Hansard

Let me start with three vital words that everyone needs to hear and that we all need to understand: black lives matter. All across the world, people are standing up and making that point. Cross-party consensus on it is vital, and we will support the amendments to the Government’s motion that have been lodged by Labour and the Green Party.

I know that we have all been shocked and appalled by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on 25 May. His terrible, senseless death is a tragedy that has reopened the seismic fault lines that exist in US society, where for too long black people have continued to suffer the most appalling inequality, prejudice and discrimination. Large parts of America are standing up and saying, “Not in my name” and, “Enough is enough.”

It is absolutely understandable that people should wish to make their voices heard. At the weekend, we saw protests across Scottish cities, with many thousands of people coming together to show their anger and solidarity. However, the First Minister was and continues to be very clear, and I want to make it very clear today, that we strongly oppose and discourage mass gatherings and that people who are seeking to make their voices heard should find alternative means of doing so.

We are at a critical point in dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic, and our hard-won gains with the infection rate reducing must not be lost. Many of us wish to make clear our strong solidarity with the black community, and we should do so virtually or through supporting the charities that are working on the ground to improve the lives of black and minority ethnic people in Scotland and further afield. I encourage everyone to act responsibly while continuing, of course, to make their voices heard. Covid is still with us and people are still dying. The priority must be to protect public health.

I turn to the inequality that black and other minority ethnic communities in Scotland continue to experience. Last year, I undertook a tour of Glasgow—not for the first time—to learn more about the city’s links to the historic slave trade, and I was struck by just how much that terrible stain on our history is still woven throughout the fabric of that great city. Although, today, we are resolutely focused on improving the lives of black and minority ethnic people, we must not forget that we once enabled the terrible practice of slavery.

It is clear to me that the roots of the entrenched structural racism that continues to pervade global society are firmly based in the historic enslavement of black people, mainly from African countries. Racism has allowed white people to determine black people as a subhuman class and treat them as chattels, or property. Reducing black people to that status salved the collective conscience of white people around the world and enabled them to justify their barbaric acts, and we should all take responsibility for that.

We must not gloss over our historical attitudes or actions, nor should we assume that, simply because we live in the modern era, everything is much better. Recent events have demonstrated that that is clearly not the case, and we need to move forward in a way that reflects the reality of the historical oppression of black people and what we need to do to tackle injustice and build true equality.

Patrick Harvie’s amendment calls for the establishment of a slavery museum to address our historical links to the slave trade, and it expresses regret about the fact that so many monuments and street names still celebrate the perpetrators and profiteers of slavery.

On the latter point, there are a range of views. Some think that such monuments and signs should be torn down immediately, while others believe that it is important to reflect the reality of the past and that to do otherwise erases the experience and the reality of the terrible inequality and suffering that existed. Our view is that these matters are best considered in a respectful and reflective way that is grounded in the voices and lived experience of those who are most affected by the issues. I give Patrick Harvie a commitment that we will play our part in contributing to that discussion.

On the suggestion of a museum, Patrick Harvie will be aware that the University of Glasgow is taking forward work in that area, following a report published in 2019 by Dr Stephen Mullen that made a number of recommendations. My officials are currently following up on those recommendations directly with the university.

One key area of progress that I would like to highlight is the establishment of a new James McCune Smith learning hub in recognition of the first African American to be awarded a medical degree by the University of Glasgow in 1837. Another long-term goal is the establishment of a Hunterian exhibition on slavery. We will continue to engage with the university as it takes forward work in that area.

I turn to our broader agenda. The Scottish Government has taken steps to advance race equality and tackle racism—but, to be frank and absolutely honest, we have not gone far enough and we need to make much greater progress.

In 2017, we published a race equality action plan that outlined the actions that we will take during the current parliamentary session to secure better outcomes for minority ethnic communities in Scotland. An update published last year indicated that although progress has been made in some areas, there remains so much more to do. A senior-level programme board has been established to drive the progress that we want to see.

In the past financial year, we allocated more than £2.6 million to fund organisations working to advance race equality. We have taken action to address bullying and discrimination in our schools, and that is a work in progress. We have a working group to implement measures to address the underrepresentation of minority ethnic teachers in Scotland’s schools. We are actively working to improve the employment rates for minority ethnic groups in Scotland, and our workplace equality fund has funded initiatives to support minority ethnic people to progress in the workplace and employers to develop a more inclusive workforce.

Black and minority ethnic representation in this place is still severely lacking, and it remains a significant issue that we have never seen a woman from any ethnic minority background in 20 years of the Scottish Parliament. Funding to the Equal Representation coalition has supported it to develop a toolkit to help political parties to improve the diversity of their membership, with a view to addressing underrepresentation not just here, but in other places in the country to which people are elected. Through the First Minister’s national advisory council on women and girls, Dr Ima Jackson and Louise Macdonald are taking forward thinking on how we build greater intersectionality into our approach to gender equality.

I look forward to publishing the report on the final year of the current race equality action plan in 2021, including consideration of areas for further action and focus. I welcome further debate and scrutiny in Parliament on the progress that we have made, and I encourage colleagues from across all parties to join me in that.