Chamber and committees

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.

All too often, nurses have had to bear the brunt of the pandemic, and many have had absolutely no respite, between cancelled leave and overtime. The sustained high-intensity workload has resulted, and will result, in significant mental health repercussions. There can be no NHS recovery without a committed and motivated nursing workforce. Nurses are pivotal, and the Government must make it clear that they are valued and will be listened to and supported at all times, not just in the run-up to an election. When it comes to the mental wellbeing of our nurses, what package of support will be offered to them alongside a much-needed pay uplift?

I have said before that when the history of Scotland’s pandemic is written, there will be no more tragic a story than what occurred in our care homes. They were missed out of pandemic exercise planning and then received more than 3,000 untested patients from hospital. Many families did not learn for months and months what really happened in the homes of their loved ones. They deserved to have all the facts all along. The repercussions of the failure to protect care homes and their residents will continue to be sorely felt, which is why we need a public inquiry to start without delay.

I am very grateful to Jackie Baillie for lodging amendment 18. Scottish Liberal Democrats also considered whether there is a need to retain the additional care home reporting on inspections and deaths that was introduced at the start of the pandemic. The policy memorandum discusses that in some detail. Before the powers are expired, I would like to hear further assurances from the Deputy First Minister and his Government that that will not have an impact on the quality of reporting on care homes. The policy memorandum says:

“inspection reports are published usually within 10 days of the inspection.”

I want to know what proportion take longer than that and whether there is a hard time limit for the publication of the reports. How will the Government ensure that there is still timely access to care home inspection reports? Are there any parts of the weekly reporting of deaths under the emergency powers that are not now covered by National Records of Scotland? Before the powers are expired, I would like the Deputy First Minister to guarantee that that will not have a negative impact on the quality of reporting on our care homes, because it has been hard enough over the past 15 months for families to acquire that important information.

I rise briefly to support Pauline McNeill’s amendment. I think that it offers some hope to the sector and a signal that the Parliament finally has the wedding industry at the centre of its attention.

Thousands of couples across Scotland have had the best day of their lives deferred or cancelled—in some cases more than once, and often at a cost of tens of thousands of pounds—because of decisions by the Parliament and the Government. It is only fair to adopt a reporting duty, as Pauline McNeill’s amendment prescribes. If we do that, not only will we send a very important signal, but it will concentrate the minds of the ministers who are responsible for coming to those decisions. In that way, in situations such as we had last week, when much of Scotland expected to go down to level 1 but was kept in level 2 and, at a stroke, we had to halve the number of wedding guests at many weddings around the country, such things will be considered and there will be reporting to the Parliament.

Scottish Liberal Democrat members are therefore happy to support Pauline McNeill’s amendment.

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.

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. Unsurprisingly, as this is an urgent question, there is a lot of interest in the answers from the Government. Given the connection issues with which the cabinet secretary is struggling, I wonder whether another member of the Government might be prepared to answer the question.

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?

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.

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 rise for the Liberal Democrats to offer guarded support for the bill’s provisions. Before I continue, I put on record my and my party’s thanks to all those on the front line of this emergency. It is much easier to come to the chamber and debate Covid-19 than it is to face it head on every day of one’s working life.

I echo other members’ discomfort about the bill’s timetabling. As a legislature, we are being asked at the end of June to empower the Executive to deal with the virus as it will be at the turn of the year. To rush through such an important piece of legislation in the last three days of a parliamentary term is not a welcome precedent to set.

Some 14 months ago, when the Coronavirus (Scotland) Bill was first brought to the Parliament, the Liberal Democrats supported it, along with all the other parties. I will say now what I said then: there are virtually no other circumstances in which our party would have supported the bill. The restrictions on personal liberties and freedoms jar against the very fabric of liberalism, but exceptional times require exceptional measures.

Earlier today I opposed the timetabling of the Coronavirus (Extension and Expiry) (Scotland) Bill, because scrutiny matters. Indeed, without the intervention of my party, in collaboration with others, the Coronavirus (Scotland) Bill would have allowed the suspension of trial by jury. That would have interrupted an unbroken tradition in Scottish justice that has lasted nearly 800 years and upended with it a cornerstone of our human rights.

Remote jury centres enabled 197 evidence-led trials to proceed in the latter part of 2020. That brought us to a return to pre-pandemic throughput, demonstrating that the cessation of trial by jury that the Government proposed in the Coronavirus (Scotland) Bill at the behest of the Lord President was, indeed, unnecessary.

I welcome the continuity of several aspects of the Coronavirus (Extension and Expiry) (Scotland) Bill, and I associate myself with Jackie Baillie and Lorna Slater’s remarks in relation to why many of the provisions have given comfort and security to people who would otherwise have been made destitute in the teeth of the crisis.

However, we in the liberal Democrats have serious concerns that continuing other aspects of the legislation beyond 30 September could still have serious consequences for human rights across society. For example, the bill in its current form proposes to continue with the suspension of certain time limits in criminal proceedings under section 5 and schedule 4 to the Coronavirus (Scotland) Act 2020, which allow for an increase of the maximum time period that an accused person can be held on remand prior to trial.

Of course, people are often held on remand, because it is the most practical way of keeping them and the public safe. However, 90 per cent of prisoners are still awaiting trial. Delays caused by the provisions of the Coronavirus (Scotland) Act 2020 have seen the untried remand population rise by 35 per cent. We need to resource the judiciary and the criminal justice system sufficiently to handle the backlog.

Reports from the Law Society of Scotland paint a very concerning picture that increased periods of time in remand threaten to skew the outcomes of criminal cases. For example, accused persons who might wait 12 or 18 months on remand had they pled not guilty might instead choose to enter a plea of convenience and plead guilty in the expectation of a discounted sentence, rather than face the long wait behind bars for trial. The continuation of increased time limits allows that drift to happen in the first place. There were backlogs before the pandemic and the continuation of the measures will only exacerbate the situation. It poses a threat to the very integrity of our criminal justice system.

The purpose of the original legislation was to protect Scotland’s most vulnerable from a disease that, 18 months ago, we barely understood. There are provisions in the legislation that I have always spoken out against because of the potential harm that they could do to some of those vulnerable citizens. The legislation offers ministers the power to increase emergency detention on mental ill-health grounds from 72 hours to 120 hours and suspends the need for a medical practitioner to consult, or get the consent of, a mental health officer before granting a short-term detention certificate. In short, if activated, the power would make it easier to secure compulsory treatment orders. That was done at a time when we did not know what pressures would befall the national health service and what healthcare professionals would be available. However, we now know that we can cope with the situation.

The provision is dangerous. I am sure that that is why the Scottish Government has never chosen to activate the powers. That begs the question why we need to retain them in the first place. As long as the provision remains in place, it presents a potential assault on the rights of those experiencing a mental health crisis and puts us out of step with our commitments to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. I hope that the Government will work with me to put those powers beyond use.

I echo what others have said in and beyond the chamber about the need for transparency. Transparency is one of the most important tenets of our democracy—without it, we would not have been able to access the information that reveals the true extent of the tragedy in our care homes—but the Government has repeatedly undermined that transparency and disrespected the supremacy of the Parliament in the way that it often announces dramatic changes to Covid regulations.

I am gratified that, this afternoon, the Presiding Officer challenged the Government’s use of Government-initiated questions for major policy announcements—in this case, on the Manchester travel ban. GIQs are never accompanied by commentary or information to increase public understanding of a decision, and they afford no opportunity for parliamentary cross-examination. In taking that approach, the Government undermines not just the Parliament and its members but members’ staff. Caseworkers and researchers are put in a position in which they have to attempt to help or explain things to constituents but do not have access to information or the chance to raise concerns before the ban is due to come into place.

Whether it is in relation to how the Government announces policies or the unprecedented powers that the bill affords the Government to control how we live our lives, there is not a free pass for Government to ignore the Parliament’s democratic mandate. Although we in the Liberal Democrats will support the bill as it transits through the Parliament, we do so in hope and expectation of the time when its provisions can finally fall away.