Hansard

Over these past decades, public trust in this Parliament has declined significantly, and that is every member’s joint responsibility. Confidence in this institution is now at its lowest point since devolution began, dropping 20 points in just 10 years. I think that Scots expect their Parliament to act to their values and in their interests. Today, many people are, unfortunately, questioning whether we still do that. Transparency is central to building and sustaining trust, and more than 90 per cent of Scots value openness in public decision making. Honesty, clarity and accountability are values that should guide how we all operate.

I sought and gratefully received advice from the Presiding Officer and the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee in response to overwhelming concern from the public, the Law Society of Scotland and the Faculty of Advocates, where there was widespread condemnation of an attack on the judiciary from a member of this Parliament with a privileged position of deputy convener. That committee has human rights and civil justice responsibilities, which—I believe—compounded the gravity of the incendiary public comments accusing the Supreme Court of “bigotry, prejudice and hatred”.

What followed was widely regarded as farcical, with the member allowed to dial in to vote to save herself from a motion to remove her that had been lodged by a committee member, Tess White. Meanwhile, the Ethical Standards Commissioner pursued a complaint about me making a complaint that the commissioner never actually received, as I never made the complaint.

Upholding our duty to defend the judiciary, however, is specified in section 1 of the Judiciary and Courts (Scotland) Act 2008, which obligates us, as members of the Parliament, to do so. Other members who similarly publicised their grave concerns have received no proposed sanctions.

My legal advice, from Roddy Dunlop KC, highlights both the commissioner’s misrepresentation of human rights legislation and a confused interpretation of the code. The logic—which the convener has repeated here today—appears to be that publicising anything that is loosely interpreted as an intention to complain would impact a potential ESC investigation, despite such an investigation clearly never commencing because there was no ethical standards complaint in order to trigger one.

After six sessions of this Parliament, there remains no convener code for committees that I or other members could have used, despite unanimous agreement on the critical importance of committees to an effective legislature. I also make Parliament aware that this is not the first complaint against me to the Ethical Standards Commissioner since I launched the consultation on my unbuyable bill. The process has been on-going for more than seven months and concludes with a proposed sanction just as I prepare for a critical stage 1 debate and vote, which were supposed to take place next week.

Advancing a bill of that nature against the roots of male violence against women has been extraordinarily challenging, despite the issue supposedly being a priority in this Parliament for women and girls across Scotland and those around the world who are trafficked here and groomed and coerced in our own towns and cities.

Despite the barriers that I have faced, which have included having no non-Government bills unit resource such as other members have enjoyed for their members’ bills, I am working to make—I hope—meaningful legislative change that the Parliament and the country can be proud of.

Holyrood was designed at the outset to be more transparent, more participatory and more accountable than Westminster, and every single member in here has a duty to protect those principles and not to undermine them.