Seòmar agus comataidhean

Good morning, and welcome to the sixth meeting in 2026, in session 6, of the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee. We have received apologies from Pam Gosal, and Maggie Chapman and Paul McLennan are joining us remotely.

Our first agenda item is a decision on taking business in private. Do members agree to take in private agenda item 10, which is consideration of our on-going work on the non-implementation of legislation?

Members indicated agreement.

Our second agenda item is consideration of a draft affirmative instrument. I welcome to the meeting Siobhian Brown, Minister for Victims and Community Safety, who is accompanied by the following Scottish Government officials: Ciaran McDonald, legal aid reform team leader, and Emma Thomson, lawyer, legal directorate. Thank you for attending this morning.

I refer members to papers 1 and 2, and I invite the minister to speak to the draft instrument.

Welcome back. Our next agenda item is our final evidence session in our inquiry into neurodivergence in Scotland. I welcome to the meeting Tom Arthur, who is Minister for Social Care and Mental Wellbeing. The minister is accompanied by Georgia de Courcy Wheeler, who is CAMHS and neurodevelopmental improvement team leader, and Robby Steel, who is principal medical officer for mental health, in the Scottish Government’s mental health directorate. You are all very welcome; thank you for joining us. I refer members to papers 4 and 5 and invite the minister to make an opening statement.

We move on to questions from Marie McNair, who will be followed by Paul McLennan.

Our next item of business is consideration of three negative Scottish statutory instruments. As no member has indicated that they have comments, are members content not to make any comments to the Parliament on any of the instruments?

Members indicated agreement.

That concludes consideration of the instruments. We will suspend briefly to set up for our next agenda item.

09:47

Meeting suspended.

09:57

On resuming—

We move to questions from members, and I will kick us off. What specific progress has been made on the human rights bill?

I am grateful to have the opportunity to debate the motion, and I thank Alexander Burnett for bringing it to the chamber. However, there is something quite ironic about the subject of the debate, and I will not shy away from calling that out.

We cannot let the Conservatives off the hook for their record or for what is happening locally. Over the past decade and a half, they had ample opportunity to do something about the situation, and they chose not to. In fact, they chose to do the opposite. Conservative politicians have a track record of voting for public spending cuts. That is on the public record. That is the ideology of Conservatism. The Conservatives cannot spend years squeezing the state and demanding tax cuts for millionaires and then call for a bigger share of a pot that, through their design, is smaller.

Let us say the quiet part out loud: public services did not get stretched by accident. They have been systematically squeezed for years by UK austerity. People at home do not need MSPs to explain what pressure looks like. They feel it in their everyday lives, and I see it reflected in my casework.

I agree that rurality, distance, harsh weather and an ageing population mean that it costs more to deliver services in Aberdeenshire, and Brexit has caused a serious labour shortage. That is why the Scottish Government has ensured that local government funding in Scotland is at record levels. Councils will receive almost £15.7 billion in the upcoming budget, and that matters. I am not saying that that will solve everything, but it cuts clean through the idea that the Scottish Government is simply not putting money into local services.

There are two issues that we need to bear in mind: first, how the pot is shared out through COSLA’s distribution process; and, secondly, what happens after that. Councils choose priorities locally, and that local accountability matters. Councillors are democratically elected to make those decisions. What the motion tries to glide past is the fact that Aberdeenshire’s budget choices are made by the Tory council administration—it is those councillors who decide what is protected and what is cut. However, time and again, we see the same trick: local cuts are made, and then the Conservatives point to Holyrood and say, “It’s not our fault.”

There were alternatives. In Aberdeenshire, for example, the SNP council group put forward a different budget proposal and priorities to reduce the damage, but those options were rejected. People deserve to know that, because it means that some of what we are seeing was a choice and was not fate.

I will make a constructive call: when Aberdeenshire councillors set their budget later this month, I ask members on the Conservative benches to speak to their colleagues, asking them to work with the SNP council group and across parties to protect the most vulnerable. They must stop the blame game and do the hard work that it takes to get consensus for the benefit of the community. When cuts hit disability day services, that is not an abstract saving line, because families are left carrying the weight on their own. If we truly care about the ageing population, we cannot ignore the people who need support now or the carers who are already at breaking point. If Conservative members genuinely want a way forward, there it is.

We were promised the broad shoulders of the UK, but people in my communities do not feel at all upheld by UK broad shoulders. Instead, they feel weighed down by decisions that have been made elsewhere. Scotland can do better than this. With full powers in our hands—the hands of an independent Scotland—we can keep more resources here and invest in our public services in a way that people deserve.

The motion for debate is spin, dressed up as concern. My constituents deserve honesty and real solutions, and that is what I am offering today.

13:01

Will the member take an intervention?

This week, Scotland reaches a milestone as more than 50,000 households receive support to live in a warmer home, with homes now being cheaper to heat. Meanwhile, the Scottish National Party Government published plans that could mean that communities across Scotland see more money being invested in their areas as a result of onshore renewable energy developments. What action is the First Minister taking to tackle fuel poverty? Does he agree that only through the fresh start of independence can we use Scotland’s energy to create a wealthier and fairer Scotland?