Meeting of the Parliament 15 January 2026
In summary, I will repeat the essence of what I said to Michelle Thomson: I will lay an SSI well in advance of the end of this parliamentary session, because I want to ensure that women and girls have those protections in the format of hate crime legislation, in the same way that those with other protected characteristics do. I assure members that that is all in hand.
As for the second part of Tess White’s question, I would note that the Minister for Equalities has certainly not met me in recent times on the various equality duties. I recall that, some time ago, soon after her appointment to her post, she met ministers collectively and I know that she has, on more than one occasion, reminded all ministers of our collective responsibility to meet our equality duties. If need be, we could go back into the records and find a note of the meeting that Ms Stewart had with me and a range of other ministers, but that is going back some time, and I will have to come back to the member on that issue.