Meeting of the Parliament 05 November 2014
I have seen the letter from the convener of the committee. As a member of the Justice Committee, which could also look at the report, I accept that parliamentary committees have a very heavy workload. However, my point is that the Parliament should be considering and discussing the report. Given how important the sectarianism issue was considered to be when the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Bill was being rushed through Parliament, why are we not considering the report in the Parliament?
I thank the minister for facilitating meetings with representatives from the advisory group for myself and other party spokespeople. I found the meetings very useful. The Government states in its response to the report that there has been a great deal of cross-party support for the need to tackle sectarianism and that it wants to build on that constructive and positive engagement: so do we.
Dr Morrow has kindly offered to meet members of the Scottish Labour group of MSPs, and I am sure that he has met members of other parties. We will meet him at the beginning of next month, and I know that several of my colleagues are very keen to take up that opportunity. However, a debate in Parliament is one of the mechanisms that we can use to highlight the issues and the actions that are being taken.
It is not just the responsibility of politicians to undertake a leadership role. The Morrow report also places such responsibility on churches, local authorities, journalists, football clubs and community organisations. The report highlights the requirement for strategic financial support and that it needs to be provided for community activity and education that could address sectarianism at the grassroots level; and that the community-based projects that have been supported by the Scottish Government since 2012 ought to be evaluated to determine what has actually been successful.