Chamber and committees

That requires each of us to set aside the battles of the past and work together towards a genuinely brighter future.

The cabinet secretary is treating the Scottish public like fools. He expects them to believe that the waits in A and E are caused solely by the pandemic. We know that they are caused by an interruption in flow throughout the health service caused by a paucity of social care to receive people from hospital in-patient beds.

The ripple effects are catastrophic. Ambulance waiting times are off the charts. Waits are excruciatingly long. Two weeks ago, a pensioner in Edinburgh reportedly waited 16 hours for help to arrive. Staff are working tirelessly, but they need more. In addition to dealing with the waits at A and E, what immediate action will the cabinet secretary take to address the pressure on ambulance crews?

If someone is referred to a website called Beating the Blues when they have anxiety or self-harming behaviour, that is an inferior intervention. The Government may have invested in the CAMHS workforce, but the truth and reality of the situation is found in the statistics that were published this morning. The minister cannot ignore the problem.

There are aspects of the programme for government—on school meals, the child payment and Covid business support—that the Liberal Democrats welcome. We also welcome the overdue expansion of funded child care, but we will be paying close attention to the capacity strain in the sector and to how flexibility is afforded to meet the needs of families that work irregular hours or have training needs.

We also welcome the planned reform of the Gender Recognition Act 2004, because the GRA is harming people every day. The proposed reforms do not seek to endanger women or create an environment for predation. Instead, they will offer trans and non-binary people the dignity and freedom that are enjoyed in countries such as Ireland and France, which have already reformed their gender recognition laws. In those countries, concerns about a suggested link between self-identification and abuse have just not been realised. It is because the Government deferred parliamentary consideration of the reforms that the debate has become so toxic.

I will certainly proceed with caution, Presiding Officer. Willie Rennie makes a powerful point, but those are not matters for me. I am certain that he would have intervened on the First Minister earlier had he been permitted to, so I offer the First Minister the opportunity to address Willie Rennie’s concerns by intervention just now.

To ask the First Minister when the Cabinet will next meet. (S6F-00196)

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on its programme for mental health within the NHS recovery plan. (S6O-00094)

This week, Audit Scotland shared serious concerns about the way in which children and young people’s mental health is being cared for across Scotland. The number waiting more than a year for treatment trebled in the past 12 months, yet the NHS recovery plan says that child and adolescent mental health service waiting lists will be cleared by 2023. Can the minister assure the Parliament that those who are waiting will have access to the best care and that young people will not be parked on medication or referred to online interventions as a means of reaching that target?

I am grateful for that answer. I will state this clearly where other members have not: I and my party are fundamentally opposed to vaccine passports as a matter of principle. The rush to introduce the policy in short order throws up practical problems. How will it keep up with vaccinations across borders and with the booster programme, which is already in chaos? In addition, hospitality sees the policy as a threat and has no idea how it will police it. It is unclear what it will mean for young people. Will I need a vaccine passport to join a mass protest against vaccine passports?

Above all, Scots will, for the first time, have to provide private medical data to strangers in order to access freedoms in our society. Vaccines are the way out of the pandemic, but vaccine passports are not. There is no time limit, and there is an open door to expansion. Where does this stop?

As I am a Quaker, it will come as no surprise to Michelle Thomson that I utterly agree with her on that.

I will finish by quoting the words of a teacher in Kabul who previously worked as an interpreter for the international forces. He said:

“I sleep 10 minutes, then I wake up. I sleep 15 minutes, then I wake up ... I am feeling tremendous fear ... When they”—

that is, the Taliban—

“announce their government I’m sure they’ll be killing us”.

Our words will mean nothing to the Afghans if we do not deliver with our actions.

I move amendment S6M-01003.1, to insert at end

“; urges the UK Government to expand urgently its plans for the resettlement of 20,000 Afghan refugees, with a new plan to provide immediate sanctuary to people fleeing persecution, oppression and terror, instead of spreading assistance over five years; believes that the resettlement of 20,000 people should be the starting point instead of the final target, and urges the Scottish Government, in light of the immediate human need, to share proactively evidence of the number that it can resettle and provide effective support and services to, including the capacity to provide physical and mental healthcare, housing, guardians, translators and education, providing guarantees that the Scottish Government and public authorities across Scotland are ready to assist, in order to help persuade the UK Government to lift the overall cap and enable Scotland to provide sanctuary to thousands.”

I am very grateful to the Government for the motion that we are debating and for the tone of the speeches of the parties that we have heard from so far, which underlines the humanitarian catastrophe that we are witnessing in the part of the world in question.

I will start my remarks by reflecting on an aspect of my life that I do not often talk about in the chamber—that is, my Quakerism. I am slightly agnostic when it comes to religion, but I am a Quaker by choice rather than birthright.

I have always grappled with military intervention and I have marched against it and against wars, but two weeks ago I found myself in the strange position of actively hoping that our troops would remain on the ground in Afghanistan.

As the Taliban advanced across the country towards Kabul, the images and individual stories were absolutely harrowing. I was reminded of the words of the author Warsan Shire, who said:

“no one leaves home
unless home is the mouth of a shark”.

Babies were passed over walls by parents making the hardest decision they will ever have to make. People waded through a sewage canal to get to the gates of an airport, holding documents that they would never have the chance to show to anyone. British passports and letters of invitation to the UK were ignored and left to fall apart in the sewage. People stayed at those gates despite warnings of an imminent terror attack, and they stayed during and after an attack that robbed dozens in the queues in front of them of their lives.

If they were lucky enough to get through all of that unscathed, people got on flights with no possessions except the clothes on their backs. Some had no idea where the flight was even going, as long as it carried them over the Afghan border. In scenes that none of us will ever forget, some clung to the outside of moving jets with no hope of survival. That is an act of desperation. Terror, persecution, oppression, abuse and violence drive people to do that to have just a shot at evacuation and escape.

The Taliban have tried to reassure the world that they and their world view have changed, but aspects of their language and the actions that they are taking give the lie to those assurances. They are not schoolboys. For want of a better phrase, the Taliban are a death cult. They stone gay men or crush them to death. They cut the tips off women’s fingers and they persecute and beat women in the street for supposed transgressions. They have a twisted view of what they believe to be Sharia law. They are brutal mediaevalists.

We spend a lot of time here focusing on where we disagree. I whole-heartedly hope that each of us recognises our duty to the people of Afghanistan. We cannot leave them on their own to fight for survival and basic human rights. I recognise that our military presence in Afghanistan has ended, but the humanitarian support and safe harbour that we offer to the people of that country must continue.

I support the Scottish Government’s motion today. It mirrors the arguments being made by Liberal Democrats in this Parliament and at Westminster. My amendment sets out how I would like the UK and Scottish Governments to go still further. The UK Government should urgently expand its plans for the resettlement of Afghan refugees. It has offered to provide sanctuary to 20,000 people. The scenes already described today show why we cannot wait for four or five years. This crisis is happening now. Given its scale, 20,000 people should be the starting point, not the limit, of our ambition; it should be the floor, not the ceiling.

That is why I want the Scottish Government to share evidence of the support that it can make available and of the resources that it can gather or dedicate. I do not doubt the Government’s credentials on the matter or the scope of its desire to make a difference. I welcome that. Those who arrive will need physical and mental healthcare. We have heard about some of that already. They will need housing, guardians, translators, education and more. They have faced enormous suffering and trauma. I ask the Scottish Government to guarantee that it is ready to assist in cross-party, cross-Parliament and cross-sector work to persuade the UK Government to lift its ambitions. If Scottish ministers produce and share guarantees of Scotland’s readiness, that could help to enable Scotland to provide safe harbour to thousands more.

I am grateful for Sarah Boyack’s kind words about our amendment. Her amendment aligns with mine in recognising the important role of local authorities, the third sector and other stakeholders.

However, the warm words in the Scottish Conservatives’ amendment cannot hide the devastation caused by the decisions of Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab or by those of President Biden and others. Although Donald Cameron made an excellent speech, it is undermined by the conflict that exists in his party over the 0.7 per cent of gross domestic product aid commitment. I welcome his call for his colleagues south of the border to increase that. I hope that they listen to him.

The UK and US Governments have left the people of Afghanistan, particularly women and girls, to the Taliban. It is a betrayal, and their decisions have left thousands fearing for their lives. How many UK nationals and Afghans were left behind? Why did we wait so long to start evacuating interpreters if we knew that this was coming? They worked with our troops and officials for 20 years. There is no hiding that this is the biggest foreign policy disaster in decades.

Every Scottish Conservative should be ashamed by their part in surrendering the UK’s position of leadership and strength on international aid. Only a handful of countries met the UN’s 0.7 per cent target and, thanks to the Lib Dems putting it into law, the UK was one of them. That commitment has been shed, and it is not just Afghanistan that will suffer. In Yemen, where aid is being halved, 400,000 children under five are at risk of starving to death. Aid cuts to that country are a death sentence, according to the UN secretary general.