Seòmar agus comataidhean

I am grateful to members for supporting the motion and for taking part in the debate.

Historical forced adoption was most common from the 1950s to the 1970s, but the pain of the victims continues to this day. What happened was beyond cruel. Women were shamed for being pregnant outside marriage. State-sanctioned abuse made them believe that they were unfit to be mothers. That can never be justified.

The practice of separating unmarried mothers from their babies and removing those babies for adoption was not unique to Scotland and the United Kingdom. In other countries—notably Australia, Canada and Ireland—Governments have apologised on behalf of the state for the injustice that changed the course of the victims’ lives for ever. There has been no inquiry and no apology for the 60,000 women in Scotland who were the victims of forced adoption. Many women have already gone to their graves believing that they were bad mothers.

Dr Cynthia McVey, who has spent decades supporting the victims of forced adoption, says that many of those women will never be able to forgive themselves without an apology from the Scottish Government. I cannot think of one single good reason to delay or deny them a formal apology.

Evelyn Robinson was a victim of forced adoption in Edinburgh when she was 19. Her journey took her to Australia, where she became part of the Australian apology, which was issued by former Prime Minister Julia Gillard on behalf of the Australian Government in 2013. That landmark apology shows us what is possible and continues to give hope to women in Scotland. In Gillard’s opening words, she said:

“Today, this Parliament, on behalf of the Australian people, takes responsibility and apologises for the policies and practices that forced the separation of mothers from their babies, which created a lifelong legacy of pain and suffering.”

If Australia can acknowledge the profound effects of such policies, why can Scotland not do so? Campaigners in Scotland have been waiting for eight years to hear those words from the Scottish Government. The act of forced adoption is the historical injustice that we are debating tonight, but the lack of an apology is today’s injustice.

Award-winning journalist Marion Scott has supported campaigners for more than a decade, giving them a platform and forcing us, the politicians, to listen. Marion is a fierce advocate for women and I hope that her persistence pays off. Time is running out for the women Marion supports.

Two weeks ago, my colleague Neil Bibby spoke powerfully at First Minister’s question time on behalf of his constituent Marion McMillan, a victim of forced adoption who continues to campaign for an apology despite being terminally ill. I have a statement from Marion, whose son was taken for adoption from a mother and baby home in 1967. Marion said:

“I sincerely hope that Scotland will finally take the opportunity to make an official apology to the 60,000 vulnerable mothers who had their babies taken from them simply because they were not married.

What happened to all of us was a dreadful abuse of our human rights, and set in motion lifelong pain and psychological damage to the women and the children.

Mothers spent their lives searching for the babies they were forced to hand over.

I remember crying and telling the authorities that my baby already had a mummy. But they simply took my son from my arms, and left me weeping.

Our children suffered too. They also had no choice in what happened to them.

Many were left deeply scarred, told their mother did not want them, or their mother was dead. Those policies condemned many to a lifetime searching for who they really are, looking for their parents within a system which put many barriers in the way of any reunion.

In 2015, I met with government ministers to ask if Scotland would take the step taken by Australia, an official apology is something which would acknowledge the wrong that was done to all of us.

It saddened me greatly the opportunity was not taken then.

However, I hope the government will listen carefully now to the personal stories of those affected, and finally take the step of apologising for what was done.

Those simple three words ‘we are sorry’ seem to have been the hardest of all, and we cannot understand why?

Scotland still has the opportunity to lead the way in the UK by doing this, and I hope the support from all political parties will show that the time is right for us to do the right thing.”

It is clear that Marion McMillan is not giving up, despite the bombshell revelation reported in The Ferret today that, ahead of that ministerial meeting in 2015, Scottish Government officials warned ministers not to apologise, and to avoid the issue when meeting Marion and other campaigners. Documents that have been released to The Ferret confirm that. I have the briefing to SNP ministers in my hand. It warns:

“A commitment to replicate the public apology made by Australia on forced adoptions should be resisted.”

Officials also contacted the UK Government to ask for a steer on the issue, and the Department for Education confirmed:

“our lines also resist calls for a public apology.”

Although it is welcome that the Joint Committee on Human Rights in Westminster, chaired by Harriet Harman MP, will be investigating historical forced adoption, we simply cannot wait for the UK Government to act. I know that the minister is due to meet her UK Government counterpart, but it is time for the Scottish Government to act.

In 2015, a University of Edinburgh report warned the Scottish ministers that as many as one in three mothers with experience of forced adoption might suffer from severe mental health issues. Researchers concluded that

“tens of thousands of birth mothers in Scotland would benefit from acknowledgement of their experiences and an offer of help in dealing with the life-long consequences of adoption.”

I appeal to the minister and to Nicola Sturgeon not to wait for the UK Government to act, to ditch the bad advice and to find the compassion and courage to do the right thing. They should deliver this long overdue apology and finally give the women and the families that were affected the recognition and support that they deserve.

Will the member take an intervention?

I welcome the minister to her new post and agree with what she has said so far. Does she agree that, if we are to get the benefit of all those measures, we need to embed menstrual wellbeing education in the curriculum? What plans does she have to speak to colleagues across the Government to make sure that that happens?

At the previous session’s cross-party group on women’s health, we heard time and again that women are not believed, even when they are informed and feel empowered to raise issues with their GPs or clinicians. What would Sandesh Gulhane’s advice be to GPs about the action that they can take to actively listen to what women tell them?

I thank the cabinet secretary for advance sight of his statement.

It is disappointing that the Scottish Government has again missed its targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. With Glasgow hosting COP26 this year, we all want Scotland to live up to our ambitions and to set a good example globally, so today is a wake-up call to get our house in order. We are all new to the portfolio, and I hope that we can work together on that.

We welcome the commitment to produce a catch-up plan. Indeed, section 36 of the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 requires the Government to produce such a report and lay it before Parliament so that MSPs can scrutinise policy proposals. I gently suggest to the cabinet secretary that six months is quite a long time—that could take us up to Christmas and after COP26—so will he commit to producing the plan by an earlier date?

Will the Scottish Government, after failing to prevent the loss of blue carbon habitats during the past 10 years, commit to developing a strategy for Scottish fisheries to contribute to net zero, including through the protection of blue carbon?

I thank the cabinet secretary for his response. However, communities such as Stonehouse in my region do not have the luxury of time. For the second time, the community is fighting proposals for construction of a large-scale incinerator at Overwood farm near the former Dovesdale site. They do not want a situation in which the can is being kicked down the road. Will the Government commit to a moratorium until the review can be completed?

Climate change and nature loss are undeniably the greatest global threats that we face, so we welcome the debate, which is my first as Scottish Labour’s net zero, energy and transport spokesperson. Labour members will miss the passion for, knowledge of and dedication to the environmental movement that Claudia Beamish brought to her parliamentary work. Claudia’s leaving is a loss to the chamber, although we know that her commitment to tackling the climate and nature crises will continue.

I am grateful to Sarah Boyack for her leadership on those vital issues, and I am pleased that we will hear from her later in the debate. I also looking forward to hearing from my new colleague Mercedes Villalba, who will be making her first speech in Parliament. Of course, I wish all new members the very best.

Scottish Labour will support the motion at decision time. We fully share the concerns about, and ambitions to address, the climate and biodiversity crises, and we strongly agree that we need a green recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic. Although our words and votes in the chamber matter, our actions outside the chamber matter more. We need to act fast, and we cannot afford any more missed opportunities. In a few months, the eyes of the world will fall on Scotland when we welcome the COP26 conference to Glasgow. That will be a crucial milestone, as it commences the decade in which the Paris agreement measures take effect and in which significant emissions cuts are required in order to limit global warming to 1.5°C.

Scottish Labour would like the Scottish Government to lead by example and will support every endeavour towards that. We agree with the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund. It has made really important points to think about ahead of COP26, including that we must confront deep carbon inequality, because those who have done least to cause the climate crisis are suffering most. With the right action, Glasgow and Scotland can help to put the world on the road to a recovery that is green, just and fair.

That takes me to our amendment. We need action, which is why our amendment refers to the need to prioritise a circular economy bill. As colleagues will know, Friends of the Earth Scotland has said that

“a circular economy would save Scotland 11 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions by 2050—a quarter of our current total.”

The bill must include targets to reduce material footprints and carbon footprints, including emissions that are embedded in imported goods and services.

It will not surprise the cabinet secretary to hear me raise the issue of incinerators, because we had a discussion about them earlier today in the chamber. Building new incinerators will lock us into years of wasting resources by burning them instead of reducing, reusing and recycling. In a members’ business debate in the previous session of Parliament, I urged the Government not to turn us into an ash-heap nation. However, worryingly, large-scale incinerators continue to be proposed in my region and across Scotland. In Central Scotland, the Dovesdale Action Group has campaigned tirelessly on the issue. Although the commitment to review the role of incineration in the waste hierarchy is welcome, without a moratorium on building new incinerators, it will simply be too late.

I agree—that figure is horrifying. Although we can all do more to tackle our throwaway culture, we also need big system change, which is why regulation is important. I confess that I might have lobbied Maurice Golden to set up a cross-party group on the circular economy, and now the whole Parliament knows about that. Anyone who wants to volunteer to provide the secretariat should get in touch with me or Maurice Golden.

On the throwaway culture, we need faster action, including on fast fashion. I want to name-check a business called Bag the Dress in my area of North Lanarkshire, which specialises in selling pre-loved occasion wear, including bridal dresses and so on. That is really interesting, but we all need to do more—not just to encourage lifestyle changes, but to get the big system change that Maurice Golden talked about. With COP26 just around the corner, Scotland can lead the way in tackling the pollution and waste that are created by the fashion and textiles industry. We all want to see progress being made on a bill that enables us to do that.

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the launch of the Environmental Rights Centre for Scotland. One of the guest speakers was the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights and the environment, Professor David Boyd. He was really interesting, but the real stars of the event were the young people from the Children’s Parliament. Looking back, we can see that tackling climate crisis has been a key issue for the Children’s Parliament since its inception 25 years ago. Its work has included its ecocity project and, more recently, its investigation for the Climate Assembly UK. Some of its ideas are brilliant and would be so simple to implement—for example, the idea of a national tree planting day, which is, as the oak champion in the previous session of Parliament, close to my heart, and its proposal to ban use of plastic packaging and single-use plastics.

I have also met young campaigners from Teach the Future who are fighting for climate justice. Their research and passion have convinced me that we need to embed climate justice in the heart of the curriculum. That is why in our amendment we ask the Government and the Parliament to agree to that. Although I recognise that the Government has made progress, we need to do more to embed climate education in our classrooms. That is a cause that should unite us all.

Beyond embedding climate justice in education for our young people, we must embed climate solutions in people’s everyday lives and take a joined-up approach across Government, business and all of society. We need greater investment in public transport and active travel to reduce emissions, and we cannot allow rhetoric to triumph over reality. In my area, the loss of the X1 bus service—which was a crucial link between Hamilton and Glasgow—has been devastating, so I would welcome a meeting with the Minister for Transport on that, if he can find the time.

More broadly, the Scottish Trades Union Congress is right when it talks about the need for a people’s recovery and investment in a green new deal. We need serious investment in infrastructure and renewable technology—

To ask the Scottish Government when it will begin and conclude its review of the role of incineration in Scotland’s waste hierarchy. (S6O-00003)

I was just coming on to mention Maurice Golden, but I will give way.