Meeting of the Parliament 13 June 2017
I welcome the cabinet secretary’s statement and the action that the Government is taking on hate crime, prejudice and community cohesion. Ministers have our full support and I associate myself and the Scottish Conservatives with the cabinet secretary’s comments on Manchester, London and the remarkable resilience of communities across the United Kingdom.
In 2015, the Scottish Council of Jewish Communities published a report called “What’s Changed About Being Jewish in Scotland?” I will read two quick quotations from that report.
“For the first time in 62 years I did not attend high holiday services this year due to my security concerns.”
“I’m scared to tell people at work that I’m Jewish—I talk about going to church instead”.
Figures that were released last week show that, since that 2015 report, both offensive conduct towards Jews and offensive communication about Jews have increased in Scotland. What, specifically, is the Scottish Government doing to address the on-going rise of anti-Semitism in Scotland?
The cabinet secretary mentioned the multi-agency delivery group, but she did not offer much detail. When will it be established? Who will chair it? How many members will it have? What will its remit be? What specifics about those matters can the cabinet secretary share with us today?
The cabinet secretary talked of a renewed public awareness campaign building on the stand up to hate crime campaign in 2014. Was that campaign successful? How was it evaluated? What assessment of that campaign has the Scottish Government undertaken to ensure that, this time, public resources are targeted as effectively as possible? This is too important an issue for us to get it wrong.