Seòmar agus comataidhean

It is Ayrshire.

Are you confident that you have a plan, with urgency, that will help boards even further than the provision of funding does?

Not at the moment, thank you.

Why not use the time to produce a real recovery plan for the NHS that will have an immediate impact on staff morale, pay and patient capacity or to fix lifeline services for Scotland’s constantly underappreciated island communities? What about the ferries?

Not at the moment, thank you.

Why do we not address the crisis in local government funding in Scotland, which has meant that many of our towns and villages are without key services? SNP members will have that in their inboxes. They will know it to be true.

Perhaps, most importantly of all, we could maximise assistance to families across Scotland who are struggling with the surging cost of living, which is rapidly eating up their pay packets.

Any one of those matters is of much more immediate importance than a sitting Government acting like a debating society.

I, too, thank Alasdair Allan for bringing the debate to the chamber and Epilepsy Scotland for publishing the report and providing a briefing ahead of this evening’s debate. I welcome representatives of Epilepsy Scotland to the gallery.

It is right that we debate this matter. The report shows the level of agreement among people from across Scotland who live with epilepsy that having the condition leads to detrimental impacts on mental health. They raise an important point. When reading some of the additional points that were made by those who participated in the survey, I found comments that suggest that even the strongest people can still be suffering inside.

The challenges that come with epilepsy are faced not just by the individual but by the whole family. Although there is a recognition that epilepsy is much more than a seizure, the constant fear of having seizures can be very challenging for individuals and their families.

The fact that 85 per cent of people feel that epilepsy impacts their mental health in a small or significant way should be a concern for us all, as members across the chamber have said. I am confident that the minister recognises the seriousness of the issue and will look to improve specific areas that the Scottish Government can work on to address it.

As we heard, one in three people with epilepsy say that they have depression, almost half have anxiety and a quarter have both. Each figure represents an individual with a family and a life. Those figures are quite stark, and they highlight the debilitating nature of the condition, which affects the mental health and wellbeing of individuals and their families and causes them to suffer.

At this juncture, it would be remiss of me not to remind members that there have been calls to increase mental health spending to 10 per cent of the national health service budget and that commitments have been made. We accept that there are budgetary pressures, but it has been evident for some time that the crisis in mental health and wellbeing will be the next significant challenge to face our population. Clearly, those impacts are already being felt across the country, especially, as has been highlighted, among groups of people with particular conditions, one of which is epilepsy. Not meeting those targets would be a major failing on the part of this Government. The request to reprioritise funding allocation is well intentioned, but it is urgent, so we ask the minister to make that point.

I note with interest the very apt and reasonable recommendations in Epilepsy Scotland’s report. I think that everybody has mentioned that all those recommendations are very reasonable. As we have heard, the calls include asking the Government to increase the number of mental health-trained professionals, including counsellors, who are available to people living with epilepsy; to increase the level of understanding of epilepsy among those working in mental health services; to increase the number of in-person support groups for people living with epilepsy and their families across Scotland; and to have collaborative working between mental health and epilepsy charities to develop key policies in that area. Those asks are timely and, in my view, reasonable, and I hope that they will be reflected in the minister’s comments.

I am pleased that we have been able to have this debate. Much of the data from the report is concerning and the situation is critical. As my colleague David Torrance mentioned, it is important that we have an opportunity to discuss it. People living with epilepsy have spoken loudly and clearly, based on their lived experience. It is our responsibility as legislators to take that seriously, bring it to the Parliament and ask the Government to act.

Not at the moment, thank you.

When scrutiny on issues such as the DRS, the NHS or the Government’s general inertia becomes too prevalent, we can guarantee that the next item on the agenda will be independence. Here we go again.

For many members of the public, a debate such as this afternoon’s looks like navel gazing during a continuing cost of living crisis and an increasingly unstable geopolitical situation. It is verging on fantasy that the Government considers discussion about a written constitution to be a priority during these difficult times. I implore the Government to get its act together and work on things that are important to the communities in Scotland.

Usually, I would welcome the contents of a debate at the start of my remarks, but it is worrying and frustrating in equal measure that, yet again, we find ourselves debating the SNP’s confusing and incoherent plans for a referendum. Those plans are, by the admission of independence supporters, at best unclear.

It often seems that, when scrutiny of the Government’s performance on issues such as the deposit return scheme—

Absolutely not, thank you.

The Government is looking to consider hypotheticals rather than the wolf at the door. The debate is clearly and blatantly an attempt to play to the crowd because the First Minister is on the ropes in his own party and voters are turning away from the Government. Let us not pretend otherwise.

On the notion of a constitution, although I have no issue with a clearer statement of rights or with protecting such important ones as the right to strike, there are plenty of positive steps that the Government could take right now simply through its own actions. We can give people more power in their workplaces and communities with the powers that are available to us currently, so why is that not being pursued? The Government does not need another mandate to implement such measures.

Jamie Hepburn and Angus Robertson are quick to tell us that they have a mandate to deliver a referendum on independence, but they are equally quick to forget the commitments to abolish council tax or reduce primary class sizes. Who can forget, as we have heard before, the treatment time guarantee? Only the SNP Government can do that.

The SNP’s talk of a mandate suits it only when it comes to independence, not when it comes to delivering on the real priorities of the Scottish people. In short, the public want the Government to deliver on what it has already secured votes for before it starts to construct the next promise that it will break.

I do not think that that is too much to ask. All that it takes is accepting the obvious reality that the Government should appreciate what the communities of Scotland want. They are not looking for independence and, certainly, at the moment, none of them is looking for another referendum. That is the hard political reality that faces the Government. A mature Government would consider accepting that point. It is not the time to discuss this paper.

No bother.

I support the position of my colleague Pauline McNeill, but, on balance, I am unable to support the bill.

I think we can all agree that giving greater focus to reintegrating people into society when they are released from prison is a worthwhile and essential cause. Reforming how we utilise remand is key to that, and I am supportive of all efforts to do so, provided that they effectively achieve that aim.

Sadly, on balance, I do not believe that the Bail and Release from Custody (Scotland) Bill achieves that aim. I say that because, at times, it has been difficult to ascertain what the Government is seeking to do with the bill. My colleague Pauline McNeill articulated how clouded some of the Government’s explanations have been during the bill’s progress through Parliament.

In particular, Scottish Labour would like to see more evidence that the Scottish Government is committed to, and is able to financially resource, the shift towards alternatives to custody. The Government seems to miss the point that much of what we all hope to achieve needs the resources to achieve best practice, rather than additional layers of bureaucracy.

We really cannot say with any clarity what the intended purpose of the bill is, what effects it might have or how it will be delivered. To put it simply, the bill does not seem ready. There is important work to do and I do not doubt the good intentions. I say that genuinely. The cabinet secretary was clearly engaged yesterday. She was very considered and took individuals’ responses seriously. I was impressed by how much she engaged with parliamentarians from across the chamber during our stage 3 discussions, and I thank her for that.

I was not involved in the committee stages of the bill process, but the papers that I have read suggest that we require far more research detailing why Scotland has so many people on remand and what the specific causes of that are. Some of that may be due to the case backlog caused by Covid, but the number of people on remand was stubbornly high even before then. The Criminal Justice Committee has sought to shed light on those issues, but it appears that the Government has decided to push ahead with the bill regardless. It is clear that the committee wished for a better understanding of how the provisions in the bill will bring about change.

We do know, as others have said, that Scotland has the highest remand rates in Europe, which cannot be allowed to continue. Will the bill decrease the number of people on remand? Unfortunately, we do not know. I believe that the only way that we could have said that with any clarity would have been if the data suggested by the Criminal Justice Committee had been pursued by the Scottish Government, but the Government did not seem to support efforts to do that.

We know from the testimony given to the committee that organisations representing victims, victims’ families and victims themselves do not have confidence in the bill, nor do many judges and criminal justice organisations. In fact, I have rarely seen a bill reach this stage following so much criticism from expert groups. I urge the Government to think far more carefully about victims’ experiences and concerns and to consider how the bill, in its final form, can be sustained in the long term if it passes into law. Those voices must be heard.

Judges will be required to register their reasons for refusing bail. It would be useful to have that data, but it is unclear why that cannot be done without the legislation. My colleague Pauline McNeill explained that much better than I can, because I am not heavily involved in that particular field, but the legal profession seems to be saying that there is much that can be done without having to put legislation in place. That is my understanding.