Chamber and committees

Thank you, Presiding Officer. I rise to highlight—

Thank you, Presiding Officer. I rise to highlight to Parliament, education stakeholders and the wider public my concerns about the way in which today’s business has unfolded at short notice and without adequate explanation. Are we now really accepting that this Scottish National Party Government is so incompetent that it cannot even organise the publication of its own so-called “landmark education report”?

The issue might seem to be small fry, but it speaks to the lack of ministerial oversight and to the incompetence that defines this SNP Government’s time in charge of our education system. Why should parents, teachers and young people trust it to turn things around and restore standards when it cannot even get the basics right? This follows the shambles at the Scottish Qualifications Authority in recent days, which has seen pupils being screwed over for the third year in a row.

I note, with gratitude, the selection of an urgent question this afternoon, but many people outside the chamber will wonder why time for an extra half-hour statement opens up when it suits the Scottish Government. I accept that the timing of today’s statement is unlikely to change, but it is important to put on the record that this chaotic approach does nothing to build consensus and trust in Scottish education. Instead of a tired Government putting the same tired arguments, we need a new approach to ask the difficult questions. We are not going to get that in a half-hour slot at the end of the day, inserted at short notice.

We are seeing again an SNP Government that claims that education is its top priority, while at the same time it is selling our young people short. Where is the leadership? Where is the so-called priority?

I would be grateful if the Minister for Parliamentary Business could explain why we find ourselves in this absurd position and why there has been such urgency in bringing the matter forward for debate, when today’s business has long been scheduled.

On 6 October last year, I asked the cabinet secretary to personally step in to sort out the SQA, and I was told that it had her “full confidence”. In reality, the SQA has presided over the most shameless shambles yet, with pupils and teachers being taken for fools. The support that is being offered is a joke and insults the intelligence of our young people.

Given that the cabinet secretary has refused to act on repeated warnings, does she now take full responsibility for damaging the life chances of our young people? If she cannot do the right thing and say sorry, will she at least guarantee that this is the last year in which the SQA is allowed anywhere near such decisions?

I start—along with just about everyone in Scotland—by thanking the cabinet secretary for providing advance sight of her statement, or perhaps I should say “press summary”. Regardless of whether members read its contents online or heard about them in this chamber, they are just as depressing and hollow.

The Scottish National Party has frittered away another opportunity to fix our broken education system. After 15 years of neglect on its watch, Scotland’s education system requires a major overhaul, not a rebranding of the SQA and Education Scotland masquerading as serious change. The public will not be fooled by the spin when they recognise the magnitude of the problems in education that the SNP Government has created and exacerbated.

Pupils, teachers and parents were promised a new strategy, but it seems that the SNP is willing to commit to only cosmetic changes, rather than addressing the failures at the heart of our education system. The idea that the SQA will continue to play a role until 2024 and will have the chance to shape and influence its replacement is outrageous and speaks to the overconfidence that ministers continue to have in their own agencies. Where is the leadership and vision? Where is the ambition for current and future generations of Scots? How on earth can we trust the same SNP Government that has diminished Scottish education to restore it, when it has failed time and again to rise to the scale of the challenge? Do our young people not deserve more than this?

That is kind, Presiding Officer.

Rhoda Grant touched on the additional challenges that women face in more rural and remote parts of our country. In my time as an MSP, that has come up again and again. In large parts of the country, we too often make provision only for telephone or other remote offerings. In their time of crisis, many women who live in rural communities are asked to travel disproportionate and excessive distances to receive medical treatment, counselling and other expert advice services. That can be impossible because of the cost, caring responsibilities, unsupportive partners or family influences.

There is no point in living in a country that claims to stand for equality when equality exists only for those who live in certain postcodes. I ask all who make decisions, and particularly the Scottish Government, to keep it at the forefront of their minds that we cannot move forward and break the bias if we are not willing to challenge issues that remain in our own society.

I have contributed to the international women’s day debate a number of times since I was first elected to the Parliament. That always strikes me as a little bit odd, when I hear the many powerful voices from women on all sides of the chamber—a number of voices that has grown again—and hear them speak directly of their lived experience.

I can contribute to the debate as a father, a husband and an MSP, but I am conscious that, in doing so, my voice is heard while my wife and daughters remain at home. Too often in our society, it is still the voices and perspectives of men that are heard, even when they are talking about issues that affect women. That seems almost as if it happens by accident, until you realise that it is no accident at all. That is why we still need to break the bias.

I take that point. There is always a delicate balance to strike. We must ensure that we hear women’s voices, but I think that men—as Paul McLennan powerfully said—have an important role to play, particularly when it comes to influencing the decisions of other men in society and calling out some of the appalling acts that we still see.

One thing that saddens me is that, when we talk about women here in Scotland and around the world, we realise that progress on establishing even the most basic of rights is painfully slow. As Maggie Chapman and Gillian Martin pointed out, being a woman is a risky business that still results in many women ending up dead as a result of standing up for basic rights or, in some cases, just for existing. That is wrong. It shames our society.

Every time we discuss this subject, we hear countless examples of women being pushed into secondary roles—women who, as we have heard many times in this debate, are expected to play a merely domestic role or who are not seen in the same way as men. That came home to me again as I listened to Michelle Thomson’s speech last week, and my colleague Tess White’s contribution today, about the challenges that women face during wartime. We all fall into the lazy habit of watching television and thinking that it is men who are at the front and who face the brunt of conflict, but we do not have to look far or try hard to see the harms that are inflicted on women, many of which remain with them long after the conflict is over.

As we take part in the debate, war has moved closer to our shores. As Gillian Martin and others have said, it is not a new issue. Women around the world have always faced war. For many, there is no escape, and our words of solidarity alone are not enough.

In last week’s members’ business debate on the subject, my colleague Pam Gosal gave a personal account of some of the barriers that she had faced in getting into this place. That is something that I admire about Pam in particular, and about all the women in this Parliament: they are not wasting the opportunity to help others to follow them. It is no coincidence that, with each new Parliament, we hear new voices. We must work harder to ensure that everyone feels safe to participate in our politics.

In the time that I have left, I will touch on something personal. Although I cannot speak as a woman, I do not want to miss the opportunity to highlight some concerns that I have seen for myself. They might not fit neatly with this year’s theme or with my party’s amendment, but it is important that they are heard.

Natalie Don has already touched on one of the issues. I previously mentioned it during a debate on whole-family support and have asked questions about the issue throughout the pandemic. It is an issue that I feel very uncomfortable about: the support that was given to expectant and new mums during the worst of Covid.

I have seen how tough this time has been for my own family, and that has also come through from my inbox. Too often, the rules and guidance that we in this chamber have sought to impose for public health reasons have left all parents and carers, but particularly women, to struggle without a support network. In many cases, they have been separated from their families and left without access to the medical support that they would have had in the past. At times, it seemed that, in trying to do something good, we lost the balance between protecting physical health and protecting mental health.

There is a group of women out there who got no face-to-face maternity classes. Others got no support at appointments or scans. Some were left to give birth, wearing a face mask and without anyone there to help and support them. We were able largely to dodge those issues for the birth of our second child, but I am painfully aware of the impact that this had, and continues to have, on others.

As with so many caring and other family and domestic responsibilities, the physical and emotional burden throughout the pandemic has fallen disproportionately on women. I remain concerned that we sometimes see such decisions as being somehow less important or that we take it for granted that there will be no real pushback. We must do better on that in the future.

I was going to touch on another issue, but I am out of time, and it has been covered in part.

I want to come back to David Belsey from the EIS about whether the same kind of discretion should be given to headteachers in schools. It is all well and good to say that local authorities should have the power to shut a school on health grounds, but the example in Glasgow that you cited and other experiences that I have seen in my constituency have involved difficult judgment calls, and the person who knows the school, young people and community best should surely have a say in such decisions, too.

I am sure that it will be worth the wait.

I have a question for the witness from Public Health Scotland. I want to push on that point. In relation to building public trust and confidence and encouraging people to continue to follow the guidance as we move into the next stage, how important is proportionality? How important is it that the legislation matches the situation and the level of emergency and fear that people across the country feel?

It is for the witness from Public Health Scotland. Do you factor in how the public as a whole feel, how organisations feel and how decision makers feel if the legislation on the statute books is out of step with the perception of the risk and state of emergency that we are in?