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Will the minister take an intervention?

I welcome the opportunity to lead this members’ business debate on sexual violence in Scotland’s hospitals. I thank Michelle Thomson for supporting the motion and allowing it to achieve cross-party support. That means that we can shine a much-needed light on a serious safeguarding issue in Scotland’s national health service.

I pay tribute to the Women’s Rights Network Scotland, which is represented in the public gallery, especially Mary Howden and Carolyn Brown, who authored the sobering report—which I have with me here—“How safe are our Scottish hospitals?”

Once again, it is a grass-roots women’s organisation that has brought concerns about safety and safeguarding in Scotland’s public sector to the fore. The Sunday Post has built on that work in recent weeks by exposing the issue and holding the Scottish National Party Government to account. The WRN submitted close to 200 freedom of information requests to Police Scotland and surveyed 198 hospital settings over a five-year period. Data was made available for only 57 of those hospitals, which is just 29 per cent of Scotland’s total. It showed that, between 2019 and 2024, 276 sexual assaults and 12 rapes were reported and 163 sexual assaults and rapes occurred on hospital wards. Twenty-two sexual assaults and one rape took place in NHS Grampian, in my region, and 17 sexual assaults and three rapes took place in NHS Tayside. Out of a total of 288 incidents, only 156 individuals were charged.

Those are spine-chilling figures. By no means is that a complete picture. We do not have data for almost two thirds of Scotland’s NHS and private hospitals. Underreporting and a lack of data management mean that we simply do not know the full scale of the problem. We can all agree that even one sexual assault in our NHS is too many.

Whether it is to receive medical care ourselves or to visit a poorly loved one, we are often at our most vulnerable when we enter a hospital. We are placing our physical and psychological safety in the hands of health boards and NHS staff. We are entrusting our children and our family to their care. We must be able to do so without fear. Staff, too, are vulnerable. Members will recall the shocking revelations in autumn 2023 about female surgeons being sexually assaulted and harassed by male colleagues in the operating theatre. The safety of patients, visitors and staff must be the SNP Government’s top priority when it comes to the NHS.

I was extremely concerned to learn that some women are afraid to seek treatment because of the potential risk to their safety. I hope that the minister will address that in closing the debate. Earlier this year, I raised with the First Minister concerns about the Carseview psychiatric unit in NHS Tayside, which has mixed-sex wards. The WRN’s research suggests that seven sexual assaults and two rapes took place in this so-called secure psychiatric setting.

One of my constituents received treatment in Carseview for postpartum psychosis following the birth of her second baby. I understand that, at that most vulnerable point in her life, she was repeatedly subjected to another patient exposing himself. She was terrified and traumatised, she was separated from her support network and she was scared for her safety on a mixed-sex ward. How can that be? Where was the duty of care? For women giving birth or accessing support for serious mental ill health or learning disabilities, safeguarding has to be of paramount importance.

The Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee recently heard evidence that 90 per cent of women with learning difficulties and disabilities have been subjected to sexual abuse, with 68 per cent of them experiencing sexual abuse before turning 18. Women have been raped or sexually assaulted at Scottish maternity hospitals on at least five different occasions, and one of those rapes was reported at Aberdeen maternity hospital. Sexual assaults have also been reported in other psychiatric units and palliative settings.

That cannot go on. We must see urgent action from the SNP Government, health boards, NHS partners and Police Scotland to allay the concerns of women and girls.

What is the way ahead? I often say that we cannot manage what we cannot measure. I understand that Healthcare Improvement Scotland is working to standardise the reporting of incidents, and that is to be welcomed, but we need details from the Scottish Government on how that will operate in practice. To address the risks and weaknesses and to put preventative policies in place, we need to see the data.

There is a wider issue about mixed-sex wards. Protecting single-sex spaces in our public sector should be at the top of the policy agenda, and I have had rigorous exchanges with SNP ministers on that issue. Since 2005, the Scottish Government has expected health boards to ensure that their facilities comply with the guidelines and recommendations on the elimination of mixed-sex accommodation that were published 25 years ago. However, that is just not happening on the ground, and I think that that is evident from the data.

Our hospitals must be safe for people—especially women and children—who access those settings. The SNP Government must act swiftly to address sexual violence in Scotland’s hospitals. [Applause.]

Will the minister take an intervention?

The answer is “no”.

That is a ludicrous and, frankly, a chilling statement from a regulator that is supposed to protect Scotland’s most vulnerable children and young people. There are massive safeguarding issues arising from that reckless guidance.

However, it is not just the Care Inspectorate. The Scottish Prison Service is in the spotlight once again because it is allowing trans-identifying prison officers to perform intimate and utterly unacceptable rub-down searches of vulnerable women who are visiting the prison estate. Violent trans-identifying men can still be housed in the female prison estate in certain circumstances.

Will the Scottish Government finally do the decent thing, lay down the law for Scotland’s public bodies and tell them to withdraw ill-informed and insidious guidance that allows the rights of male-bodied individuals to transcend those of women and girls?

To ask the Scottish Government whether it will review public sector guidance on single-sex spaces, in light of reported concerns about the Care Inspectorate and the Scottish Prison Service. (S6T-02422)

The cabinet secretary may be interested to know that the Care Inspectorate’s “Guidance for children and young people’s services on the inclusion of transgender including non-binary young people” makes the following statement:

“The provision of gendered facilities such as toilets is social convention. There is no law in Scotland about this.”

Does the Scottish Government agree with the Care Inspectorate’s statement?

Will the cabinet secretary take an intervention?

I say to Audrey Nicoll and Evelyn Tweed that language matters. Gender is a construct; sex is down to biology.

It is no wonder that trust in the Scottish Government has been so badly corroded. The SNP has made an absolute mess of this. Its amendment to the motion says:

“the Scottish Government fully upholds the Equality Act 2010”.

Senior SNP politicians have made similar statements, but the sleekit SNP is at it again. John Swinney is trying and failing to ride two horses on sex and self-ID.

If I had been allowed to intervene on the cabinet secretary or the minister, I would have asked them about the millions of pounds that the Scottish Government has given to activist groups that are providing guidance, which is being interpreted as law. That is extremely worrying. As we have heard in the debate, the minister can read out a speech, but she probably does not engage with the substance, as Mr Ewing has pointed out.

As Rachael Hamilton said, John Swinney recognises that the law is on the side of women, but the problem is that his SNP Government refuses to enforce it. Lest we forget it, the SNP Government has been arguing in the UK’s highest court that men can get pregnant and become lesbians; John Swinney confirmed at the end of February that he accepts that trans women are women; and he does not regret supporting the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill, which was—thankfully—blocked by the previous Conservative UK Government.

We cannot have a women-only space and let biological men have access to that space. That is common sense. The SNP does not believe that women are adult human females, and it has taken a sledgehammer to the rights and spaces that are afforded to biological women and girls as a result.

In kowtowing to activist organisations such as Stonewall, the SNP Government has allowed self-ID to creep into Scotland’s public sector for years. As I mentioned, the law is being skewed by lobby groups that are being funded by the SNP Government. Faulty guidance is becoming policy, with disastrous consequences, as a result of Nicola Sturgeon’s self-ID obsession. She leaves a dangerous and divisive legacy when she stands down in 2026. As Russell Findlay said, women will not forget that she trashed their rights. The NHS, schools, councils, the Prison Service and the police all jumped on the so-called inclusion bandwagon at the behest of Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP Government. Labour did nothing.

Equality, diversity and inclusion policies in our public bodies have become exclusionary for women. That is why we need leadership and clarity from the SNP Government, and it is why the Scottish Conservatives are calling on John Swinney to issue a directive requiring public sector bodies to provide single-sex spaces for biological women and girls, in line with their legal obligations. It is high time that, after eroding our rights and relegating our needs for years, the SNP put women and girls first.

John Swinney thinks that the legal position on single-sex spaces is “crystal clear”, but the SNP’s position is as clear as mud. Week after week, the Scottish Conservatives have been trying to get answers out of the SNP on what on earth is happening with women-only spaces in Scotland’s public bodies. Our requests for ministerial statements were knocked back. Our questions were swerved—