Chamber and committees

No, I do not have time.

I saw then that, as long ago as 2010, the Scottish Government had commissioned research into the use of falcons to displace nesting gulls and into other actions, including egg and nest removal and egg oiling.

In 2016, the House of Commons suggested that buildings could be seagull proofed, councils could issue gull-proof bin bags and people could be educated about seagulls. At the time, former Edinburgh councillor Nick Cook advocated funding for de-nesting. More recently, Aberdeen has tried a hawk and Aberdeenshire is trialling sonar devices.

However, where in all this is the Government or NatureScot? Rhoda Grant gave us the answer to that earlier—they are passing the buck. I found a parliamentary question from 2015, in response to which Aileen McLeod MSP stated flatly:

“It is the responsibility of local authorities to address problems caused by urban gulls.”—[Written Answers, 17 September 2015; S4W-27335]

In 2019, following constituent complaints in Airyhall in Aberdeen, I demanded action, but Roseanna Cunningham simply said that it was for the local authority to deal with the situation. Later that year, I wrote to Aberdeen Council on behalf of constituents in Torry. The council said that there was nothing that it could do due to the legislative framework and that the problem was the property owner’s responsibility; it also sent me a nice leaflet about living with urban gulls.

Here we are, all these years later, with member after member queuing up to show that the problems are worse than ever, thanks to a Scottish Government that slopey shoulders them and a Government agency that, as Douglas Ross said, has an extraordinary conflict of interest—an agency that seriously proposed that people should use an umbrella to go into local shops and/or send their dugs up on to the roof.

This is a serious problem, and it needs serious solutions. Douglas Ross has proposed some—which I am four square behind—to protect humans and businesses from the menace of gulls. Nearly a decade on from when I first started campaigning, it is long past time for this Government to get its act together.

I am delighted that Douglas Ross lodged this motion. Since being elected in 2016, I, too, have been inundated with concerns from constituents about screeching gulls dive-bombing people, particularly the elderly and small children, for food or territorial reasons.

In Aberdeen, the council receives around 200 complaints and inquiries about gulls every year, most of which concern aggressive behaviour, noise and damage to buildings. Just last week, on Schoolhill, I saw an enormous gull on the pavement, squaring up and refusing to budge. It was facing off against a terrified elderly woman and eyeballing her food. Aberdeen’s Marischal college, the second-largest granite building in the world, has sustained structural damage from the birds.

I must correct Mark Ruskell’s unevidenced assertions about numbers. A 2015 University of Bristol study showed that the number of urban gull colonies in the UK and Ireland had more than doubled to just under 500. In 2017, The Independent reported that the number had nearly quadrupled. That was eight years ago—the number will be huge by now.

I first started trying to find solutions in 2017.

In the cabinet secretary’s own words, no research has been done on the impact of the change on victims. Last summer, only 2 per cent of victims were told about the early release. Given those facts, surely the right thing to do today is to take the plans back to the drawing board, do the research and carry out a proper consultation so that we can understand the impact on victims.

In response to the 2019-20 crime and justice survey, the then justice secretary Humza Yousaf crowed that

“adults in Scotland were less likely to experience crime than those in England and Wales.”

However, the latest survey shows that Scots are now more likely to be a victim of crime in general and twice as likely to be a victim of violent crime than those in England and Wales. After 18 years in charge, does the Government accept any responsibility for those frightening figures? When, if ever, will there be a whole-system strategy to arrest those rising rates?

This SSI makes a small but far-reaching change to the home detention curfew regime, in which, subject to licence conditions, eligible prisoners are released from custody into the community.

At the moment, a prisoner can get HDC once they have served a quarter of their sentence. The SSI reduces that to a mere 15 per cent. A prisoner who is sentenced to two years in prison would therefore now be eligible for HDC after just three and a half months.

We all know that, due to a lack of any overarching strategy and an inability to build capacity, our prisons are running way over capacity. However, absent any such strategy, the Scottish National Party knee-jerks its response: last summer, and again earlier this year, the SNP opened the gates and let hundreds of prisoners out early. Despite that, by February 2025, prison numbers exceeded the pre-summer-release figure by almost 100, not least because more than one in 10 of the original cohort was back behind bars within weeks.

The SNP tried putting more people on community service, yet almost 30,000 such orders have been breached in the past decade or so. Roughly 8,000 of those involved got the jail for their breach, thus adding to the numbers.

Then the SNP changed the law such that short-term prisoners would automatically be released after serving just 40 per cent of their sentence, despite evidence showing that too little time in prison can prejudice proper rehabilitation—yet the prison population remains stubbornly high.

Clearly, this SSI is just the latest knee-jerk attempt to reduce the prison population. As was the case with the other measures, we have been given no evidence that it will either aid rehabilitation or, ultimately, reduce the prison population. Crucially, there is no consideration of the victims of crime. Indeed, the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs told the Criminal Justice Committee that no specific research has been undertaken on the impact that the SSI might have on victims.

Last month, I raised the case of violent thug Andrew Brown, who, just one year into a four-year sentence for repeatedly subjecting Demi Hannaway to appalling mental and physical abuse, even when she was pregnant, will get home leave. That is under the current rules. If colleagues vote to approve the SSI today, they are voting to allow criminals such as Brown to be eligible for HDC after seven months. The mere thought disgusts me, and any other MSP who feels the same must vote against the SSI tonight.

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on when the consultation results of the A96 corridor review will be published. (S6O-04821)

The Scottish cluster needs meaningful support. Years ago, the SNP promised £80 million to help to bring it online, with no strings attached. Later, the SNP introduced a condition that it would be paid only when the UK Government promised funding, and then the Green Party blocked it anyway.

Now that the UK Government has met the retrospectively imposed criteria and the Greens are, thankfully, out of government, when will the Scottish cluster get the £80 million that was promised?

Almost 5,000 days, 16 transport ministers and 14 years since the Government promised to dual the A96 between Aberdeen and Inverness, we finally have a publication date for a consultation report. When the consultation results are released this afternoon, will that come with a cast-iron commitment that the A96 will finally be dualled?

I will cut to the chase. I am sure that residents would be grateful for a meeting, but they would be even more grateful if you would just release the £20 million, or even £5 million of it, that was promised to Aberdeen in order to get the issue sorted right now.

Will the cabinet secretary accept an intervention?