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Official Report: search what was said in Parliament

The Official Report is a written record of public meetings of the Parliament and committees.  

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Dates of parliamentary sessions
  1. Session 1: 12 May 1999 to 31 March 2003
  2. Session 2: 7 May 2003 to 2 April 2007
  3. Session 3: 9 May 2007 to 22 March 2011
  4. Session 4: 11 May 2011 to 23 March 2016
  5. Session 5: 12 May 2016 to 4 May 2021
  6. Current session: 13 May 2021 to 8 November 2025
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Displaying 583 contributions

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Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]

Pre-budget Scrutiny 2026-27

Meeting date: 11 September 2025

Patrick Harvie

Do you think that the sector more broadly—beyond the areas where it is just a person with a mic—could tolerate the idea of some conditionality around public funding to drive up the use of circular economy approaches, so that they become the norm?

Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]

Pre-budget Scrutiny 2026-27

Meeting date: 11 September 2025

Patrick Harvie

I think I feel a local visit in Glasgow coming on.

Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]

Pre-budget Scrutiny 2026-27

Meeting date: 11 September 2025

Patrick Harvie

I will put my final question on this theme to Tony Lankester, because it is perhaps more relevant to the Edinburgh festival fringe and to other aspects of performance arts.

There are challenges around the approach of productions to the circular economy and to achieving sustainability by reusing resources. Many productions have a bad track record of repeatedly buying new and throwing away. Whether it is stage or screen, a great many productions in the sector could do a great deal better with regard to embedding circular economy approaches.

I recently met ReSet Scenery, which is doing its best to try to get people throughout the sector to reuse materials. However, that kind of activity is going on at a low level. Is there any element of conditionality on culture funding, as there is in some other sectors of the economy, whereby, if the Government is going to support something, it sets environmental standards and conditions and drives those up over time, so that something like the circular economy becomes the norm rather than the exception?

Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee [Draft]

Pre-budget Scrutiny 2026-27

Meeting date: 11 September 2025

Patrick Harvie

Can the other witnesses add anything about how your organisations and the sector are dealing with the net zero challenge, or what needs to change to enable you to do it better?

Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]

Pre-budget Scrutiny 2026-27

Meeting date: 9 September 2025

Patrick Harvie

I will come in with a supplementary on that area, and in particular on the idea of a shift towards a prevention approach.

I take the point that you are describing PBMA for individual programmes, or how health boards or other parts of the NHS make their decisions about their budgets. However, it seems to me that that is not the bit that is missing in making a shift towards prevention. What is missing is a health impact analysis of the policy and spending on housing, education, criminal justice and all the other areas that are completely outside the processes that health boards or other parts of the NHS go through. Why are we thinking about it as a process that is internal to the NHS, when really the health determinants are everywhere else?

Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]

Pre-budget Scrutiny 2026-27

Meeting date: 9 September 2025

Patrick Harvie

Thanks very much. One of the features of the way that budget scrutiny impacts on local government in particular arises from the fact that the United Kingdom Government sets its budget and the Scottish Government then sets its budget or publishes a draft, and, only after that budget has been passed does it confirm to local authorities what their individual block grants will be. However, before that happens, local authorities have to start coming up with their plans, particularly for a worst-case scenario. What generally happens is that most of those worst-case scenario plans make their way into the press and become hugely problematic, which means that politicians have to start saying, “No, we will not do that; it was only a suggestion.”

It seems to me that, however logical the approach that you are suggesting might be, whether in good times or bad times financially, the reality is that, as soon as a health board or any other body starts coming up with all the various potential options for disinvestment, the political and media scrutiny will make those options impossible. Is our political landscape capable of doing what you are suggesting?

Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]

Pre-budget Scrutiny 2026-27

Meeting date: 9 September 2025

Patrick Harvie

Is any part of the Scottish Government’s guidance that tries to encourage that approach actually taking the process outside the NHS and trying to join the dots? Is that happening?

Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]

Pre-budget Scrutiny 2026-27

Meeting date: 9 September 2025

Patrick Harvie

Convener, can I ask one final supplementary question?

Health, Social Care and Sport Committee [Draft]

Pre-budget Scrutiny 2026-27

Meeting date: 9 September 2025

Patrick Harvie

The use of health impact assessments across government is pretty patchy, though, is it not?

Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee

Desecration of War Memorials (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Meeting date: 4 September 2025

Patrick Harvie

Your answer, in which you described where you got the definition from, reinforces my worry that, perhaps, you decided at the beginning to focus specifically on war memorials, and you have not explained why that is specifically the definition. For example, we have seen antisemitic attacks on Jewish graves. If the individuals did not die in an armed conflict, their graves would not be covered by the definition, although I think that most people would recognise that the very same trauma and emotional impact are involved, and the cultural and social significance of those memorials is the same.

I will ask a few comparison questions. I am aware that there is a danger that this is going to sound as though I am trying to create a hierarchy of importance, but I am actually trying to suggest that there should not be a hierarchy and that all these things matter. There is a campaign to raise funds to create a memorial for LGBT veterans—people who served in the armed forces. Many of them died in armed conflict, but some of them would have been persecuted and even tortured by or expelled from the British Army, and some of them are still serving. If it were created, an LGBT veterans memorial would not be covered by the bill, although, if the memorial was to a specific individual from that community who had died in armed conflict, it would be covered.

There is also a campaign for a memorial to those who fought against apartheid. Clearly, that was an armed conflict. Although, at the time, not everyone in this country would have agreed, most people today would recognise that the African National Congress were freedom fighters who were taking up arms against a profoundly evil white supremacist regime. If a memorial was built specifically to Nelson Mandela in Scotland, it would not be covered because he did not die in armed conflict, but if a memorial was built to Steve Biko, who was tortured to death in a South African prison, it would be covered.

Do you understand the point that focusing specifically on war memorials seems to create a lot of anomalies and to cover only some monuments? For example, you mentioned the Boer war. Some would point to the atrocities—the war crimes—that were committed by the British Army in that war. Therefore, the bill would cover monuments and memorials to individuals or groups of individuals who most people today would not say require the same degree of respect as those in living memory or those who fought against fascism. However, it would not cover some monuments or memorials—either those that already exist or those that people are seeking to create—that most people would recognise relate to the very same trauma and have the same social and emotional impact. There seem to be a lot of anomalies.