Meeting of the Parliament 17 February 2026 [Draft]
I am talking about part 2 of the bill, which is not about religious observance. However, on that point, we believe that there should be separation of church and state. There is nothing in the bill to prevent religious observance by children and young people who wish to take part in the home or in other settings. I am addressing part 2 of the bill and we must ensure that all acts of the Scottish Parliament are compliant with UNCRC in the first instance, so that we build a human rights culture across our public bodies.
That culture must respect the rights of children and young people as being absolutely prime and must ensure that the duties of public bodies are discharged in a way that respects those rights. The bill does not do that. Amendments made to the bill by me and by the cabinet secretary have addressed that problem in part. There will now be clear reporting mechanisms and public bodies will have to inform the relevant authorities when they are considering an action that is required by law but that might be contrary to UNCRC. However, I remain disappointed that there will be no proactive auditing process to allow us to identify clashes before they happen and I still do not understand why the Scottish Government would not give the children’s commissioner the ability to refer legislation directly to the court for a decision on compatibility.
Nelson Mandela told us:
“To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity”.
That is why Greens have worked so hard to ensure that the rights in the bill are meaningful, are expanded and can be enforced by children and young people and by the organisations that represent them. Scottish Greens have worked hard with those children’s rights experts to make this well-meaning but flawed bill better. As a result, it now protects the vital role of religious education in promoting religious understanding and tolerance in our plural society. I am also pleased that we will know more, and earlier, about potential clashes between existing legislation and the UNCRC.
However, for the reasons that I mentioned earlier, and primarily because of the issues with part 1 of the bill, the balance is still, in our view, not quite right. At decision time this evening, we will not support the bill but will abstain. Had the bill been drafted through working more closely with children’s rights organisations from the start, it might have been a different story.
I remain committed to supporting the introduction of a Scottish human rights bill in the next session of the Parliament and am hopeful that that can be done. That will be landmark legislation and will provide a once-in-a-generation opportunity to ensure that existing human rights and, I hope, many new rights will be at the heart of every public policy decision that is made.
However, before we start on that bill, we must learn the lessons of this bill. We must use the new human rights bill to build a human rights culture in our public bodies; we must involve human rights experts more and earlier; and we must ensure that we have clear mechanisms, so that all the actions that we take and every piece of legislation that we pass are compatible with our human rights objectives. Only then will we be sure that the essence of our humanity that Mandela talked about—the fact that everyone, everywhere, in all aspects of our lives, has rights that must be respected—is truly at the heart of the laws and policies that we make.