Meeting of the Parliament 22 March 2016
The bill is a contract between the Parliament and the parents who reacted with anguish, bewilderment, astonishment and dismay earlier in the parliamentary session when they found out the fate of the remains of their babies. It was impossible not to be enormously affected—as I know members from all parties in the chamber were—by the personal testimony that we experienced at the time. It led to the recommendations from Elish Angiolini and Lord Bonomy, the voluntary arrangements that Nanette Milne detailed in her speech and, finally, to the bill.
As I think that the minister would accept, many of the amendments to which we have agreed today have been quite technical in nature, given the way in which the bill has progressed. However, the parents—some of whom were sitting in the public gallery earlier this morning as we discussed the amendments and began the debate—should be assured that the bill will, in its effect, realise the powerful demand that they made of us: to pass legislation that would ensure that such a situation would never happen again.
We can be proud of the fact that the bill will achieve that, even as we acknowledge with dismay that it proved to be necessary. As in so many areas of public life, something was going on beneath the surface of a nature that proved to be astonishing in the modern era, and which we all would have imagined was being addressed otherwise.
In the context of the debate, the key exchange of interest concerned the designated location of a crematorium and its boundary with adjacent properties. I was minded to support the minister, although I found John Wilson’s contribution very powerful. However, I must say to Kevin Stewart that his unfettered, unblinking and unquestioning belief in the planning process that goes on in our local councils—which in my own area can often cheerfully ignore even elected councillors, if those in charge of the process bother to let those councillors have a say at all, given that so many planning processes are now automatic—will have provoked hoots of derision the length and breadth of the country.