Chamber and committees

On amendments, I think that you mentioned meeting MSPs from across the Parliament and that detailed work has been carried out on amendments. Given our interests in this section of the bill, are you in a position to share the proposed amendments with the committee at this stage, or will you be in such a position in short order, so that we can decide whether we need to take more evidence? There are detailed aspects to the issue, but it is not something on which we got a huge amount of detailed evidence during stage 1. We agree on the principle; this is about making sure that the proposals are workable—

I thank the cabinet secretary for her answer and for mentioning Mouswald. I would like the whole road to be dualled, but it is clear that that is not going to happen under the Scottish National Party. Therefore, will be cabinet secretary take away and consider the very reasonable request from some deeply concerned and desperate constituents at Mouswald for a couple of double white lines to be introduced, to prevent dangerous overtaking and potentially save lives at that location?

As the First Minister will be aware, since plans for a new Galloway national park were announced over the summer, there has been significant and growing opposition to the proposal, which now spills into my Dumfriesshire constituency. Many fear that this promises to be yet another example of urban do-gooders imposing their sanitised, overregulated idea of the countryside on already fragile rural and agricultural communities. The proposal is not supported by the local NFU Scotland branch, and hundreds of people are concerned about what is planned. Can the First Minister give a guarantee today that, if local people say no to the proposal, it will not go ahead?

I am perhaps less generous than some colleagues and less optimistic than Willie Rennie. I find myself arriving here today and wondering what the point of this debate is. I do not think that it is real. I am not sure what has depressed me most: the suggestion that we are confined by devolution or watching the glee and joy with which many SNP MSPs have pivoted their attacks from the Conservatives to Labour. It seems that some of these things are more about politics than about moral duty.

Only the Scottish Government, led by this First Minister, could have the brass neck to come here and try to hide behind the most disadvantaged in our society in order to detract from its disastrous tenure.

The First Minister talked of the past 25 years, but he is looking back through rose-tinted spectacles, because the truth is that the Scotland that we see today does not live up to the early promise of this Parliament. The blame lies squarely with the SNP, which, over the past 17 years, has squandered the opportunity to build a better Scotland. The truth is that, for many young people, Scotland is a grim place in which to grow up, and the ministers sitting on the SNP front benches have overseen every minute of that situation for the past 17 years.

We all know that, much like the promises to close the poverty-related attainment gap and to make education the number 1 priority, the Scottish Government’s latest bold ambition will remain just that and is not worth the paper that it is written on. There is little hope, only the same false promises and failed solutions from the same people who keep getting it so badly wrong.

It is true to say that the Scottish Government has shifted the dial, but only in a negative direction. Our once-proud education system is a shadow of its former self, our national health service is crumbling and shrinking inwards towards urban centres, and the promise of a good job and a fair crack at the whip is out of reach for many. Of course, it is always easier to blame someone else—or, in the SNP’s case, everyone else—but that does a disservice to this generation and to future generations.

We hear that budgets are tight, but bad decisions have been made year after year, the wrong priorities have been pursued for the wrong reasons and there has been no strategic oversight or vision. We see that again now. How can the Scottish Government announce that it wants to eradicate child poverty at the same time as rowing back on the commitment to deliver free school meals? How could the First Minister stand up yesterday, and again at First Minister’s questions today, and talk about having the right support available, through pregnancy to birth, when, in the Scotland that he leads—Scotland in 2024—some health boards do not offer in-person antenatal classes? Some of them do not even offer them online.

We live in a country where our Government can no longer get the basics right. It has lost its grip on health boards and on many of the other quangos and organisations that it is responsible for—and that is before we even consider whether the First Minister’s own drive to address child poverty is really credible. This, lest we forget, is an experienced and skilled politician who has served as Scotland’s finance secretary and as its education secretary, all the while brushing away serious challenges in the system and throwing around political insults and soundbites. I know that there has been a transformation and a whole new approach since the First Minister got the top job, but I, for one, do not believe it. The problem is that many of the challenges that we have go beyond simply money, and they stretch over so many budget years that it is laughable to suggest that changes could not have been made if the will had been there. As I say, some of the challenges do not come down to money; they are about questions of leadership.

There has been a litany of failed promises, including on tackling the cost of the school day—we heard about that again at the start of the debate—but very little has been done on it. Branded uniforms are still commonplace in most schools. There are lots of hidden costs in the school day, such as milk. There are no breakfast clubs in many parts of the country, and there is no after-school provision in most parts of the country. There are challenges for people in accessing childcare. Yes, it is good that we have 1,140 hours of funded childcare, but if the provision is not there or is not flexible enough to allow families to go to work, words in the chamber mean nothing.

We have heard from Government members, as always, about the good bits of policy, but they need to have the moral courage to admit that it is patchwork at best and that many of the measures that have been set out are sticking plasters that offer no bold or radical solutions. If that was just a one-off, we could perhaps agree that it is down to budget pressures, but we all know that the lack of vision goes far beyond that. Most families in Scotland know that, when things are tight, people focus on what really matters.

Even as the SNP Government announces a laser-like focus on eradicating child poverty—as it has done I do not know how many times—its decisions show that its focus remains all over the place. In short, this year’s programme for government amounts to nothing more than a mirage of activity in what has been a 17-year-long desert of SNP neglect. It is just a shame that the people of Scotland will have to wait another 20 months before they get the chance to call time on this waste-of-time approach.

To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to improve road safety on the A75. (S6O-03674)

I am a bit confused about the Cabinet sub-committee. If this issue is the Government’s overarching priority, should it not be a policy priority that runs through every single portfolio? For example, is hiking rail fares for hard-pressed families not completely contrary to the things that the cabinet secretary will be setting out to do?

In her opening remarks, Beatrice Wishart referenced the cross-party group on cancer and the potential for some crossover. If this group gets approved, will there be a chance in the future for the groups to work together from time to time?

Given the significant damage to the reputation of the Parliament and public trust in it and its members, I believe that a significant suspension is necessary. It is clear to me from the evidence that we have considered that those who have sent us here would not look kindly at a short suspension for one of our own when many in the real world would have faced the very real possibility of losing their job in the same circumstances. I therefore would have supported a higher sanction, but I recognise the need to come to a majority view.

The Law Society of Scotland and the Accountant of Court have both expressed concerns about the subsections of sections 12 and 39 that restate the current legal position in relation to data protection legislation, making clear that those sections do not authorise anything that would breach that. Various stakeholders have highlighted to the committee that legitimate information requests, especially by judicial factors, can already be denied or delayed. It is said that that is due to an unjustified reliance on data protection legislation, coupled with a failure to fully understand the judicial factor’s role.

Do you see any validity in those policy concerns? If the bill is to cross-refer to the data protection legislation, do its legitimate uses need to be explained in more detail, either in the bill or in associated guidance?

I think that it was the Law Society. The matter was raised by a lady who has been there for a very long time and is its in-house judicial factor. She therefore has a lot of experience of working with such legislation, and she said that it is not something that most people know about. They hear the term “judicial factor”, but they are not clear about what that is. They do not understand that the person who is appointed as the judicial factor, in effect, acts as if they are the person, so there is already confusion. She is concerned that the bill’s reference to the Data Protection Act 2018 would lead to people defaulting to using that as a reason not to provide information. Will you consider moving that to the guidance or the explanatory notes, rather than the 2018 act being referred to so prominently in the bill?