Meeting of the Parliament 10 December 2024
I have been clear—and I will come back to this point later in my remarks—about the Government’s continued commitment to the human rights bill. The bill will be introduced in the next parliamentary session. One of the reasons for that is that we have a new United Kingdom Government, with which we have the opportunity to build a genuine working relationship on human rights. With respect to Mr Balfour, I am afraid that it was not the same when his party was in government at a UK level.
Passing the bill will help our human rights culture in Scotland. It will allow the culture in Scotland’s public services to develop and ensure that, where rights are not being realised, that is addressed. It will be complementary to our on-going work to advance a culture of equality, inclusion and human rights, including our proposed mainstreaming strategy, which is being consulted on.
As I have said, we have taken the decision to take more time to work on the human rights bill before it is introduced. I again put on record that I very much recognise the frustration—indeed, the anger—that that decision has caused for many who have worked so hard over so many years on the issue. However, I feel that the extra time that we will take over the next 18 months will give us the opportunity to develop the bill further and make it stronger. It is my absolute determination not just to deliver a bill, but to deliver the strongest bill possible and a workable piece of legislation.
We need a bill that will deliver on our shared ambition to truly embed a human rights culture across public services. The election of the new UK Government has presented an opportunity to explore the challenges that we have previously had, including how the constraints of the devolution settlement have limited our ability to truly transform incorporation legislation. We saw that during our debates on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Incorporation) (Scotland) Bill—now an act. We want to work on our relationship with the new UK Government to build a constructive and collaborative relationship on human rights, and I hope that we will see progress there.
In the meantime, it is important that we use those 18 months to further strengthen the bill, as I have said. We will shortly share with partners a detailed plan for taking forward bill development over the remainder of this parliamentary session. As part of that process, we are giving careful consideration to the publication of a policy paper that will build on last year’s public consultation and set out our thinking on the bill overall to support constructive engagement as we continue to test and refine proposals.
I commend and pay tribute to the role of organisations such as the Scottish Human Rights Commission, the Human Rights Consortium Scotland and the many other civil society actors for their positive collaboration with the Government to help to develop proposals to this point. I know that they are deeply disappointed at the decision that the Government has taken.
Those organisations, along with individuals who have shared their experiences of how human rights play out in their day-to-day lives, are our human rights defenders. The work of individuals and organisations who have taken part in previous consultations remains at the heart of what the Government does in our continued work to advance human rights. Nothing that they have contributed to will be lost, and it will be the foundation of the work that we will continue to do for the rest of the parliamentary session to make the bill as strong as they want it to be. Indeed, they have a right to expect that from the Parliament.