Seòmar agus comataidhean

I am very pleased to be here today and to speak to amendment 40, in my name, which seeks to rename the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill as the “Care and Carers (Scotland) Bill”.

As the committee will know, from the very start, the Scottish Liberal Democrats stood against the bill in its original form and its principles. We did so because it sought to centralise social care services and remove power from communities and care professionals, who are best placed to exercise that power for the good of both those who provide care and those who receive it.

In the light of opposition from all other parties, I am pleased that the Government has finally decided to change course and abandon the centralising ministerial takeover of social care. However, it is unfortunate that it has taken four years and £30 million of taxpayers’ money being wasted on that premise to get to this point. It is now only right that the bill with which we are proceeding is named in a way that reflects what it intends to do.

Even in its original form, the bill would not have created a national care service. Giving it a similar name to one of our most beloved national treasures, the national health service, was a cynical attempt to make it appear to be something that it was not. The NHS answered a need from the rubble and poverty of war in which it was forged, whereas that was not the case for this takeover of social care. The NHS offers care that is free at the point of delivery, whereas nothing about the national care service was intended to do that.

We need a bill that seeks to support those who work in the care sector and those who rely on it. I note that two other amendments, rightly, seek to change the bill’s name, but I believe that it is appropriate to rename it as the “Care and Carers (Scotland) Bill”, so that the Parliament can send a clear message to care workers, care users and the legions of unpaid carers that they are what really matters.

Having listened to the remarks of Gillian Mackay and the minister, I will not move amendment 1.

Amendment 1 not moved.

Amendment 2 not moved.

Section 7, as amended, agreed to.

Section 8—Reduction of safe access zones

Amendment 32 moved—[Jenni Minto]—and agreed to.

Amendment 33 moved—[Gillian Mackay]—and agreed to.

Amendment 48 moved—[Emma Harper]—and agreed to.

Amendments 3 and 4 not moved.

Section 8, as amended, agreed to.

After section 8

Amendment 5 not moved.

Section 9—Cessation of safe access zones

Amendment 49 moved—[Emma Harper]—and agreed to.

Section 9, as amended, agreed to.

After section 9

Amendment 34 moved—[Gillian Mackay]—and agreed to.

Section 10—Power to modify meaning of “protected premises”

Amendment 35 not moved.

Amendment 36 moved—[Jenni Minto]—and agreed to.

Amendment 37 not moved.

Amendment 38 moved—[Sandesh Gulhane].

Thank you for allowing me to join you today, convener. I will say at the start that I am grateful for the engagement that I have had with both Gillian Mackay MSP and the minister on the topics that my amendments seek to cover.

We are not the first jurisdiction in the United Kingdom to bring forward legislation around safe access zones and abortion services. Both the United Kingdom Parliament and the Northern Ireland Assembly have used different legislative vehicles to bring about the effect that we are seeking to achieve. In the UK Parliament, there was a simple amendment, in the name of Stella Creasy, to a piece of legislation. The framing of legislation in Northern Ireland was very different, given its political context. Neither of those legislative vehicles contained provision to allow ministers unfettered power to moderate or change the exclusion zones.

My particular concern—and the reason for lodging my amendments, a couple of which are more in the way of probing amendments than anything else—is that we, as legislators, need to govern for the political consensus as it might become in the future, rather than as it is now or as we would wish it to be. My anxiety is that, without having proper scrutiny from Parliament, ministers of a less progressive Administration in the future may simply reduce the reach or distance of a buffer zone to zero, without any recourse to Parliament. That is why I have lodged amendments 1 and 3. I will wait to hear the minister’s remarks, but I intend to press them.

In relation to amendments 2 and 4, I am not entirely sure that any reference to expansion or reduction is needed. It does not seem to be needed in the other jurisdictions that I talked about. Those amendments are more about getting the points on the record and exploring solutions with Gillian Mackay and the Scottish Government.

It is.

Thank you for your indulgence in allowing Colin Smyth and me to address the committee this morning.

There is, of course, a legal dimension to this issue, so there is an element of detail that we cannot go into around the cases, the survivors and the abuse that they suffered. There is much that we cannot say but want to say and I hope that, in the fullness of time and upon the conclusion of the legal proceedings, there will be an opportunity for those stories to be told in full.

I, too, pay tribute to the Fornethy survivors and, in particular, to Marion Reid. As you say, convener, many of them are joining us in the public gallery this morning. Many of those whom we can see before us today joined Colin Smyth and me on a trip back to Fornethy house last summer. It was a very emotional but cathartic visit.

I first met the women more than two years ago. The accounts that they imparted to me of the brutality and sexual abuse that they suffered as young children are absolutely horrendous and harrowing, and they still keep me awake at night. The courage that the women have demonstrated in telling us about what happened to them and in fighting for justice, sometimes against the prevailing wind, has been truly inspiring. They have said that it has never been about money, but what they want more than anything is an acknowledgement of the abuse that they suffered, and to receive a full and meaningful public apology.

In her remarks to the committee last month, the Deputy First Minister said that the women should be excluded from the redress scheme, arguing that they were sent to Fornethy for short-term care. However, that runs contrary to the accounts of countless women. We know that thousands of girls from disadvantaged backgrounds were sent by Glasgow council to Fornethy as “educational pupils”—I quote the phrase that was used—at a residential school, not as children attending a respite care centre or holiday home. It has been suggested that these girls’ parents sent them to Fornethy voluntarily, but they were largely from vulnerable and impoverished families who put their children into the care of the school system and facilitated their attendance at Fornethy.

Even the former Deputy First Minister, John Swinney, said:

“I find it difficult to reconcile”

placing a young person in Fornethy house with

“some form of voluntary endeavour”.—[Official Report, Education, Children and Young People Committee, 12 January 2023; c 14.]

He also rejected the idea that the scheme is not for the Fornethy survivors. It would be a grave injustice to bar these women from the redress scheme. I hope that the committee recognises the stories of these courageous women and, at the very least, allows them to tell their story to the world, recognises their victimhood and recognises that the redress scheme should apply to them.

It has been one of the privileges of my parliamentary career to bring light to their story. I stand with them today. I have stood with them for the past two years, and I will continue, along with Colin Smyth and other parliamentarians named in your opening remarks, convener, to stand with them for as long as it takes for them to find justice.

That is fantastic. I have one final question, if I may, convener.

Thank you, convener, for allowing me to join the committees’ deliberations today.

Minister, you know that I am supportive of the Government’s approach to harmful substance use and deaths caused by the same. However, my question is about a topic that you and I have not discussed before. You touched briefly on the topic in your opening remarks, and in an answer to Russell Findlay—synthetic opioids.

I have a graph in front of me from the United States. It says that in 2012, just over 2,500 people died from synthetic opioids, predominantly from fentanyl, but that last year that number had jumped 73,500. There is an epidemic of synthetic opioid misuse in the states that has not yet been realised on our shores, but that may be changing.

The metrics speak for themselves. When the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in April 2022, it instituted a national ban on the growth and sale of the opium poppy. As a result, opium exports from Afghanistan have dropped right off, and stakeholders are concerned that there may be only 18 months’ worth of heroin left in the illicit global supply chain. The vacuum that that will create might well be filled by synthetic opioids—predominantly fentanyl, but also Captagon, which is coming out of countries such as Syria.

First and foremost, what work is your Government doing to prepare for surveillance of what people are taking so that we can get an early warning if synthetic opioids hit our shores? The death rates from fentanyl are far worse than those from heroin.

Are we confident that the processes and interventions, such as naloxone, that we have at our disposal for crisis response and overdose mitigation are applicable to the synthetic opioids that are coming in? Are we learning from our North American colleagues about what interventions have been efficacious in those countries and are we ready to adopt those quickly? Things could happen very quickly. Are you confident that we are in a good place?

I am aware of a number of relationships that have sprung up organically between parliamentarians in this place and in the Rada, in Ukraine. The group is a great opportunity to formalise that and, as Colin Beattie said, establish a standing friendship committee that will further those ties.

Before I do so, I am required to draw members’ attention to my entry in the register of members’ interests. First, I was a host through the homes for Ukraine scheme, and a Ukrainian refugee lived with our family for nine months. Secondly, I am under sanction by the Russian Federation for my work with the Ukrainian diaspora here.

On 22 February last year, our world turned on its axis when Russia brought war to continental Europe for the first time in a century. The men and women of Ukraine are fighting in the trenches of their homeland not just for their freedom and sovereignty but for the freedom and sovereignty of all of the free democracies of this world. We owe them a debt of gratitude that we will never repay and, in the formation of the cross-party group, it is important that we recognise that struggle not only for the people who are still fighting in Ukraine, but for the Ukrainian diaspora who are choosing to make Scotland their home. Much time in the chamber has been taken up with a recognition of their needs and interests and the fact that we still have some way to go in settling them in this country. For both of those reasons, the cross-party group deserves the support of this committee and its recognition in this Parliament. I hope that the cross-party group will be long standing and will outdate the war, when the Ukrainians win their freedom and victory over the Russian Federation.