Chamber and committees

How do you measure the success of that? How do you know whether the service is working for parents?

I congratulate Kate Forbes on securing this important debate and highlighting the positive impact of charities, community and voluntary groups and other non-profit-distributing organisations.

Third sector organisations can be the backbone of communities. They offer a range of services and often help to alleviate societal difficulties such as food poverty, loneliness and social isolation and generally making life better. I am sure that everyone here can think of many organisations in their constituencies that do just that. I know of organisations ranging from community larders providing access to groceries and the Community Led Action and Support Project’s hope in the community work with older citizens to larger charities such as Barnardo’s and Aberlour, to name just a few.

The Westminster-induced cost of living crisis means that such organisations are plugging gaps in services that were previously publicly funded, while, like everyone else, navigating rising costs and inflation. In doing so, they contribute to, and help to reduce, public expenditure, as was highlighted by the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Thousands of organisations are helping to balance our delicate social fabric.

During my time as convener of the Equalities and Human Rights Committee back in 2019, we published a report about valuing the third sector, which recognised the economic contribution of the third sector as being higher than that of the whisky industry and not far behind that of the Scottish tourism sector. Recent figures, published by the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations in 2022, show that economic contribution as £9.2 billion, up from £8.5 billion in 2021, while third sector spending was £8.8 billion, up from £7.9 billion in 2021.

Despite that growth in the third sector, its contributions remain obscured, as Kate Forbes explained in her opening speech, and its struggles are pretty unrelenting. In June 2022, Age Scotland reported the findings from its “keeping the doors open” survey, which showed that securing funding was a recurring issue, expressed the view that multi-year funding would be beneficial for increased financial security and the delivery of longer-term projects and said that single-year funding models, which required organisations to show impacts in just one year, made it more likely that they would be able to interact only with communities that they already engaged with. The 2019 report that I spoke about also picked up on the impact of single-year funding on the hugely important staff employed in our communities.

The Royal Society of Edinburgh’s report, echoed by the SCVO’s latest findings in the Scottish third sector tracker, continues to identify finance as a top priority. I understand that the Scottish Government is working with other statutory funders to consider how partnership working can be encouraged in a competitive funding environment and I would be interested to know how the findings are being used to design and develop meaningful collaboration between all sectors.

Economic activity should serve the purpose of meeting everyone’s basic needs and improving our collective health and wellbeing, so that all of Scotland’s people and places can thrive and prosper. The voluntary sector meets the vision of the national strategy for economic transformation by harnessing innovation, entrepreneurship, research and development, partnership and prevention and by supporting people into employment.

Building successful and trusting relationships between the third and public sectors is achievable. We saw that during the pandemic when the third sector played a key role in supporting the public sector and it was evident that existing relationships became stronger and new ones were created. There was the removal of bureaucratic barriers alongside joined-up working, which empowered people to work together quickly and efficiently. That made such a difference to folk on the ground. It was a better way of working.

Fairer funding opportunities and balanced power and resources for third sector organisations can help to overcome barriers and recognise our vision for Scotland as a wellbeing economy.

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on what action it is taking to challenge and deter men’s demand for prostitution. (S6O-03231)

A Model for Scotland recently published its report “International Insights: how Scotland can learn from international efforts to combat commercial sexual exploitation”, which we debated in Parliament. Will the minister meet the organisation and me to talk about the Scottish Government’s very welcome strategy as a whole, and discuss how to meet in practice the named objective of challenging men’s demand for prostitution and the elements of a programme of work that will be developed to achieve that?

This is all very fascinating. The difficulty of the signage issue is intent and how things are received. Protesters or people who are taking part in vigils would think that they do not have malign intent. The same is true of church signage, on which messages can be stark. They are not always welcoming messages from scripture. How have you worked through those difficulties?

Section 11 of the bill enables the Scottish Government to issue guidance to operators of abortion services. What do you expect that guidance to cover?

Would you acknowledge that it might be more distressing to walk past a group of men holding placards, even if those placards were about fair pay or working conditions, than it might be to walk past a couple of individuals who are praying silently?

Yes—I would not diminish any of that; we absolutely heard that. As we are creating law, what I am trying to get to is whether it is possible, in law, to protect citizens from silent judgment.

I am okay, convener. I will come back in later.

Do you agree that, in relation to proportionality when we are talking about rights, post-legislative scrutiny—there is that phrase again—is an important tool to give everyone that comfort?