel that the party has changed around them, or they do it in reaction to new circumstances. It also happens in situations where the motivation is transparently about self-interest or a betrayal of the fundamental values. It is understandable that there may be no single, simple rule for whether people will feel that it is appropriate or acceptable for someone to continue to be a member in such circumstances.

Finally, I want to come back to one of the most important—well, important to me—points in my opening speech: the role of legitimate peaceful protest, which can often meet a criminal sanction and often receives disproportionate sentences in the UK. If there is to be any criminal trigger for a process of the kind that the bill proposes, surely it must relate to the nature of the offence that is committed, not simply to the length of a sentence that is passed. If there is to be any criminal trigger, it must be about what the person has done and the circumstances and nature of that offence.

I will finish by saying again that I remain unconvinced that the bill can be repaired or fixed to the point at which those concerns are all addressed. I and my party will engage in that process. We will abstain tonight on the amended motion, but we remain unconvinced that the bill will be supportable at stage 3.

Richard Leonard began his speech by saying that the bill raises more questions than answers. I fear that I am about to spend six minutes saying nothing more than that, whereas he said it with admirable simplicity.

I have long supported the argument that there needs to be some measure of the ultimate disciplinary sanction for MSPs whose behaviour in any other workplace would be deemed gross misconduct and who would lose their jobs—for example, for sexual harassment or something similar.

There is not currently a mechanism for members to lose our jobs if we act in a way that, in any other place, would be considered gross misconduct. I think that there should be. However, I have also long argued that any specific attempt to design such a mechanism will inevitably encounter significant problems.

Perhaps this is a paradoxical argument, but, in my view, Kevin Stewart’s amendment mentions factors that would be more helpful than what the bill would provide. It includes things that should happen regardless of what happens to the bill, and which would be more effective in addressing the issues that we are concerned about.

If we develop any such system, we need to avoid the recall petition or the removal process becoming politicised. There is a real risk that any system that is based on a petition fails in that approach. In fact, in the early days of campaigning on the issue, the member in charge attempted to have the bill named—in an informal sense, at least—“the Derek Mackay bill”, which is the sort of term that the media might use. I think that his behaviour around that indicates that the intention was partisan from the outset.

There is a real risk that a petitions process would be used in a similar way. How could we prevent that? Have we even discussed whether political parties should be barred from campaigning or organising during the petitions process, so that it is led by the members of the public who are concerned rather than by political partisans?

I recognise that the situation is not fully unique, but my usual instinct is not to look to Westminster for a political system that we should copy.

The issue of anonymous campaigning has been raised. I will not repeat what I have seen in Glasgow, but it has included anonymous smear graffiti that makes very serious allegations against a sitting MSP, not based on any conviction or charge. That kind of campaigning in conspiratorial terms happens already and could be weaponised in this process.

We should also recognise the social media context. Extremely powerful social media platforms currently do nothing to police lies, conspiracy theories, racism and other forms of prejudice. Again, I fear that a petitions process would be vulnerable to that.

Several members have talked about issues around the disparity that relates to regional members. I will not go over that ground again, because it has been discussed, but it seems to me to be only one aspect of the issues that need to be addressed. The system for regional members, however, appears to accept the principle that the voters determine party balance, so I question the absence of a trigger in relation to somebody switching parties.

It might be that this is an issue where there is no absolutely right or wrong answer. It might be arguable that there should not be an absolute trigger, in all circumstances, for someone changing political affiliation. However, for a member who joins an openly racist, far-right party that promotes climate change conspiracy and whose former high-profile leaders have taken bribes to shill for Vladimir Putin’s regime, voters’ legitimate disgust at that behaviour might be seen as grounds for recall.

On physical non-attendance, I can see an argument for non-participation in the business of Parliament—

I am grateful to Jackson Carlaw for giving way, and I am not at all uncomfortable with his comments. Does he think that the bill ought to specify particular types of criminal offence that should be a trigger, rather than there being a threshold that is based on the length of sentence?

The Scottish Government is also dragging its feet in relation to the pace at which we reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, because it is watering down its heat in buildings agenda.

Even in domestic terms, Rosebank will not help the Scottish or UK economies. It is viable only with millions of pounds in subsidies, with taxpayers being asked to shoulder 80 per cent of the costs. All told, the development is expected to add £250 million to the UK Treasury’s black hole. It will not help households with rising energy bills. Ninety per cent of Rosebank’s reserves will be exported, mostly to the European continent. Even the portions that are sold here will be subject to prices set on the open market, so what we pay to heat our homes will be unchanged.

Rosebank is very far from a silver bullet for the North Sea workforce. With the whole North Sea basin in decline, as has been pointed out, the number of jobs has already dropped by a staggering 40 per cent. The decline is terminal, as research for the Scottish Government has shown. The only way to give the workers of the North Sea a secure future is to support them to use their skills to build Scotland’s renewables future. Indeed, the truth that Equinor and UK ministers want to hide is that Rosebank will, in essence, redistribute wealth away from the public purse and investment in Scotland’s renewable futures and towards wealthy fossil fuel giants.

If all that is still not enough to bring Scottish National Party ministers off the fence, perhaps the fact that Rosebank profits will actively fund some of those who are operating illegally in the occupied Palestinian territories will be the final straw. Equinor’s minority partner in developing Rosebank is Ithaca Energy, which is majority owned by the Delek Group—an Israeli fuel conglomerate that is operating in the occupied territories and has been flagged for potential human rights breaches. If Rosebank is developed, the Delek Group is expected to receive about £253 million in revenue from the field. Profits from an oil field in Scotland’s waters could financially benefit a company that is linked to human rights violations against the Palestinian people. That would be just three months after we voted for a package of boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel and companies that are complicit in the occupation.

For all those reasons—complicity with occupation and war crime, betrayal of Scotland’s economic interests and the extraordinary scale of climate destruction—the Parliament must vote to oppose the Rosebank field.

I move,

That the Parliament opposes the development of the Rosebank oil and gas field.

[Made a request to intervene.]

I thank all members who have contributed to the debate. It is clear that, across the chamber, there is a strong recognition of the value and importance of bus services to all the communities that we represent, whether that is in tackling child poverty and the cost of living or whether that is in enabling access to services, work, college and each other. I think that one member referred to buses enabling people to access a loch to have a picnic there. Bus travel was described during the debate as the “backbone” of public transport, and I think that that is right.

I will mention Jamie Greene’s speech because he was one of a number of members who talked about the reduction in bus services, especially in the more rural parts of his region. He did not simply blame the Government for that; he recognised that the model is broken. He saw that the blame often lies with the private operators and that councils have been given the power to act but not the resource to do so. In too many parts of Scotland, we see private companies quite happily running the profitable bits of the network—some people think that that is a good thing—while abandoning other parts of the network or other communities and leaving the public sector to step in.

A number of members gave examples of where communities have stepped in. Davy Russell is in the chamber, so I will mention Climate Action Strathaven, which runs the 3C bus in his constituency. That is how I travelled when we were all heading out there for the by-election campaign. Local communities should not have to step in to fill the gaps in a failed private sector model.

A number of members talked about the impact of antisocial behaviour. I believe—we all do—that every bus passenger should feel safe and be safe when using the bus. Every bus driver and worker in the bus services should feel safe at work and be safe at work. We recognise that that is an issue, but I also say that it is not entirely tied to the under-22s free bus pass. I regret that some people seem to want to tie together those issues a little too closely.

I have seen antisocial behaviour on the wider public transport network, including on trains, and not just on buses. On buses, I have seen it from people who are significantly older than those young people who are sometimes stigmatised. I know from colleagues that such behaviour happens in parts of England and Wales that do not have something equivalent to the under-22s free bus pass.

We will look at what the Government comes forward with and take a view on it when we see it, if the Government wants to make changes. However, it is clear—at least to me—that simply removing the free bus pass would not tackle antisocial behaviour. If somebody’s behaviour is the problem, simply saying that they should pay for their own ticket is not a solution, while simply saying that they should not be on the bus means that the behaviour will take place somewhere else. I would like us to think principally about the behaviour, rather than the bus pass.

The under-22s free bus pass has been an overwhelming success. Although one or two members seem to be in denial about that and to think of it as some uncosted fantasy economics, I gently remind everyone that we have actually done it. It is happening, it is working and it has been a huge success, with more than 250 million journeys taken.

I have spoken to constituents of mine who had the option to take a job or a college course that they simply could not have afforded to do if they had had to pay the full cost of their bus travel. Publicly funded journeys—whether for younger people, older people or anyone else—help to make services more viable. They help to protect and preserve services that the private sector would otherwise seek to undermine. However, that also makes the case for moving away from what is a failed free-market model.

The Conservative amendment talks about competition. We have had decades of competition in delivering bus services, and it has failed. We have seen ever-rising prices, services have been scrapped or are unreliable and many communities have been left without a service altogether. The Government often gets the blame when communities are poorly served in that way but, in fact, it proves that the free-market model is a failure.

We need to move on, certainly to franchising—and, yes, the argument for shortening and simplifying that process is clear. As well as giving local authorities the ability to do that, we need to fund the process. We need to ensure that they are resourced and have access to the funding and skills that will enable them to use those powers. From that case for franchising, we then need to move on and talk about public ownership. That will need resource, too, but it will be the most effective way to ensure that we end up with a public transport service that works for the public interest.

I commend Claire Baker for her bravery in using the phrase “take back control” because I wish, for goodness’ sake, that the phrase had been coined as a slogan not by those who were seeking to blame the European Union for all the ills of the country but by those who were looking to blame the private sector, the super-rich and the billionaires. The bus system in this country has allowed the super-rich to line their pockets by running rubbish services that are fleecing people through tickets and not providing the service that is needed to a great many communities.

Greens are proud of the progress that we have made, particularly on travel for under-22s. We are determined to build on that progress and to see a public transport system in Scotland that is run for public benefit and that meets the interests of the communities that we serve.

Will the member give way?

Will the member give way?