Chamber and committees

In Dundee, 81 blocks of flats and 293 cottages, 133 of which have been bought from the council, have been found to have RAAC. Dundee residents in places such as Craigie and Menzieshill and residents in Milton Street in Monifieth tell me that they have been abandoned by their councils and the Government. I am afraid that the minister’s answer will have just reinforced that view.

A fortnight ago, the First Minister told me that the Government would engage with councils and residents to navigate them through the situation. When can Dundee residents affected by RAAC expect to hear from the minister so that a meeting can be set up with them and the council?

I thank the cabinet secretary for advance sight of her statement, and I extend my deepest condolences, too, to the families of Katie Allan and William Lindsay. I have three questions for the cabinet secretary, which I will keep brief to ensure that she has time to give full answers.

The cabinet secretary has signalled that she will pursue the lifting of Crown immunity. Will she set out for us when she anticipates real progress—and, I hope, success—with that?

Secondly, the cabinet secretary referenced the system of investigating the deaths of prisoners, but she said that it will take a further year to report. Will she explain why that further delay is needed to point out what seems to be obvious to everyone in the system, which is that it is not working?

Finally, the cabinet secretary says that she will extend legal aid to bereaved families participating in FAIs, but the legal aid system is already very short of money and resources. What extra funding and resources does she consider are necessary in that respect, and when will they be made available?

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete being found in current and formerly council-owned residential properties in Dundee. (S6O-04244)

Will Natalie Don-Innes take an intervention?

Will the member take an intervention?

I have listened carefully to the stage 3 debate, having not been directly involved in the bill until shortly before the stage 3 consideration commenced. Since becoming an MSP, I have heard a number of members plead that we should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I fear that, by failing to seek perfection in the bill, which I think that we need to strive for when we are legislating, the Parliament risks settling for the bill being just about good enough. On the one hand, the bill is important and it will achieve important changes, as my colleague Sharon Dowey set out. That point was also reinforced by the persuasive submission that we received from Victim Support Scotland last night, which actively urged us to support the legislation.

The bill introduces changes such as the new code of ethics, which has been welcomed as a step in the right direction. Although the duty of candour has been welcomed, some stakeholders and members have questioned whether it will have a meaningful impact. Perhaps the cabinet secretary can allay those fears in her closing remarks when she answers the concerns of Unison and the SPF, as raised by Katy Clark. There are changes to the disciplinary processes to allow them to continue even after the cessation of engagement, and on the independent adjudication of senior officers, and there are significantly expanded powers for the PIRC.

I am genuinely interested in this debate. How would the cabinet secretary respond to Calum Steele’s challenge this morning? He said that, because of how the provisions have come about, we have not heard evidence on them from people who will be directly impacted by them.

That is a very important point, which goes towards what the bill will achieve. As I set out at the start, there are areas in which I think that the bill is far from ideal. Just this morning at the Criminal Justice Committee, the PIRC candidly admitted that it is unclear at this stage what the extent of the extra workload that it will be required to do will be. It acknowledged that it is running at full capacity already. Although it will, of course, do its best to meet all the objectives that are put on it, it will require adequate resource. At this stage, it is not in a position to say what additional costs the bill would impose. That is in a situation in which the PIRC has already said in its annual report that it is having to request additional funding for staff costs and temporary funding for legal fees.

Its uncertainty is understandable, given that, as Katy Clark highlighted, the financial memorandum’s projections for the bill from last summer were at least £4 million lower than was necessary in order to meet the obligations as they existed at the time. The Government admitted at the Finance and Public Administration Committee that it had failed to take account of inflation and pay rises, and that it was using scenarios and figures that related to September 2022—yet the bill was being discussed in 2024. Of course, we have a new financial memorandum that was published in November last year, which the Government will say is authoritative. However, a whole raft of new features and requirements have been added to the bill, such as vetting and other items that will be developed as a result of the bill. My general position of having little, if any, confidence in the Government’s financial projections has not changed.

Finally, like Pauline McNeill, I am deeply uncomfortable that something that is as important as vetting was introduced at stage 2, which means that it has not been subject to the usual call for views or consultation process. There is a wider point about how we legislate in the Parliament, which is for another day.

The fact is that we have heard in the past couple of days significant concerns from the SPF about those changes to the vetting process, as Jamie Greene flagged earlier. Those concerns worry me because, from listening to the amendment debates and reading the SPF’s concerns, I think that it seems more than possible that there is something to them.

As MSPs, we have done our best to amend the provisions, but will the amendments address the concerns? Will they head off the unintended consequences? It is difficult to say, because the provisions were introduced only at stage 2 and lack detail. Perhaps the cabinet secretary can in closing set out her response to the federation’s concerns and, I hope, allay them, because that is the issue.

Given all the good things that the bill will bring in, I will vote for it at decision time. However, as with so many bills emanating from the Scottish Government, it is far from perfect. I hope that the cabinet secretary will make the case that it is good enough for now.

I entirely associate myself with Maggie Chapman’s comments about the Belmont. Is she as concerned as I am that Aberdeen Performing Arts last week reported a £900,000 drop in revenue last year, alongside rising costs? Does she share my desire for the cabinet secretary to take proactive steps to inform himself about that and to help Aberdeen Performing Arts, as we hope he will help the Belmont tomorrow?

Will the member take an intervention?