Chamber and committees

The power does not allow the accessing of data on devices of that kind. Would it allow the seizing or destroying of those devices?

I want to ask about the enforcement provisions. I apologise that I have not yet had time to compare the bill with the 2020 bill as introduced or as passed, but I am interested in the changes that were made to that bill during its passage through Parliament. In particular, there were discussions about the need to protect people against personal searches and searches of their electronic devices, the argument being that the police already have those powers and that, when they exercise them because they suspect that a crime has been committed, they have set procedures and safeguards to protect people. The expansion of those powers to council officers for the purposes of trading and advertising offences could have risked the unnecessary violation of privacy rights.

Has the Government modelled the bill on the 2020 bill as introduced or as passed? Have the changes that were discussed and agreed by Parliament been incorporated into the bill that we are discussing?

Would the power to destroy, albeit that its use would be a last resort, be exercised by council officers, by the police or by both?

We will perhaps need to discuss that in detail as we get into the evidence on the bill.

Mr Kerr talked about the purposes of the protection of monopoly rights, which UEFA and others who organise similar events insist on. They would make the case that those rights are necessary to make the event commercially viable. Mr Kerr, perhaps understandably, talked about the impact on other businesses that might want to compete for that custom. However, there is also a concern about the impact on civil liberties. There have been a number of instances, not just in this country but around the world, where similar legislation has been used not against commercial operators who were trying to rip off a brand, but against messages, protests or expressions that have criticised some of the multi-billion-dollar brands around the world for their ethical behaviour.

Where has the Government sought to draw the line in protecting the brands that UEFA and its partner businesses will be concerned about, but also protecting civil liberties at the level of either organised peaceful protest or, for example, somebody wearing a T-shirt that satirises a brand?

That is helpful. Thank you very much.

Flegs!

The frustration comes with the delay, and I know that that frustration is felt by SNP members who have voted for rent control policy for many years without action happening. There was never any need for the many years of delay, and we could have done far more good for people by acting sooner.

The Housing (Scotland) Bill must make rent more affordable, and it will need to be strengthened if it is going to do that. It must also provide more protection for people who rent their homes. People deserve the right to withhold rent payments when issues such as mould, damp and serious repairs are being left by landlords for months—sometimes years—on end. Will the First Minister back the Green proposal to give people the right to withhold rent payment until repairs are completed to stop landlords profiting while they ignore their responsibilities, or is that another issue that will take 10 years of pressure before the Government acts?

I first raised the need for rent controls well over a decade ago, to the complete disinterest of the Scottish National Party housing minister of the day. By then, private rented housing had already been growing dramatically for years, and rents had continued to spiral. The situation now is far more severe. Even if rent controls had been in place just for the past five years, people renting their homes in places such as Glasgow and Edinburgh would be thousands of pounds a year better off.

I am glad that the Greens’ efforts and the work of tenants unions have resulted in a housing bill with rent controls for Scotland, even if it is weaker because of SNP amendments. I am also glad that our plans for energy efficiency rules for private landlords are finally going to happen. Will the First Minister explain why it took so many years of pressure from the Greens to make the SNP accept that rents are too high, that standards are too low and that urgent action is needed?

Today’s motion reminds us of the hundreds of thousands of members of the UK forces and the tens of thousands of civilians whose lives were lost in world war two. Beyond those deaths, the war caused up to 85 million deaths worldwide—about 3 per cent of the global population at the time. That number includes the 6 million Jews and the millions of others who were exterminated by the Nazis. An estimated 40 million to 60 million people were displaced.

However, mere statistics are not enough to truly comprehend the scale of what had to be done to defeat Nazism and fascism, the sacrifice of those who fought and the scale of the impact on the millions of lives affected. I honestly do not think that I can begin to imagine the emotional release that must have come—including in households that were, as the First Minister described, still suffering their own personal grief while the celebrations began—when the announcement of VE day was made.

In the wake of such suffering, VE day led to new beginnings. In recognising that they had fought together and survived together, people decided to rebuild their society together, with a welfare state and a national health service—an astonishing legacy for that generation to leave us—the creation of international institutions of peace, a framework of international law, human rights and what eventually became the European Union.

However, it is important to remember that VE day was not the end of the story for those who were still enduring war in other parts of the world, or for East Germany, which went from Nazi to communist control. It would be decades before that country would achieve freedom and join a peaceful and democratic family of European nations. It was not the end of the story for the gay men who were liberated from Nazi concentration camps but re-imprisoned by the allies.

We must also remember that the struggle to defeat fascism remains our responsibility today. We see an expansionist war against Ukraine being rewarded on the world stage and the horrific images of genocide from Gaza. We see the brutality of immigration detention camps and imprisonment without trial in countries that claim to be democracies. We see far-right ideology growing around the world and the arrest of Nazis in the UK only yesterday. We hear prominent voices in major political parties seeking to abolish our fundamental human rights and tear up the astonishing endowment that the post-war generation left us. As we see the UK Government celebrating VE day on the same day that it announces an agreement with a US President whose ideology is indistinguishable from fascism, we need to remember that appeasement never works.

I will end with the words of Ken Turner, 98 years old, as he sat in a Sherman tank. Mr Turner served in world war two, as did the tank. In a video that was posted on social media yesterday, he said:

“I’m old enough to have seen fascism the first time round, and now it’s coming back.”

After driving that tank over a Tesla and crushing it, he gave this message to Elon Musk:

“We’ve crushed fascism before and we’ll crush it again.”

Ken gets it—he knows what had to be done and the cost of what had to be done—but Ken also knows why it had to be done, and he knows that it must still be done. Let us never forget what Ken has reminded us of.

Scottish ministers have already lost two court cases on this matter, in July 2023 and April 2024. It is nearly two years since that first case, and my understanding is that the Open Seas Trust has alleged that Scottish ministers have continued to issue licences unlawfully and did not consider the national marine plan when they made those authorisations. Indeed, that has happened as recently as January. Will the minister commit to publishing in detail the new arrangements that he refers to—the detail of which, I understand, has not been made public—and to ensuring that the Government starts following the legal duties of the 2010 act and that authorisations do not allow significant harm to happen to priority marine habitats?