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To ask the Scottish Government what support is in place for people with the condition, Turnpenny-Fry syndrome. (S6O-04525)

Just last week, my constituent Paul Kelly contacted me about support for his seven-year-old daughter, Harper, who I believe is the only individual in Scotland who has been diagnosed with Turnpenny-Fry syndrome. I am told that she is one of only five people to have been diagnosed with the condition in the United Kingdom. Mr Kelly advised me that, due to the rareness of the condition, the family are struggling to get any support for Harper and feel that they are being passed between different health agencies. As a result of that lack of support, including for very practical things, the family have not been able to get incontinence products from the health board.

Since being contacted by Mr Kelly and my office, NHS Lanarkshire has reached out to the family, and I hope that that contact will lead to appropriate support being put in place. However, I think that there is a bigger issue. Given that my raising of this very rare condition for my constituent is quite possibly the first time that the condition has been raised in the chamber, what steps can the Scottish Government take to ensure that more research is carried out on Turnpenny-Fry syndrome, so that people who are diagnosed with it now and in the future can get the help that they need and are entitled to expect?

Speaking as a member of the Criminal Justice Committee, I put on the record my thanks to all those who gave evidence at stage 1 and, of course, to our excellent clerking team. Liam Kerr mentioned the issue of timing with the various bills that we are considering, and it is important that we remember the clerks in that regard, because the Criminal Justice Committee is an extremely busy committee.

As the cabinet secretary acknowledged in opening the debate, the committee agrees with the general principles of the bill. The bill will support the Scottish Government’s ambition to deliver effective and sustainable public services by ensuring that our justice system keeps up to date with technological advances and by creating a robust review system that will identify areas in which improvements are needed with regard to homicides and suicides.

As we have heard, the bill is divided into two parts. The first part includes the modernisation aspects of the bill, and the second part focuses on a new review process, which the committee believes will ensure that improvements will be delivered, thereby preventing deaths in the future.

All of us know that legislative processes are often slower than digital advances. Although that might be frustrating to some, it is important that, in the democratic system in which we live, the development and the scrutiny of legislation take place at the proper pace. The bill will allow the criminal justice system to utilise digital technology to a greater degree. Many of the measures were introduced through necessity during the pandemic, but it is now time for us to legislate to make some of them permanent features of our justice system. Those provisions include providing for the electronic signing and sending of documents in criminal cases; allowing virtual attendance at a criminal court; removing geographical limitations that courts have to deal with in the initial stages of a case; and introducing higher fiscal fines.

I reiterate that those measures have been in place since 2020—as Maggie Chapman said, they should possibly have been in place for longer—but the bill will move them from being temporary reactive measures during Covid to procedures that will be underpinned in our legal system. The measures have already delivered better outcomes and experiences for those who engage with our justice service in Scotland, and they had general support among stakeholders during stage 1. I therefore believe that now is the proper time to make them permanent, before they are due to expire, in November.

Two new provisions in the bill focus on digital innovation: any use of digital productions instead of physical evidence, and allowing digital copies to be treated as equivalent to items that have been copied without the need for additional authentication. There are some obvious concerns about those new provisions. The committee agreed that there will always be occasions when it is necessary for a physical object to be produced in court. Therefore, the cabinet secretary’s response to our stage 1 report was reassuring, as she highlighted that a safeguard was built into the bill whereby a court would have the power to direct that an image of physical evidence may not be used in place of the physical evidence. I welcome the fact that, in the same letter, the Government has also committed to exploring further safeguards and clarity around how those provisions might operate in practice.

The second part of the bill lays out the statutory framework to create Scotland’s first national multi-agency domestic homicide and suicide review model. Before I go into detail about that part of the bill, I reiterate that one death involving domestic abuse is one too many. Sadly, a significant number of victims are killed by a partner or ex-partner every year, with the vast majority of victims being women. Although we are now legislating with the intention of preventing deaths, the change that we all want to see will happen only when those who perpetrate domestic abuse, the majority of whom are men, change their actions and behaviour. That responsibility is on all men, including all men who are in the chamber today.

Speaking about the bill also gives me the opportunity to highlight the short film, “Bruised”, which was directed by my constituent Carla Basu and won a Royal Television Society Scotland student award. The film was recently shown here in the Parliament, and the minister was in attendance. It is a very powerful documentary, and I encourage all members who have not already seen it to view it.

Coming back to the bill, it allows for reviews to identify what lessons can be learned and applied following a death when abuse is known or suspected, in order to prevent future abuse and deaths. Those reviews would not be conducted to attribute liability, but to work with relevant agencies to learn any wider systemic lessons. Reviews could be carried out not only when there was or appeared to have been abusive behaviour in a relationship, but when abusive behaviour has or might have resulted in the death by suicide of an abused person.

Reviews would be carried out by a review oversight committee at its discretion. That committee would decide when to review a death based on the likelihood of identifying lessons and whether public authorities or voluntary organisations were or could have become involved in circumstances leading up to the death.

I understand that the fact that the committee has discretion over which deaths to review might cause unease, certainly in circumstances as emotive as losing a loved one. The bill allows the Scottish Government to direct a review to be held even if the committee decides not to, as it is important for families to be able to escalate a case if they consider that a review should be undertaken.

The committee noted that creating a committee with a panel of members from diverse bodies and backgrounds might result in committee members having differing levels of training and competency, which is why I was reassured by the letter from the cabinet secretary last week that confirmed that a robust and comprehensive training programme will be completed by those who participate in reviews.

In summing up, the bill has been shaped through extensive engagement with key justice partners and third sector groups, whose views have been invaluable in forming the policy positions in the bill. The provisions that have been outlined will help to deliver effective and sustainable public services in Scotland by modernising our existing systems and creating a review process that will help us to learn from and improve current procedures. I therefore urge all members to support the general principles of the bill at decision time this evening.

I wrote to the cabinet secretary earlier this month and last year about Jordan Burns, so I know that she will be aware of the case of that 22-year-old who had a history of significant self-harming during his 10 months as a remand prisoner at HMP Addiewell. Sadly, on 23 November last year, Jordan was found dead in his cell, having suffered an overdose. Jordan’s mum, who has experienced unimaginable grief, is a constituent of mine, and my office and I have had on-going contact with her. Does the cabinet secretary agree that the fatal accident inquiry should be expedited so that the family can be given the answers that they need? With a case such as that, what steps is the Scottish Government taking to ensure that there is confidence that adequate systems are in place to protect prisoners in such circumstances and reduce the likelihood of similar instances occurring in the future?

Can the minister outline how the recently launched national planning skills commitment plan, which he referred to, is set to support our next generation of spatial planners and equip them with the skills that they will need to make efficient planning decisions and overcome many of the challenges that Scotland’s communities face?

The steps that the Scottish Government is taking to develop a more responsive system of secure care provision are welcome. Can the minister provide an update on the stakeholder engagement that the Scottish Government has undertaken ahead of responding to the Children and Young People’s Centre for Justice’s “Reimagining Secure Care” report?

I welcome the recent investment from the Scottish Government for the “Let’s talk ASN” service, which had been suspended towards the end of last year. What assurance can the cabinet secretary give that the service, which is valued by many of my constituents as well as by many others across the country, will remain available, especially when more parents and carers increasingly require support for children in ASN settings?

To ask the Scottish Government what support there is for the parents or guardians of children and young people with additional support needs who require a specific school placement. (S6O-04471)

The debate has taken place in the shadow of continued sustained pressures on the finances of all those who live in Scotland. The cost of living crisis, which we first had to contend with under a Tory Government, has continued with the newly elected Labour Government. The optimism that came with removing the Tories after 14 years of failure has quickly been replaced by a realisation that, those in power at Westminster, no matter what colour of rosette they are wearing, represent a harmful austerity agenda and seemingly endless cost of living crises for the people of Scotland.

I have no doubt that every member who is in the chamber today hears weekly the concerns of constituents who are struggling to make ends meet. Just yesterday, I met representatives from Hope 2 Help, which is a Coatbridge-based voluntary organisation. In the past 12 months, it has helped residents from across my constituency to access approximately £4.6 million-worth of benefits—that is money going back into the local area. The people whom that hard-working organisation helps are feeling stretched and are unsure what their financial future holds. The organisation, like so many others, is also feeling the strain, having just been rejected for grant funding from North Lanarkshire Council.

During the UK general election campaign last year, we heard a lot of promises. Last summer, we heard that Labour would cut energy bills by £300, but the energy price cap is about to rise for the third time, bringing the total increase to nearly £300. We live in one of the most energy-rich regions of Europe yet, under the UK Government, we are also paying some of the highest electricity costs in Europe—the word “ironic” does not even begin to cover it.

Last summer, Anas Sarwar promised voters that Labour MPs would scrap the two-child cap; instead, they voted to keep it, choosing to keep thousands of Scottish children in poverty. The budget that the Parliament recently passed was once again required to take mitigatory measures to shield those who are most vulnerable from economically punitive Westminster policies.

Last summer, we were told by Labour that our pensioners would be supported and that no austerity would be introduced. Instead, the winter fuel payment was scrapped in record time as soon as Labour took power. That move goes further than even the Tories went, and it has impacted nearly 1 million people in Scotland. I say to my Labour colleagues that it has not gone down well at all, with many constituents telling me in the days and weeks that followed the decision that, first, they could not quite believe the level of betrayal and, secondly, that they were very much regretting their vote. I think that Labour members know that to be the case. Of course, again, the Scottish Government has stepped up to the plate and has, yet again, mitigated that unfair policy with the pension age winter heating payment.

Some pensioners have also been affected by the Labour UK Government’s decision to reject the independent recommendation on compensation for the women against state pension inequality—the WASPI women. We now know that almost a third of a million women in Scotland might have been affected by the Department for Work and Pensions error that meant that they were not notified of changes that concerned them. Labour backed the WASPI campaign, promised justice and supported campaigners but, again, as soon as the Labour Government attained office, the campaigners and those affected were simply left behind.

Bill payers, parents and pensioners have been negatively affected since Labour took office, but do not worry, Presiding Officer: business owners have not been left out or ignored. Although Labour came to power on the promise of no tax rises for working people, its decision to hike employer national insurance contributions has forced businesses to face impossible choices between cutting jobs, reducing hours, cutting wages, absorbing the costs or passing some of the burden to consumers in the form of higher prices. The Scottish Government estimates that the increase will cost businesses £850 per employee.

What I do not support is the hike in national insurance. As my colleague Willie Coffey pointed out to Paul O’Kane, it is our money—we are not getting any favours from the UK Government. It is our money, and it is only a fraction of what we should be getting.

I urge Labour to reconsider its decision on national insurance, which has the potential to cause serious lasting damage to Scotland’s economy. Just today, I heard from the general manager at Clarke Fire Protection Products in Coatbridge, which is a very good business. She confirmed that the measures have affected her company’s pay reviews. She told me that the bottom line is that there is simply not as much money in the pot to share with employees—again, it is workers who are paying the price.

I have mentioned the list of failures that people across Scotland have seen in less than a year, but one of Labour’s most damaging legacies is the private finance initiative, or PFI. Although those contracts were introduced under the Tories in the 1990s, they continued under successive Labour Governments and were discontinued only in 2018. Media reports now indicate that the chancellor is considering reintroducing them, so it is worth remembering the financial black hole that PFI contracts have inflicted on councils.

Last month, Labour-run North Lanarkshire Council set its budget for the year ahead and agreed on a 10 per cent increase in council tax. However, a huge proportion of council taxes go towards paying for those PFI contracts. In North Lanarkshire next year, more than £31 million—which is more than a quarter of the total amount of council tax that the council expects to receive—will be spent on PFIs. That figure represents only one year of paying for PFI contracts, which shows that the total amount of money spent on those contracts since their introduction is truly astronomical. Ultimately, North Lanarkshire Council will pay back £729 million for schools that had build costs of just a fraction of that amount. Two of those are in my constituency: the joint campus schools of Bargeddie and St Kevin’s and of Our Lady and St Joseph’s and Glenboig. Incredibly, North Lanarkshire Council is already having to build new schools for St Kevin’s and Glenboig, although they opened less than 20 years ago. Thankfully, in 2007, the incoming SNP Government put a stop to any new PFI contracts in Scotland or the situation would be even more bleak.

I appreciate that I must close. We heard a lot of promises during the UK general election campaign last year but, in record time, we have seen that those promises were worth very little when Labour had the power to act on them. The mitigating steps that the Scottish Government has taken once again underline the need for Scotland to have total control over its own policies and finances and we all know that the only way to do that is through independence.