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Good morning. I am keen to have a robust discussion on the matter. There is no doubt that what has come out of the discussions is that the national care service proposals do not address what needs to be sorted now, and that there are many things that we can do to help with social care, which is in absolute crisis, as we have heard.

I was very heartened to hear the minister’s contribution on the professionalism of the workforce and how we make sure that that workforce has good training. However, from talking to the trade unions, there is absolutely no doubt that we need to look at pay and terms and conditions across the board. The unions are very keen to look at sectoral collective bargaining. I am interested to know from the minister and officials whether there is a plan to look at that and whether they will commit to it for the social care workforce.

I do accept that that is what you want to do. The problem for me is that often, in Parliament, we do lots of talking, but we need action. Therefore, I am keen to have a timetable saying when we might be able to move towards better pay and terms and conditions for staff.

I have a very short last question on private profit in care, which you mentioned earlier. We need to discuss that again. I hope that you will understand that social care is not about private profit, and that we need to work hard to make sure that that is removed from the system.

Do you accept that we need to be brave with some of the stuff that my colleague Paul Sweeney mentioned in relation to the economics of health and social care and breaking the cycle of huge overspend and delayed discharge, and that the way to resolve that is to make those decisions?

That sounds good. I do not know whether the minister would commit to coming back within a short timeframe to lay out some of her suggestions for that.

I, too, thank Jackie Dunbar for bringing this important debate to the chamber. It is right that we debate this topic, because it is important that we consider the campaign and discuss all options that would allow people to be safer in the sun.

As the motion states, the vast majority of melanoma cases

“could be prevented by staying safe in the sun”,

and so it is critical that we are always raising awareness of the key components of good sun safety practice. Those include, as has been mentioned, wearing clothes that provide sun protection, finding shade and taking extra precautions if you have any, or many, moles.

In addition, it is only right that we take the opportunity, in this debate, to look at where the Scottish Parliament has, in the past, legislated to tackle the incidence rate of skin cancers in Scotland. As members may know, the former Labour MSP and Presiding Officer of the Parliament, Ken Macintosh, delivered legislation that directly addressed the lack of clear and visible warnings surrounding the use of sunbeds, which we know has direct links to skin cancer, sunburn and other skin-related conditions.

That was important when the legislation was introduced, and it remains so now—possibly even more so, given that analysis of Britain’s high streets has revealed that businesses such as tanning salons are concentrated in areas of the country that already have high levels of deprivation and are perhaps targeting specific communities. It is important that we get a chance to discuss those broader issues in the chamber.

That is lovely—thank you. I am sure that the member will understand that the next part of my speech very much addresses that particular issue, so her intervention is very welcome.

The role that employers play in protecting employees, in particular those who work outdoors during periods of high temperature, cannot be underestimated—as we all agree, it seems. During last year’s heatwave, the Trades Union Congress and the Scottish Trades Union Congress rightly called on employers to provide sun cream and advice on the need for protection from the sun when employees were working outdoors.

From a workplace perspective, the TUC argued that sun cream is PPE and should be considered as such, and that, although it is within the rights of an employee to refuse to take up the offer of wearing PPE—in this case, sun cream—for whatever reason, it should remain the case that employers are fully expected to still make that offer to the wider workforce.

When we think about the times when we may be at highest risk of damaging ourselves in the sun, we often think about being on the beach or overseas. However, the NHS rightly advises the public that they can burn in the UK, even—as we have heard—if it is cloudy, and that sunburn, as we have also heard, increases the risk of skin cancer. We must always be aware of the risk, no matter where we are and no matter what the weather is.

It is absolutely right, therefore, that we debate the matter and look at all the avenues, including the campaign that has been spoken about today, and I thank Amy Callaghan MP for the opportunity to discuss it in the chamber. We can, and we must, do better for people.

My party and I fully appreciate and acknowledge the importance of protecting skin from the sun. In this place, where we have the power to do something, we should always ensure that we do what we can. We must increase awareness, and every member has done so tonight. I thank Jackie Dunbar once again for bringing the debate to the chamber, and I thank all those members who have spoken this evening.

I acknowledge the protections on household goods that were brought into place at stage 2 and I thank the minister for the discussions that have been had on the matter.

As the minister said, amendment 18 removes the changes introduced by my stage 2 amendment, which was about annual uprating. I have listened closely to what the minister has said. As he acknowledged, the bill is quite technical, and so in some ways, a lot of what he has done so far in the debate has been to tidy up amendments. I am wondering whether he could have tidied up some of the detail, because I believe that the committee report made recommendations about the reference to the retail price index. There was agreement across the parties at stage 1, and quite broad agreement at stage 2, that that would be helpful. Including in the bill an automatic annual uprating of the figure, with reference to the retail price index, would ensure that the figure can be increased. There could also be a power to round the figure up, if that was what the minister was suggesting was needed.

We must ensure that the Scottish Government sets a date by which it must look again at the figure—that was the point of linking it to the retail price index. I appreciate that the minister sees that as overkill, but I believe that it would be helpful to say in the bill that Parliament must regularly update the figure, and it seems sensible to link that to the retail price index.

Overall, I find my stage 2 amendment justified and think that the bill could have been tidied up to make it work, but I thank the minister for his remarks on the matter.

I thank all the members across the chamber who are debating this very technical bill. As a latecomer to the committee, I recognised that quite early on.

At all stages, Scottish Labour has supported the modernisation of the legislation and recognised the positive impact that it is likely to have on access to credit and finance for many different groups and individuals. My colleague Daniel Johnson laid that out well.

We have worked hard, alongside consumer and money advice organisations, to get this right. I am satisfied that, for the most part, we have achieved that. As I said, I was a latecomer to the committee. Having come into the committee at that late stage, it is important for me to recognise the work that it did on the report and to say thank you to the minister, the members of the committee I came in to work with, and the clerks for all the support that they gave on it. Some of the technicalities were quite difficult to work through, but everybody took the time to support each other and to make sure that we got it right because it was seen as such an important piece of legislation.

I would of course have liked some of the Labour amendments to have reached the final stages of the bill. We lodged them, at stage 2 in particular, in order to genuinely improve the functioning of the bill. The minister has recognised that we did that in good faith.

When the legislation was announced, concerns about its potential unintended consequences were raised by various stakeholders. Those were a priority for me and Labour colleagues. I asked a question in the chamber early on and the minister and I had a discussion about that. The concerns were associated with the drafting of the bill and how it might negatively affect people.

From today’s debate it can be seen that we have worked hard on those issues, as is now reflected in the bill.

As other members stated earlier, Scottish Labour agrees that the bill should pass. We look forward to its introduction because it will remove a key competitive disadvantage for Scotland’s businesses in comparison with their friends in England. I trust that the process has moved forward with the concerns of small businesses and sole traders in mind and that any unintended consequences have been removed. I applaud the co-operation among all parties that has brought us to this point.

As I am sure the minister will recognise, Scottish Labour members will continue to scrutinise the operation of the bill to ensure that the commitments that he made in the chamber today are kept. I look forward to doing so.

I thank the minister for his engagement on the issue. As he knows, I moved some of those amendments at stage 2.

As he outlined, amendment 8 removes the requirement on the Government to report on the waiver of defence. The minister knows that I argued strongly at stage 2 that such a requirement was appropriate. There was some suggestion that that may cause difficulties, but we do not know. I felt that it was important to have in place a sound reporting mechanism to ensure that the impact of the waiver of defence clause is given consideration and, indeed, that steps are in place to ensure that MSPs can question Government about the impact of that should any negative impacts be identified that require mitigation.

The minister indicated that there are options for review, and I note his comments in relation to the overall review. However, in my view, having reporting expectations on that aspect set out in the bill removes the challenges that we as MSPs may face further down the line.

Again, as the minister outlined, amendment 34 makes alterations to reporting. It removes the requirement for the Scottish Government to report on the effectiveness of the legislation and its impact on sole traders and individuals within three years of royal assent. As he said, that requirement is replaced with a duty to report within five years from the point at which sections 1 and 40 of the legislation come into effect. That is disappointing, as we believe and argued that three-year reporting offered a good balance between embedding the legislation and giving good protection from any difficulties with it.

For those reasons, we will vote against the amendments.