Chamber and committees

How is Police Scotland engaging with particular minority communities of interest or identity to support them in getting their voices heard?

Has that been because of the reorganisation to a national fire service or explicitly because of the community empowerment legislation?

Thank you, Derek.

I will come to Karen Jackson and Eann Sinclair with my second question. How do you go about building capacity in more deprived areas and more marginalised rural areas? How do you build capacity in those communities to make sure that they can contribute effectively and have their voices heard on how services are delivered for them?

I will put my question to Stephen and Valerie first. How is participation with communities affecting how your organisations work with community planning partnerships? Has that changed in the eight years since the 2015 act was passed, or are you just continuing as you were?

Yes, convener. I will put this question to Pauline Smith first. How do your membership organisations ensure that all voices are heard? I am thinking of particular communities of interest or identity across the spectrum. How do those sometimes minority groups get their voice heard at community planning partnership level? What are your membership organisations doing to facilitate that?

How is community participation influencing how your organisation operates? Has that changed in the eight years since the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 was passed?

I welcome the debate, which marks international long Covid day, and recognise the tireless campaigning work that Jackie Baillie has done for people who are suffering with long Covid.

Long Covid is a devastating disabling disease. We should also be absolutely clear about the fact that, for many thousands of people, it is an industrial disease. Lives and livelihoods have been consumed by the relentless, horrifically common symptoms, which include brain fog, breathlessness, extreme fatigue, constant dizziness and joint pain. Therefore, I welcome the motion and agree that people who are suffering from long Covid should be compensated.

As members might know, the starting point for my proposed member’s bill, which would establish a Scottish advisory council to make sure that we have an employment injuries system that is fit for purpose in 21st century Scotland, was back in 2020, when I asked key workers, academics, unions and ministers whether long Covid should be classified as an industrial disease. The answer back then was an overwhelming yes, and the evidence that we now have means that that case is absolutely undeniable.

Many people caught Covid at work when they were simply doing the job while we were safely isolating at home. The condition has virtually destroyed their ability to return to work. Last week, many of us will have read on the front page of the Daily Record that long Covid has left nurse Brenda Eadie penniless, as she has had to give up her job in Low Moss prison. Brenda’s harrowing story was echoed by that of another nurse, who highlighted that, without a “financial miracle”, she would be unlikely to make it through the year. Front-line workers who put their health and wellbeing on the line for all of us during the pandemic are now suffering devastating circumstances in financial hardship.

You would not know it, but the issue of employment injuries is fully devolved to the Scottish Parliament. A Scottish advisory council could recommend long Covid becoming an industrial disease, but such a council does not yet exist, and we do not know when the relevant benefit will launch.

Although I plan to lodge my member’s bill in a matter of weeks, I am saddened that that will not be soon enough to help the countless workers who are suffering right now. In recent weeks, I have learned of care workers who simply cannot do their jobs any more because they do not have the strength to lift people or to cope with a full day’s work. They are being retired or, worse still, dismissed from their jobs on ill-health grounds for something that they caught at their work.

The fact is that too many people have been ignored by their employers, all while the Government is offering little more than warm words. The Government’s actions have been dismal, and it certainly does not match its rhetoric on supporting disabled people and seeking to give them the dignity, fairness and respect that they deserve. The Government recently told me that it started tracking its own staff absences due to long Covid only in July 2022, which demonstrates that there has been a failure to track people who are suffering from long Covid, as has been raised by other speakers in the debate.

When I first asked the then Cabinet Secretary for Social Security and Older People whether the Government would use its powers to recognise workers with long Covid in its planned employment injuries benefit, the response was appalling. Rather than using the devolved powers that Scotland has, the cabinet secretary said that those people should make a personal independence payment claim to the Department for Work and Pensions. The idea that someone with long Covid should apply to the DWP for PIP, forcing them into a traumatic, cruel process at the hands of an organisation that systematically discounts their illness, is horrifying.

Nearly 200,000 people are suffering from the disease, so it is devastating that only 422 people had made a successful claim by October last year. To make matters worse for the new Scottish benefit, the Scottish Government simply cannot see who with long Covid is getting support under the adult disability payment because, again, it does not track the statistics of people who have the condition. It should not take a member’s bill, but if that is one of the ways in which we can give people with long Covid the dignity, fairness and respect that they deserve, so be it. I look forward to engaging in the debate when I launch my proposed bill.

I absolutely accept that, but the contention by the experts that I visited in the member’s constituency is that the Scottish Government did not have to replicate that scheme in Scotland. It could have adapted the scheme to respond to the environmental situation here.

Those experts have also said that there has been an absolute failure by Government to provide adequate training so that their staff will know what the new scheme will look like. When I have asked questions of ministers, they have simply passed the buck to colleges and have said that it is for further education institutions to set up training schemes. They have not taken responsibility for supporting organisations in the member’s constituency which, as I said, have not been able to deliver a single insulation installation since July 2021. That is absolutely shocking. It has choked off work for local suppliers, which is something that should be urgently addressed.

To return to my original point, the report emphasises that local government must be a key partner. When making its recent budget bid, COSLA said that it would need £1 billion just to stand still and maintain current services. It emphasised how vital councils are in the preventative work that keeps people away from a strained NHS and continues investment in local communities. The journey to net zero will be even harder when budgets are cut and the consequences of not reaching those targets leave us in a worrying position.

I will take the member’s intervention in a moment, because this directly affects his constituency.

All that has meant that there has not been a single installation of insulation in the member’s constituency since July 2021, which has seriously undermined the local supply chain.

I appreciate that the scheme was designed and devised in Westminster. However, I have received advice that the Government was under no obligation to simply replicate and use that scheme in Scotland. In fact, the experts who have been involved in installing insulation in the Western Isles for many years said that that was exactly the reason why they had to bring their services to an end, which absolutely devastated the capacity of that community to deliver for the islands.