Chamber and committees

I will wait and bring the issue up later, because I think that it will be worth a letter. It concerns maternity services and delivering babies in ambulances in rural areas, for instance. I can pick that up later.

Thanks.

Sometimes, people might not be aware of it, so they might go to the emergency department instead of phoning 111, because they just assume they will not be able to communicate. If we make people more aware of the fact that there is this interpreting ability with 111, that is a good thing.

Good morning. Thanks for coming today. You mentioned the IVR—the interactive voice response. People whose first or preferred language isnae English can phone up. Do you monitor how many calls are made by people whose first language isnae English or Scots? I am reading here that there is the ability to interpret Polish, Arabic, Mandarin, Spanish, Romanian, Süryani and Ukrainian. Do you monitor how many calls are made by people whose first language isnae English?

We have talked a lot about distress brief interventions, breathing space and the mental health hub, and we know that a lot of work has been done to reduce stigma around mental health so that people feel that it is okay to reach out. How has Covid impacted the work to direct people to breathing space, DBIs and the mental health hub?

Can I ask a final question, convener?

As the minister will know, I have been working with her and with her predecessor to tackle drug and alcohol-related stigma, which affects individuals, families and communities, and which can have a negative effect on recovery. I welcome the fact that NHS Education for Scotland now has specific information for health and social care staff on Turas, the NES learning platform, but although there is education around stigma, there is a wee bit of room to go further. NHS Inform has some great drug and alcohol-related stigma information in a short, comprehensive format.

Would the minister consider working with NES to put that information into a mandatory module on the Turas platform for all health and social care staff, not only those who work in drug and alcohol addiction services, so that we can truly help to combat drug and alcohol-related stigma?

Alexander Stewart mentioned the chamber desk team, which is a small team. Is it burdensome for the team members to manage motions? There are a lot of motions—some people would have certain things to say about motions that they might not find as valuable; we have covered that already—and I am interested in finding out whether that team feels burdened by having to process so many of them.

Like Stephen Kerr, I sympathise with what Graeme Dey’s letter is about, but, for people who live rurally and remotely from this place, a motion is really beneficial, because they feel that they are being heard and that their work is valued, whether that is in relation to a charity or to local action that is being taken forward. We all have motions related to our cross-party groups as well. For example, today, I have a motion about world asthma day, and there will be a debate in the chamber about it. I know that not all motions are for debate—some are just to recognise or to congratulate something. Therefore, I would be keen to monitor the situation and see how we get on, but I would not like to prescribe to colleagues whether they should write motions in a particular way.

I welcome today’s debate on the Scottish Parliament’s gender-sensitive audit and the work of the Presiding Officer and the Parliament officials who have been involved in the process. They should be commended for producing the audit and for the huge amount of background work that has gone into it. I also thank all members who are involved in the gender-sensitive Parliament advisory group for their input and experience.

I am particularly interested in the audit, as I am the only female member of the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee at this time. It has been interesting to look at its findings. For me, achieving a gender-sensitive Parliament is more about making sure that there is gender sensitivity than it is about ensuring that there is equality.

As the audit states:

“Parliaments are unique institutions. They are both places of democracy and places of work. To deliver the best outcomes for both under-represented groups and for society as a whole, women must be fairly represented, be able to fully participate in parliament, and be centrally involved in decision-making”.

It continues:

“Scotland has a record that bears international comparison: arguments for equal representation were central to wider debates over devolution and embedded into institutional ‘blueprints’ for the new Scottish Parliament”.

That included policies to ensure “family friendliness”. I also like the use of the phrase “life friendly” in the audit. This afternoon, we have already made progress: we have moved forward with our use of language to be more inclusive and to support an approach that is not just family friendly but life friendly.

We need to make sure that we enshrine a commitment to equal opportunities and to mainstream equality, including gender equality, across all areas of work. Of the 129 MSPs who were elected to the Parliament for the first time in 1999, 48 were women, which equated to 37 per cent, but, as Rhoda Grant rightly said, women now represent 45 per cent of Scotland’s 129 MSPs.

As we started the debate, I was checking the balance of our members of the Scottish Youth Parliament. Of the members who chose to say how they wanted to be identified, 54.89 per cent said that they were female versus 42.86 per cent who said that they were male. There are other interesting MSYP stats, such as LGBT+ and carer stats. We need to be cognisant of those figures for our MSYPs—both male and female—and we need to make sure that we support them in their future progress and journey in this political environment that we aim to make more gender sensitive.

Progress is being made, but the record number of women winning seats in this parliamentary session did not happen by accident or chance. During the 2021 campaign, growing pressure on political parties led to many of them introducing a range of measures to increase women’s participation in parliamentary democracy. As members know, those measures included all-women shortlists for constituency election contests and zipped lists for regional list elections, in which female and male candidates were alternated.

From the 2021 outcome, it seems that those measures have worked. Indeed, as the audit highlights, they have worked in previous elections both in the UK Parliament and in Parliaments around the globe, including in Australia.

I found the findings really interesting, especially as much of the evidence indicates that shortlists in a range of areas such as disability and ethnicity—and, in particular, gender—support people, including many women, to be empowered to consider standing for election.

I am especially interested in recommendations 13 and 14 in the report. Recommendation 14 states that the SPPA Committee should

“consider these statistics (from Recommendation 13) biennially”—

so, every other year—

“and develop new rules and/or conventions to rebalance participation, where there is evidence of inequalities of participation.”

Roz McCall highlighted that in detail in her contribution, and I thank her for doing so.

As is covered in recommendation 13, we need to look at potentially publishing intersectional data on gender participation in chamber debates; questions by type, including First Minister’s questions and statements; and interventions. The reason for doing so is that it could potentially enable us to create new rules and conventions to rebalance participation where there is evidence of inequality—for example, in particular areas such as the economy or science, technology, engineering and mathematics. I know that my colleague Michelle Thomson is vocal on economic and financial issues; she and I are on the cross-party group on the USA together. That gives us a voice that ensures that we are represented around the globe.

Rather unsurprisingly, the audit highlighted issues to do with social media. I will pick up on that issue, as other members have done. We know that there has been a massive impact from interactions on social media. At the Presiding Officer’s meeting that we attended last week, I heard Meghan Gallacher describe what has happened to her—it was absolutely shocking. We have had reports of women parliamentarians around the globe being subjected to horrific abuse on social media, including, sometimes, from other parliamentarians.

Social media can be quite toxic. I would like social media to be a valuable tool that we use to access reports, research and data—I used it during the Covid pandemic to find out so much information about what was happening around the globe. I would rather that social media was a positive thing rather than the toxic influence that it is just now. Indeed, the former First Minister recently said that social media was a significant barrier for women pursuing a political career.

Recommendation 28 in the audit report says:

“The SPCB, working with the Gender Sensitive Parliament Advisory Group, and a group of MSPs from ... under-represented ... groups ... should update”

the Parliament’s continuous professional development provisions and potentially extend that work to explore a social media policy.

I am a member of the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly, in which the Governments and assemblies of these islands work together. I have written to the BIPA clerks to pursue the question of whether BIPA has done any inquiry work into social media policy. I know that the Welsh Parliament already has a social media policy as part of the standards that it works towards.

I have given a commitment to the convener of the SPPA Committee to share any response that I get from the BIPA clerks, and I will also write to the co-chairs, Karen Bradley MP and Brendan Smith TD, to find out whether they would like to undertake any further inquiry on the matter.

I am sure that my time is a bit out, Presiding Officer—you have been very generous with every member this afternoon. In closing, I simply state that equality for women is at the heart of the Scottish Government’s vision for an equal Scotland, and in Parliament we need to see the same approaches to look at achieving gender equality and gender sensitivity in the way that we work.

I look forward to working with colleagues across the chamber to help to make this place kinder. I absolutely agree with Monica Lennon’s intervention in that regard, and I look forward to hearing the closing speeches this afternoon.