Seòmar agus comataidhean

In developing the bill, we have been influenced by Northern Ireland and how the bill there was constructed. It is always useful to look at how other legislatures have implemented similar legislation. As I laid out earlier, there are functional differences between those other legislatures and us, but your point about staff is really important. As the committee has heard, staff have had to counter misinformation and console patients as well as doing their job of ensuring that healthcare services are delivered. They have gone above and beyond to make sure that the care provided to people who are in distress gives them all the options that they need, but also allays some of the fears that they have had, and those staff absolutely deserve to be protected from intimidation and harassment when they go to their workplace.

The bill’s provisions rightly extend to supporting staff who might not be clinical in nature but who might help with the facilitation of abortions. We have seen incidents, particularly in Glasgow, in which members of staff have been filmed. That is not something that we should tolerate for NHS staff.

Proportionality is at the heart of the bill. We have to be aware that this is about a balance of rights; people have the right to access healthcare and they also have the right to have their views known. We strike that balance in the legislation well, because people will still be able to do what they do right now anywhere other than for 200m around 30 premises in Scotland. Even if we add that all up, it is not a particularly large area that we are talking about, given the land mass of Scotland, and the impact, therefore, is relatively proportionate, given the very disproportionate impact that protest has on people accessing services. The committee heard as much in evidence, and I am sure that members will have heard the same from people privately, too. It also causes people concern about having to come to services.

The other aspect of proportionality, which I covered earlier, is about the different ways in which services are delivered in Scotland compared to other places that have legislation of this type already. Other services at certain sites are impacted by the protests; indeed, there has been a lot of coverage about that in the news. Some clinicians who work in neonatal intensive care at the Queen Elizabeth university hospital have said that there are times when the protests can be heard in neonatal intensive care. That is horrendous for the parents who are going through some of the worst times of their lives. The audible protests at Sandyford can be heard in services; a variety of very sensitive services is delivered there, and there has been an impact on staff and patients in those settings.

Given all of that, I think that the balance in the bill is correct. We should be able to provide services in the way that we want to, and we should be able to create a very specified exclusion area while allowing people to make their views known everywhere else. I would very much like for people to come and protest outside Holyrood, say, rather than outside hospitals.

I think that the issue is the impact on people who access services and how one uses their property to attempt to influence someone else’s decision. Private property rights are covered in one of the pieces of legislation elsewhere—you will have to forgive me, though, as it has gone out of my head where that is the case. Is it the England and Wales legislation that includes private property rights?

It is complex. The police will have to deal with the balance as to whether someone is intentionally trying to influence people or is acting recklessly. Again, there is a context element to that.

The police use different legislation in relation to the marches in the west of Scotland. Other laws apply in safe access zones, so there is nothing to say that the police could not use other laws to effect the same outcome.

It goes back to what Police Scotland said in its written submission about the dialogue that it has with individuals. Where interactions take place, I do not doubt that the police will try to have conversations with people about why what they are doing might not be appropriate, which very much lends itself to the example that Ruth Maguire gave. A potential danger is that we try to bottom out every single behaviour and scenario that might occur without taking into account the multiple bits of context that might add up to the police having to take action instead of having a conversation with a person to ask them to take down a flag, or whatever item it is.

There are arguments both ways as to whether that should be a parliamentary decision. In the evidence that we gathered through the consultation, there was a mix of views about whether the decision should be for ministers or for Parliament.

There has to be appropriate oversight and scrutiny of any changes that we make to zones, for exactly the reason that you gave about people potentially being criminalised as a result. People who could potentially be impacted by protest want us to respond in a timely manner to any changes in behaviour that might make implementation of a zone more difficult. There is a balance to be struck between sufficiently quick movement and appropriate oversight to ensure that we as parliamentarians are doing our job appropriately and ensuring appropriate consultation and scrutiny.

What I am endeavouring to get across is that there is a balance there and, as with the entirety of the bill, there are those representing competing interests on both sides who would say, “Go quicker,” or “Go slower.” There is a middle ground to be found, where we respond in an appropriate time but with appropriate consultation, too.

Whatever we do, there should be a level of consultation, because this is about extending zones into public land. There must be a level of consultation, particularly where private dwellings could be captured by any extension. I think that the minister gave an indication earlier that a level of engagement and consultation would take place for any extension.

On what happens inside private dwellings or churches, private conversations are not covered under the bill, as the minister said. Things would have to happen from those premises that could be heard or seen within the zones, as I am aware that the committee has heard in evidence.

In the previous session, there was a good airing of what signs would or would not be captured under the bill. I hope that the committee feels that it has had a full exploration of that.

It is essential that such premises are covered by the legislation, for exactly the reasons that Colin Poolman gave early in the series of evidence sessions. The bill could be undermined by an anti-abortion organisation buying a property within the zone, using it as its headquarters, projecting images from it on to services, putting up large signs in the garden or handing information over the wall, as happens in some of the states in the US that do not exempt private dwellings.

We have the balance right, but we will need to ensure that we communicate well with people who live in a zone and with religious organisations that have places of worship in a zone to ensure that they fully understand what we are doing with the bill.

Yes—absolutely.

No—I apologise if I was not clear on that. This is about the functions of the zones. The committee has explored the example of images being projected on to the Chalmers sexual health centre. I cannot here and now think of an example of a particular behaviour whose impact would mean that we might have to extend a zone for a particular reason, but there are potential behaviours to consider. We have seen behaviours in other places around the world that, if they were imported here, might make the function of the zones within 200m difficult—that would depend on how the behaviours were manifested. That is why flexibility is so important. Oversight and our ability to respond in a timely manner are important, too.