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Six thousand workers have come to Scotland each year through the scheme. Many of them have come to areas of Fife and Perth and Kinross that fall within the region that I represent and the constituency that Mr Swinney represents. The scheme has been key to addressing some of the labour shortages.

The SNP likes to blame those shortages on Brexit, as it has done many times before. In reality, however, the problem is not specific to the UK—we have seen the same problems across Europe, where many countries are just as badly affected.

It is not surprising that the Scottish Government would rather talk about solutions that do not deal with the detail or with what we are trying to achieve. It talks only about the problems that are being created, which it always maintains lie at the door of the UK Government.

Time is moving on, so I will conclude. Those points demonstrate the biggest problem with the SNP’s new paper: it talks about what Scotland cannot do, rather than what it can do. The Government’s new strategy rightly talks about the importance of making Scotland

“an attractive and welcoming country”.

However, the mistake is to think that it does not have the powers to do that already. It has those powers. It is time that the Government, instead of complaining about the powers that it lacks, used the powers that it has to make Scotland the attractive, dynamic destination to live and work in that it truly can be, given the potential that it has.

I support the amendment in the name of Donald Cameron.

It is disappointing that the release of yet another taxpayer-funded independence paper has led to valuable parliamentary time being taken up today when we could have been debating issues that are priorities for families in Scotland, for example. However, the fact that the debate is taking place will not be surprising to anyone who is familiar with the tactics of this Green-SNP Government. I will be supporting the amendment in the name of Donald Cameron.

The SNP’s latest independence paper follows a familiar pattern of highlighting certain challenges facing Scotland. It then blames them on the current UK Government and pretends that the problems would go away if it only had the powers of independence.

We have seen this all before. Back in 2013, in the independence white paper “Scotland’s Future”, the SNP claimed that Scotland needed a points-based immigration system. It also claimed that it wanted to reintroduce the post-study work visa and that there were not enough international students who were able to choose Scotland as a place to study. Ten years on, we find that the UK has a points-based immigration system, the post-study work visa has been reintroduced and the number of international students at Scottish universities has increased by more than 40 per cent.

As we have heard today, total net migration is now double what it was a decade ago.

We have heard, and we continue to hear, from the SNP what its hopes and aspirations are, but the people of Scotland have chosen not to make those decisions. As I said, the SNP can continue to bring forward papers and try to smokescreen the situation, but the people of Scotland do not want independence. We will continue to see independence not be a priority for the people of Scotland.

Given all that, the new paper talks about what the SNP would like to see. The paper contains no talk about what has been achieved to date. The obvious truth is that the paper is less concerned about finding real solutions to real problems and more concerned about stoking political grievances. We have seen those political grievances many times in the past.

As Mr Swinney recognises, we attend similar meetings. However, as the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has said, it is now providing enough visas to meet the sector’s workforce needs, and there have been, and continue to be—

I am pleased to contribute to the debate and thank Daniel Johnson for securing it. I acknowledge the acute concerns that the motion refers to and I agree that antisocial behaviour by youths is very much on the increase. That is the case not just in Mr Johnson’s Edinburgh constituency but across my region of Mid Scotland and Fife. The sheer scale is deeply worrying and such incidents continue to be reported.

As we have heard, that was borne out over the weekend in the horrific scenes that we saw in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dundee, where antisocial behaviour and fireworks became a toxic cocktail and emergency service personnel were once again targeted in their line of duty. It was absolutely appalling and I look forward to hearing what the minister says in her summing up.

Only recently in my region, the Alloa and Hillfoots Advertiser highlighted that police patrols were having to be increased in Tillicoultry and Alloa following a rise in youth-related antisocial behaviour. I am extremely concerned at that rise, and that individuals as young as between 12 and 15 were roaming the streets with weapons. Such incidents of antisocial behaviour have been most prevalent in the high streets and town centres. The most worrying was when young individuals were spotted in the early hours wearing masks and attempting to intimidate workers and people who were making local deliveries. Similar reports have come from Stirling city centre. I have long been a supporter of calls for initiatives to ensure the utmost safety for retail and delivery workers, along with our emergency services personnel.

However, the phenomenon is now moving to another level, and there has been talk of the free bus travel for under-22s being questioned. I have had a number of contacts from constituents suggesting that some individuals might be abusing that facility. However, I believe that it is still a minority of youths who are jumping at the opportunity to travel further and create antisocial behaviour in different areas.

Recently, I was delighted to learn of a Clackmannanshire gentleman, Craig McIntosh, who is becoming a peer mentor with a view to engaging with young people. He is focusing on alternative pathways for individuals who have shown risky behaviour in Stirling city centre. I believe that the post was funded by Stirling Community Enterprise, Go Forth Stirling business improvement district and Police Scotland and that the majority of the funding has come from the Stirlingshire Voluntary Enterprise community justice fund.

That is a real opportunity to show that peer mentoring can draw on people’s past experiences and pass them on to the next generation. That role is an opportunity to help young people to turn their lives around. I wish Mr McIntosh all encouragement as he takes forward that project. It is important that we see further projects like that happening across the community. We have heard about the voluntary sector doing such work and that needs to be advanced.

Police Scotland remains desperately underfunded and undermanned, which risks the force being undermined, as we have heard today. There is a legal responsibility on parents and guardians to ensure that young people in their care are not exposed to likely harm. That harm comes in the form of not only mental and physical harm to themselves but harm to others and antisocial behaviour. Police Scotland also needs to robustly enforce legislation to ensure that individuals who perpetrate any such offences are tackled with the full force of the law to ensure that they stop and that they know how the land lies.

To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to the Fire Brigades Union’s report “Firestorm”, which reportedly warns that the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service is in “crisis”. (S6O-02673)

On Tuesday, the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service’s publication of new statistics indicated a rise in fatal fire incidents and an increase in non-fatal fire casualties, which amount to just under 1,000 in one year. The data illustrates the dangerous consequences of having an underfunded fire brigade. How much worse does the situation need to get before the Government looks at the statistics and provides the resource that the fire brigade deserves to support it?

Yes—there is a lesson for us all as to how we in Parliament are perceived, and how we represent ourselves, and also how the public perceive us as representatives of them. There is currently an imbalance there, which needs to be talked about.

There is a lot of feedback as to where we are. The pilots that will be taken forward will give us an opportunity once again to evolve the model and work together to ensure that we can help one another.

The minister talked about the real challenges that were mentioned in the report, which we have to deal with as we move forward, and I think that that is the case. The vision for this Parliament is that we want it to be engaging and get the right balance, because that balance is important.

Maurice Golden spoke about the themes of the report, and talked about questions and answers, and how that element is managed and perceived in the chamber and in the community.

I do not have time to go through everybody, but I highlight the excellent contributions from Martin Whitfield, Ruth Maguire, Edward Mountain, Michelle Thomson and Kaukab Stewart. They all spoke with passion about what they see in the Parliament and how they want it to be represented.

A healthy level of public participation should be a key ingredient in the way that we deal with democracy in our systems. Through the public participation inquiry, we have clearly identified a number of ways that we wish to improve the process of participation in Scotland. It has contributed positively to where we are going.

In conclusion, much work has been done in the inquiry so far, and I look forward to seeing the progress that will be made in the coming years. The report talks about the timescales for 2023-24, with a report to be published in 2025. That report will set out the way in which democracy might become institutionalised in our whole Parliament and how we can work across the chamber to address the challenges.

I look forward to seeing some of the ideas being debated today being put in place at the start of the next parliamentary session. I also look forward to seeing this Parliament take another step towards becoming the inclusive, dynamic and engaging institution that it wants to be and should be.

I am delighted to wind up for my party in this excellent debate. There has been really good interaction across the chamber, which is very welcome.

The public participation inquiry was one of the key pieces of work that I was able to contribute to in my time as a member of the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee, and I got the opportunity to go on the world tour.

The Parliament has long strived to be a place that is welcoming and open to public participation. As such, it is to be welcomed that “Citizen Participation” was added to the committee’s remit at the beginning of the current parliamentary session.

The public participation inquiry has followed a number of different avenues since its launch early last year. We have heard about some of the engagement work in this debate. However, the most important aspect of the inquiry has been the citizens panel on participation. I was pleased that, through the panel, the committee was able to deliver not only some hugely positive, productive and helpful recommendations but an experience that deeply engaged those who were involved in the process. All those who took part in the panel’s work had positive things to say about the experience. The panel member Ronnie Paterson said:

“None of us was well versed in politics or academia, but we came up with the recommendations 100 per cent as a group ... The fact that we came up with those recommendations together shows the power of deliberative democracy.”—[Official Report, Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee, 14 December 2022; c 4.]

That is excellent feedback from a group of individuals who were brought together to represent us and to have their views and opinions expressed. They got the opportunity to do that. That showed the success that we had.

The panel was a success, and the committee carried out further engagement to see what we could add to the report. Earlier this year, as many members have indicated, a number of us had the opportunity to go to Dublin and Paris and to see, experience and hear about first hand how people had gone about things. It was two years ago this month that Paris city council voted to establish its own citizens assembly, which was formed by drawing on experiences of international practices. That assembly continues to find its feet and is delivering its first recommendations.

I am grateful to the participants and elected officials who provided my colleagues and me with very helpful insights as we went to those locations in other parts of Europe. I thank the committee clerks, the Scottish Parliament information centre and everyone who supported us to ensure that that happened, because they had to do a huge amount of work to ensure that, in the timescale that we had, we got information that was beneficial to us all.

This afternoon, we have heard some excellent contributions, which have shown the calibre of debates that we can have in the chamber on a topic such as this one, when members have the opportunity to express their views, interact and become involved in the debate.

My fellow member and convener of the committee, Jackson Carlaw, spoke about the reputation of this Parliament; the perceptions that we had about where it should go; the feedback on the recommendations; and the success of the whole process. There is no doubt that the process has been successful.

The question whether we will enhance or undermine that reputation was discussed, and has come out in the recommendations. The public understand that, but they still have a problem when they are talking about what is the Parliament and what is the Government. They get confused.

The National Museum of Scotland has said that it is facing its toughest financial crisis ever, with fears over the ability to pay staff to maintain the museum. Without a proper plan in place, the solution might involve having to cease some operations. What further measures can be put in place to maintain, retain and sustain such operations for Scotland?