Seòmar agus comataidhean

The Scottish Greens will support the LCM at decision time.

However, I want to get the following comments, which relate to clause 38 of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill, on the record. As it stands, clause 38 of the bill will repeal certain provisions of the Illegal Migration Act 2023—specifically sections 24 and 28, which disapplied specific powers and duties of the Scottish ministers that are in the Human Traffic and Exploitation (Scotland) Act 2015. Neither of those sections has been fully brought into force. We support the repeal of those sections and would like to see the whole Illegal Migration Act 2023 repealed.

It is disappointing that the UK Government saw fit not to repeal section 29 of the 2023 act as well. It focuses on disqualifying protections for individuals who are identified as potential victims of modern slavery or trafficking if they are deemed, according to the act, to be

“a threat to public order or ... have claimed to be victims in bad faith”.

Some might say that that is fair, but a key provision of the 2023 act is the expansion of the definition of a “threat to public order” to include anyone who is convicted of a crime and given a prison sentence and those who are liable for deportation under the Immigration Act 1971. That means that victims of trafficking could still be detained and face removal rather than receiving support, and it applies even if they were coerced or forced into entering the UK irregularly by their traffickers.

Absolutely. I thank Paul Sweeney for raising that. Let us remember that many trafficked victims are forced into criminal activity and, by virtue of being trafficked, they are much more likely to have a criminal record.

Section 29 of the 2023 act makes it more difficult for such victims to come forward and seek help, which could force them further underground, where they could continue to be exploited, could be re-trafficked or worse. We know that, when trafficked victims are removed from the UK, they face a high risk of being re-trafficked and could end up in exactly the same situation.

I am grateful to the Scottish Refugee Council for its meticulous work on the ramifications of the bill. I really wish that we could repeal the entire Illegal Migration Act 2023—one day soon, I hope that we will.

I note that Stephen Kerr seems not to like the fact that the right to seek asylum is enshrined in article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and elaborated on in the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees—it is clear that his party does not like human rights for many people at all. However, there are few, if any, so-called legal routes to get to the UK for refugees and asylum seekers from parts of the world that continue to suffer the consequences of imperialism, uneven development and climate breakdown. I wonder how some people justify the differential treatment that the UK has shown to Ukrainians compared to Yemenis or Palestinians.

If people really want to stop the boats, let us arrange safe and secure routes and crossings for asylum seekers, as we should do under our international and moral obligations. I am proud to be in a party that believes that we should welcome refugees and asylum seekers and that we should offer them the dignity of safety and sanctuary. That is our duty.

I thank the First Minister for his statement. On behalf of the Scottish Greens, I welcome Gypsy Traveller community members to the Parliament. I am glad that you can be here to witness this. I recognise community members Dr Lynne Tammi-Connolly, Roseanna and Shamus McPhee and Davie Donaldson, whose determination is why we are here today. The apology is important and I hope that it signifies a new direction for how we in Scotland’s Parliament engage with, support and treat members of Gypsy Traveller communities across Scotland.

I will continue the conversations that I have been having with the Scottish Government on next steps, because we must discuss reparations and redress. For now, how can we ensure that the Government’s apology—it is long overdue, but it is here now—will be the catalyst for other public bodies that had a role in the tinker experiments to properly examine their complicity, apologise to communities and provide to those communities the proper services, from housing and healthcare to education and cultural recognition, that deliver dignity, respect and justice?

The Scottish Greens cannot agree to this LCM this evening. Part 2 of the Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill

“assumes that all recipients of benefits have criminal tendencies and must therefore be denied financial privacy.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 15 May 2025; c 2372.]

Those are not my words, but the words of Labour’s Lord Sikka, speaking in the House of Lords about the bill just last month. The Scottish Greens reject the bill’s assumption outright and so cannot support the LCM. In addition, we cannot agree to any legislation that gives snooping rights to banks and other companies in the way that is enabled by the bill, even if not all those powers would be explicitly allowed in Scotland.

No court order would be needed for that unrestrained surveillance and individuals would not be told that they were being surveilled. There would be no right of appeal by those who were affected, and it is not clear what information would actually be identified by the surveillance or how fraud would be determined on the basis of that information. Because individuals would not even know that the surveillance was happening, they would have no chance to provide any explanation of their situation.

What if the algorithm that is used to identify that information makes a mistake? The Post Office scandal has surely taught us that computer systems are not infallible. Even a 1 per cent error rate could result in more than 1,000 people losing universal credit. How would they be compensated? How would they challenge that, given the widespread and on-going issues with lack of access to legal aid?

While the legislation initially allows for snooping on recipients of universal credit, recipients of pension credit and others, it is likely to be extended to recipients of other benefits, even if they are not specifically devolved and under the control of Social Security Scotland.

All of that is to tackle fraud, which we know accounts for only around a couple of per cent of annual welfare spending. Powers to snoop on all claimants on the basis of that tiny rate cannot be justified. The DWP already has powers to compel information holders to share data on individuals who are suspected of fraud, so, like Lord Sikka, I question whether the powers in the bill are necessary.

In short, the bill removes financial privacy from the poor, the old, the sick and the disabled. It is discriminatory. It turns on its head our normal presumption that people are innocent until proven guilty, and it makes a mockery of our equality and human rights laws. As such, we in the Greens cannot support this LCM this evening.

The cabinet secretary highlights the Gillies report’s call for openness and transparency, but already the interim leadership team is showing little sign of change. I have heard concerning reports that the democratically elected student representative on the court is being asked by the interim chair to not attend handover court meetings where the report is being discussed. There has been no attempt yet to include new voices from unions, Dundee University Students Association or the incoming rector in the development of the action plan, which is due later this summer.

Does the cabinet secretary agree that there is no justification for excluding court members from court discussions when there is no conflict of interest? What more can the Government be doing to ensure that the culture change that is needed starts now and that discussions about the future are inclusive, open and transparent?

I am pleased to close the debate on behalf of the Scottish Greens.

We have heard many thoughtful reflections from members about aspects of the council’s work—its recommendations, its achievements and, of course, the regrettable gaps and shortfalls.

In her foreword to the report, Shirley-Anne Somerville acknowledged that

“the pace of change can feel frustratingly slow.”

I think that many members share that frustration. Although it is, of course, important to move forward with care and consultation, sometimes the sense of urgency seems to be lost in successive changes or stages that never quite reach their objective. The first example in the report of the proposed “What Works?” institute illustrates that tendency.

We recognise the limits that are imposed by the devolution settlement—there are yet more examples of why we need the full powers of a normal country. In the meantime, important and imaginative work has been done. For example, although we are barred from legislating for quotas, the funding of Elect Her and the Engender equal representation project, alongside support for the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, has opened up the potential for political representation by and for many more women and non-binary people in Scotland.

Like Rona Mackay, I am glad to be part of the gender-sensitive Parliament advisory group, which is looking for further opportunities to improve the diversity of representation that we have in our politics.

Of course, gaps remain, some of which are wide and gaping. The difference between the funded childcare that is currently offered to families and that which was recommended by the council is immense. If women could access the level of funded childcare that was recommended—50 hours a week for children from six months of age—their opportunities for earning, career progression and family wellbeing would be utterly transformed. The impact that that would have on our poverty levels cannot be overstated.

We have heard about the devastating impact on the lives of not only women but their families and wider communities of unequal or absent access to, and misogyny in, our healthcare, justice, education and other public service systems, on which we should all be able to rely. However, it has been heartening to hear the clear majority call for recognition that gender policy coherence will not work without intersectionality. We must be better at understanding the multiple overlapping and interconnected identities and factors that affect whether women and girls are able to survive and thrive.

In his foreword to the report, the First Minister wrote about the “political headwinds” that threaten our progress on gender equality. He is absolutely right, as Clare Haughey highlighted. We are in a very different context from the one in which Nicola Sturgeon founded the initiative, but that is no reason to give up, to lose hope or to diminish the scale or the radicalism of our ambition.

We face wars and preparation for more war; brutal cuts to the livelihoods of the poorest; a situation in which priority is given to economic growth at all costs, with no care for distribution; the rhetoric and reality of punitive immigration controls; the normalisation of killing thousands of children by swift or slow violence; the myth that climate change is controllable through technology alone; and the replacement of male accountability with misogyny and transphobia. However, we know how to counter all those things and how to live, speak and act with integrity, intelligence, solidarity and compassion.

Scotland has been a leader in human rights, and it can be again. It is still bitterly disappointing that we have not had, in this session, the groundbreaking legislation that we were promised, but we in the Scottish Greens, at least, will not rest until that has been achieved. Thanks to people such as Emma Ritch, the groundwork has been done, and it will be tragic if we do not continue to build on that groundwork with renewed energies. The women and girls of Scotland need us to do just that.

I am grateful to the cabinet secretary for securing the debate. As she has outlined, gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls is one of the sustainable development goals, and it is one that we should all strive to implement.

As Katy Clark has just stated, we must use whatever mechanisms we have at our disposal to tackle misogyny. I, too, regret the Scottish Government’s decision to drop the planned misogyny legislation.

Since its inception eight years ago, the National Advisory Council on Women and Girls has been a wise, prescient, brave and visionary body. Its members, including the brilliant, compassionate and much-missed Emma Ritch, realised that progress would require mechanisms of accountability as well as substantive changes. One of the council’s recommendations was that Scottish ministers should deliver an annual statement on gender policy coherence, followed by a debate in the Scottish Parliament. It might have taken some time to get here, but we have that statement in the form of a report, and we have this debate, and I am grateful for both of those.

It is commendable that, in its motion for this debate, the Government has sought not to boast about achievements or make excuses about shortcomings but simply to note the statement and let us talk about it. With the same dignity and respect, most Opposition parties have refrained from lodging amendments to make political points and set the debate on a path of division and conflict—most, but not all.

Once again, our few opportunities to talk about the real structural barriers to the wellbeing of women and girls, of families and communities and of living generations and those to come—our tiny slivers of time for conversation and progress—are to be dominated by the discourse of transmisogyny. Let us be clear: of the social and economic oppressions, institutional and structural injustices and participatory and intersectional shortfalls that women and girls experience, absolutely none is inflicted by transgender or non-binary people. On the contrary, the poisonous rhetoric of prosperous so-called gender-critical activism damages all women and girls, trans and cisgendered.

I go back to the advisory council and its practical, trans-inclusive, intersectionally aware, robust and transformational feminism. It was created as a catalyst for change. That change is not always comfortable, and it is certainly not always easy, but I think that we recognise today, from bitter experience, that it is more urgently needed than ever.

Gender equality is not a zero-sum game. It is not about dividing the cake differently but about baking an entirely different kind of cake—one that benefits men, boys and non-binary people as well as women and girls. It provides radical, sustainable and compassionate alternatives to misogyny, exploitation, injustice and violence—violence in our homes, schools and streets; in the homes, schools and streets of Gaza and elsewhere; in the bleak destruction of climate change; and in the plans and profits of a resurgent war machine.

The council produced 21 recommendations, with on-going, sensitive and meticulous work about how those recommendations can become real. The Scottish Government has, to its credit, accepted them all. If fully implemented, they would transform Scotland for the benefit of everyone—perhaps most of all for the children in poverty to whom our attention continually returns. In my closing speech, I will address some of the ways in which we are moving towards those goals and that gender policy coherence, and some of the ways in which we can do much better.

Meanwhile, on behalf of the Scottish Greens, I welcome the report and the motion, and I whole-heartedly reject the culture-war games that, I fear, we might get into later this afternoon.

I am grateful to Liam Kerr for securing the debate, and I echo other members’ comments in welcoming the cabinet secretary to her new role.

At the heart of the debate are peoples’ homes. For anyone, whether they are a renter or a home owner, the thought that the safety of their home might be compromised—that it might not be structurally sound—and that they might face not only financial loss but immense upheaval must be one of the most unsettling feelings to experience. Our homes are our foundation. They are the place where we should feel safe and secure. They are the place that gives us the starting point for our days and that offers rest and sanctuary.

The Scottish Greens believe that every person deserves a safe, affordable and secure home. Housing is not a commodity but a social necessity. Alongside that principle, it is important to consider the value of public accountability. Public bodies must act transparently. They must consult residents and ensure just compensation or rehousing, especially for those who are hit hardest by the structural failures of RAAC. I will spend a bit of time considering that point.

Across the North East Scotland region, there remains considerable uncertainty about the scale of RAAC. In Dundee, more than 900 properties had been reported as being affected, but that figure was corrected to 887—526 social homes and 361 private homes. In Aberdeen, 504 homes—366 council properties and 138 private dwellings—are affected. At least 26 affected homes have been identified in Monifieth. However, residents, tenants and home owners are concerned that those numbers do not represent the full scale of the issue.

There are multiple continuing investigations, but—this is crucial—the lack of systematic testing by local authorities places private and social housing on not only an unequal but an uncertain footing. We also note that different brand names of RAAC are being treated differently without any clear explanation being given. There are also challenges because more and more documents are emerging that show that the risks of RAAC have been known for a considerable time—at least 40 years. Despite that, some public bodies seem unwilling to admit that systematic surveys or interventions are necessary and that they might even have some responsibility for that.

There are also significant inequalities across Scotland in how communities are being treated. Some councils are opting for demolition and rebuilding, some are offering limited financial support for remediation and some are not engaging with residents at all. However, the emotional toll on individuals, families and communities is common across all areas. Residents are worried and anxious. They fear homelessness or bankruptcy. Their mental health is suffering, as Liam Kerr outlined. Their communities are being destabilised. We must not underestimate the negative impacts that that is having on individuals, families and their communities.

We need co-ordinated action and shared working. I would like to see a national audit that covers private and social properties, with public reporting supported by councils and both of our Governments. We must ensure that the protection of residents is our priority in the matter.

I was glad to have arranged a meeting between the then housing minister, Paul McLennan, and constituents in Dundee who are concerned about RAAC. That meeting took place just last week, following the meeting that Paul McLennan had attended in Torry. Several commitments were made at those meetings, and I would welcome comments from the cabinet secretary and early engagement with her on how those issues will be taken forward.

RAAC has been a known risk for more than 40 years, but, today, families in Dundee, Aberdeen, Angus and beyond face eviction, financial ruin and emotional distress. It is a national crisis that transcends council borders.

We need people-centred and co-ordinated solutions, including full transparency, proper compensation, safe and free housing, retrofit when possible and rebuilding to modern standards, funded together by local government and the Scottish and UK Governments, because nobody should be left in limbo for a place that they call home.

The cabinet secretary says that residents should seek help and get a survey, but the cost of that is a challenge in the first place. There are also people who live in blocks and who do not themselves have RAAC while those in a neighbouring property do. That has a direct impact on the value and safety of their property, but they cannot effect any remediation because their property is not directly affected, even though they are, to all intents and purposes, in a RAAC-affected building.

I thank Bill Kidd for securing this debate.

Collective punishment is a war crime under international humanitarian law, and it is specifically prohibited by the Geneva conventions. Yet, collective punishment is exactly what the blockade of Gaza, imposed by the apartheid, genocidal Israeli state, is inflicting on Palestinians. Using the starvation of civilians as a weapon of war goes against international law and the customs of war. The humanitarian crisis that we see in Gaza is a direct consequence of that collective punishment.

Alongside that are Israel’s actions to destroy all the infrastructure of society and culture, flattening schools, homes, hospitals and universities. Those acts of aggression are clearly designed to cause as much human suffering as possible and to make it is as difficult as possible to resist the blockade and to rebuild, restore and live.

If we, in this Parliament, find the actions of Putin in Ukraine to be so unpalatable—and we rightly,do—then we should find the actions of Netanyahu and his regime to be just as abhorrent. The International Criminal Court has had an arrest warrant out for Netanyahu since November 2024. We should take a similarly robust stance as we do with Putin. We should also be doing whatever we can to ensure that Netanyahu and the others who are responsible for these atrocities are held to account, that the blockade is lifted and that unhindered humanitarian access across Gaza is supported and encouraged.

However, this is not just about the ICC and legal routes to justice, or getting into Gaza the food, water, medical supplies, fuel, clothes and so much more that we all take for granted every day. We must also consider the role that we, in Scotland and the UK, are and could be playing in this on-going genocide.

We hear of the heroic attempts to get aid into or people out of Gaza and the West Bank, and we commend those who are committed to humanitarian and peace work. What we do not hear much about or see any accountability for are the actions of our state institutions that serve to pour fuel on the fire of this war. The UK’s military forces are currently training Israeli Defence Force personnel. More than 55,000 Palestinians have already been murdered, the majority of whom were women, children and the elderly, and yet we are training the very army that is carrying out such atrocities.

As if that was not bad enough, UK taxpayers’ money—our money—is being used to subsidise weapons companies that manufacture arms and components that are being used to destroy infrastructure and life in Gaza and, it seems, also in Iran, with Israel escalating instability across the region at the weekend.

We can no longer say that our Governments are not complicit in a situation that is

“worse than hell on earth”

according to the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross. We have to call it what it is—genocide and ethnic cleansing—and act accordingly. We should be doing everything that we can to stop the UK’s complicity.

We want to see recognition of the state of Palestine, as is seen in a growing number of countries around the world. The Greens also believe that we must see support for and action towards boycott, divestment and sanctions. We should not be normalising genocidal states. We should not be celebrating their inclusion in sporting or cultural activities. We should instead be using every ounce of our economic, social and political power to isolate the genocidal Israeli state and secure a very different future for Palestine and the wider middle east.

The crisis in Gaza is not inevitable. War is not inevitable. Both are a consequence of political failure, and our Governments are complicit in that failure. The Palestinian people deserve better.