Seòmar agus comataidhean

I thank the witnesses for joining us. Your answers have been overwhelmingly comprehensive. I have expanded my education on the subject this morning, so thank you for giving me that opportunity.

In September last year, the British Medical Journal published a study on minority ethnic women’s access to, and lived experiences of, maternity care during the pandemic. The study includes information on their mental health and wellbeing. It says:

“There were four emergent themes including communication, interactions with healthcare professionals, racism and the effect of the pandemic, with further subthemes identified.”

I want to home in on the communication aspect. The study says:

“Communication, or lack thereof, played a major role in participants’ perceptions of whether they were receiving acceptable care. This consisted of routine or emergency interactions with midwives, obstetricians, general practitioners and health visitors ... Despite the high standard of English spoken, most participants felt that language barriers were the most common cause of miscommunication between themselves and healthcare professionals. They concurrently felt they themselves were more likely to make inappropriate decisions regarding their healthcare as a result of misinterpretation”.

Is that situation reflected across society—not just in healthcare but in financial, social and educational settings and in other areas? How is progress being made in addressing the issue?

I ask Mariam Ahmed to answer first, please.

The Scottish Government has a strong track record of supporting the fishing industry on the Banffshire and Buchan coast, most recently with the additional £1.8 million of funding for ports and harbours, which was announced last year, which benefited Fraserburgh, Peterhead and Macduff.

However, given that Scotland is entitled to receive at least £62 million annually to replace the European maritime and fisheries fund, can the cabinet secretary tell us what impact Brexit has had on funding for the vital projects and infrastructure that support our fishing communities, such as those in my constituency?

To ask the Scottish Government what support is available to ensure that more fish caught by Scottish vessels are landed and processed at Scottish ports. (S6O-00784)

Thank you. It is really helpful to know what we are focusing on.

It was for an earlier question—I must have been skipped over.

I want to dig down a little bit more into the cabinet secretary’s comments about the bill’s scope. We are trying to gather evidence and see things from an implementation point of view, but I felt that, with Rachael Hamilton’s question, more tentacles were being added and that what was said was not necessarily what I thought the cabinet secretary was trying to get across with regard to the bill.

Perhaps I should caveat this, but what are we looking for the bill to cover? For example, as a result of European Union exit, shipbuilders in my constituency face serious labour shortages, which really impact on their work of building and repairing the boats that are needed to go out and catch the fish that we then need to land and eat. Surely we are not looking for the bill to have an all-encompassing scope and to cover, say, shipbuilding. What is the scope of the bill? We could be forever picking out and trying to deal with problems that have nothing to do with it. If we just cracked on with the bill, its overarching framework and what it is supposed to be, would that support other industries and more collaborative working?

Over the past few weeks, I have been trying to dig down into the reasoning behind some people’s desire for setting targets in the bill. Over the evidence sessions, I have seen more and more how that could end up leading the process by the nose and how targets can end up being meaningless in this fast and ever-changing political and socioeconomic landscape. For example, I visited a food bank on Monday and was told that, after April, there will be an astronomical increase in demand for its services in the area. In relation to what I have heard about targets and how they can be detrimental to the kind of plan that we are considering, what could we use instead of targets as markers for outcomes?

Again, what we are taking forward is the overall framework for the good food nation plans, which will set out more of the detail of how we will deliver on this policy. With regard to the proposal for an oversight board, the evidence to the committee shows that views in that respect are very mixed.

As for the Scottish food agency, our manifesto set out quite a remit in that respect. It was about promoting food, drink and horticulture, attracting investment, increasing process and capacity and improving supply chains and infrastructure. Again, there is a lot of detail involved in that, and, given the other bodies that we have in that space, it is only right that we take the time to analyse that fully, see the potential impact and ensure that we fully understand the implications.

I am envious of everybody who is in the chamber with Christina McKelvie. I cannot wait to get back there and see her in person. Welcome back, Christina.

I thank all the members from across the parties who have supported the motion so that we could bring the debate to the Parliament. LGBT history month this year is focused on the theme “blurring borders: a world in motion”. Although some other countries in the world face a rising tide—a roll-back, really—against LGBT human rights, the Scottish National Party Government is committed to improving the rights of LGBT people who live in Scotland.

If we take ourselves back in time, we see that until as recently as 1980 it was illegal to have gay sexual relations. That, of course, impacted on any potential romantic or intimate loving relationships. The law criminalised generations of LGBT people. Criminalisation of gay people fed a culture of shame that nurtured a hostile environment for people who were attracted to people of the same gender as them—an environment whose negative impacts we still experience in our society. We still have a lot of damage to undo.

I have personally felt the impact of the hostile environment that was created. As a child, I had no understanding of my own small world. My mum was gay and I grew up in a household with two women. My mum’s partner was referred to as “the lodger”. Of course, adults gossiped and that filtered down to their children, who poked fun at me in the playground and called out homophobic slurs regarding my mum. I was confused and ashamed, and was taught to hide my family circumstances for fear of being bullied. But, surely, love should never mean having to live in fear.

My friends would ask me questions. Some were prompted by their parents, no doubt, but I guess that some were just curious. However, I could not answer those questions because I did not even know what being gay was. My mum never spoke about it, school never taught me about it and we certainly did not have any healthy examples of gay relationships to pull from. There were only slurs, shame and fear. In that context, we must remember that, in 1988, Margaret Thatcher’s United Kingdom Tory Government implemented a series of laws that prohibited the so-called promotion of homosexuality—in other words, section 28.

This year’s LGBT history month theme, “blurring borders: a world in motion”, invites people to think beyond borders and to ask one another what Scotland’s place is within the global movement towards equality, so let us look at Scotland’s record.

Since devolution, we have made some landmark leaps forward in legislation. In 2000, the Scottish Parliament repealed section 28, so schools can now talk about LGBTI issues with pupils. In 2007, Scottish same-gender couples gained equality in adoption and fostering. In 2014, same-gender marriage was legalised. In 2018, the Historical Sexual Offences (Pardons and Disregards) (Scotland) Act 2018 was passed.

Most recently, in 2021, Scotland introduced LGBT-inclusive education in our schools—a world first. I wish that I had had that growing up in the late 1970s and the 1980s. I ask members to imagine how the landscape would have differed for so many people. Now, at last, LGBT-inclusive education will change the landscape for so many more who are to come.

We have improved the rights of LGBT people in Scotland, but we also need to create a cultural change in society. Having all the good laws in the world is all well and good, but we also need to address the unwarranted moral panic that is going on in the UK right now, particularly towards trans people. I will explain the term “moral panic” for anyone who is unfamiliar with it. It is a situation that occurs in society when media reporting creates a folk devil out of a particular social group—often a minority or already marginalised people. It is described as a moral panic because it is based on an outraged sense of offence, although the information that prompts said offence is limited, vague or simply untrue.

The term “folk devil” refers to a group whose commonality has become stigmatised by society and which has become the target of adverse comments and behaviour, just as my mum and many other lesbian, gay and bisexual people in the 1980s were demonised and met with suspicion by powerful public figures, politicians and the media. Sadly, in recent years, I have recognised the same patterns of discrimination towards LGBT-identifying people, and particularly towards trans people, as the Scottish Government has sought to simplify an administrative process—in other words, to reform the Gender Recognition Act 2004.

The current rise in LGBT hate crimes is testament to that pattern and to the need for culture change. We, as citizens and community leaders, have a responsibility to have zero tolerance—otherwise, we become enablers of culture change to the contrary, and not just in terms of stagnation of rights, but in terms of rolling back rights that have already been fought for. It is incumbent on all of us to act and to speak up for what is right. It is especially incumbent on cisgendered heterosexual people to stand by LGBT friends, family, colleagues and loved ones so that the only culture change in our society is towards acceptance.

It is important that we take lessons from history so that, in the future, we ensure that those lessons have been learned. What we do in Parliament is not only important for the LGBT+ community in Scotland; it also sets an example for other countries and LGBT communities worldwide. We should be proud of all that Scotland has done in leading the way in the fight for LGBT+ equality. We should never underestimate the power that our actions and words here can have in the rest of the world. The world is watching—now it is time for us to lead.

I take the opportunity to reaffirm my commitment to improving LGBTQ+ rights and inclusion, particularly as we move forward with reforming the GRA. Also, importantly, we need to improve healthcare outcomes for trans people. Let us go further and do more.

Finally, I will speak directly to every LGBTQIA+ person who might be listening. Whether you are out and proud or yet to make that journey, I say to you that there is absolutely nothing wrong with you, but there is a lot wrong with the world in which we live. Know this: I will, for my part, do everything that I can to create the cultural change that is needed to ensure that Scotland is not only a country where it is safe for you to live true to yourself, but one that leads the world by example.

I put the same questions to Judith Higson.