Meeting of the Parliament 11 December 2025
The opportunity to speak in this debate is special because we have an opportunity to acknowledge genuine progress and the delivery of support to, and recognition of, a powerful and important community, which is Scotland’s deaf and hearing-impaired community.
Like others, I thank the committee and especially all those who contributed evidence for what I genuinely believe to be an important report. I also thank the BSL interpreters who have appeared on screens in the chamber today. I know that they are there all the time when we are broadcasting, but it is very nice to see them on the screens in the chamber so that we non-BSL users can also see the access that is available.
The committee’s report highlights some very important areas, and I will touch on a number of them. I will start with my little pet subject of post-legislative scrutiny, which was powerfully mentioned by Miles Briggs. The work that the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee has done on its report is probably the best example of post-legislative scrutiny that I have had the privilege to see this session. It was not required by legislation or demanded by the Parliament. I hope that I do not embarrass the committee convener by saying this, but those who sat on the committee and the power of the convener herself brought about an incredibly powerful piece of post-legislative scrutiny.
Depending on which side of the chamber they sit on, members either fear the concept of returning to legislation—as they see it as Government bashing—or see post-legislative scrutiny as an opportunity to do that. The committee’s report represents an incredibly balanced and powerful use of post-legislative scrutiny. As has been picked up in a number of speeches, and as was picked up by the Deputy First Minister in response to my intervention, the committee has presented the Parliament with an opportunity to make things better.
We are not starting the process at stage 1—we are starting a long way into the journey—but it is still a journey. We should take that powerful message from today’s debate and from the committee’s work—and also from those who contributed to the work of the committee. They have clearly shown where things have worked well. As Paul McLennan said, the act was “world leading” legislation when it came out.
We are talking about a language that we have put on the statute book as a language of Scotland. Those people for whom BSL is a “first language”, to use the convener’s proper description, have a right to access their human rights through their first language. We have not just a duty but an obligation to ensure that that can happen.
There have been a number of very powerful speeches from across the chamber. I will pick up first on Pam Gosal’s contribution, on Marie McNair’s enormously powerful speech and on Emma Roddick’s contribution, among others, regarding the evidence that was heard about the risk among the deaf and deaf/hearing community—in that women in particular suffer from the risk of domestic abuse. That was so well articulated by Pam Gosal as well as other members. That is hard to read in a report, but it is right that that appears in the committee’s report, so that those who read it and those who choose to make choices on behalf of others realise people’s lived experience. That was very powerful.
I will also pick up on the point about education. We have heard an enormous amount of evidence in the debate about the importance of BSL in the journey through childhood and about the challenges—the challenges at transition or at entry to nursery, and the challenge of maintaining ability and sometimes interest, in the case of a young person who cannot access anything that is happening in the classroom. Those challenges should not rest on our BSL communities; they should rest on our educational community and our local authorities, and they should rest on the Parliament and the Scottish Government, which should do better, frankly.