Meeting of the Parliament 25 February 2020 [Draft]
I associate myself with the words of Aileen Campbell. I agree with every word—well, most of what she said; not quite everything.
I congratulate Monica Lennon on her work on the bill, on her tireless tweeting and on managing to persuade all parties to go against the committee’s recommendation that the bill should go no further. I have known Monica for what feels like a long time—probably for both of us. When we were both councillors in South Lanarkshire, she was as quiet as a mouse, but not now
I have treated the bill as I treat any bill: with an open mind and a great deal of diligence about what is in front of us. What looked to be fairly straightforward has proved to be anything but. I have swayed between thinking that the bill had some legs, to thinking that it should go no further and was not required. I remain to be convinced about it, but my party leader, Jackson Carlaw, who was mentioned previously, was ambushed on Facebook, so here we are. I have been informed of the error of my ways. If only I had briefed him in advance.
It would be easy to say that because of what the Parliament is about to do, we might as well rip up the committee’s report; that we might as well not have bothered to take any evidence or to do any work. However, the Parliament is entitled to disagree with a committee’s conclusions and there has been great value to our work on this subject. I have certainly found the whole thing educational.
I represented the Local Government and Communities Committee at a meeting with the Scottish Youth Parliament in Dunfermline. I thank all those who attended that meeting for their keen interest in the bill. Three of us also met groups in Perth. That led to one of our recommendations, which I will come to.
The bill would become
“An Act of the Scottish Parliament to secure the provision throughout Scotland of free period products.”
Section 1 of the bill says:
“Everyone in Scotland who needs to use period products has the right under this Part to obtain them free of charge.”
Loads of questions arise from those opening lines alone. How? At what cost? Why everyone? Where? What products? What quality? After that, the bill really starts to unravel. My big concern was picked up in the committee’s report. It described the bill as
“legislation that would impose a duty on, as yet unidentified, public bodies which would have a cost but would not compel the Scottish Government to fund it, should it choose not to.”
In other words, bodies such as councils would be saddled with spending that might or might not be covered by the Government. That could be bordering on irresponsible when councils are making cuts in core services.
The bill requires the Government to draw up a scheme to implement that universal provision, but it would apply only to the public sector. To be fair to the Government, it has pretty much done that already without the need for legislation, and it is surely only fair to see how that works. Monica Lennon was not happy with that, though.
The committee’s other concern was that we have no idea at all about what any of it would cost. There is a huge disparity between what Monica Lennon said and the ludicrous figures that have been quoted by the Government.