Chamber and committees

It is important to address that, Presiding Officer. The terms “displacement” and “othering” have associations with the language of the Third Reich. I make no suggestion or implication that Reform would adopt the policies of the Third Reich. However, we must be very careful when we talk about displacement, replacement theory and othering, which have become more widespread as the Overton window has shifted. I apologise if any offence has been taken.

I am afraid that I have given way enough now and I must make progress.

I must make progress.

By investing in social care, we can get those 2,000 Scots out of hospital. They would much rather be at home or in a care home than taking up a hospital bed. We absolutely need to recognise that inward migration is a fundamental part of doing that. Actually, there are many care vacancies. It is not about getting “our people”, as Malcolm Offord says, into work. Lots of jobs are going unfilled by Scots right now, and people from other countries desperately want to provide care and support to people in our communities.

This week marks the ninth anniversary of the Grenfell fire. Our thoughts are of those who lost their lives in that tragedy and with those who survived it.

The Humanity for Grenfell group is still campaigning for people who live in cladded flats, and it is right to do so. Nearly a decade on from Grenfell, too many people are lying awake at night, wondering whether their home might be at risk.

Across Scotland, almost 1,000 buildings are suspected of having dangerous cladding, yet new figures that came out this week revealed that the First Minister’s Government has got round to investigating only 149 of them. Why is that the case, and why is cladding removal under way in—staggeringly—only three buildings in this country?

We are nearly 10 years on from Grenfell, and the response that we have heard from the First Minister will come as no comfort whatsoever to the people who cannot insure or sell their homes or to the people who fear for their lives and want to know that their homes are safe.

The United Kingdom Government gave Scottish ministers £100 million to conduct the cladding assessments. Therefore, money is not the problem; the lack of urgency is. It appears that not a single building has been checked during the past six months.

More than two years ago, the Parliament passed the Housing (Cladding Remediation) (Scotland) Act 2024. Ironically, ministers said that that would speed up the process. Will the First Minister get a grip on this? Will he guarantee that, by the time we reach the 10th anniversary of Grenfell, next year, every single one of those vital checks will have taken place?

The minister will forgive me, because Liberal Democrats are not represented on the Economy, Tourism and Energy Committee, so we are unclear as to the process that has been followed on this occasion. Is he clear that, when he asked the convener of the committee, the convener had sought representations from each member and each party represented on that committee?

I am grateful to Helen McDade for taking my intervention—I offer my apologies for having to leave early, but I am very grateful that she has brought the debate to the chamber.

Does she recognise that, in particular health board areas such as NHS Lothian, young people are being asked to wait for as long as eight years for a diagnosis? I have a constituent called Abigail who is 16 years old; she has been told to wait eight years for diagnosis, by which time she will have left child and adolescent mental health services and transited into adult services. She worries—quite rightly—that she may be at the back of the queue for an adult services diagnosis. Does the member recognise that that is a particular problem in Scotland right now?

Before I come to the appointments before the Parliament today, I, too, on behalf of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, pay tribute to Dorothy Bain KC—the second woman to hold the post of Lord Advocate in our country. She was very generous with her time with me, and forgiving of my lack of understanding of the law at times. She also brought forward groundbreaking guidance, in particular as regards safe consumption rooms such as the Thistle centre, which I was fortunate enough to visit at the start of this year. That facility has saved nearly 100 lives since it opened, and I think that a lot of that is thanks to her visionary application of the guidance.

I welcome Ruth Charteris KC and BJ Gill KC to their appointments, and assure them of Liberal Democrats’ support this afternoon. These are the highest law offices in the land—it is important that we have people of calibre and respect, and both the nominees before us have those in spades.

However, I say respectfully to the Government that it is perfectly acceptable to respect the legal competence and experience of the nominees before us but to recognise that the case for reform of these offices is now unanswerable. When Dorothy Bain was appointed five years ago, the SNP recognised at the time of the election just preceding that—when it had promised to consult on reform of these offices—that having a Lord Advocate acting both as chief prosecutor and as principal legal adviser to the Government, as a full and active member of the Cabinet, presented many risks.

Those are very different skill sets, and I think that the intervening period has only reinforced and underscored the case for reform. As we have heard, England has an Attorney General to advise the Government, but a separate Director of Public Prosecutions. Similar reform has been emulated in the Republic of Ireland and, recently, in Northern Ireland.

However, I recognise that we need law officers, and we will support the appointment of the nominees before us today. There are big challenges before them both in relation to drug policy enforcement and fixing our broken fatal accident inquiry system. I congratulate them on ascending to these offices today, and we will support the motion before us.

17:30

The First Minister is quick to lean into the likes of e-Sgoil, but that requires far more support than the Government is currently providing.

I am not sure that the First Minister fully understands just how depressing it is for new teachers to come out of training and to have to head to the likes of Dubai or Darwin for a job because they cannot find one here. It makes no sense. On the one hand, we have teachers who cannot find jobs and, on the other, subjects are being cut due to a lack of teachers.

One practical way in which we can fill those vacancies is to make it much easier for primary school teachers to requalify to work in our secondary schools. Indeed, the General Teaching Council for Scotland said that that was a

“practical solution for … employers to address specific recruitment issues.”

Scotland’s young people deserve the right to study whatever they want, wherever they are. Will the First Minister instruct his Government to sit down with the Liberal Democrats and teaching bodies to deliver sensible solutions such as that?

On behalf of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, I echo the remarks about the Scotland world cup side and wish Steve Clarke and his squad all the best in the Americas.

On the violence that we have seen on Scottish streets in recent days, the heat and hate that are stoked by bad actors online and amplified by voices in this chamber do not reflect the welcoming and internationalist country that I recognise. If they seek to gain advantage by trying to divide the people of Scotland, they underestimate the people of Scotland, and they will fail.

A leading education expert warned this week of a persistent and worsening shortage of specialist teachers in Scottish schools. This is not just an education crisis; it is an economic one. Today, the Scottish Liberal Democrats are publishing new research that shows that more than 500 teaching jobs had to be readvertised due to shortages. Posts have been left unfilled for as long as two years. In Kirkwall, the maths teacher post was readvertised 14 times. Subjects such as science, computing and technology are the industries of the future. Why on earth are they being taught by history teachers or being dropped entirely?