Chamber and committees

As I have had no indication that anyone else has a question, I thank the minister for her evidence.

Agenda item 4 is the formal debate on the instrument. I remind the committee that officials may not speak in the debate. I ask the minister to speak to and move motion S6M-12990.

That concludes the public part of our meeting today.

Thank you, minister. I move to questions.

Minister, you will be aware that stakeholders have concerns about the appointment of Sir Jonathan Montgomery and about the lack of transparency on the expert group’s membership which, I believe, has not been published or publicised. I am keen to hear the Scottish Government’s view on the anonymity of the group’s membership.

Good morning and welcome to the 13th meeting in 2024 of the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee. I have received no apologies.

The first item on our agenda is to decide whether to take items 5, 7 and 8 in private. Do members agree to do so?

Members indicated agreement.

The second item on our agenda is an evidence session on a legislative consent memorandum for the Victims and Prisoners Bill, which is United Kingdom legislation. I welcome to the committee the Minister for Public Health and Women’s Health, Jenni Minto. Her supporting officials are Sam Baker and James How from the Scottish Government’s public health capabilities division and Marie Penman, from the Scottish Government’s legal directorate.

A purpose of the Victims and Prisoners Bill is to require the Secretary of State to establish a body to administer a compensation scheme for victims of the infected blood scandal within three months of passing the bill. Due to time constraints in the passage of the bill at Westminster and the subsequent lodging of the LCM at a late stage, the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee is also considering the LCM at its meeting today, so it will not be possible to include its conclusions in our consideration.

I invite the minister to make a brief opening statement.

The next item on our agenda is consideration of an affirmative instrument. The purpose of the instrument is to amend the Registration of Social Workers and Social Service Workers in Care Services (Scotland) Regulations 2013 to reduce the period of time that workers have to apply for registration with the Scottish Social Services Council, with the requirement now being that they do so within three months of starting a new role. The policy note states that the objective is to encourage social workers and social service workers to apply for registration sooner after starting work, which will allow the assessment of an applicant’s fitness to practise at an earlier stage, providing greater public protection.

The Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee considered the instrument at its meeting on 19 March 2024 and made no recommendations in relation to the instrument.

We will have an evidence session with the Minister for Children, Young People and Keeping the Promise and supporting officials on the instrument. Once we have had all our questions answered, we will proceed to a formal debate on the motion.

I welcome to the committee Natalie Don, Minister for Children, Young People and Keeping the Promise; Rona Carson, who is a lawyer from the Scottish Government legal directorate; and Jamie McIntyre, who is team lead for the Scottish Social Services Council sponsorship team in the Scottish Government. I invite the minister to make a brief opening statement.

Mr Mason’s point reflects some of the discussions that the committee had and some of the evidence that we received, regarding silent prayer, both from people who held vigils or protests outside abortion service providers and from the police. That is why the committee recommends that the issue needs to be debated further at stage 2.

Notwithstanding that difference in view on the issue of silent prayer, the committee has concluded that, for the bill to be implemented appropriately, individual cases will need to be carefully assessed on the basis of their particular circumstances. For that to happen, we recognise the critical importance of giving police officers on the ground the necessary specialist training to ensure appropriate enforcement of the offences that are created by the bill. Our report calls on the Scottish Government to commit to providing the necessary funding to deliver that training and for that to be reflected in an updated financial memorandum.

In conclusion, I look forward to hearing members’ contributions to this afternoon’s debate and to considering the bill further should Parliament vote to approve its general principles.

My committee’s scrutiny of the LCM has been curtailed due to the bill being amended to include provisions affecting devolved matters only at report stage in the House of Lords. The committee sought evidence on the amendments from stakeholders, who raised a number of serious concerns that some of the changes deviate from the recommendations of the infected blood inquiry’s second interim report.

In particular, the submission from Haemophilia Scotland raised concerns that the previous requirement for the infected blood compensation authority, or IBCA, to be chaired by a judge of the High Court or the Court of Session had been removed. In addition, it was concerned that appeal hearings would no longer have the option to be conducted in person and would be before the IBCA rather than an independent appeal body, and that the amendments also appear to remove access to independent legal representation and support during an appeal. Haemophilia Scotland expressed further concern that no provision had been made for the representation of members of the community on the IBCA.

Respondents to the committee’s call for evidence further argued that the IBCA should be accountable to Parliament and not to a minister or department. They suggested that there should be

“a clear, tight, and agreed timetable to get to the point of operational delivery of the scheme.”

On that basis, they were concerned that the amendments remove a three-month timescale from the bill.

Respondents highlight a lack of detail relating to compensation payments, specifically with regard to the circumstances in which payments would be held in trust and the possibility of repayments. They argued that the chair should be responsible for all governance, management, structural and operational matters and for organisational development, and that the existing support scheme in Scotland—the Scottish infected blood support scheme, or SIBSS—should be kept separate from the compensation scheme and guaranteed for life.

Respondents make the case that support payments and compensation payments should be, in their words, “segregated legislatively” and that hepatitis B victims should be included in the interim compensation arrangements. Finally, respondents have suggested that those who are infected and affected by contaminated blood should be involved in the establishment of the IBCA and should have input and a power of veto in relation to key appointments.

Despite those concerns, Haemophilia Scotland noted that it was nonetheless supportive of the amendments because of a

“need to get this legislation into place so that swifter progress can be made to establish a compensation scheme for infected and affected individuals.”

Meanwhile, the Scottish Infected Blood Forum said that we need a

“balance between getting legislation into place so that swifter progress can be made to establish a compensation scheme for infected and affected individuals, and moving ‘at pace’ and then getting it wrong with little possibility of retrospective changes being enacted once views and actions have been solidified.”

The SIBF concludes:

“We finally urge the Health Committee to look at all the specific issues and inclusions outlined above to aid the Scottish Parliament in passing the Legislative Consent Motion (LCM) for the relevant sections of the V&P Bill while opposing those which are not in the best interests of Scottish citizens or devolution.”

The committee concluded its scrutiny by recommending that the Parliament agree to the legislative consent motion. However, we also intend to write to the UK Government to further highlight stakeholder concerns.

I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests in that I hold a bank nurse contract with NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde.

As convener of the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee, I am pleased to speak to our stage 1 report on the Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones) (Scotland) Bill. I thank the committee’s clerks and Scottish Parliament information centre colleagues for their work on the report.

The bill aims to achieve a balance between conflicting human rights: the rights of women who access abortion services to have privacy and to feel safe and secure when doing so and those of people who wish to express their opposition to abortion outside premises where such services are provided.

With that in mind, the committee has taken a careful and considered approach to its scrutiny of the bill at stage 1. In doing so, our focus has been to determine whether the restrictions that the bill imposes on the human rights of certain individuals is proportionate to its aim, which is to protect the human rights of other individuals and to strengthen their ability to exercise those rights.

Article 8 of the European convention on human rights requires the state to ensure that an individual is protected against interference in their private life. That includes an individual’s right to access or to provide abortion services. It also includes the rights of people who live in proposed safe access zones. Under article 9, everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. Under article 10, everyone has the right to freedom of expression. Under article 11, everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly. None of those human rights is absolute; they can all be restricted to protect the rights of other people.

The committee set out to scrutinise not only the provisions of the bill but whether it is proportionate to restrict the rights of one group of people in favour of those of another.

The bill is not concerned with the legality of abortion. In this country, abortion is legal up to 24 weeks of pregnancy, and beyond that if there is a significant risk to the life of the person accessing abortion services or there is evidence of fetal abnormality. However, it would be remiss of me, in this context, not to recognise that not everyone agrees with abortion, and that is the main reason why people gather outside abortion services to express their beliefs.

During the committee’s scrutiny, we heard evidence that activity by those who are opposed to abortion has increased outside clinics in Scotland in recent years. We heard about activity occurring outside a number of premises in Scotland, and we took extensive evidence both from those who have been affected by activities outside abortion services and from those engaging in such activities. I thank everyone who assisted the committee with its scrutiny, those who responded to our call for views and those who gave evidence in person or online. In particular, I thank Back Off Scotland and the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children. Both organisations helped us to engage with individuals, both formally and informally, in order to hear their personal experiences.

Some people chose to speak to us in private and others spoke publicly on the record. In weighing up the evidence that we heard, the committee concluded that the restrictions that the bill places on human rights

“are proportionate to its aims”,

and that, as a committee, we support the general principles of the bill.

However, we are clear that we must tread very carefully in this area. For us, as a Parliament, our guiding principle must be to ensure that any restrictions on human rights should be kept to the minimum necessary to meet the bill’s policy aims. Our report highlights areas in which the committee thinks that the bill could be clarified or strengthened in that regard. One of our key recommendations is that the legislation should be

“subject to ongoing review to ensure restrictions continue to be proportionate to the legitimate aims of the Bill as circumstances change”.

We believe that provision should be made for

“regular post-legislative review to ensure”

that the bill’s implementation

“remains suitably proportionate, balanced and effective”

over time.

The bill sets out that the safe access zones should have a standard radius of 200m, and it also makes provision for the radius of individual sites to be extended to address site-specific circumstances. We have heard that a radius of 150m would be sufficient to address sites that are covered by the bill, with the exception of the Queen Elizabeth university hospital in Glasgow.

In order to align with the principle that human rights restrictions should be kept to a necessary minimum, we propose in our report that the default radius of the safe access zones in Scotland should be set at 150m. Once the bill is in force, separate provision should be made to extend the radius of the safe access zone at the Queen Elizabeth university hospital to address the specific situation at that site.

We are also of the view that processes in the bill to extend or reduce safe access zones should be subject to stronger safeguards. We believe that

“there may be justification for setting minimum and maximum requirements”

for those zones in the text of the bill. We also believe that

“decisions about reducing or increasing the size of safe access zones”

should be subject to a human rights proportionality assessment; prior consultation with service providers and other relevant stakeholders; and parliamentary scrutiny via delegated powers.

The committee agrees with the definition of “protected premises” as set out in the bill. However, we remain concerned that any future decision to widen that definition could result in the bill applying to a much larger area than is currently intended and, as a result, having a far greater impact on human rights. Again, that is an area in which care will need to be taken to ensure that the bill’s impact remains proportionate to its aims, and in which Parliament will have an on-going role to play in carefully scrutinising future decision making.

The committee spent a considerable amount of time exploring potential scenarios arising from the bill’s implementation; what would or would not constitute an offence; and how potential offences could be managed. Key areas of focus included silent prayer, displaying religious iconography and what takes place in private premises, people’s homes and religious institutions that are located in a safe access zone.

On the issue of silent prayer, as the report makes clear, there were different views among those on the committee. Some members felt that the bill should include a specific exemption for silent prayer; other members believed that including such an exemption would fundamentally undermine the bill’s purposes. We concluded that silent prayer is a matter that will need to be debated further should the bill progress to stage 2.