Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 17 March 2021
Thank you very much. As the Deputy Presiding Officer said, this is, after 22 years, my final speech to Parliament as an MSP, before I step down in May.
Until my dying day I will be very proud, like the Deputy Presiding Officer, to be have been a founding member of the Parliament—the first ever democratically elected Scottish Parliament. We have proved that Jimmy Maxton was right when he said that a Scottish Parliament could achieve for Scotland much more in five years than Westminster could achieve in 25 years.
That said, we have a lot more to achieve, so I hope that in future years we will not be timid, but will instead be a bit more radical in what we try to do for Scotland. We will democratise the Parliament internally by strengthening the role and power of back benchers and committees, which I hope will happen soon.
I take this opportunity to thank all the Parliament’s staff for all the 22 years of exceptional and friendly support and help. I thank all my friends on all sides of the chamber for their friendliness and support, and I thank my excellent staff over the 22 years, including my existing staff, who are helping me enormously in the constituency in difficult times.
I particularly want to thank my constituents in Airdrie and Shotts, which is a very fine constituency with very fine people. It has been an honour to represent them in the Parliament for the past 22 years, as a list member and as a constituency member.
In two of the four ministerial positions that I have held, I have had responsibility for chairing the Scottish Government’s national group on violence against women, which is a body that includes representatives from a wide range of local and national organisations.
I believe that, since 1999, every Administration has made progress in dealing with the problem of domestic abuse and violence against women, although that has not always happened at the pace and scale that we all wished for. In supporting the bill today, we must rededicate ourselves to doing more to reduce and, I hope, eventually to eliminate that evil from our society. The measures that are contained in the bill that we are, I hope, about to pass will help us to do a lot more, by preventing enforced homelessness of abused women and their children, as well as, through provision of additional police powers, helping people who badly need our protection.
However, as the cabinet secretary and others have pointed out, passing legislation is extremely important but is not the total answer. I have to say that it does not always deliver the response that we need on the ground. On that point, I will mention two cases that I have dealt with involving women being stalked by ex-partners. Those women had horrific experiences.
To be honest, I say that the criminal justice system has not always been at its best when dealing with such cases—not through malicious intent but because it is not joined up enough. In one case—which started before the pandemic—the abused person has been waiting a year for the alleged perpetrator to appear in court. He still has not appeared in court and will not do so until July. That is just one example of our needing to do much more to drive the criminal justice system, the police, the prosecutors and everyone else involved to make sure that those women get the protection that we all want them to have and for which we are legislating.
As Fulton MacGregor rightly pointed out, the decision—again, I note that it was taken without malicious intent—by North Lanarkshire Council a few weeks ago to award a contract for local domestic abuse services to a national non-specialist organisation was a mistake. Under that contract, the same organisation will provide services to both victims and culprits. That is a backward step that flies in the face of what we know about best practice in dealing with violence against women. It will also result in the defunding of brilliant organisations such as Monklands Women’s Aid, which has done a huge amount of work in the field. Like Fulton MacGregor, I hope that North Lanarkshire Council will rectify that mistake, which was the result of a decision that was made with good intent but bad judgment.
As I said, the issue is not just about passing legislation. It is not even just about more training and more education. At the root, we need to change the culture, the attitudes and the levels of awareness among all the institutions that we need to fight against this terrible evil.
If I may make a recommendation to the cabinet secretary, I say that I think that his idea of an implementation board is absolutely excellent, but he should ensure that other essential services, including housing and welfare support, are included in that implementation plan, because there has to be an integrated approach to helping women who find themselves in situations such as many abused women and children find themselves.
Scotland, as a country, must do better if we are to stop letting down those women and make a real dent in the number of women and children who are subjected to abuse and violence by male perpetrators. No civilised society can tolerate such violence. Stopping it must be a top priority for the new Parliament that will be elected in May. I am absolutely sure that the legislation that I hope we will pass this afternoon will make a significant contribution to that objective.
17:49