Chamber and committees

While a day out of Langholm is a day wasted, I am delighted to have brought the debate to the chamber, with support from members on all sides. It is an opportunity to put Langholm on the map, in the Scottish Parliament at least.

Langholm is a proud community, and rightly so, with a rich past and equally vibrant present. The muckle toon, as it is known locally, is said to have taken its name from the many large textile mills that were once based there and the booming population and bustle that accompanied them. Sadly, however, the subsequent years have seen many changes as that industry and other traditional industries have declined, with only a handful of connected businesses remaining. However, one thing is for certain: the sense of community, heritage and spirit that has been fostered over the years has not left—if anything, it has been reignited in recent years. Community efforts are now firmly focused not on halting decline, but on reversing it.

This is rare praise from me, but I give credit where it is due: pre-Covid, a visit from John Swinney, although it did not deliver the funding for which many—including myself—had hoped, nonetheless focused minds, and eventually led to the formation of the Langholm Alliance and the community forum, which has brought the whole community together. That has been very much a community-driven effort, much like the Langholm moor buy-out and many other success stories. Again, however, we cannot downplay the importance of on-going support from South of Scotland Enterprise, which has been invaluable in funding roles to co-ordinate that activity.

Following a meeting on Thursday, at which the community hosted the South of Scotland Enterprise chair, Russel Griggs, it was helpful to be able to ask for support from the Minister for Agriculture and Connectivity in addressing Langholm’s very real concerns that, because of the success of the Langholm Alliance, SOSE might now be looking to pull the plug. That would be entirely the wrong decision and would represent poor value for taxpayers when just another 12 months of support, at around £50,000, would give a number of key projects, such as the old primary school hub, a real prospect of being delivered. I would be grateful for confirmation this evening that the Scottish Government will take an interest in securing the support that the community deserves.

It would be easy to fill the remainder of this contribution many times over in talking about Langholm and the many projects, individuals and community groups that make it Langholm. Some of those are touched on in my motion, although it barely scratches the surface. The town has been called, among other things, Scotland’s chilli capital, given the number of members of its chilli-growing club. That is before we even get to its well-advanced plans to move into a new brand of horticulture, with a large facility for growing medicinal cannabis situated nearby—for the colleagues sniggering behind me, I stress that it is entirely legal.

Langholm is many things, but it is always full of surprises, and new ideas and new thinking, which sit alongside its many proud traditions and customs.

As the minister said, part of the site is now available and in the hands of South of Scotland Enterprise. Alongside a cross-party group of local MSPs, I have been working hard to support a company that is called ReBlade, which is interested in setting up a wind turbine recycling hub on the site. I have raised the matter before, but there has since been a change of cabinet secretary. Is the minister interested in meeting the MSPs that are involved in the cross-party group to see what more can be done to ensure that the project becomes a reality?

To ask the Scottish Government what steps it is taking to support the creation of new jobs at the Chapelcross site near Annan. (S6O-03261)

Thank you, convener. I want to place on the record that I remain strongly opposed to the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021. I think that the legislation undermines free speech and I believe that it should not be subject to commencement when serious concerns remain about how it will be policed in practice.

To be honest, I am appalled by that answer. I understand why the report was commissioned, but I do not think that it is consistent with what the then Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills said as the bill went through Parliament. I was on and off the Education and Skills Committee throughout that time. He acknowledged that it was unlikely that documentary evidence would be available in every circumstance. He did not talk about certainty; he talked about the balance of probabilities. He offered repeated reassurances that people would be believed and that the principle would be that, where survivors came forward and offered testimony, it would be taken as fact, not that it would be questioned.

The second thing that I find pretty hard to swallow, given that it was discussed during the passage of the bill, is the relationship between parents and the local authority that has been presented. It is not true; it was not factually correct then and it is still not correct to this day. Local authorities, through social work and education, wield a huge amount of authority over families. When they suggest things and direct things, vulnerable families feel under pressure to accept them. It is not a relationship of equals and it is wrong to categorise it in that way. Given what we hear from survivors, I had hoped that we would be looking to find a way to say yes rather than finding reasons to say no.

I am interested in what the Deputy First Minister has to say on the commitments that were given through the bill and on the relationship between parents and local authorities that she has set out. Even now in 2024, that is not my experience of what it is like for many families in my constituency.

Surely we should be responding to what did happen rather than what should have happened. It is another example of the system failing that people have come up against. The system has not been working as it should, so we would not expect you to dismiss that and say that it should have been done differently. That is what it sounds like.

There do not have to be records. I know that from my own constituents. What someone has to prove is that, on the balance of probability, something was more likely to have happened than not. I am aware of payments being made to people who have not been able to find records but who have been able to put together other circumstantial evidence to support an application. In this case, we have a great many people from various parts of Scotland, particularly in the Glasgow area, who are able to corroborate and confirm that the experiences that other people are talking about are the same as theirs.

That starts to look to me like something that would meet that test or certainly that should get far enough through the process to allow Redress Scotland to make an analysis of the evidence. However, because of the individual nature of the applications going forward, we are not looking at that collective picture. To me, that is not consistent with what your predecessor meant when he recognised that this is a grey area, that these issues are very difficult and that they would have to be looked at in detail. If they cannot even be looked at in detail, how do you work out whether they meet the balance of probabilities test?

Redress Scotland works for you. Redress Scotland works for the Government.

I agree, and I think that we would get a better quality of response if the petition came back in a different form. The reality is that, if we were to contact organisations or local authorities on the current premise, we would move into what would be quite a political space around funding rather than something constructive. From my limited experience of the committee, it works best when there is a defined goal or something that is achievable at the end of the petition.

I strongly support the aims of the petition. I see the problem regularly as a constituency MSP, particularly with vulnerable and elderly patients, including those who have to travel, and those with long-term chronic conditions, who are all struggling to interact with the same-day policy.

It would be worth while trying to find out how prevalent the issue is across the country. We could achieve that by writing to the Scottish Government to ask how many GP practices are now operating with a same-day-only appointment system. We should also seek its views on the health and care experience survey results and on NHS England’s recent change to the GP contract, which now states that patients should be offered an assessment of need or signposted to an appropriate service at their first contact with the practice, with practices no longer being able to request that the patient contact them at a later time. We could ask the Scottish Government whether it is looking at a similar approach and, if it is, whether there is flexibility to make a similar change in the existing general medical services contract.

I do not want to add unduly to the committee’s workload, but I would also be interested in knowing the views of health boards across Scotland on the issue, as they have a responsibility in relation to primary care. There are examples around the country of poor access to primary care causing wider challenges in the health service, with higher numbers of people than average presenting, for example, at accident and emergency. I would be keen to ask health boards whether this practice is happening in the areas that they are responsible for and how common they think it is.