Chamber and committees

Good morning. I am interested in the link with the intended outcomes of each commissioner and their being scrutinised or held to account as a way, almost, of mapping against outcomes. Do you assess the effectiveness of the supported bodies against the outcomes that they have set out?

I do not want to put words in your mouth—I am trying to summarise what you have just said—but do you think that there is a gap in that respect, that the Parliament should be looking at?

A number of the commissioners who have come before the committee have said that they feel that the timing of their financial reporting to the Parliament is off, and they suggested that that could be improved. I am interested to know whether you had noticed that, too.

Secondly, do you think that there are strong enough links between the bodies’ financial reporting and, again, the outcomes that they are supposed to be achieving?

Single-sex spaces are not a “nice to have”. A person cannot self-identify their sex. The Government should not be removing safeguarding—it should be enforcing it. The women and girls of Scotland, quite frankly, deserve nothing less.

I will come back to the member in a moment.

Some people thought that that was hyperbole, and the First Minister said that he did not accept the charge. Whether he does or does not accept it, that is the reality of what is happening across Scotland. Either he does not know what is happening, and my characterisation is correct and he is out of touch, or he does know and he is being disingenuous.

My question was based on a letter that had, the previous day, been sent to the First Minister by Claire O’Brien, who is a member of the Scottish Human Rights Commission. It sets out clearly human rights breaches and the corresponding international obligations that apply in those cases.

My first observation is that the Scottish Government should have brought this debate in Government time. The lack of time that the Parliament has had to ask questions and to debate the issues is beginning to make the Parliament look less relevant to the public. We really should be striving to avoid that.

This is an important debate, and there have been some very thoughtful speeches from across the chamber—in particular, those from Murdo Fraser, Claire Baker and Pauline McNeill.

Last week, I asked the First Minister a question about the state-sanctioned human rights abuses that women are facing across Scotland.

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. I apologise—you might have misunderstood my point. I was not referring to whether a member or minister takes an intervention. I was asking whether it is customary practice for the member who is summing up—whether for the Government or the Opposition—to answer the points that were raised in the debate and to reflect the debate that took place.

I do—I support the notion of third spaces. Some members do not understand that single-sex spaces are not single-sex spaces if anyone can self-identify into them.

Women’s human rights are protected under international law through, for example, the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the Istanbul convention. Dr O’Brien states in her letter that there is

“no legal basis for the view that CEDAW extends in the scope of its protection to biological males. If it did, CEDAW would be deprived of its central purpose”.

There are a number of areas across Scotland where women’s rights are not being upheld. I will go through a couple of them. Prisons are an obvious example. Prisoners must be held on a single-sex basis, which is primarily to prevent psychological harm—that is an important point—and physical harm to women. That is an international minimum standard. I had an exchange with the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs on that a few months ago.

I will not, just now.

I really must state that the Government must reverse the policy that it has just announced of not providing the data on where trans prisoners are being held. Simply taking that approach because something is not politically easy is not a good enough reason to withhold that data from the Parliament and the public.

I will move on to the issue of toilets in schools. There is, of course, a law that requires school toilets to be single sex—for obvious reasons. However, the Scottish Government is consulting on removing the statutory requirement for equal provision of separate male and female toilets. I come back to the exchange that I had with the First Minister last week. The Government cannot get to its feet, as it has done again today, and say that it is committed to women’s human rights when it is pursuing such policies, which are a breach of women’s human rights.

I admire their spirit in trying to come up with a compromise that works for everyone, but they should not have to do that themselves. Leadership should be exercised in those areas.

On single-sex changing spaces, women have an internationally protected right to privacy, bodily integrity and protection against sexual violence. The position that has been taken by the Scottish Government and local authorities in relation to single-sex changing spaces runs counter to the protections that are outlined under international law.

The Scottish Government is responsible for human rights under the Human Rights Act 1998, even though it likes to pretend that it is not. The Scottish Parliament retains competence with regard to observing and implementing international human rights obligations. Again, I do not think that the Parliament is taking that up in the way that it should. In my opinion, both the Government and the Parliament are failing to uphold women’s human rights in Scotland.

That brings me neatly on to the Scottish Human Rights Commission. When I questioned the chair of the commission two weeks ago, she was unable to answer any of my simple questions to my satisfaction or—I think—to the public’s satisfaction. So, the commission is also failing: it is failing to adhere to the remit that is set out in its enabling legislation. It did not provide a comprehensive analysis of women and girls as vulnerable rights holders during the passage of the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill, which is a serious failure. It continues to fail to make interventions on upholding women’s human rights. The Parliament must now act, either to remove the commissioner, to censure the commission or to end its funding. I look forward to speaking to other members about what they think of that suggestion.