Meeting of the Parliament 17 September 2024 [Draft]
I thank the clerks for fixing my pass and apologise to colleagues on the Labour benches who were getting distracted by my doing laps around their desks.
We all agree on the principle of valuing the Gaelic language, but as we have heard from Liam Kerr, there is perhaps a bit more difference when it comes to how we approach Scots in the bill. I will start with Scots before moving on to Gaelic for most of my contribution. Symbolic recognition—in this case, symbolic recognition of a language that has not had that before in law—is important. Scots is a language that has undergone centuries of denigration. It is a living language. As the census showed us, it is thriving in all sorts of ways that Gaelic is not, despite sustained efforts to force it out of public life.
On Gaelic, we have waited 20 years for this bill, but it is fair to say that the response to it has been underwhelming. It will not be transformational when transformation is what is needed. I fear that the bill as currently drafted is a result of that classic political process: we needed to do something, so we have done something.
The census showed two very different stories in relation to Gaelic. As has been indicated, the number of Gaelic learners is growing, but in traditional communities, where it is a living community language, it is in steep decline. We heard the stories of Gaelic-medium education schools in the central belt and of Duolingo learners, which are both very positive developments, but the reality for a young person who goes to a GME school in Glasgow is that they cannot go into a shop on the way home or into a cafe and buy something in Gaelic. It is not a language that they can live their life in. There has been some progress in extracurricular activities, sports clubs and community groups, but it is not a community language, and in the communities where it is, it is under existential threat. We heard in evidence to the committee at stage 1 a good anecdote from one of the witnesses, who said that, in Lewis, she saw a group of teenage boys on the street who were misbehaving in Gaelic. That is an example of what a living community language actually looks like.
Again, I do not want to dismiss the value of symbolism, especially when the legitimacy of Gaelic and Scots has been challenged for centuries—and is, in many ways, still challenged today. Having the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament making a clear statement in law has value, but on its own, however, that is not good enough. The bill will pass—there is no reason for it not to do so—but it currently represents a missed opportunity. The question for us this afternoon is whether we can amend the bill at stages 2 and 3 so that it means something much more.
I will run through a couple of the amendments that the Greens are considering lodging at stage 2. The first is about measuring success. It is good that responsibility for the national Gaelic language strategy should sit with Scottish ministers, but there is not much value in strategy that is all motherhood and apple pie. The strategy is that we are going to make things better, but we, or our successors, will all be back here in five or 10 years’ time feeling very disappointed at the fact that things did not get better. We need to be much clearer about what we mean and how we measure success. The Greens would like members to consider an amendment that would require ministers to outline how they will measure success and progress towards the goals that are set out in any strategy.
Success will look different in different places. If we want to move beyond Gaelic being a language that is spoken only in GME schools in places such as Glasgow and Edinburgh, we would do that in a very different way from how we would go about protecting it as an existing but declining community language in Lewis.