Chamber and committees

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?

Does Craig Hoy agree that it is troubling that we have a system whereby one person can overturn a democratic decision such as the one that was taken here or ones that are taken in councils, especially against such a weight of public opinion?

I am not sure that I can be as sexy as that.

I congratulate Stuart McMillan on securing the debate. It would be remiss of the convener of the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee not to congratulate the Scottish Law Commission on reaching the age of 60. As a former convener of that committee, and as someone who is around the same age as the commission, I had to add my voice to Mr McMillan’s.

It has been my pleasure to visit the commission—although I have not yet been to its new offices; perhaps there will be an invite—to chat to the commissioners and to meet the current chair, Lady Paton. It is good to see them all here today.

I want to mention a couple of pieces of work of the commission. One is current and one is past. The current one, which shows that we can achieve things in this Parliament if we work together and engage with the Government, is the work that the commission is doing on tenement law. That directly followed on from a report that was produced by the cross-party working group on tenement maintenance. The group was established in 2018, with Ben Macpherson as its first chair—I took over when he, justifiably, became a minister. We produced a series of recommendations for the Government, including a requirement for tenements to be subject to a building condition inspection every five years, the establishment of compulsory owners associations and the establishment of building reserve funds.

The Law Commission was tasked by the Government with looking at the owners association issue. It has been working on that since 2022, and it hopes to be in a position in the future to provide the Government with a report detailing its recommendations and to produce a draft bill by the spring of next year. I thank Professor Frankie McCarthy, who is leading on that, and her small team for their diligent work and for keeping us informed. It is likely that, by the time we see legislation, it will have been 10 years, spanning three parliamentary sessions, since MSPs first got together to tackle the issue, and that is a frustration.

I have also been involved in scrutinising Law Commission bills on judicial factors, moveable transactions and prescription and title to moveable property. However, I finish by mentioning an important piece of work that I was not in Parliament to work on but in which I had a small part, and that is the work that led to the Double Jeopardy (Scotland) Act 2011.

For those who do not know, the 2011 act means that people can now be retried in Scotland for serious offences for which they have been cleared, if new and compelling evidence—such as DNA evidence—is found. The matter was raised in the Scottish Parliament by Annabel Goldie after a speech that I made at a party policy conference, in which I told how the man who was accused of killing my sister in England could be retried because the law there allowed it, but the law in Scotland, where she was born, would not. New evidence was found in that case, and he was retried and is still behind bars. I am pleased that the 2011 act has been used in Scotland.

The Law Commission deals with difficult areas of the law. Its work is vital, and we should all be thankful to the current commissioners and to those who have gone before. I will not be around—I am afraid to say—in another 60 years, but I very much hope that the 2085 version of Stuart McMillan will lodge a similar motion for a debate in the Parliament to celebrate the Law Commission’s 120th anniversary.

In September last year, the Scottish Government published a report on RAAC in the public sector, which said that, in the NHS estate, it was likely that the number of buildings containing RAAC had fluctuated from 395 initially to 560. Today, we were told that 50 buildings definitely have it. Is that number likely to go up? Can the minister explain why he did not mention the Police Scotland estate, the courts estate, the Scottish Water estate, colleges or prisons in his statement?

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on what actions it is taking to end the housing emergency. (S6O-04734)

I thank the minister for that answer, but I cannot help thinking that there is no housing emergency plan after that. Following last week’s statement, I mentioned the issue of sites not being able to progress because they cannot get grid connections, and I want to quickly raise a couple of other issues. It can take as long as two years for developers to get permissions, and there can be up-front costs amounting to hundreds of thousands of pounds before any work can be done. What is the minister doing to unlock development by speeding up the system and making the process cheaper?

The cabinet secretary’s statement made no reference at all to home builders that are small and medium-sized enterprises, which I found rather odd. The number of active SMEs is down two-thirds since the global financial crash, and more than 500 in Scotland were dissolved in 2023, yet they are vital if we are to build more homes.

This week, the cross-party group on housing heard that up-front costs are too high and the planning system is too slow. One of the biggest barriers that builders face is the cost of electricity connections, with sites across the country stalled because they cannot get on to the grid. When the cabinet secretary looks at the issue of stalled sites, which she referenced in her statement, will she look at that issue? Will she agree to then report back and even to meet members of the cross-party group?

The First Minister will no doubt have been delighted that Sir Tom Hunter has hinted that he, the First Minister, is paid too little, but Sir Tom cannot get everything right. He wants radical action to reverse what he calls Scotland’s “managed decline”. He references falling standards in education for the past two decades, some of the worst health outcomes in Europe and a demographic ticking time bomb.

The report also highlights how Scotland continues to punish the entrepreneurial community with high tax rates. We have a top tax rate of 48 per cent, compared with just 24 per cent in booming Singapore. Does the First Minister not recognise that lower, simpler taxes can boost Government revenues, inspire innovation and lead to extra investment?

To ask the First Minister what the Scottish Government’s response is to the Hunter Foundation report, “Lessons from Singapore for Scotland’s Economy”. (S6F-04113)