Chamber and committees

Research from the Get Glasgow Moving campaign suggests that there will not be a single franchised bus in the Strathclyde region until 2030. I think that that is being optimistic, actually. That will be 11 years after the Transport (Scotland) Act 2019 was passed. What is the Scottish Government doing to expedite the process?

Last month, the Climate Change Committee advised that nature-based measures such as tree planting and peatland restoration could contribute 13 per cent of emissions reductions by 2045, but that would need the rate of tree planting to more than double in the next two decades. Will the minister admit that—aside from one good year—we are not going to achieve that?

I do not want to interrupt Kaukab Stewart mid-rant, but in my contribution I mentioned a very important project for Ukrainians in Hamilton that is run by the Salvation Army. I mentioned that visas and funding are due to expire next year. Will she commit to looking at the funding issue and possibly have discussions with the UK Government, which she has been keen to mention so far, on the visa issue?

This has been a really good debate so far and members have generally made good points. The Government is quite right to talk in its motion about the benefits of migration, a point that Kate Forbes made strongly. Liz Smith is also right to deal in her amendment with the difference between managed, legal migration and illegal migration, which is an issue not only on these shores. I might be wrong, but I think that I detected some consensus between Liz Smith and Kate Forbes, so perhaps Kate Forbes might consider voting for Liz Smith’s amendment on that basis, as we are all being so friendly.

If I can be honest, some of the objections to immigration over the years have been rooted in racism, but others have not. Attitudes have changed for the better during my lifetime. There was a lot of racism about when I was at primary school in greater Manchester in the early 1970s and some of it was directed at my friends. Things have improved a bit since then, but not nearly enough.

In my early days in journalism, in the early 1980s, I took up the case of one of the Vietnamese boat people—some here will not be old enough to know what I am talking about. He was a chap called Mr Yip, who had settled in Daventry, where I was working at the time, and was fighting to stay in the UK. Those people were fleeing repression and were very welcome indeed. Reg Prentice, who had sensibly left the Labour Party for the Conservatives and was the town’s MP at the time, took up the case but was on the brink of giving up and claimed that the immigration rules did not allow Mr Yip to stay. I was only in my 20s then, but I pointed out to the experienced Mr Prentice that the rules that were in force when Mr Yip first applied to stay in the UK were the ones that counted, and that they favoured him, so the MP pressed on and we won.

Thousands of Vietnamese people still arrive here by boat, but they are now largely illegal immigrants and are in an altogether different category to their earlier counterparts. I will come back to that idea.

Fast forwarding to the here and now, last week, I visited a project in Hamilton that is looking after around 100 Ukrainians, most of whom have learned English—if they could not speak it before they came here—and have either found jobs or are at college. They all pay their way, but they are on time-limited visas that will expire in July next year, four months after the funding for that project is due to end. Although visas are a UK Government matter, the funding is not entirely a UK Government matter and I therefore ask Kate Forbes whether there have been any discussions about extending such vital schemes, because those discussions are necessary, and those people need to stay.

People who have come here via legal routes are to be welcomed and we need them, but those who arrive illegally are a different matter. The director general of the National Crime Agency, Graeme Biggar, last year highlighted the detrimental impact of illegal migration on Scotland when he said:

“The main issue may be occurring in the Channel but we have others flying into different airports in the UK every single day. That includes the likes of Glasgow and Edinburgh. It is a problem which we are seeing right across the world and it is happening in Scotland too.”

Glasgow City Council’s convener for homelessness, the SNP’s Allan Casey, has said that the asylum dispersal scheme is “damaging social cohesion” and placing unbearable pressure on the city’s housing supply.

Like Liz Smith, I am not in favour of a Scottish visa and do not see how it could work, but there are sectors, such as care, that need help, and the Starmer Government’s approach to that has been wrong.

I will end by mentioning students. I have been trying to help them through the Housing (Scotland) Bill. An amendment that I lodged would have helped foreign students who are asked to provide a UK-based guarantor, which is an impossibility for some. It is vital that we attract and welcome international students, just as it has always been vital that we welcome people from across the world who want to come here via legal routes. To that end, the Labour Government’s plan to tax international student fees at 6 per cent and reduce the terms of graduate visas—

The Scottish Government has had various funds to help bus companies to buy electric buses. One of those funds was launched by Michael Matheson. That money—our money—has been used to buy Chinese buses. Years ago, some of us warned that that would end in tears, and that is where we have got to.

The First Minister says that there is a problem with the Subsidy Control Act 2022. Yes, there is, but we have known about that for years. Why does he want to do something about that only now?

Right, because I was going to follow on from your line of questioning—

You mentioned self-assessment and talked about people marking their own homework, which is what self-assessment can be. Your report highlights variation in how boards carry that out. Why is there variation? Should there be greater consistency?

Are all the boards using the blueprint? When you suggest external validation of blueprint self-assessments, who are you thinking of to carry that out?

Let us see how well I do on the issue of boards and board chairs. There was mention of Forth Valley. NHS Forth Valley’s current interim chair is Neena Mahal, who was the chair of NHS Lanarkshire. Is there an issue there? There is clearly a problem recruiting new chairs. Alison Cumming mentioned the aspiring chairs programme, which appears to consist of people who are already in the system. Do we need to be doing more to attract new people who are not in the system? Do we risk having this almost revolving door of chairs jumping from one board to another—the sort of cross-pollination that Colin Beattie mentioned?

How do you think the blueprint for good governance is going? How could it be improved?