Seòmar agus comataidhean

I am in my closing sentences.

I urge the Scottish Government to redouble its efforts, using all the powers that it has, to fund and reform a social care system that is genuinely fit for the 21st century.

I pay tribute to the social care staff and unpaid carers of all ages who work so hard to take care of people under often very difficult circumstances. Low pay, understaffing and a lack of access to proper breaks from caring have all placed enormous pressure on people who give their all day in, day out, and it is not an exaggeration to say that the sector is in crisis. Historic underfunding has led to long waits for care and support, which is too often only available, if at all, when people reach crisis point.

We can all reflect on the real experiences of our constituents and our own families. Parents are denied social care for their son when a package would transform the lives of everyone in the family. A grandfather is trapped in a hospital bed, waiting for social work and the NHS to finally agree a package so that he can return home. Despite the passage of the Care Reform (Scotland) Act 2025, fundamental reform of the sector is still needed, because the ambitions of the independent review of adult social care have not yet been realised.

For example, we are yet to achieve ethical commissioning, which would recognise the value of the third sector as equal partners in delivering social care. Representatives from the sector are clear that the current commissioning model is harmful and unsustainable. According to the Scottish Association for Mental Health,

“Ethical commissioning should be based on partnership and cooperation between commissioners, social care providers and people in receipt of social care, rather than the existing model of competition which prioritises cost.”

In their closing speeches, I want to hear from ministers about what steps they are taking to ensure that genuine ethical commissioning is taking place in the sector.

In 2021, the Scottish Government committed to ending non-residential social care charges, but no meaningful progress has been made since then. As a report that the Joseph Rowntree Foundation published last month highlighted,

“disabled people face deepening poverty and rising costs”.

Disabled people’s access to social care support is critical to the realisation of their human rights, but they are all too often denied those rights by a system that brutalises them and fails to meet their basic needs. A Glasgow Disability Alliance survey that was conducted last year revealed what that means in practice for disabled people—93 per cent were worried about money, 71 per cent could not meet their needs on their income and 67 per cent could not access social care that actually met their needs.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation report found that, at the same time as disabled people and their households are facing rising costs, local authorities are making decisions to increase non-residential social care support charges and raise eligibility thresholds for accessing support. The report is clear that the Scottish Government and COSLA should work together, without delay, to deliver a clear timeline for removing non-residential care charges.

The SNP’s amendment is right to note that the UK Government’s hostile immigration policies are starting to have a “devastating impact” on the sector. Scottish Care has warned that UK Labour’s proposal to extend the qualifying period for settlement for legal migrants, particularly the increase from five to 15 years for those on health and social care visas, will have a “profoundly negative impact” on care services across Scotland. We cannot afford to lose those hard-working people from the sector. I urge Scottish Labour to acknowledge the impact that those policies will have, and are having, in contributing to the crisis that exists in the social care sector.

I hope that it will never happen.

I think that what is being put to us is more about incident reporting. If there was something like a Deepwater Horizon incident—God forbid—in Scotland, it would be about looking back and saying, “How did this occur, given that we have a permitting regime, and what could be learned?” rather than a wider assessment of whether the act is working.

I think that you are saying that there is no need for amendment of the 2014 act as it stands at the moment.

As the convener said, we had evidence from the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service that said, in effect, that, if it has to make a decision, it may go down the 2014 act route because the bar is lower and the chances of conviction are, on the face of it, much higher. It is a question of ensuring that options are available at any stage in the process, and that nobody is able to drive a coach and horses through the provisions.

If there had been a severe environmental impact and clear intent, and if the court had to decide whether to impose a five-year penalty or an eight-year penalty, would an eight-year penalty not feel more like the result of an ecocide offence?

Okay, I understand.

Cabinet secretary, you said at the beginning of the evidence session that you would seek to amend the bill to remove the reporting provision. We have heard evidence and views from stakeholders that they would like to see an alternative reporting provision, which would follow any conviction to assess how ecocide was allowed to happen and look at how such an incident could be prevented in future. Is that something that you would consider as an alternative to the straight reporting of the bill?

I think that other colleagues will want to come in on where some of the lines sit between the existing regime and a potential future regime.

Finally, I want to ask about alignment with EU law, in particular the environmental crime directive. In the past, has the Government considered using the keeping-pace power to align more closely with that? On the face of it, the bill would bring closer alignment with EU law, but the Government could have considered other options for bringing the law in line with that important EU directive, in particular on sentencing.