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Thank you. Before I pass over to my fellow MSPs, I advise everyone that we have an hour left for this panel and we have 10 questions to get through, so I am keen to keep answers as succinct as possible.
I understand what you are saying, and it sounds very reasonable, but our job as MSPs is to look at the legislation that is presented to us, and it certainly seems quite clear, as we go further into this, that the bill would change the law to give the police, if they were so inclined, the power to enter premises to search without a warrant.
It is obviously simply about the interpretation of that advice, which is the Scottish Government’s right to determine. As MSPs, we have constantly been contacted by different organisations that have highlighted the issues that they are facing because of Covid.
Although I appreciate that the option to extend might be seen to favour the Government and would provide further flexibility, I am also conscious that many stakeholders, and indeed MSPs, have expressed their desire to see a firm cut-off date.
I go back to my point that women should have control over how they report, who they report to and when they go into a police investigation, but we should capture the forensic evidence so that it is there for when they are at that point. As an MSP for a rural area, I am interested in how we protect confidentiality in such areas.
If you do not think that the Scottish Government should proceed with, in your words, a fabric-first approach, where would you rank the need to tackle fabric issues? From my perspective as the MSP for the Cowdenbeath constituency, everything else is theoretical for constituents who live in damp houses; they want that problem solved first and foremost as they...
Would the bank really be able to make its own decision on that matter if there was pressure from the public and Opposition MSPs? I thank Friends of the Earth Scotland for its briefing, in which it calls, for example, for investment in walking and cycling infrastructure.
It would be helpful to the industry if some value were to be put on the stock, because that would focus our MPs and MSPs—and our MEPs not-to-be—on what we are actually giving away.
I support the bill on a number of grounds, but primarily because it has come at long last, after all our campaigning and our discussions across the spectrum—with Cabinet ministers and MSPs and with the Scottish Human Rights Commission and the centre for excellence for looked after children in Scotland at the University of Strathclyde.
Questions and Answers
Date answered:
22 November 2010
In April 2009, the then Minister for Culture, External Affairs and the Constitution, Michael Russell MSP, visited Canada where he met with the Mayor of Toronto, Ontario''s Minister for Culture and various officials.