Seòmar agus comataidhean

To ask the First Minister what action the Scottish Government is taking to support those affected by fuel poverty, in light of the recent rise in energy prices and their potential impact on the cost of living for households in Scotland. (S6F-04571)

I commend the measures that the First Minister outlined and am proud that, at a time when people are struggling, this Scottish National Party Government is providing a stronger package of winter support than is available anywhere else in the UK. The Labour Party promised to cut energy bills by £300, but households are almost £200 worse off. Any Scottish politician worth their salt should be demanding better for Scotland. While the UK Government continues to deliver nothing but broken promises, does the First Minister agree that it is only through independence that we can prioritise Scotland’s interests and actually reduce energy bills?

I am pleased that we have the opportunity today to debate the provision of civil legal assistance in Scotland. In the course of our inquiry, the committee was presented with an alarming picture of the current availability of civil legal assistance. People’s access to justice is being compromised, and we must take the opportunity today, as a whole Parliament, to debate the “Report on the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee inquiry into Civil Legal Assistance in Scotland”.

Access to justice has been a key theme of the committee’s work during the current session of Parliament. In particular, the committee has been concerned about the provision of civil legal assistance and the increasing challenges that some people face in finding a lawyer to take on a case.

In the context of recent increasing concern about the ever-declining number of solicitors in Scotland who are taking on legal aid work, the committee agreed to undertake an inquiry into civil legal assistance in Scotland. The committee agreed to focus on what is and what is not working in the current civil legal aid system, and on what changes could be made in the short term and the longer term to address access issues.

A number of key themes emerged from our work. However, before I get into those themes, I state that the committee was disappointed that no primary legislation has been introduced in the current session of Parliament to effect an improvement in the provision of civil legal assistance. The concerns that we heard emphasised that the need for legislative change has long been known and has not just emerged, and a desire was expressed that primary legislation should have been introduced earlier in the session. However, it is welcome that the Scottish Government has been consulting on reform, and we hope that the Government will go even further. Legislative reform of civil legal assistance must be a priority for the next Administration.

During our inquiry we heard significant concerns about the operation of current systems, which emphasised the acuteness of the situation. I am grateful to all those who provided us with written and oral evidence that painted such a vivid picture of the current predicament with regard to civil legal assistance in Scotland. The committee was presented with a picture of legal aid deserts that are compromising people’s ability to exercise their legal rights. These legal aid deserts relate both to geographical areas and to areas of law, including those relating to asylum seekers, immigration, welfare, housing and employment.

Perhaps most strikingly, we heard about the experience of women seeking legal assistance in relation to domestic abuse cases. We were given the example of Grampian Women’s Aid, where workers are making 50 to 60 calls a day to find a legal aid solicitor. That challenge is not unique to remote and rural areas. We were also told that, in domestic abuse cases across Scotland, women are having to contact 30 to 50 solicitors before they can access advice. We noted that that was unacceptable and, in our report, we urged the Scottish Government and the Scottish Legal Aid Board to work together to understand the extent of unmet need for civil legal assistance in Scotland. Therefore, we welcome the Scottish Government’s recognition—in its response to the report—of the need to undertake such an exercise, and we also welcome the efforts that are being made by SLAB and the Law Society of Scotland to do it.

It is also pleasing to note the commitment of funding for initiatives such as the legal aid traineeship fund to attract new entrants to the legal profession. Measures to increase the capacity and capability of the supply base are noted, as well as the potential impact of the Regulation of Legal Services (Scotland) Act 2025.

Those are all welcome measures that we hope can contribute to an improved supply of civil legal assistance. However, there must be tangible results from the exercise, and we will strongly emphasise to our successor committee that it must hold the Scottish Government to account for progress in those areas. Although we welcome the measures, we note that they do not respond to the primary driver of shortages that we heard about. We were told that shortages of legal aid practitioners were primarily attributable to the low rates of fees for solicitors for legal aid work, and that increasing those rates would have a significant impact on the availability of legal aid practitioners. There appeared to the committee to be a clear link between low fee rates and the lack of lawyers who are willing to undertake legal aid work.

When we reported, we welcomed the Minister for Victims and Community Safety’s commitment to reinitiate fee review planning and collaborate with stakeholders on the reform of legal fees in 2025. The committee also welcomes the subsequent commitment to establishing a fee review mechanism group. It is pleasing to see that the group has now been established and has met, and we hope that it can make good and swift progress.

The report says:

“Bureaucratic processes were identified as another major barrier to offering and accessing civil legal assistance. SLAB administration requirements were seen as burdensome and disproportionate resulting in a strained relationship between legal aid lawyers and SLAB.”

We also heard that the administrative processes undermined legal practitioners’ capacity to undertake trauma-informed approaches, so it is pleasing to see the Scottish Government’s recognition of that concern, including its recognition of the importance of a trauma-informed approach.

In the coming weeks, the committee looks forward to scrutinising secondary legislation, which the Government tells us will: provide quicker access to legally aided services for people who are eligible; reduce administration for solicitors and SLAB; reduce the number of multiple legal aid applications that are required for payment; and provide greater certainty of payment.

We note the secondary legislation that supports those policy objectives, but it is disappointing that no changes will be made to address the pressing concerns around access to civil legal assistance, and we consider that a range of suggestions from our report could have been taken forward at this juncture. However, we welcome the on-going planning for primary legislation in the next parliamentary session to respond to those challenges.

Eligibility for civil legal assistance was another key concern for the committee that emerged from the inquiry. For example, we noted that it is not tenable that someone with £1,718 in their bank account

“should not be able to access Advice and Assistance”,

and we called for inflationary increases and increases to advice and assistance financial eligibility

“to match civil legal assistance thresholds as proposed by the Scottish Association of Law Centres.”

We recommended

“that the Scottish Government pursue reforms with a view to removing financial eligibility tests”

for legally aided legal advice on civil protection orders and homelessness due to a breach of statutory duty cases. We also urged the Scottish Government to

“investigate options for ensuring legal aid is available without means-testing to a wider selection of domestic abuse cases.”

The committee did not find that the flexibilities that exist in the current system are sufficient to meet the challenges that people currently face in relation to eligibility.

In its response to the report, the Scottish Government noted its commitment

“to ensuring that civil legal aid is accessible to all who need it, particularly survivors of domestic and gender-based violence as highlighted in the Committee report.”

We would welcome more clarity in the Minister for Victims and Community Safety’s response on how that commitment will be met.

In the longer term, the committee welcomed

“the emphasis being placed on mixed models of delivery and user voice by the Scottish Government.”

However, we believe that judicare, whereby solicitors themselves decide whether to offer legal aid and are paid on a case-by-case basis, must remain a key feature of any future system.

The committee also asked that

“the Scottish Government consider preventative approaches and public legal education as part of its discussion on longer-term reforms.”

Again, we would welcome some further reflections on that point from the minister in the course of the debate.

There are serious concerns about the operation of civil legal assistance in Scotland. We welcome the generally positive tenor of the Scottish Government’s response and hope that it will be accompanied by action, so that any future committee will not express similar concerns to ours at the end of the next parliamentary session. I look forward to the remainder of this important debate.

I move,

That the Parliament notes the findings and recommendations in the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee’s 3rd Report, 2025 (Session 6), Report on the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee inquiry into Civil Legal Assistance in Scotland (SP Paper 858).

I am pleased to speak in this debate because, for a coastal constituency such as mine, swimming pools are vital for safety and health.

Water is part of our everyday life. It is beside our homes, and it underpins jobs in fishing, aquaculture, offshore energy and the wider supply chain. It is where families spend time together when they can. When we talk about swimming pools, I do not start from a sporting perspective; I start from the simple reality that learning to swim is a life skill. In coastal Scotland, that can be the difference between a frightening moment and a tragedy.

There is a rural reality that it is easy to miss sometimes. When a pool closes, people are told, “There’s another one over there.”. However, “over there” can be completely out of reach. In rural Scotland, distance does not just inconvenience people; it absolutely excludes them. That is why pools matter far beyond leisure. They are where children build confidence in the water, where older folk keep moving when other exercise options are too hard on their joints, where someone who is living with severe pain or disability can access low-impact activity that simply is not available elsewhere, and where we see the quieter mental health benefit of routine and self-care.

This is also where the idea of a wellbeing economy becomes practical, not theoretical. If we are really serious about prevention, we must protect local services that reduce harm and keep people well because, if we strip them out, the costs do not disappear—they just land later in poorer health, greater inequality and higher pressure on other services.

Local authorities have to make difficult decisions, but they also have choices about what they prioritise and whether they fully weigh up the long-term impact when a community facility is lost. I do not shy away from saying that all spheres of government are operating within tight fiscal constraints, but if we consider the high-level overview of budget decisions and the consequences of them, surely it is good business, too.

I will ground this point in a local example—the pool at Bracoden primary school in Gamrie by Gardenstown. It is a village that sits right on the cliffs on the coastline. The pool was first built as an open-air facility in the late 1950s, and it was paid for by the local community. That history matters, because it tells us what communities valued enough to build and what families expected would be there for the next generation. The reality is that the pool has now been closed for a few years and it would require additional work to reopen. We all know that, once something shuts, it can be far harder to get it back, and that is why engagement matters. When facilities such as that one are at risk, communities need time to work with councils and partners on practical solutions. If decisions arrive abruptly, people lose not just the facility but the chance to organise, to shape alternatives and to build something sustainable while there is still momentum and good will.

We also need to be straight about what is driving so many closures. Pools are energy-hungry buildings. When electricity and heating costs spike, that does not just tighten budgets—it can take a facility from a difficult situation to a completely unsustainable one almost overnight. That pressure is often felt the hardest in rural areas.

We should also be honest about where the main levers on energy pricing and regulation sit, because it is not at Holyrood. When local public services are being squeezed by bills that feel completely out of proportion, the frustration is real and it should be directed at the system that sets those costs. Why, in an energy-rich Scotland, are bills so high?

I am glad to see that strong practical work is under way on the condition of Scotland’s pool estate and on what a sustainable future looks like, including energy efficiency measures that reduce operational costs and emissions. That is the direction—

—but we must also acknowledge that funding requires creative thinking.

Therefore, I support the desire for Parliament to recognise swimming pools for what they are—essential community infrastructure. Keeping pools open protects lives, improves health and reduces inequalities—

I am grateful to Alasdair Allan and congratulate him on bringing the debate to the chamber. The unfairness that his motion describes is felt from the Western Isles to the north-east of Scotland.

In Banffshire and Buchan Coast, fishing is not just an abstract sector; it is boats leaving before first light, processors keeping lines moving and families whose weekly wage depends on what lands at the quayside. That is why the UK Government’s approach to the £360 million fishing and coastal growth fund is so hard to justify.

Scotland is being allocated, as has been said, around £28 million—under 8 per cent—because the distribution is based on population and not on the scale of our fishing industry. Barnett, as has been said, counts people; it does not count ports, processors or the real costs of keeping coastal economies working.

Scotland’s contribution is not in dispute. Scottish vessels consistently land more than half of the UK’s total catch, 63 per cent of total catch value and more than 60 per cent of seafood exports. If the aim of this fund is fishing and coastal growth, those figures should be the starting point.

Since the motion was lodged, the pressure on the pelagic supply chain has become even clearer. Quota reductions coming for mackerel and herring next year will bite, especially when processing factories have fixed costs, contracts and a workforce that cannot simply be switched off and on.

That is why I welcome the Scottish Government’s decision to introduce an emergency measure for 2026 by amending the economic link licence condition. From 1 January 2026, the requirement will be species specific—70 per cent of mackerel landings and 70 per cent of herring landings into Scotland in 2026, up from the current combined requirement of 55 per cent—with the measures kept under review.

Processors tell us plainly that reduced volume next year threatens jobs and undermines confidence to invest. If we lose onshore capacity—skills, plant, contracts—it does not spring back overnight, so when the Scottish Government uses a devolved lever to help to keep more of that reduced volume landing into Scotland, so that the cash flow stays in our coastal communities and wages are protected, I struggle to see who can argue against that principle. It is not forever and is not without review; it is a stabiliser—an emergency condition—for 2026.

We also have to be honest about the limits of what Holyrood can do. Two of the biggest pressure points that processors raise with me are trade friction and immigration rules, which are not devolved. Those decisions are taken elsewhere, but the strain lands on our harbours and in our coastal communities.

Yes, the debate is about fairness, but it is also about respect. If Scotland’s fishing industry is held up as a national asset when it suits, it cannot be treated as if it is a rounding error when money is allocated.

Our coastal and island communities are not asking for any special treatment. They are asking for a mechanism that reflects contribution, recognises need, invests where the potential is, and underlines the wider point at the heart of the motion that decisions that are taken closest to the industry tend to fit the industry better. The Scottish Government is engaging intensively with stakeholders and using its powers to protect jobs and investment. Meanwhile, the UK Government is telling Scotland to accept a population-based share of a fund that was designed for fishing and coastal communities.

If Westminster wants to prove that it respects Scotland’s fishers, it should start with the simple step of rethinking the allocation of the fund so that it reflects contribution and need. Coastal growth cannot be delivered by treating Scotland as an afterthought.

Scotland’s fishing and coastal communities deserve fairness in funding and practical support that keeps value and jobs where the fish is landed. I support the motion, and I urge the UK Government to do the right thing at last and support an uplift in the coastal communities growth fund.

Fish processors in my constituency are under serious economic pressure due to quota cuts. There are fears that local jobs may be lost and that businesses will suffer.

Will the First Minister set out how the Scottish Government will help to drive economic stability for the fisheries sector, especially in my constituency, where livelihoods depend on it?

There will be a division.

For

Gosal, Pam (West Scotland) (Con)
White, Tess (North East Scotland) (Con)

Against

Adam, Karen (Banffshire and Buchan Coast) (SNP)
Chapman, Maggie (North East Scotland) (Green)
McLennan, Paul (East Lothian) (SNP)
McNair, Marie (Clydebank and Milngavie) (SNP)
O’Kane, Paul (West Scotland) (Lab)

The question is, that amendment 53 be agreed to. Are we agreed?

Members: No.