Seòmar agus comataidhean

Does the member agree that she is cherry picking what has been said in the committee and that she is not explaining in a well-rounded way what was said? NFU Scotland president and agricultural reform implementation oversight board chair Martin Kennedy told the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee that, in relation to coming out of the EU and no longer having long-term certainty of funding,

“we need to be able to look five or six years ahead ... We got used to”

the framework

“that was delivered by Europe, which covered a seven-year period, so people knew what was going to be available. We do not have such a framework at present, which is really concerning.”—[Official Report, Rural Affairs and Islands Committee, 8 March 2023; c 20.]

I thought that I would intervene just to give balance to the argument.

Do you think that Brexit has helped the agricultural sector in Scotland?

I say through the chair that the Good Food Nation (Scotland) Bill was passed a few months ago.

The farmers in our constituencies—and the whole agriculture sector—talk to us, bend our ears and tell us about the issues and the problems that they are having, and they expect us to come up with solutions and to help them; they do not expect us to use their problems as ammunition in a one-sided debate.

Not just now, but in a second.

We have to be solution focused and go forward working together and doing our best for our agriculture industry. That is what our farmers deserve, and nothing less. They might not have kept the receipts of Brexit, but we have because we are picking up the tab.

Sustainable and regenerative farming is at the heart of the Scottish Government’s vision for agriculture, and rightly so. The twin biodiversity and climate crises are existential, and they will present challenges and opportunities for Scotland’s farmers and crofters. If we are to ensure that there are fewer of the former and more of the latter in the years and decades to come, it is vital that we act with our climate change targets and net zero ambitions in mind.

In my constituency of Banffshire and Buchan Coast, we have already seen the alarming impacts of those crises. We have been hit hard by storms, rising tides and coastal erosion. Acres of forestry has been lost across the constituency as a result of never-seen-before gales. The migration of cod and urban gulls has had a notable impact on the lives and livelihoods of those in my constituency.

While many recognise that we have a climate emergency, not all of us know that we also face a nature emergency. Professor Des Thompson, principal adviser on biodiversity and science at NatureScot told us this morning at the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee that, although there is growing realisation of the nature emergency, we have a long way to go. He said that what has happened with gulls is a catastrophe but it is because of what has happened at sea that the food base for gulls has declined. Gulls are therefore moving inland into towns and cities that are not adapted to breeding, and they are very good at tracking schoolchildren, unfortunately, so that they know where to find food.

What we are seeing with the gulls is just a symptom of climate change. The broader realisation that climate change is contributing to the nature crisis and therefore to the problems that we have right on our doorstep cannot be overstated and our farmers get it more than anyone else. They are witnessing those changes in real time and they understand the challenges that they are facing.

I welcome the Scottish Government’s emphasis on our vision for agriculture and the agricultural reform route map. The emphasis on our net zero ambitions and emissions reductions are in line with our climate targets. We all need to do better at expressing and mitigating the gravity of the twin climate and nature crises, and I praise the minister for her commitment to encouraging co-operative approaches on these issues, and to optimising collaboration with knowledge exchange.

Food security is an area of vital importance. In recent years, we have witnessed many disruptions to the global food supply chains, most recently through Russia’s abhorrent war in Ukraine. The Covid-19 pandemic also posed some difficult challenges to the global food system. Although its impacts are not unique to Scotland, those caused and imposed on Scotland by the hard Brexit were entirely avoidable. The UK Government has done immense and irreversible damage to our world-class food and drink industry and to rural and coastal communities such as the one that I represent, and I commend the minister for her continuing and tireless engagement in combating post-Brexit skills shortages in agriculture and for calling on the UK Government to fulfil its outstanding commitment to fully replacing EU funds.

I must say that I am quite disappointed by the tone of the debate—but that is not coming from those on the SNP benches. All we hear are descriptions of problems, but being descriptive does not offer any solutions. We are willing to work cross-party to come up with solutions to a lot of the issues.

Jim Stephenson talked about women’s participation in legal services and them dropping out. We recently had a gender-sensitive audit of the Parliament. Maggie Chapman and I were members of the board for that, and we looked into the barriers to women’s participation in politics as a whole. We know that the better the representation of women in Parliament, the better women are served across Scotland. Would a gender-sensitive audit of legal services be considered? A lot of the issues that we are hearing about this morning affect women disproportionately.

Thank you. I am sure that Fulton MacGregor will be able to come in with his other hat on as member of the Criminal Justice Committee.

Since I became an MSP, a few constituents have approached me with concerns that the court system was being used to abuse them further with regard to abusive relationships, whether that abuse be physical domestic violence or coercive and controlling behaviour. The issues range from one partner receiving legal aid and then financially draining the other to—and I have looked into and read a bit more about this—ex-partners being able to cross-examine partners whom they have abused and who might even have taken out a restraining order against them. These things have been allowed to happen in the court system, and it seems that women have been disproportionately affected. Are you aware of and attuned to such matters, and what can be done about them?

I see Jen Ang nodding, so I will pick on her first.

Good morning to the witnesses, and thank you for your testimony so far, which has been enlightening.

I am curious about your expectations of the proposed agriculture bill. Have they changed from when you first came into the process? If so, in what way? Perhaps Vicki Swales can start.

I open with a quote:

“So often, when I am being harassed by a man on public transport, no one intervenes. Then, when I am off the train, returning from work or a night out, there is no one to help. I have lost count of the number of times I’ve been followed home, terrified of being raped or murdered.”

Those are the words of one woman—Sally—who spoke to my office as I prepared for the debate. They are sobering to hear, and the experience is, sadly, one that most women in the chamber and watching at home will recognise in one way or another.

Many women and girls will be familiar with sending a friend our live location when we transit to or from home. Some of us change how we dress, in order to avoid attracting unwanted attention from would-be harassers. Alternatively, we take a different longer or more convoluted route to our destination, to ensure that it is well lit or busier. Some of us do not take the risk at all, and spend a fortune on taxis. Those are just a handful of the actions that women are taking, day in and day out, to avoid harassment in public. Sadly, that extends to our transport system.

Another woman told my office:

“Every time I get on public transport, I have a flashback to a time that I was harassed. I thought I was going to die. One of the reasons I bought my car and learned to drive was to avoid encountering creeps on public transport. If I couldn’t drive and needed to take public transport to get somewhere at night, I would choose not to go.”

No one should live in such a state of constant fear, excluding themselves from public life for fear of their safety. I thank the women who shared their testimonies with me and my office. Their courage and honesty have left me dwelling on a number of questions in the lead-up to international women’s day tomorrow.

How can women thrive at work, for example, when, too often, their commutes are spent in a state of hypervigilance? How can we tackle the climate crisis through encouraging the increased uptake of public transport when so many of us fear for our welfare, and even our lives, on our buses and our trains? How can we tackle the scourge of harassment when, for too many women, there are still too many barriers to understanding and reporting harassment on our public transport? Women’s safety and wellbeing should underpin all that we do in this area, but it is important, too, to recognise that these matters have an impact on our economy, our climate and our justice system.

It is also important to reiterate that the voices and perspectives of women must be front and centre in any effort to resolve this on-going problem. It is vital that we have women representatives who are proportional to the population to ensure that there is parity of attention to women’s issues in the Scottish Parliament. Women make up 46 per cent of the Scottish Parliament, so there is a wee way to go yet, but we are closer than we have ever been to equal representation.

I had the privilege of being the SNP representative on the Scottish Parliament’s gender-sensitive audit board and playing my part in the large body of work that has been undertaken to recommend action both in parties and in the Parliament. I hope that that will make a significant difference to women’s participation in politics and elected office, because it is essential to have women’s voices and perspectives at the heart of Government.

We are fortunate to have had our first female First Minister, who has ensured that, under her leadership, our Scottish Cabinet has been gender balanced for seven years. Our Minister for Transport—a woman—has talked about her lived experience of harassment on public transport.

We know from Transport Scotland’s social and equality impact assessment that women are more likely to be a victim of sexual assault, and we are also more likely to have concerns about safety and security issues on public transport at night and a fear of being harassed or sexually assaulted.

The report that has been published today makes a number of recommendations to tackle those issues, and I want to highlight and endorse one in particular. I welcome the fact that the report specifically recommends that awareness be raised of the immediate and intermediate support that is available to those who feel vulnerable at any point before, during or after public transport journeys.

Many of the women who I have spoken to about harassment on public transport have said that any effort to tackle harassment must be door to door; it must not stop at the boundary of the train station or bus stop. I commend the work of organisations such as Strut Safe—a free, non-judgmental service that is dedicated to making women, LGBT+ people, people of colour and others feel safe walking home.

We know that misogyny and the violence against women and girls that it perpetuates are not confined to public transport. Sadly, we see them throughout our society. Eradicating the pervasive and deeply ingrained inequalities in our society will require radical and holistic efforts, but with a gender-sensitive Parliament and a gender-balanced Cabinet, I know that we can prevail.

I vow to do all that I can to ensure that the voices of women from a wide variety of backgrounds are heard in this place, hopefully working alongside colleagues in a cross-party and cross-gender way. It is only by calling out misogyny and creating a culture where the perpetrators of it are like social pariahs that we will be able to radically change the culture in our society.

I welcome the update from the cabinet secretary. Just this week, new statistics have shown that attainment numbers for positive destinations are at a record high, with more than 95 per cent of school leavers in education, employment or further training three months after leaving school. Although that is testament to the hard work of our teachers and young people, does the cabinet secretary agree that the figures also prove that this Government is delivering in education?