Hansard

I am pleased to close for Scottish Labour in this short but important debate on Scotland’s national action plan for human rights and concur with members’ comments about the appropriateness of its following the tributes to Nelson Mandela, who did so much to fight for human rights and, later on in his life, the rights of children.

I welcome the opportunity that is provided by the debate to promote human rights in a positive way. Alex Johnstone referred to the public perception of human rights; unfortunately, some right-wing politicians and certain sections of the UK media that support them have promulgated the view that human rights are all about the rights of bad people. Some have actually said that our obligation should be abandoned; indeed, I thought that Theresa May herself had suggested as much.

It is also unfortunate that media attention on human rights focused this weekend on those of a convicted criminal—in this case, a murderer’s claim to conjugal rights—and his successful application for legal aid instead of, on this day in particular, reflecting on why the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948. That arose because of the horrendous abuse on the grounds of religion, race, nationality and sexual orientation that had taken place in Nazi Germany—a country not unlike Britain; a western country, like us, but one in which human rights were abandoned—and the recognition that it was necessary to provide globally recognised definitions of the rights to which all human beings are entitled.

The development of Scotland’s national action plan is in line with the United Nations’ recommendation that national action plans should be developed and adopted by each country. The recommendations were made as part of the Vienna declaration and programme of action some 20 years ago. Although it is good that Scotland is the first country in the United Kingdom to have developed a national action plan, we are all a little bit behind the game in taking 20 years to do that. However, I congratulate the SHRC for facilitating the process of development of the plan. It was developed through the participation of a range of organisations, which identified three outcomes: understanding and empowerment of individuals to claim their rights; tackling injustice and improving lives; and delivering on our international obligations.

I was disappointed with the minister’s contribution in her opening speech, because she seemed to use it to talk about the constitutional arrangements within the United Kingdom. As John Finnie said, the relevance of the national action plan is not about whether people vote yes next year. In fact, I felt that the minister’s speech was self-congratulatory in tone in talking about the wonderful legislation that we have passed in this Parliament. It was recognised by those who developed SNAP that the plan was not all about legislation. We pass good legislation in the Scottish Parliament, but when it comes to translating that into embedding human rights in the provision of public services and individuals’ understanding their rights, that is where we do not do so well. Just talking about what a wonderful job the Government is doing was not taking the opportunity of the debate to discuss what is actually in the plan.

The amendment makes a practical suggestion regarding how we can protect today the rights of a group of women in Scotland, but Malcolm Chisholm referred to a load of other actions that need to be taken regarding the rights of women and girls. I am sure that some of those actions will be discussed next week.

The implementation of SNAP is a process of cultural change, making respect for human dignity central to public services and applying a person-centred approach. That approach in service delivery is not new, because there are already developments in health and social care services, such as personalisation, which seek to involve clients in the design of the services that they receive and to allow them to choose and have control of the delivery of the services. However, this is an opportunity to think about the extension of the principle into other areas of public services.

As I said, the public perception seems to be that human rights is about protecting criminals. However, it is obvious that victims also have human rights, and a person-centred approach has implications for our justice system. We will discuss some of that in the context of the Victims and Witnesses (Scotland) Bill later this week. However, a person-centred human rights approach has implications for not just the court system but the system of policing in Scotland. Some of those will need to be reflected on as we go forward.

Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland made the point in its briefing that the human rights approach has important implications for the delivery of health and social care. People with disabilities and long-term conditions should be treated as human beings rather than just as people who suffer from a condition that requires health and social care interventions; and the outcomes that they desire for themselves must be taken into account when services are designed. Alison McInnes made an important point about the rights of mental health patients.

Jamie Hepburn referred to Community Land Scotland. I was quite interested in its observation that a human rights-based approach has implications for land reform and the community right to buy, in protecting not just the human rights of the landowner but the rights of communities to have access to land and to create a sustainable future for themselves.

I will touch very briefly on human rights for workers. My colleague Neil Findlay would have liked to take part in the debate to talk about blacklisting. There was not time for that, but blacklisting is a human rights abuse in that workers have been denied employment because of their political views or trade union activity, or because they have raised health and safety concerns.

We need to take ownership of the progress of SNAP and we need to stand up to those voices that portray human rights as a negative issue. We also need to be proactive in discussing the situation of the rights of convicted criminals. We must have a mature and sensible debate about that rather than just react to things that the media brings to us.

Overall, I welcome the publication of SNAP, which has vital implications for not just how we legislate but, crucially, how public services are designed. Most important of all, perhaps, is that for the approach to be successful it will require cultural change.