Meeting of the Parliament 16 January 2025
Thank you.
I hope that the Minister for Parliamentary Business will propose that at a future meeting of the business bureau. However, I will tell members why it perhaps has not come up so far. Perhaps it is because the key words in the report are “failure”, “regression” and “deterioration”.
“Across all rights examined,”
the commission concludes,
“there is not a single human right that meets all the conditions of adequacy under international law”—
not one. Minimum core obligations such as access to food and housing are not being met. The rights to health, social care, education and culture are not getting better; they are getting worse.
These are not abstract or theoretical findings. These rights are about ensuring that everyone can live a dignified life, free from fear and want, but what this report finds is that there is hunger, deprivation and malnutrition. I made some inquiries recently, only to discover that Public Health Scotland does not routinely collect data on malnutrition. However, it should do, because we know from the British Association for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition that the number of patients who are admitted to hospital diagnosed with malnutrition has doubled to more than 44 per cent in the past decade.
When I was with Rhoda Grant in Shetland, we met the workers at the Sullom Voe terminal, a northerly centre for the United Kingdom oil and gas industry for more than four decades. We sat down and spoke with representatives of the very impressive Shetland Fishermen’s Federation. They told us that their members net one sixth of the catch for the whole of the UK, yet we know that a third of the inhabitants of Shetland are living in fuel poverty. It reminded me of Aneurin Bevan’s observation:
“This island is made mainly of coal and surrounded by fish. Only an organising genius could produce a shortage of coal and fish at the same time.”
In other words, what is wrong is the way in which our society and economy are organised; what is wrong is the way in which power and wealth are distributed. Even among small Highlands and Islands communities that are blighted by hunger, rooflessness and fuel poverty, there exists great affluence. From Anders Holch Povlsen, the richest man in Scotland, to the old aristocracy, including the Earl of Seafield, Earl Granville, the Earl of Sutherland, the Camerons of Lochiel and the Duke of Westminster—all with massive land ownership and vast wealth.
The report is right to determine the equality gap in fundamental human rights between rural and urban Scotland. It is right to point to the acute levels of homelessness in our Highlands and Islands, as well as to the access that is denied to basic public services and fundamental human rights such as food and clothing.
However, we have to understand the colossal wealth gap that exists in the Highlands and Islands. We have to recognise the pernicious division of class. We have to comprehend that, unless we tackle this obscene and rising inequality—the division in income, wealth and power—we will never address the fundamental breaches of human rights that are highlighted in this very serious, important and ground-breaking report.
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