Chamber and committees

I am grateful for that intervention, but there has been a paucity of achievement by the Scottish Government over the past 100 days, because of its overwhelming focus on the constitution, which is not doing my constituents any good and is not doing your constituents any good, Presiding Officer. It is probably time to just dispense with the rhetoric. We know that you guys want independence: just go and shut up about it.

Oliver Mundell made an important point about the delivery of laptops to children after the fact, and he was right to point out the SNP’s absence of humility in that regard. Getting things people things that they need, in good time, is an aspect of good government, but that has not been delivered. Carol Mochan touched on that in her passionate call for reform in the rented sector.

I congratulate Fulton MacGregor on his new child and Paul O’Kane on his big life event in the summer—he got married. It is always good to recognise such things.

Gillian Mackay, Gillian Martin and Kaukab Stewart made proficient speeches, but they all missed the underlying point that the Government’s attention is elsewhere.

Presiding Officer, I know that my speaking time is up, but I will go back to where I started. In his first 100 days, FDR recalled Congress in the grip of a national crisis and passed 76 laws to effect immediate change. This country needs immediate change, but we have been found wanting under the Scottish Government.

This is thin gruel for the Green Party. The SNP Government has barely had to budge. Take education, for example. In the previous parliamentary session, the Greens worked with us to reform education. However, every single education policy in the agreement document was existing Government policy before the negotiations began. The Greens have not moved the dial at all. In fact, the deal takes us backwards on education.

In 2018, all Opposition parties voted to halt the national testing of primary 1 pupils. There was a parliamentary majority that was backed by teachers and parents to that end. The SNP Government chose to roundly ignore that. The First Minister told us that testing would not lead to league tables, but there are now league tables in the national press. Will national testing of four and five-year-olds finally be abolished, or have the Greens surrendered the parliamentary majority that existed in support of that abolition, as well?

Last week, we learned that, in a single year, nearly 1,400 people had their lives cut short and their potential extinguished—many of them decades before their time. Apologies are hard to accept, because pleas were dismissed for years, and I will never understand why ministers surrendered services and expertise by cutting ADP budgets by so much in 2015-16 and 2016-17.

The drugs deaths crisis will be ended through compassion and treatment, but people who are gripped by drugs misuse are still regularly directed into the criminal justice system. Two hundred people a year are being imprisoned for possession. That situation has not changed in a decade, and the police say, rightly, that is pointless and damaging to lives.

In March, at the second time of our asking, the Scottish Government finally agreed to the principles of diversion and of stopping the imprisonment of vulnerable people. Now that decriminalisation is under consideration by the task force, how will ministers take that forward?

I start by offering the condolences of the Liberal Democrats to everyone who knew Andrew Welsh, who was a fine man.

I thank the legislation and clerking teams for the work that they have put into the bill, which has been no small feat.

I rise on behalf of the Liberal Democrats to explain why, after careful consideration, we will not support the bill at decision time tonight. That is not because we think that we do not need some kind of legislation—we do—but we want to see a better, more considered bill that does not extend power to such an extent or for such a length of time.

As liberals, we have been instinctively uncomfortable with the coronavirus acts, despite the security that they have offered some groups in our society and the protections that they have sought to give the most vulnerable. The bill offers the Government powers for far longer than we believe it will require. It also gives the Government unprecedented rights to introduce legislation without the level of scrutiny that we should expect in any healthy democracy—and, thanks to the vaccines, this nation is far healthier than it was when those acts were passed.

As I said yesterday, the fundamental principle of the bill is that it creates emergency powers that should exist in the context of an emergency. We in my party are not persuaded that the emergency in which we find ourselves will last for the length of time for which the legislation might empower ministers. Simply put, the Liberal Democrats do not believe that it was necessary to introduce in such short order a bill whose provisions last so long.

The Government’s answer to concerns voiced by my party, the Conservatives and others about the duration of the extension of the powers in the bill is the threat of new variants. That threat, however, might never expire; the threat that the variants might evade the vaccine is just as real for the next decade as it is for next week. Throughout the pandemic, ministers have shown that they are willing and able to legislate quickly. If the Government can find time to push through a bill as important as this one in just three days, it can introduce legislation that we can pass just as quickly should the vaccines fail us.

The Government has stretched and at times broken with the tolerance and good faith of members when it comes to making announcements to Parliament. Therefore, I am grateful for the agreement that Jackie Baillie and the Deputy First Minister’s office reached on the future conduct of such announcements.

The decision not to support the bill was difficult for the Liberal Democrats. We do not have a cavalier attitude to the virus or our route out of the pandemic, but we value the importance of scrutiny in parliamentary democracy. The bill as it stands is an overreach of ministerial power that we just could not countenance. It is not a considered piece of legislation; we have had barely more than two hours to look at amendments to a bill that has so much potential to give the Government so much power for so long.

We do not suggest that there should be nothing, and that the powers and protections of the original acts should just fall away. Instead, we appeal to the Government to use the summer to introduce a better bill to Parliament after our return—one that is informed by the landscape of the pandemic in late summer, safeguards the supremacy of the chamber and shortens to the bare minimum the amount of time that ministers have to exercise those powers.

We need something. The Liberal Democrats support the protections from eviction and the other rights that the bill affords tenants. We want to continue those protections, which should form the central precept of any future bill. A new bill would also need to disapply the extension to time limits on criminal proceedings, which, as I have said before, delay criminal justice and lead to an increase in the remand population.

The legislation is important, but it is because of its importance that we ask the Government to think again.

To return the favour that Graham Simpson did me yesterday, I support amendment 1 for the same reason that I moved my amendment 13 yesterday. It was on public scrutiny, which matters, particularly as the change will come just months before local authority elections. People want to know how decisions, particularly about things that are important to them, are made. I am happy to support Graham Simpson’s amendment 1.

The news that we have heard will be deeply alarming to many women, and it is a tragic reminder of the importance of robust screening programmes. If, as the minister says, there are regular audits, how was that issue missed for so long? If it was first detected in December 2020, why are women hearing about it only now? Are all the 1,500 women aware that their records are currently under review?

I rise in support of all of Pauline McNeill’s amendments and some of Jamie Greene’s amendments.

The Scottish Liberal Democrats worked hard to highlight the crisis in our prisons, which were unsafe and overcrowded well before the pandemic struck, because the Scottish Government has repeatedly failed to get a grip on the instinct to imprison. I have long supported evidence-based proposals for reducing the prison population by stopping the overreliance on remand and giving confidence to community sentencing options that do not rely on extra bunks in Barlinnie.

The release power was a mechanism that was put in place as part of extraordinary measures, at an extraordinary time, in the interests of health and safety. Fifteen months into the pandemic, with the vaccine roll-out well under way, that threat to health and safety is not what it was and the Government should not get comfortable with the power of executive release, because it is not a sustainable option for the long term. Likewise, options for automatic rebates on community orders do nothing to give confidence in those orders. If there are resource or deliverability issues, as opposed to health and safety issues, they need to be dealt with through proper funding, so that people can be supported to meet the terms of the orders. The legislation cannot be used as a get-out-of-jail-free card for the Scottish Government’s failure to properly support Scotland’s justice system.

I close with a word in support of amendment 7, in the name of Pauline McNeill, which would disapply the extension of time limits to criminal proceedings. Yesterday, I spoke in the stage 1 debate about the issues of remand that Jamie Greene has eloquently pointed to this afternoon—in particular, the rising population on remand. A rising number of people are going for a plea of convenience by pleading guilty to a crime that they perhaps did not commit, because they know that, otherwise, they will spend longer on remand when waiting for their case to come to trial. We support amendment 7, because we believe that the extension of time limits has caused a drift in the criminal justice system that is no longer acceptable.

Scottish Liberal Democrats campaigned for years to convince the SNP of the value of offering funded childcare for two-year-olds from deprived backgrounds. Supporting children in their early years is one of the most effective ways of driving down the attainment gap. It also helps parents to return to work by easing the burden of childcare costs and, by extension, it drives down in-work poverty.

Statistics that were released this week show there are still more than 8,000 two-year-olds missing out on that entitlement. What will the Scottish Government do to improve that terrible take-up rate and deliver flexible childcare to those who need it most?

The outcome of the vote on amendments 2 and 3 will be very important to the Liberal Democrats when it comes to deciding whether to support the bill at stage 3, because they seek to support the fundamental principle that these are emergency powers—they exist only in the context of an emergency.

We simply do not know what the context or the landscape of the pandemic will look like in 2022. As we all know, coronavirus is unpredictable and it can lead to unimaginable change, but the weathervanes all point to the fact that we might finally be emerging from it, and the roll-out of the vaccine is going well. We have to hope that there will be some version of normality in the near future without the necessity for draconian Government powers hanging over us all.

The bill will allow ministers to extend those powers in a wholesale way to September 2022, by regulation. As I have said before, the existing coronavirus legislation contains powers that are far reaching and, indeed, illiberal. They are necessary only because of the clear and urgent need brought about by the pandemic.

There is no need to extend such powers. As we speak, ministers are showing their ability to legislate quickly. If the Government insists that three days is enough time for scrutiny of a new piece of legislation on this occasion, why could that time not be found again in the new year? I reiterate our support for amendments 20 and 21, in the name of Murdo Fraser, on the same basis.

I am gratified to hear that Jackie Baillie has chosen not to move amendment 19. I look forward to working with her on that at stage 3 because I have a lot of sympathy with her intentions. The amendment would require that a statement be laid before Parliament 14 days before any proposed changes came into force. My party has expressed frustrations with late changes, some of which have been poorly consulted on. There have been times when businesses have spent serious amounts of money preparing for one scenario, only to find themselves plunged into an entirely different situation at the last minute.

However, I share the concern that a requirement for 14 days’ notice would not give the Government the flexibility to respond to urgent health threats. If such a rule were to apply to adding countries to the red list, would we be able to respond with the speed required in the event of a new variant emerging? We know that a delay in making such decisions can have serious and far-reaching consequences. The Government has stretched and, at times, overstepped the boundaries in making announcements to Parliament and doing so in good time, but I recognise the need to afford ministers flexibility so that they can respond to serious and fast-moving situations. I am grateful to Jackie Baillie for not moving amendment 19 and I look forward to working with her at stage 3.

I am grateful to Graham Simpson for his comments. I rise to speak to amendment 13 and I offer support to Graham Simpson’s amendment 12.

Paragraph 13 of schedule 6 to the Coronavirus (Scotland) Act 2020 has modified section 50A of the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973 to read:

“The public are to be excluded from a meeting of a local authority whenever it is likely that, if members of the public were present, there would be a real and substantial risk to public health due to infection or contamination with coronavirus.”

There has remained a requirement on authorities to publish an agenda and minutes of all meetings, but that was the extent of the reach of the requirements of publication.

When we passed the first coronavirus act in spring last year, we were in the first wave of the pandemic. Those weeks of high infection required that Parliament second guess the causes and mitigation of community transmission. As it stood then, paragraph 13 made absolute sense; we had banned all public gatherings, closed all hospitality, prevented people from being together in enclosed spaces and asked them to stay at home. It was self-evident that should people attend in-person meetings of a local authority, they would pose a substantial risk to public health and could spread infection. Paragraph 13 gave local authorities the option to exclude the public from in-person meetings based on a subjective assessment. It was the best that we could do at the time, but those times have changed.

By the end of September, cinemas and theatres will, likely, be operating almost normally. We might even have dispensed with any form of social distancing and face coverings, because our citizens no longer represent the real and substantial risk to public health that they did in March last year.

It is crucial to remember that the end of September would come just six months before the start of the local authority election campaign. To allow the provision to continue could allow local authorities to proceed with unpopular decisions away from the scrutiny of the electorate, by whom they will be held accountable in just a few months’ time.

I understand that we are not clear of the pandemic and that new surges and variants might once again create a heightened risk to health, but the bill will continue ministers’ powers to take measures that are sufficient to mitigate the risk of any activity, up to and including a stay-at-home order.

In short, paragraph 13 of schedule 6 of the first 2020 coronavirus act is no longer needed, and its use in such close proximity to a local authority election would undermine the democratic accountability of our councils and councillors. Removing it would not compel local authorities that are still meeting virtually to broadcast their proceedings if they do not have the technology or resources to do so, but it is our hope and expectation that, when the first two coronavirus acts expire and fall away, our local authorities will be able to meet in person once again.

Some of the biggest decisions that affect my constituents and those of other members take place in our local councils—on planning, on education or even on the local recovery from the pandemic. People at the business end of those decisions need a line of sight to how they came about. Paragraph 13—well intentioned though it was at the time—no longer has a place in the pages of the legislation or, indeed, in our democracy.