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 Scottish Action 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.

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.

Can that dovetailing be undertaken in the context of the bill, or is there a need to go back and look again at the Regulatory Reform (Scotland) Act 2014—if not under the bill, then in future? Is it possible for the 2014 act to simply sit there and seamlessly link in with the provisions in the bill?

We have also heard that, where an ecocide offence has been introduced in other countries, it is very much seen as a stand-alone offence the drives a culture change throughout the whole regulatory system. It makes a strong statement about the country’s values and the need to protect the environment. You mentioned that a little in your introductory comments. Do you want to expand on that? What, in reality, do you see as the value of such an offence, given that it is likely that prosecution will be pretty rare?

Would that not be, in effect, ecocide?

My point is that, if an eight-year prison sentence penalty were available under the 2014 act, would that lead to an equivalent ecocide provision? Are we thinking about something quite distinct by having ecocide at the apex of the legal system—

—or is it actually possible to create an ecocide offence under the 2014 act?

I want to ask whether the Government will look to amend some of the definitions, should the bill reach stage 2. The bill defines “long-term” as 12 months, but the committee received evidence that it is hard to see how an ecosystem could recover within 12 months, so there were questions about that definition. I do not know whether there are any aspects of the definition of ecocide that you have a firm view on at this time or whether you would be able to say that you will want to put a different figure on something or frame something differently.