Meeting of the Parliament 11 June 2026 [Draft]
I direct members to my entry in the register of members’ interests: I am a serving member of Highland Council. I thank Colin Beattie for securing the debate.
I realise that those members who are left in the chamber are, unlike me, unlikely to rush out on a Thursday morning to buy the latest edition of the Lochaber Times, but if they had done so this morning, they would have seen that this evening’s debate is timely from the perspective of my constituency, because the front page features news about the extended closure of the public toilets in Fort William as a result of antisocial behaviour that led to vandalism.
Other members have pointed to some of the causes of antisocial behaviour and the measures required to tackle it, but I want to use my contribution to highlight the essential services that are being lost as a result of antisocial behaviour, particularly when it leads to vandalism. The closure of the public toilets in Fort William is just an example of that; although the toilets are vital, they are not statutory, and when they are vandalised, they come under threat of closure. Indeed, we have seen the extended or permanent closure of such facilities, not just in Fort William but in Portree, Aviemore, Ballachulish and across the Highlands. That has a direct impact not only on our local communities but on the important tourism economy that we rely on.
Our councils are facing increased, and escalating, costs that are unsustainable. What might seem like relatively small levels of antisocial behaviour soon accumulate. Vandalism that involves toilet rolls strewn across public toilets becomes washbasins or urinals getting ripped from the walls, and that leads to wheelie bins being set on fire or even, in the case of some incidents in Fort William, a hotel worker being physically assaulted by the perpetrators of all that antisocial behaviour.
I understand the frustration that our police feel when they deal with these issues. A police inspector told me that he actually had to threaten to arrest the father of one of the young people who had been taken to the police station after being apprehended for antisocial behaviour and vandalism. No wonder we have a problem, if that is the attitude of parents in these circumstances. Colin Beattie is right to highlight that in his motion. The police, too, are frustrated with the limitations on our children’s panels in dealing with these incidents.
None of us wants to criminalise our young people, but it is right that we look at the underlying causes identified in Colin Beattie’s motion and at how we support our young people and their families to stop this problem, as he puts it, “at the source”. He is also right to highlight the hard work being done by our police, but I must say to the minister that the simple fact is that, particularly in large rural geographies like my own and those of Dawn Black and Liam Kerr, the police are overstretched and simply cannot deal with these issues. We cannot find ourselves in that sort of situation. As Katharine Sangster has said, the police need to be seen in our communities so that our young people can develop a healthy relationship with them.
I hope that, when the minister responds to the debate, she will tell us how she plans to redirect resources to tackle these issues, how we can strengthen the existing measures that we have at our disposal and whether she will consider introducing additional measures to look at the issues identified by members this evening.