 Diolch yn fawr, mae'r next item of business on name rונ SustainMembers Registration Act 1-855, yn wandiad Russel Finlay on repealing the hate crime act. Rwy'n amser i'r tu admit o'r ddymarfodd i mi oedd i chi mwyodd i gweithio i ddewidiau, o fawr gweithwyr o'r hyn sy'n rhan o ddewid teimlo i ddîm yn rhaid i gweithio i ddowid i gweithio i ddewid atdewid, i'n gweithio... R grouping, ddweud ac tref, gweithio. Rwy'n amddai'n iawn yr ydyddai'n aethau i rwyfod arweithio'r cyffredinol, ond, yn ystwun â'r cylliddiadau sy'n ei wneud hynny, ac yn ystwyff o'r iawn, mae hi i gael i'r cyffredinol y bydd yma, a oedd yn ddol i gael i'r cyffredinol, oedd yn ni gael i'r cyffredinol, oedd yn ni iddyn nhw'n gweld i gael i gael i'r cyffredinol, oedd yn ei ddysgu gweld i'r cyffredinol. gwael i gael amser oedd hynny i mi sgwad definitelyu. Os eich rhaid i'w cwfwyr deolch yn dweud wrth sefydliad, a atser oedd yn yma, â hwmza Caiusiff ar y pryd. A benefwyd yr ysgol a'r hyn yn gweithio'i gwaharedd y Gwyrdd Gelfaith Cymru. Mae Cyrtanaeth Hwmza Caiusiff yn gennym drayn. Gwyrdd Gelfaith Cymru maen nhw ddim yn ni'n mynd he thinks it was. From April Fool's Day, it's transformed Scotland into a place of international mockery. It's transformed the birthplace of the Enlightenment into a place where free speech has been debased and devalued, a place of sinister police billboards instructing people to snitch in those who hurt their feelings. Where contentious discussions and disagreements in your own home can result in a knock at the door from the police, where every single complaint, no matter how groundless or absurd, is subject to police investigation while despairing officers are being told not to pursue real crimes. Welcome to Scotland, home of Humza Yousaf's hate crime law, aka The Clip's Charter. I will. Mr Finlay for giving way, and it seems that he has swallowed his own publicity in all of this. Can I ask Mr Finlay if he thinks that the harassment and hate of disabled people is a real crime? I'm talking about the many thousands of crimes that are deemed to have been not crimes whatsoever, the vast majority of the 9,000 that have been reported to police. That's what we're talking about. Now, as the Scottish Conservative Party and many others warned at the time, this legislation is a disaster. It's a disaster on paper, and it's a disaster in reality. The SNP backslapping of 2021 was crass and ill-judged. The celebration of bad legislation from a Government that specialises in bad legislation. Liam Kerr and others worked hard on amendments to fix the worst elements of this bill. Back then, just two SNP members defied Nicola Sturgeon's whips to abstain. How many will find the bravery and the steel to do the right thing today? How many will listen to senior nationalist figures who understand that freedom of speech is much more precious than party loyalty? And what of Scottish Labour former leader John Lamont tried to protect the rights of women and girls? The legislation protects men wearing women's clothing, but not women. When John Lamont's amendments failed, she voted against the bill along with one other Labour member. As usual, Anna Sarwar sided with the SNP and not for the first time and not for the last time. Will she repeat that same mistake today? The chilling effect of this legislation is real. Some fear being subject to investigation and prosecution for stating the truth about biological sex. When JK Rowling put this to the test in social media, Police Scotland confirmed that she had not committed a hate crime. But what about those without her cash and clout? Even if prosecutions are unlikely, being subject to an investigation can be daunting, disruptive, humiliating and financially costly. Police arriving at your home or workplace, taken away in handcuffs, phone seized, forced to pay for a lawyer, stigmatising and damaging to personal reputations and employment prospects. I am particularly struck by the phrase, the process is the punishment. I will do so in a minute. Anyone who has ever taken on Scotland's powerful and unaccountable public bodies will know exactly what that means. Even before this act was enforced, a street preacher in Glasgow was wrongfully arrested over false hate crime allegations that I will give way. My apologies, Presiding Officer. Will Mr Finlay, as a matter of factual accuracy, concede and put on record that, built into this legislation, is protection of freedom of expression, including that criticism or commentary on any protected characteristic is not to be mistaken as hatred or abuse? Russell Finlay. I welcome on to that, but what the cabinet secretary does not accept is that there is no dwelling defence, which I will also come on to. Even before the act was enforced, my colleague Murdo Fraser was reported to the police. His alleged crime was to make a light-hearted quip about SNP policy relating to people who say they are non-binary. The complaint and the investigation were kept secret from him. He had no idea that the police had then recorded this as a non-crime hate incident. Police Scotland's response to Murdo Fraser has been confused and confusing. The justice secretary's response to his question yesterday cast no light. During yesterday's proceedings, the justice secretary also made allegations about misinformation. There has been misinformation, but from what I have seen and heard, it has come from the SNP Government and its agencies. The law states that the hate crime threshold is met if deemed by a reasonable person to be threatening or abusive. That is threatening or abusive. My party tried without success to amend this to threatening and abusive. It is a crucial distinction and a higher bar for prosecution, yet an SNP minister took to the airways to incorrectly state that the law says threatening and abusive. Yesterday, the cabinet secretary added to her Government's catalogue of misinformation by telling Parliament that the threshold is now threatening and or abusive. She did so while railing against misinformation. Presumably, this is through ignorance and not intent, but they misrepresent this critical point. Then we have Police Scotland's extraordinary output. Their website tells the public that a hate crime is, and I quote, any crime that is perceived by the victim or any other person has been motivated wholly or partly by malice ill will or prejudice against a social group. This is simply untrue, simply because someone does not become a crime just because someone perceived it to be a crime, and such flagrant misinformation fuels public confusion. Moreover, it is fuelling the flood of complaints. The police website targets working-class white men effectively telling them to watch their mouths, inciting so-called white male entitlement. I ask of Police Scotland themselves committed a hate crime. Then, of course, we have the hate monster, a ridiculous cartoon character that would surely be deemed too silly for the scriptwriters of Scott Squad. Let's not forget the sinister Government billboards, a campaign costing taxpayers at least £400,000, generating even more nonsense complaints. Should we be surprised with a creeping criminalisation of freedom of expression in Scotland? I'm not, because this has been the direction of travel for years. As far back as 2016, Police Scotland told the public to consider if their social media comments were kind or necessary, and if not, they warned that a visit from officers could be expected. Of course, people should be kind, but who on earth decides what is necessary and what has any of this got to do with the police? The law was not enforced for three full years because Police Scotland knew that it was seriously problematic and that it would be inundated with complaints. They knew that it would be weaponised, and that is exactly what is happening. Humza Yousaf claims that there is a rising tide of hate crime in Scotland, contrary to the evidence. His Government is urging Scots to report hate crime while peddling misinformation about what the definition of hate crime is. I'm grateful, Mr Finlay. I'm listening carefully to your remarks. I'm just waiting for you to come to the point where you put on record the existence of hate crime in this country and your condemnation of it. Through the chair, please. Russell Finlay. On the daily legislation that was enacted, the SNP Justice Secretary was enjoying a nice jigsaw puzzle. Meanwhile, on our streets, overstretched police officers were dealing with a much harder challenge. Days ago, HMICS report here told of Police Scotland officers feeling unsafe and unable to do their jobs constantly being told to do more with less, yet the same exhausted officers are now being ordered by the SNP to police our speech. Hundreds of officers are still not being trained in the new law. Before recess, the Justice Committee asked for the training material, but we weren't given it. No wonder, as officers say, it is wholly inadequate. The Scottish Police Federation deserved great credit for standing firm against the breathtaking Government spin. We keep being told that the tsunami of spurious complaints will have no detrimental impact on investigating real crimes. This is patently untrue, as Federation officials patiently explain. I despair at this Government's sneering sense of moral superiority and failure to tackle the issues that truly matter. I am sorry, I do not have time. Never mind plumeting education standards in classroom violence. Never mind the tragedy of record drugs deaths. Never mind the stagnant economy stymied by hostile ministers. Never mind islanders reliant on a fleet of decrepit ferries. Never mind our NHS being neglected by a disgraced ex-Health Secretary who was more interested in keeping his job. Never mind the filth and squaller on our pothold streets. Nope. Never mind the day job when this Government would rather virtue signal and preach to ordinary Scots about what opinions are deemed to be acceptable. It is pious, it is pure ill and it is patronising. MSPs should start listening to the majority of people in Scotland who agree with the Scottish Conservatives. This is about freedom of speech, it is about bad legislation, it is about letting our police officers do their jobs, it is about rejecting division by turning Scots against Scots, to clipe on friends, colleagues and family. Based on the evidence, we were right to vote against this law three years ago and based on the evidence, we are right to call for its appeal today. I urge all members to do the right thing and back the Scottish Conservative motion. Thank you. Thank you, Mr Findlay. Could you please formally move your motion? So I now call on Minister Siobhan Bryan to speak to and to move amendment 12855.3. Up to nine minutes, please minister. Thank you, Presiding Officer. The Hate Crime Act will help us to target hate crime in Scotland and help us to support those who are most affected by these crimes. I'd firstly like to respond to some of the points that have just been made in relation to the Hate Crime Act. Over the past two weeks since its implementation, the Scottish Government has responded to numerous media statements combating misinformation, which is still regularly regurgitated and indeed here in this chamber. To dispel this misinformation, it is perhaps beneficial for me to set out again what the Hate Crime Act does. This is an act designed to consolidate existing legislative protections against offences aggravated by prejudice against the following five characteristics, disability, race, religion, sexual orientation and transgender identity. This is the exact same group of characteristics that are protected in England and Wales under the current Hate Crime legislation, and this Parliament agreed to add the additional characteristic of age, which has been welcomed. We know the impact on those who suffer from hate crime can be traumatic and it can be life-changing and we want to ensure that we can protect those affected, but the Conservatives, we have this Parliament remove those protections. Hate crime, as set out under the Act, is a behaviour which is both criminal and rooted in prejudice and where the offender's action has been driven by hatred towards a particular group, but the Conservatives would have this Parliament repeal it. The Hate Crime Act introduced new offences for threatening or abusive behaviour and the communication of threatening or abusive material, which is intended to stir up hatred against a group of people who possess or appear to possess particular characteristics, but the Conservatives would have us take away such offences perpetrated against people in our society. The minister began by saying that she was about to reveal some misinformation from members in this chamber and I was waiting with bated breath but I still have not heard any such specific allegations. Mr Finlay, I am going through my speech. I am not even actually sure what you just asked me there for. The independent review by Lord Bracadale of Hate Crime in 2018 that led to this act clearly stated the need for legislation in that it would help to recognise the impact and harm caused by hate crime and I quote, stirring up hatred may lead to violence or public disorder. The Conservatives want us to ignore this harm. This act does not prevent people expressing controversial, challenging or offensive views as this has clearly been demonstrated nor does it seek to stifle criticism or rigorous debate in any way and the right to freedom of expression has been specifically built into this act. This legislation also provides a high threshold for criminality and for these a new offencer it has to be proven that the behaviour is threatening or abusive and it has the intention to stir up hatred. This is a higher threshold for a crime to be committed under the act than the offence of stirring up racial hatred that has been in place since 1986 in Scotland. On that point, I want to enable the minister to set the record straight today. I am not sure what actions Police Scotland are taking to incorporate the precedent set in Miller versus College of Policing in December 2021. Of course, that applies to England and Wales where it was determined that the policy of reporting for non-crime hate incidents breached article 10. I understand that Police Scotland reported in its bulletin of April to September 2023 to adopt the policy but to what extent have they done so and can the minister today set out the specific details of has it been fully incorporated, is it being incorporated into by a stage process? First of all, non-crime incidents is not related to this hate crime act in any way and, as we know, recording on non-crime hate incidents is an approach across the whole of the UK. I am aware of the Miller recommendation that has been implemented in England and Wales and Police Scotland have indicated that they are currently reviewing it for implementation in Scotland. Since 2014 to 2015, an average of 6,700 hate crimes have been recorded by the police each year. In 2021 to 2022, there are 6,927 hate crimes recorded by the police, and of those, 62 per cent included a race aggravator, 27 per cent for sexual orientation and 8 per cent for disability, highlighting the clear need for hate crime legislation. We also know that, from research in 2020 to 2021, around a third of hate crimes involved a victim who experienced the incident at their place of work, or as part of their occupation. Most of those victims were working in retail or service industries, and this is not including the police. The same research shows that almost a quarter of all victims recorded in 2020 to 2021 were police officers. We have worked very closely with our justice partners, including Police Scotland, since the act was passed in 2021, to ensure that its implementation and delivery would be robust. I am grateful to Police Scotland for their outstanding dedication and professionalism since the act has come into force. Within the first week, Police Scotland received over 7,000 reports of hate crime, of which the vast majority were assessed not to be criminal. Over the same week, 232 hate crimes were recorded and 30 non-crime hate incidents. There have been reports of individuals and groups exploiting the new legislation to make vexatious complaints in order to overwhelm police systems, and we must send a strong message to those making vexatious complaints to stop doing so. I would hope that every member across this chamber, regardless of political affiliation, will stand united in this call. Online reporting drastically decreased by 74.4% during the past week to 1,832. This fall was not reflected in the number of recorded hate crimes that further strengthens the Government's position that this legislation is needed to support targets of hate crimes. We have also seen the first recorded crimes using the new age aggravator, with 38 recorded in the first fortnight of implementation. It has been reiterated by Police Scotland, though although the increase in reporting has been greater than usual, this is being managed within the contact centres and the impact to front-line officers has been minimal at this time. Let me turn to our plans on misogyny. Women, like everyone else, are already protected from threatening and abusive behaviour in law, but are specifically not covered in the Hate Crime Act for well-known reasons. During the consultation on Lord Bracadale's report, a number of women's groups raised concerns that the proposed hate crime framework did not reflect the reality of misogyny and harassment and abuse experienced by so many women. For this reason, we established the working group on misogyny, led by bonus Helena Kennedy to consider in detail issues relating to misogyny and the criminal law and make recommendations for reform. We consulted on draft legislation to implement the report's recommendations in 2023, and we will inform a final bill, which we will introduce this year. During the development of the hate crime strategy, we heard from people who are unable to leave their homes due to the fear of being targeted by hate crime. This hate crime act will go some way to providing the people with confidence to carry out their lives in a safe manner. The Conservatives called today to repeal the Hate Crime Act, and let me be crystal clear that this Government has no intentions to repeal the Hate Crime Act. Repealing the act in full would leave Scotland as the only country in the United Kingdom without specific legislation to protect communities from hate crime. Why would anyone not want our communities protected from hate and crime? I understand that the Conservatives want this act to fail because they need to justify why they didn't support it in 2021, so they will do everything they can to discredit it. However, my message to you is that it will not work. Legislation that protects people from hatred is not new, it is still needed, and the misinformation that has surrounded this act has been irresponsible. The Hate Crime Act modernises an update. The Minister is bringing her remarks to her close. If it was repealed as a Conservative motion calls, it will keep legislation in place, making blasphemy a common law offence once again, an offence that hasn't been prosecuted in Scotland for over 175 years, Conservatives once again taking us backwards. We are committed to providing the protection people deserve for those who are face prejudice due to just who they are, due to their race, disability, religion, sexual orientation or transgender identity or age. We stand with you, unlike the Conservatives, and we will ensure that we have laws to protect you. So let's all stop the gutter politics and the scaring mongering, and as elected members, take responsibility to protect some of our most vulnerable people in our communities. Minister, could you please move the amendment? I just take this opportunity to remind members with the new system that if a member is seeking to make an intervention that they should press their relevant button. Now I note that over the course of the debate thus far there has been an increasing recourse to that and well done to all of those, but for those who are yet not quite as familiar with the system perhaps as we go forward we could press the intervention button, thank you. With that I call on Pauline McNeill to speak to and to move amendment 12855.4, up to seven minutes please. Thank you, I move the amendment in my name. Scottish Labour voted for this legislation in good faith and supported many of the amendments particularly by Adam Tomkins that ensured that there was freedom of expression in this act. We do agree that you must have robust good law on hate crime which is well understood by those who enforce it, but also I agree that it should be a high test for criminality. But Labour was clear that included in those provisions should have been sex as an aggravation and three years on there is still no sign of the legislation which was promised within one year of passing the 2021 act. So we call on the Scottish Government now in view of that to reconsider and bring sex as an aggravator now. The First Minister did not help support women trying to make sense of what's happened in the last few weeks by refusing to make the distinction between sex and gender when he was interviewed on BBC Scotland this week. I'll take an intervention from Liam Kerr. I'm very grateful to the member. I remember at stage 2 that Pauline McNeill argued very strongly for a sex aggravator and Scottish Conservatives voted with Labour to get that in. Under Humzae Yousaf's whip, the SNP, the Greens and the Lib Dems specifically opposed it. Does she feel that she has been utterly let down by Humzae Yousaf, the former justice secretary? Pauline McNeill. Well, I've been quite clear as Scottish Labour has. I think it was wrong not to include it and I think that what the last two or three weeks has exposed is that the Government should reconsider their position now that they know that although the misogyny law is a good law, it's going to take four years before it goes in the statute books. For us Scottish Labour, purpose of this debate is to test the Government's address some of the serious problems that have happened over the last few weeks. The implementation of the hate crime bill has been a shambles. 8,000 reports of hate crimes in the first few weeks have brought officers back to do overtime shifts, and the Scottish Police Federation is saying that it has taken an extra 40 officers a day to deal with the responses to the legislation and not to mention the hapless hate monster campaign. The Government is going to say that this will calm down in time, but the problem is that already the public is beginning to lose confidence in this legislation, which is why Scottish Labour is calling for an urgent post-legitive scrutiny of the act to review the poor implementation and the confused communication to address the real issues that have arisen from 1 April. A place that is required to investigate all alleged offences, no matter how trivial or vexatious they are, and because of this requirement, Lord Hope, who used to be Scotland's most senior judge, has commented that the act has placed an extraordinary burden on the police. The Government has got to address this important point a fewer than 4 per cent of the 8,000 reports in the first week that went on to be assessed as actual crimes. Yesterday, the Cabinet Secretary for Justice said that the policy that Michelle Thompson is right to raise on the non-crime hate incidents from the Stephen Lawrence inquiry report following a successful legal challenge, England Wales, is no longer doing this. Yesterday, I listened to the Cabinet Secretary for Justice in response to murder phraser, and I am still no clearer as to whether the non-crime hate incidents recorded by the police is counting towards disclosure certificates, for example. There must be a review into the recording of hate incident reporting, which I know is not part of this legislation, but it has exposed this. Why should anyone have on their record something that is deemed not to be criminal? With the backdrop of the recent proportionate responses to crime, that is a really important point, and I think that Michelle Thompson is quite right to ask the question, is this truly compliant with the human rights act? I personally think that it can possibly be. The Scottish Police Federation says that the biggest issue with the Hate Crime Act is the amount of police time wasted and the irrationality of a situation where the police now do not deal with and attend certain crimes. Police Scotland has been using overtime to cope with the online reporting, and that is not sustainable. The cost of this ill-conceived implementation is already huge. Reports are that nearly £500 million has been spent promoting the act, and yet the majority of the people are unclear as to how it differs from previous law. I dread to think how much the hate monster campaign has cost the taxpayer, but it has certainly cost the SNP credibility, and they need to live up to that. A campaign that, ironically, itself was offensive—in one point, I agree with Russell Findlay on—explicitly targeting young men aged between 18 and 30, where he said that it was more likely to commit hate crime, particularly those from socially excluded communities. Surely the Government must accept, with all its good intentions, that is something that has gone horribly wrong. I am happy to hear the minister on that. I want to point out to Ms McNeill, the public information campaign that she referred to was not a Scottish Government campaign, but a Police Scotland campaign that took a year ago. She also asked for clarification—I can give clarification—that Police Scotland is indeed reviewing its code and guidance in response to developments south of the border regarding non-crime hate instance. I welcome that last one. I thought that the cabinet secretary would say that you have to take responsibility. You are the Government and you have presided over the implementation of an act, which is very important. We supported you on it, but you need to take responsibility for the way that it has been implemented, and it is not right to blame Police Scotland for a campaign that has gone horribly wrong. The act has merit, and that is where I agree with the minister. For example, prosecutors can attach prejudice aggravators to crimes such as assault, threatening or abusive behaviour. If the aggravator is proved, it can be taken into account when sentencing. However, as I argued strongly at the time, sex is a characteristic that matters when it comes to understanding levels of violence. Lord Bracadale described the omission of sex as a loss opportunity. I fully support the work of Helena Kennedy on misogyny, but understandably, women did not want to wait for the results of a working group, and they were proven to be right, I think, on this. Women are regularly the targets of offending behaviour-based and isolated towards their sex, and two weeks on from its implementation, the public are really none the wiser. The Scottish Government must take responsibility for this mess, but I ask them today to set out how they intend to address the questions of the roll-out and implementation of this act to restore confidence by taking major steps if they do think that the public confidence can be restored and take the best elements of this law forward. Thank you, Ms McNeill, and I now call on Liam McArthur up to six minutes, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Given the motion today, it is worth reminding ourselves that this Parliament has shown itself willing to repeal legislation when the need arises. It's certainly unusual, and probably thankfully so, but not unheard of. I was a member of the Justice Committee in the last session when we considered not just the Hate Crime and Public Disorder Bill, but also a member's bill brought forward by former Labour colleague James Kelly to repeal the Discredited Offensive Behaviour at Football Act. Some may seek to draw comparisons between the two pieces of legislation, but I believe that the differences are stark. The former emerged following the lengthy and detailed review by Lord Bracadale, set in the context of mounting public concern at the time about a rise in all forms of hate crime, but particularly in relation to anti-seminism and Islamophobia. The latter emerged in the aftermath of an infamous old-form match as a knee-jerk response by the then First Minister Alex Salmond to criticism of him and his Government for doing little or nothing to tackle the scourge of sectarianism. The former reflected a generally recognised benefit to be had from modernising and codifying existing laws, while extending certain protections in place regarding race to cover other protected characteristics, namely age, disability, religion, sexual orientation and transgender identity. The latter reflected a something must be done panic within Government, leading to a decision to use legislative levers to send a message despite repeated warnings, not least from Police Scotland. Those differences are crucially important to bear in mind in the context of this afternoon's debate. That is not to say that the hate crime bill presented to Parliament wasn't flawed. It was fatal if so. The Government did itself and its case no favours by initially failing to include any reference to intent in relation to stirring up offences or even a reasonableness test. Explicit freedom of speech protections were added at stage 3, but would have been helpful on the face of the bill from the very outset. I'll take a brief intervention from Russell Finlay. I'm just slightly confused. I wasn't here in 2021, but the member talks about the legislation being fatally flawed, but its party voted for it. Are they now regretting that decision? If Russell Finlay would listen to what I'm saying, the bill is introduced was fatally flawed, which is why the Government had to come forward with an intent amendment ahead of stage 1, which is pretty unheard of in this place. Of course, there's the question over whether or not to include sex as an aggravator. At the time, Scottish Women's Aid, Rape Crisis Scotland, Zero Tolerance and others all argued strongly against preferring instead a stand-alone misogynyffence that Baroness Kennedy's report subsequently endorsed. There's absolutely no doubt that the continued absence of the misogynyffence leaves a gap in protections that is highly problematic and difficult to defend. Again, as I did following yesterday's statement, I urged the cabinet secretary to publish the promised bill on misogynyff without delay. Rather than belatedly adding sex as an aggravator, as the Labour amendment suggests, I think remains the best way forward. In her statement yesterday, the cabinet secretary also acknowledged failings in the way that the Government has communicated and prepared for the introduction of this legislation. I think that that's fair. It's unfortunate that such an acknowledgement is absent from today's motion, as it certainly helped to contribute to some of the confusion around this issue. At this point, it would be useful to understand what further steps the cabinet secretary and the minister believe the Government can take in order to rectify that and ensure that the law is applied sensitively, practically and in ways that fully respect essential freedoms such as freedom of expression. It was helpful to hear the minister respond to the earlier point that was made by Michelle Thomson and subsequently made by Pauline McNeill in terms of the Miller recommendations and the hope that in terms of non-hate crime incidents, the recording of those may well be done differently going forward. However, whatever the failings around communication or preparation for introduction of this legislation, Parliament needs to decide whether or not it still believes that robust action is required to tackle hate crime. I believe that it is. As I said earlier, I served on the Justice Committee, which scrutinised the bill. I had the privilege of doing so alongside former Conservative MSP Professor Adam Tomkins, who proved to be a hugely effective convener. I still consider a couple of the speeches that he made during the stage 3 proceedings on the bill to be among the finest that I have heard in this chamber over the 17 years that I have been an MSP. In those contributions, he spelt out in terms that Parliament found compelling and persuasive the necessity of including robust and explicit freedom of speech protections on the face of the bill. He also made the important point that such freedoms have never been wholly unfettered. As a result, while it will now be an offence to behaving ways that a reasonable person would consider threatening or abusive, if in doing so you intend to stir up hatred, the law also states that particular regard must be hand to the rights to free speech, including the principle that this right protects communications or behaviours that others may find quote offensive, shocking or disturbing. In my view, this debate would have benefited greatly from the presence and contribution of Adam Tomkins. Let me conclude with the words of Professor Tomkins writing in the Herald earlier this month. If we focus on what the act actually means, rather than on what intemperate voices on both the left and the right are falsely claiming it means, we might yet make a success of it. Thank you, Mr McArthur. We will now move to the open debate, and I call Murdo Fraser to be followed by Audrey Nicoll, Mr Fraser. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Lord Hope of Craighead is the preeminent Scottish lawyer of his generation. He rose to the position of deputy president of the UK Supreme Court and is widely respected for his experience and his knowledge. Last week, in a newspaper article, he called for the Hate Crime Act to be repealed. He is joined in his criticism of the act by a broad range of other opinion, including Joanna Cherry MP from the SNP, from representatives from ALBA, by a wide range of academics, commentators and lawyers, and even significantly, as Russell Finlay reminded us, by the police themselves, with representatives both of the rank and file and of senior police officers expressing their serious concerns about this legislation. I make that point because it is not just the Scottish Conservatives who are calling for this act to be repealed. That may be the case in this chamber, but in wider Scottish society our call is one that has extensive backing. I know that Labour and the Liberal Democrats voted for this act in 2020. I would say to them both that there is no shame in now accepting that that decision was a mistake, and in the light of experience, and in particular the shambolic fashion in which this act has been introduced and the pressure it is putting upon an already hard-pressed police force in them reconsidering that decision and joining us in backing its repeal. I would like to focus my remarks on the issue of non-crime hate incidents, which a number of members have already referred to. Something not actually part of the Hate Crime Act, but closely related, and where we will see, I expect, many more incidents being recorded as a result of the act's introduction. In November last year, a social media post of mine critical of Scottish Government gender policy was reported to the police by a trans rights activist as a hate crime. The police determined that no crime had been committed, but it would be recorded as a non-crime hate incident. I was not informed of this, and indeed I would still be unaware how the activist in question not then reported me to the ethical standards commissioner. The commissioner threw out the complaint, but at that point I became aware of the recording of this hate incident, and at that point in December I wrote to the chief constable asking for an urgent meeting to discuss the implications. I have still not had a reply from the chief constable, but three months later it received a response from my local chief inspector in Perth. Having taken legal advice with the support of the free speech union, it is my view that the recording of these non-crime hate incidents is unlawful in a number of respects, particularly in breach of articles 8 and 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects freedom of expression and in particular political views. It is significant that the police in England and Wales had to change their policy on the recording of non-crime hate incidents based entirely on the perception of the complainer following the judgment in the court of appeal in the case of R on the application of Miller versus the College of Policing, referred to by Michelle Thompson and others. For reasons best known to themselves, Police Scotland did not change their policy at that point. I believe that they now will have no alternative but to do so, but I cannot understand why they are dragging their feet. This matter was made much worse when I discovered that the numerous complaints made against both Humza Yousaf and against JK Rowling two weeks ago as hate crimes were not recorded as non-crime hate incidents in a clear breach of stated Police Scotland policy. I have been in correspondence with the police around this issue, but they have been able to provide me with any satisfactory explanation as to why a different approach was applied in my own case as opposed to that of the First Minister. I sincerely hope that this is not an example of political bias on the part of Police Scotland, but in the absence of any credible alternative explanation that suspicion must remain. I will happily give way to either the Minister or the Cabinet Secretary if they can explain why Police Scotland could take a different approach in my case compared to that of Humza Yousaf. I will give way to Mr Ewing in that case. I share Mr Fraser and Joe Cherry's concerns. Would one way forward to pursue this matter in a rational and considered way to be for the Scottish Government to appoint perhaps an expert lawyer in the field of human rights after having taken soundings and consulting both the law society, the faculty and leaders of political parties in this place in order to ensure that such an appointee to consider this matter and review it is irreprochably independent in order to sort out what I think is a very clear and serious matter in Scotland? Yes, I thank Mr Ewing for that intervention. I think that that is a sensible suggestion he makes and given the inability of the Government to explain what has been going on, any progress would be welcome. I have, after three months of trying, now secured a meeting with the police. I am meeting the Deputy Chief Constable and the chair of the Scottish Police Authority next week. It cannot be acceptable that the police are treating opposition politicians differently from the way they are treating members of the SNP Government. It is simply deplorable that they think they can avoid providing an explanation to the public for their actions. In any liberal democracy we have a principle that must be applied of policing by consent. That means that the police must be answerable for and accountable for their actions. I would urge the minister, therefore, regardless of whether or not this motion carries today, to ensure that the police are acting in a fair and balanced manner in the application of their policies. We will be in a very dark place as a country if that does not happen. Hate crime has long been a scourge on Scottish society and we all have a responsibility to challenge it. The Hate Crime and Public Order Scotland Act was passed by a majority of MSPs in March 2021 following the independent review of hate crime legislation undertaken by Lord Bracadale. In his report, Lord Bracadale reminds us that legislation will not change attitudes on its own, but clearly defined legislation and well-developed procedures will increase awareness of hate crime and can contribute to attitude note change. I am drawn to the definition of hate crime used by Lord Bracadale that offences which adhere to the principle that crimes motivated by hatred and prejudice towards particular features of the victim's identity should be treated differently from ordinary crimes. The Justice Committee stage 1 report on the Hate Crime Bill outlines evidence that was taken from 35 witnesses. Over 2,000 written submissions were received and research commissioned to assist scrutiny on elder abuse and approaches in other jurisdictions. The bill was subject to significant amendment that has been acknowledged here today and that in my view reflects a very robust scrutiny process. The Hate Crime Act consolidates existing protections against offences aggravated by prejudice against the five characteristics disability, race, religion, sexual orientation and gender identity, the same characteristics protected in England in Wales. It includes age as an aggravation and introduces the new offence of stirring up hatred against people by reason of their possessing particular characteristics. The act does not prevent people expressing controversial or offensive views nor does it seek to stifle criticism or rigorous debate. That simply cannot be part of a modern day society. Many of us here today have come into politics, leaving behind a professional life. In my case, that included living through the introduction of many new and challenging pieces of legislation, the Adult Support and Protection Act, Mental Health Care and Treatment Act, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and Hate Crime legislation. The reality that legislation is that legislation takes time to bed in for practice to adapt, for officers to build confidence and experience using new law and for the public to understand what new law means for them. Not for one second can we diminish the importance of making good law that is effective in its purpose, the importance of effective training and guidance and not for one second can we underplay the need for a communication strategy that leaves the public in no doubt about what the new law means for them, a point acknowledged in the cabinet secretary's statement earlier this week. Turning to the motion to repeal the Hate Crime Act, no context, no detail or evidence, no proposal for a replacement and no acknowledgement of the consequences of repeal on legal practice and minority groups. The Labour amendment does not acknowledge it is a matter for Police Scotland and the Scottish Police Authority to ensure that officers are work ready, well trained and competent in their application of the law. It also calls on the Scottish Government to urgently review the implementation of the act, but I am really not clear what that relates to possibly the public education point that Katie Clark raised during her question to the cabinet secretary during yesterday's statement. On that point about reviewing the operation of the act, this fails to acknowledge the reporting requirement in sections 14 and 15 of the act that requires the Scottish Government to publish reports on hate crime convictions and hate crime recorded by the police. Neither the Tory motion nor the Labour amendment makes reference to the fact that Police Scotland is accountable to the Scottish Police Authority. Indeed, the SPA has been tracking and analysing reporting since 1 April. That is its role. Of course, as has been previously mentioned, there is a post-legislative scrutiny embedded in this Parliament that exists to consider the effectiveness or otherwise of law. Through the cloudy landscape of media discourse, there have, of course, been some glimmers of positivity. Professor Adam Tompkins, Justice Committee convener, during the passage of the bill, has stated that the new hate crime act has been misrepresented by temperate voices on the left and the right. James Chalmers, regis Professor of Law at the University of Glasgow, describes the hate crime act as providing a more accurate label for prosecuting serious cases of hatred. Earlier this week, Andrew Tickell, senior lecturer in law at Glasgow Caledonian University, commented, Can it seriously be the Scottish Tory policy that harassing the disabled, assaulting ethnic minorities and dobbing anti-Semitic abuse on synagogues should not be treated in Scots law, as aggravated by prejudice? That is a big part of what repealing the hate crime would achieve. I sincerely hope not. Hate crime is everyone's business and it ruins lives. I hope that today's debate is more about political gesture rather than a serious proposal. I urge members to support the Scottish Government amendment. The Parliament's 25th anniversary year. The thoughts of many journalists and commentators just now are rightly focused on how well it is functioning. Particularly, are we capable of passing good law? Good law is, as Adam Tompkins reminded us, the concept of endurance prudence, which decrees that a legal action is both valid and able to hold legal weight. Not a law that has to be overturned or rendered obsolete. It is a law that is the basis for effective policymaking and, as such, it requires a clarity of purpose, to be understood in simple language, to be strong in its evidence base, to be workable and, of course, to be accepted by the public. In short, it should balance the requirement for simplicity with legal precision. Those are surely the criteria against which we should examine the Hate Crime Act. I do not doubt for a minute that the basic intentions of the act were good ones. Who can argue against the fact that hate is an all-too-privileged cancer amongst our society? And who can argue against protecting vulnerable minorities who tend all too often to be the victims? That is why, during stage 1, the bill three years ago, those principles were supported by every party in the chamber. The problem is not the intention, but, as only the Scottish Conservatives pointed out at the time, it is the fact that the act does not meet the thresholds for good law. Instead, it constitutes bad law because it is based on an unsound interpretation of the legal principles and on a proposition of law that is erroneous. The First Minister and the proponents of the act assure us that the bar for prosecution is set high, but then we find out that the police have been recording hate incidents even if they do not meet a criminal threshold. Worse still, individuals might not know that they are on that recorded list as happened to Murdo Fraser. That assurance does not hold water. I won't, if you don't mind. Nor does the fact that there is no clear distinction between private and public settings. It is rightly anathema to free-thinking Scots to recognise that, potentially in the privacy of their own home, they can commit a crime that will be reported on. The real problem for this act is that it is attempting to crack down on a problem that is not clearly defined, thus muddying the waters about the right balance between freedom of expression and human rights. It goes well beyond Lord Bracadale because it is based on how you are perceived by someone rather than on your belief or your action. As the law society reminded us at stage 1, all victims of whatever characteristics cannot by this act have the same expectation of what is offending behaviour. That means that there is no clear line between offensive behaviour that has been criminalised and that which has not. No doubt why the Scottish Police Federation is so concerned about this act being unworkable. There is a wider issue here, too. Why is it when so many stakeholders raised concerns that they were not listened to by the Scottish Government? The First Minister tells us that the current controversy about the act is largely a result of misinformation and misrepresentation among what he described as the Holyrood bubble. How wrong he is if he thinks it is just politicians making a fuss. What bothers me more is the fact that this is by no means the only example of the Scottish Government's unwillingness to listen in order to prevent the inaction of bad law. We saw it in gender recognition, in the offensive behaviour at football, in railway policing and in named persons, all of which failed to adhere to the principles of good law. Despite the good intentions, part 2 of the Hate Crime Act is illiberal, intrusive and deeply flawed. Just like named persons, it is deeply unpopular with the public because they can see these glaring flaws all too clearly. Just like named persons, the legal responsibilities are confused. Just like named persons, the Scottish Government does not appear to be listening to the legal advice or to the police or to the many stakeholders who feel that it will be an intrusion into privacy and personal choice. Just like named persons, fair-minded people can see that the bill as it currently stands is unworkable. The Scottish Conservatives opposed the Hate Crime Act not to scare munder or to incite fear, but because it was wrong, and that is why it should be repealed. I finished, not only should the Scottish Government be asking itself about why it fails to heed the right advice, but it should reflect on why it ends up with too much bad law. That is a debate for another day. Today's debate is an important one because we need robust good law and we must discuss if things have not gone well. In my view, the SNP has yet again failed to effectively implement important legislation. Constituents are telling me that the SNP run a Government founded upon incompetence, and in the last few days and weeks the Government has been in denial about the strength of feeling across communities on this issue. Poor governance and poor implementation of legislation will inevitably lead to challenge after challenge, struggle after struggle, and, for the First Minister, that has been the story of his leadership so far. Why is that important? That is important because people do lose confidence, I give way. Will she acknowledge the point that the minister made some time ago, on what the members' views are about implementation, that there have been orchestrated campaigns in this country to waste police time around the implementation of the act by what can only be called bad faith actors? I thank the member for the intervention. You will see in my speech that I go on to discuss the way in which we need to be responsible as parliamentarians in this area. The implementation and subsequent reaction by Government to the hate crime bill has shown that this Government is not performing. It is a Government completely out of touch. Again, I want to raise the issue. The reason that this is important is because it causes our communities to lose faith. Now, as noted by my colleague Pauline McNeill, the SNP had an opportunity to show that this act could be sensibly and correctly implemented, but instead we have ended up with a disastrous messaging system, while completely failing to resource and train Police Scotland. This is not an issue in which the SNP can employ their usual dither and delay tactics. It needs urgent and purposeful action to correct things before our communities do completely lose faith. As we have heard, I thank the member for the intervention. I think that it is really important that, for the last year, I have met regularly with justice partners, including Police Scotland. We were not going to implement this act until Police Scotland was ready with the implementation of the computer system and in training. That is what the date was on Police Scotland's terms. I think that if we have a matured debate about this, we can see that Police Scotland is struggling. We know that they are under resourced, and we know that the training in Police Scotland was only a small two-hour package. We can see from this important legislation that that was not enough. I am not going to go back over the points made by Michelle Thomson, Pauline McNeill and others about the human rights law compliance, because I think that the minister has tried to address this, and I hope that the cabinet secretary will address it again in our closing remarks. What is important to me is about the way in which our communities are being failed. We are failing on the message in front, but more importantly, we are failing on the promises that were reiterated by the minister in our opening remarks today on tackling hate crime in this country. It is important that we tackle hate crime in this country. That is where I am going to go on and say that, in good conscience, I cannot sit back today and listen to the Conservative Party trying to take the moral high ground. Members here are part of a Conservative Party that tries to pit workers against workers that politicises the most vulnerable in our society, including those seeking refuge, and a Conservative Party that has fallen so far that it has no interest in fighting an election on the record, but on dividing communities and creating tensions within them. I urge the public—not at this point—to see the move on the Conservatives today, not as a movement in favour of freedoms of speech or expression, but rather as a further attempt to exploit, often, most vulnerable people in our community. I maintain that there is nothing positive to say about the SNP's implementation of the bill, but the Conservative approach is, in my view, opportunistic. I have confidence that the public will say that. Of course. I am grateful to the member for giving way. I am not sure if she has been following what the Conservative members have been saying in this debate, but the reason that we are opposing the act and why we want it repealed is because it is based on bad law. It has nothing to do with political policymaking or anything. It is based on bad law, and that is why so many people in Scotland are objecting to it. I find the member's contribution is always very reasonable, but in the context of the Conservatives within the framework, I find that they do not perform well. I do not have much time left, so I want to come very importantly to the Labour amendments around section 12, and the use of that act to add the characteristics of sex as an aggravator and protected characteristics under that act. I have limited time, but I would ask members why I believe this. You only have to listen to some of the excellent speeches from the women at that time. My colleague Joanne Lamont and others, Pauline McNeill, contributed greatly to that debate. I think that the minister and the cabinet secretary must accept that we cannot wait the four years and that continuing along the same path that they have does not mean that the issue will disappear. I do not have much time left. I want to close by saying that I hope that the Parliament will support Labour's amendments because it is a very balanced way of approaching how we can implement this very important legislation. I welcome the chance to speak in this debate as a member of the current criminal justice committee and as a member of the justice committee when the Hate Crime and Public Order Scotland Act was passed in 2021. The debate will hopefully sort out the facts from the fiction of which there has been an abundance since the start of the month. In 2021, the justice committee was convened by former Tory MSP Professor of Public Law Adam Tomkins, who skilfully steared the bill through the various stages until it was passed by 82 members in this Parliament. In recent weeks, Professor Tomkins has confirmed that some of the key pillars of the new law, such as its provision of criminalising the stirring up of hatred, have been around for decades. Indeed, stirring up of racial hatred has been on the statute books in Scotland since 1986. Professor Tomkins explained that what the Hate Crime Act does is to take that core idea, stirring up racial hatred, and apply it to a range of protected characteristics, not just race. Can the member tell me how Professor Tomkins voted in this legislation? Yes, I am aware of where he did not vote for it. I am not talking about that, I am talking about his recent comments and also the process going through committee. He has his own reasons for not voting for it. What the Hate Crime Act does is to take the core idea and apply it to a range of protected characteristics, not just race, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity, age and disability. The idea is not new. In England, it has been a crime to stir up hatred on religious grounds since 2006 and on grounds of sexual orientation since 2008. One of the things that the new Hate Crime Act does is to bring that anomaly to an end. Crucially, he confirmed that offensive speech is not criminalised by this legislation. Let us be clear that hate crime has a hugely damaging and corrosive impact on victims, their families and communities. People have been afraid to leave the house, been bullied and harassed at work and living in a state of perpetual fear. I cannot imagine how difficult and distressing that must be. That act is designed to protect people from the worst of this human behaviour and give them greater protection. Who could argue with that? Whether Tory is apparently with this ludicrous motion which would leave Scotland the only nation in the United Kingdom with no protection for vulnerable groups at all. They want to roll back. I am very grateful. Does the member not concede that whatever the bill and the act were designed to do—which, at stage 1, she will recall that we all voted for—it is the implementation that is fundamentally at flawed? Rona Mackay. I am not sure that it is reasonable to talk about implementation 17 days after an act is introduced. They want to roll back in common sense legislation designed to protect our citizens who need it most. It is incredible that a motion in this chamber has been put that could roll back protection and give free rein to hate speech and abuse. The act has been deliberately and wrongly, in my opinion, conflated with the debate around transgender rights, despite disability, faith and sexual orientation also being protected characteristics. The fact is that this debate should not be so divisive. No one wants to curb free speech, and this bill certainly does not do that. The right to freedom of expression is specifically written on the face of the bill. The act is also compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights, including article 10, which protects everyone's right to freedom of expression. There is also a defence available that the behaviour or communication was, in particular, circumstances reasonable. The new laws were developed following Lord Bracadale's independent review of hate crime legislation, which concluded that new specific offences relating to stirring up hatred were needed. The legislation was subject to extensive consultation and engagement throughout, including with communities affected by hate crime. It was widely amended on a cross-party basis, and it is probably the most amended bill that I have ever been involved in. The act is a high threshold for criminality for the new offences in the legislation. It has to be proven that the behaviour is threatening or abusive and intended to stir up hatred. If the bill was repealed, as the Tories want, we would effectively be condoning the stirring up of hatred against minorities and vulnerable people. Hate crime is behaviour that is both criminal and rooted in prejudice. It can be verbal, online, physical and it is ugly and has no place in a modern Scotland. A modern Scotland where our police officers are trained to combat prejudice, the pity is that such is the level of misinformation police Scotland have had to correct inaccurate media reports about training materials. A level of misinformation that has opened the doors to a flood of excessious anonymous reports to the police. I am willing to bet that they come from people who complain that the police do not have time to fight crime. The irony is astounding. In conclusion, I find it interesting, but probably not surprising, sadly, that the stushi around the act did not take place in any other part of the UK or internationally where hate crime legislation is in place. The underlying reasons for this are, of course, open to debate. I want my children and grandchildren to grow up in a Scotland without hate and prejudice, to know that everyone is equal, whatever their race, disability, transgender identity, sexual orientation or age. Repealing the act would do future generations a great disservice and Scotland deserves better. I will not support this motion at decision time. Thank you, Mr Mackay. I call Jamie Greene to be followed by Stuart McMillan. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I really need to clear something up. Having a problem with this bill does not and never will mean that we can do in hatred in any shape or form. And I say that directly to the members who have stated that, because hatred in all its forms is wrong. Racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, all of it is wrong. That is not up for debate with me. The problem is that Lord Bracadale's suggestion that Scotland's hate crime landscape was confusing was probably a correct one. The early incarnation of the hate crime legislation was probably well-meaning. We never disagreed that tackling hate crime was important. We never disagreed that the bill itself improved as it went through the legislative process. But we were also clear that our red lines had been crossed. Much has been said of Professor Tomkins. He is not here to speak. But what he did say is a matter of record. He voted against that bill, and here is why. Here are his own words. Even amended, after all the work that we have done, the bill continues to pose a real risk to our fundamental rights and liberties. It is there in black and white. So he and we and eight others in this chamber did not support the final proposal. It is interesting that none of those eight are still in this Parliament today, but Liz Smith is absolutely right. Bad law with good intention was becoming the norm in the last session of this Parliament. Laws which created confusion rather than clearing it up were becoming the norm as well. At least the Offensive Behaviour Football Act, one such error in my view, was repealed when this Parliament finally showed some grit and teeth. Those were the days. Our red lines were unambiguous and clear. First, this bill was not, as it has been claimed, directly comparable to legislation elsewhere in the UK. It clearly went much further. Second, the bill created defences which were vaguely worded, which were widely misunderstood and impossible to enforce. We now know that. Thirdly and fundamentally, this bill has fallen on its own sword of the unnecessary intrusion into individuals' rights, including their privacy in their own home. That is why we voted against it. Yes, we tried to improve it. The dwelling defence amendment number five, the inclusion of six as a protected characteristic amendment number four, I voted for both of those amendments. The Government did not. It was clear back then that this was way much more than a consolidation bill. It veered far into the territory of articles eight and ten of the European Convention, and everything that we said would happen has happened. It has become a vehicle for vexatious complaints and huge numbers being made to the police. You can be accused of a hate crime with no means of finding out by whom or why. You have no idea of any record remains of it, and I think that that should be a concern to all of us, whatever your politics. The question was never about whether we were for or against tackling hatred. That is a nonsensical argument. It is about whether this law was the right way to go about it. Was it clear? Was it proportionate? Was it enforceable? If it failed those tests, I would not support it and I did not support it. Like many people, albeit for different reasons, I have had my fair share of bigotry over the years. I know that because my poor office staff have to delete most of it and my poor mother reads the rest of it on Facebook, but the question is how I choose to respond to it. More importantly and philosophically, do people hold the fundamental right to hold views towards me which I or others find offensive? Back in 2021, Humza Yousaf, then Justice Secretary, was clear. He stated, if you believe that sex is immutable, if you prosyptlise that same-sex union is sinful, and, for the record, I disagree with both of those comments, none of that would fall foul of the law, stating that a belief is not what this law was about. The question that we must ask ourselves today is, given that there have been 10,000 reported hate crimes since April 1, how many of those were actually about what this law was about? Of course, you need laws to protect people. I benefit from laws that protect me. You cannot discriminate against me because of my sexuality, and I supported, perhaps not without consequence, reform to gender recognition in this place. I do not regret that, but I struggle to see why somebody who holds a different view to me on that matter expresses it and that becomes a police matter. That is the conundrum that I have grappled all the way through this process, because I fundamentally believe in freedom of speech. This bill ventured way into the territory that criminalises not just what you say or what you do but on how you are perceived. Free speech is not carte blanche to say anything you want, to anyone you want, to any cost with no recourse and no consequence. I understand that, but we do know justice to tackling hatred. If people believe that their thoughts and views are being policed in the most granular and inappropriate way that a Government can, that was my red line back then, and that is still my red line today. Sometimes, Governments just make bad law. It is as simple as that. They do not eradicate hatred, they do not inform the public discourse. I will say to Members that I thought I made a mistake by voting against this bill the first time around. Trust me, I would say so. Today, we have the rare benefit of hindsight, and today, starting off, I, too, will vote to repeal the bill. Thank you, Presiding Officer. There has been a vast amount of misinformation about this act, and that is why I wanted to speak today. At the outset, I would like to put on record—pardon? We have heard a lot about misinformation, but I would like to ask the member if he can point to one specific example of misinformation from Members in this chamber. I have really just started, so I will continue and then see if it answers Mr Russell's question. At the outset, I would like to put on record my disappointment at the way that the legislation has been conveyed publicly. Some media outlets have sadly helped to peddle the narrative that the Hate Crime Act is about limiting or removing free speech. That could not be further from the truth. Fundamentally, Hate Crime is behaviour that is both criminal and rooted in prejudice, and it can be verbal, physical, online or in person. The Hate Crime Act therefore aims to tackle the harm caused by hatred and prejudice and provide greater protections for victims and communities. The legislation does not, and I repeat, does not prevent people from expressing controversial, challenging or offensive views, nor does it seek to stifle criticism or rigorous debate in any way. The right to freedom of expression is specifically built into the act. It is the height of hypocrisy that the Conservatives are asking this Parliament to repeal this act, citing free speech limitations, when their Westminster colleagues are campaigning for the UK to leave the European Convention on Human Rights. Audra Nicol, in her contribution earlier, spoke about the consequences of the repeal of this act. She spoke about it very eloquently. I quite agree with the member that the tension behind the act was that, importantly, it was amended as such so that people could express their views, even if they were insulting or offensive. I just wondered if the member has given thought to what Murdo Fraser said. If there is a high bar for criminality, why are we experiencing these issues where people are being reported to the police for something that should be nowhere near a police station? There was a comment from one of my colleagues earlier. I know that Pauline McEwen will post that question with a genuine question. One of my colleagues earlier spoke about some of the actors out there in society who certainly do not want this act to succeed. There are bad actors out there in our society, sadly. We have to accept that there are not everyone, but there are. In my opinion, some of those bad actors will also have had an effect upon what has happened in the media over the last couple of weeks. I come back to the point regarding the European Convention on Human Rights. This is despite the UK Health and Draft ECHR being one of the first states to ratify in 1851. That is important because the ECHR offers significant protections on the right to life, liberty, a fair trial, freedom from discrimination, freedom of assembly and freedom of expression among other legal safeguards. Despite some of the grandstanding by the Prime Minister, the UK remains a participating member of the convention, the European Court of Human Rights and the Council of Europe. Where the Conservative UK Government seeks to abandon human rights, this SNP Scottish Government seeks to further enshrine it in our proposed human rights bill. Another crucial point that has been lost in some of the public discourse is that the Scottish Act mirrors legislation in England and Wales, but you would not believe that to be the case if you were to read some of the criticisms that the law has attracted online. This is an inconvenient truth for those who do not support this Government, devolution or this Parliament. The talking down of this Parliament continually on what it does has went into hyperdrive in recent years. The criticism of this act is just the current manifestation of those actions. For clarity, I have already taken to the new offences for threatening or abusive behaviour that is intended to stir up hatred based on prejudice towards characteristics, including age, disability, religion, sexual orientation and transgender identity and variations in sex characteristics. It reflects the law in England and Wales that recognises five types of hate crime based on race, religion, disability, sexual orientation and transgender identity. Any crime in England and Wales can therefore be prosecuted as a hate crime if the offender has demonstrated his hostility based on those characteristics or been motivated by his hostility based on those traits. As you know and the chamber should know, the stirring up of racial hatred has also been on the statute books in Scotland since 1986. Therefore, the stirring up of hatred provisions in the hate crime act are not new, and the new law actually implements a higher threshold for canalty than the long-standing stirring up of racial hatred offence. As politicians are sure, we all recognise that hate crime does not just take place online, and we all sadly know of colleagues in this chamber who have experienced threats. Sometimes these threats have extended to our staff, which has been the case recently in my office. I mention this as a reminder to all MSPs of the role that we play in informing the public about legislation passed in this Parliament. There is a simple law of physics. With every action, there is a reaction, whether intentional or not, that misleading people is counterproductive and, in some instances, can be dangerous. I want to thank the cabinet secretary for her statement yesterday, although sadly it had to be made. Clearly, some lessons have to be learned about how legislation is communicated to the public. Fundamentally, we as legislators must consider our language and our actions. Politics can be a robust business, and that is healthy in any democracy, but what we should not be doing, however, is to allow our criticism to cloud debate with misinformation, as I have regrettably found to be the case on too many occasions when discussing this act. It is clear that many Conservatives do not like the idea that victims and survivors of threatening or abusive behaviour on account of their disability, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity or age deserve protection of the law. They want to repeal the legislation that was passed by an overwhelming majority of this Parliament three years ago, a majority that included one of their own members. At a time when we have seen increasing hate crimes against, for example, disabled people and people on the basis of their sexual orientation, and given the previously confusing hate crime legislation in Scotland, it is clear why Lord Bracadale considered such legislation necessary. If the Hate Crime and Public Order Scotland Act 2021 were to be repealed, we would have, at best, fractured and scattered protections against hate in Scotland, given this act itself repealed previous hate crime legislation. If that is the intent of the Tory notion today, if the Tories really do want us to have virtually no hate crime legislation in Scotland, it is a pretty damning indictment on what that party thinks of so many of the freedoms outlined in much of international and UK human rights law and other civil protections. We have heard much in Tory contributions of how we must stop sowing division in Scotland, of the importance of freedom of speech, of the value of communities coming together. I do not disagree with these sentiments or intentions, but it is clear, Presiding Officer, that this debate is in danger of being flooded with the crocodile tears of Conservatives. Crocodile tears because they care not a jot about freedom of speech. Their party in government at Westminster is responsible for a series of authoritarian attacks on the rights of people to express themselves. If it is not curtailing the right to protest, it is supporting the police arresting journalists covering those protests. All served with a side of undermining workers' rights to withdraw their labour. Such restrictions, as contained in the Police Crime Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 and the Public Order Act 2023, to name but 2, have been condemned as draconian and deeply concerning by UK and international human rights organisations. The UK Government cheerfully stears the country into the third tier of the index on censorship rankings for freedom of speech, while those in this chamber claim that the only important thing is that they or their pals get to freely misgender people, stir up hate and generally make people feel unsafe. The UK ranks alongside Moldova for freedom of expression in no small part because of the government policy at UK level. It is all a piece with a broader Tory agenda to silence opposition. While universities in England are to be compelled to host hate speakers, Priam Vada Gopal was disinvited from a Home Office event for having the temerity to write about the failings of the British Empire. If you want to promote sexism on campus, the Tories are all for it. If you want to point out that British forces tortured Kenyans during the Mao Mao Insurgency, you will be silenced. So what Conservatives are interested in is not free speech. It is the silencing of opponents and a free platform for those who want to spread the sort of speech they agree with. Given that today they are opposing measures against hate speech, I think that we can all see what the character of the speech they support is. Presiding Officer, the act passed with cross-party support three years ago does two main things. It requires courts dealing with existing crimes such as assault or criminal damage to consider aggravating hate factors and to create new offences of stirring up hatred. Neither of those is entirely new or unprecedented. Scottish law already recognised that where an offence is prompted by, for example, racial or religious hatred, the sentence should reflect our society's shared belief that such bigotry is unacceptable. Similarly, we already had a long-standing law against stirring up racial hatred, while other parts of the UK also have laws against stirring up hatred based on people's religion or sexual orientation. The act brings these provisions together and extends their protection to the characteristics of age, transgender identity and disability. It rightly retains the existing robust understanding of stirring up racial hatred, but in relation to the other characteristics there are multiple safeguards to ensure the protection of free speech. It is only where someone intends to stir up hatred is not acting reasonably and a reasonable person would consider the behaviour threatening or abusive that an offence might be committed. It does not criminalise discussion of gender issues, criticism of policies or ridicule of religion. It also abolishes the outdated offence of blasphemy as the minister outlined earlier. Presiding officer, contrary to what the Tories would have us believe, this legislation is not an act of censorship but one of protections. Protections for people who should never have to face abuse, violence or hate in person or online just for being who they are. Presiding officer, the life of the hate monster was indeed a short but an infamous one because the hate monster became known all over the world. As I heard from friends in places as far away as New York and the Far East, that achieved something that I did not really think was possible. For a short while, at least, the hate monster became better known than the Loch Ness monster, which I had not contemplated was possible. I hope that it is axiomatic and others have made this point that everyone in this chamber must abhor hateful, abusive, horrendous, disgusting remarks and behaviour of a very serious nature. I think that it is just not really helpful to the debate to suggest that some members in this chamber, with whom we may happen to disagree politically, somehow are condoning, permitting or in some way favouring the expression of hatred. Nobody does here. We are a civilised chamber. It is not a sensible point to make in the debate. It does not travel well. Are we saying that people out with the political bubble here or class or whatever you want to call it, people like Lord Hope, people like the police federation, people like J.K. Rowling, whose world is not a politics but of other types of interests entirely, we are not suggesting that they somehow are in favour of condoning, permitting or encouraging. Of course they are not. What they are doing is expressing legitimate criticisms. As it happens, not just because I voted for this bill, Presiding Officer, when I was bound by collective responsibility and I regretted that I would have liked to have included women as a protected grouping, of course, and that really must be put right. I am not going to be voting for the Tory amendment today, because I do not believe that this bill needs to be repealed, as Liam McArthur argued in his excellent contribution. However, I do think that there is a strong case that it should be reformed in many ways. I do not have time to address some of the issues. I just want to address one. That is the issue of non-hate crime incidents, almost an oxymoron. As a lawyer and someone who studied the law almost every day in one way or the other since 1979 and who studied before then at Gilmaw Hill, I remember attending the criminal law classes and reading Gerald Gordon's excellent text and studying crime. I do not remember the chapter about non-hate crime incidents. In fact, I do not remember any chapter about incidents. What are incidents? In Scotland, if someone is charged with a crime, they have the right to defend themselves, the right to a fair trial. That is our system. That does not apply to these incidents. Mr Fraser's experience is absolutely apt. I understand from discussion with him that he only found out that there was this black mark on his name, because the complainant had made a complaint to the Ethical Standards Commissioner, who then informed Mr Fraser of it. It was only fortuitously that Mr Fraser even found out that there was a black mark against his name. I understand. I have given notice to the Justice Secretary of this line of argument. I do think that the Justice Secretary dealt with many of the points that are concerned to be satisfactorily. I respect her efforts and I appreciate her help. I know that she advocates a review by the police and Martin Evans. I am happy to give way, of course. I am grateful to Mr Ewing for giving away. I need to take some care when individuals have complaints and issues that they may or may not be seeking legal redress. I need to be very careful not to step into operational matters. I want to put on record the conversations and exchanges that I have had with Mr Ewing. I have indeed discussed issues in and around the broad policy of non-crime hate incidents with the chair of the Scottish Police Authority and will intend to do so again, because I accept that clarity on those matters is indeed very important. I thank the Justice Secretary for the engagement. I gather that, if I were to make a subject to access requests to the chief constable as to whether there are any marks against my name, I would get a blank sheet of paper. He would not tell me, because apparently the information is held on something called an interim vulnerable person's database. When have we debated this? I do not recall it. Is it not even more insidious actually that you can have a black mark on your name without even knowing about it? In what sort of democracy are we living in here? I mean, I used to read serious novels, I do not know any longer about it. I remember reading Franz Kafka, and that is the name that springs to mind here, because this is not a feature of Western democracy where the right to a free trial is a cornerstone, a pillar of our system. It is an abnegation of that. Why are we tolerating it? With respect, cabinet secretary, I think that giving a lead is the role of this Parliament, not just leaving it to the police and sitting on the sidelines as a spectator. I do think that the suggestion that I made, which is that there should be an independent expert human rights lawyer selected after agreement with all relative parties to ensure an irreproachable degree of independence could be the right way to take this forward and end what I see as a perversion on our justice system in Scotland. I call Liam Kerr to be followed by Christine Grahame. Presiding Officer, looking at the amendments, both those selected and not, and listening to the remarks of those parties which submitted them, what is striking is how surprised they all seem at what has transpired, because everything that has happened since this came into effect was warned about loud and clear during the bill's passage. Whether that be Lucy Hunter Blackburn warning, the people this will get used against are much more likely to be working class, followed recently by the stupid infantilising hate monster campaign saying utterly egregiously, we know that young men aged 18 to 30 are most likely to commit hate crime, particularly those from socially excluded communities. Whether that be Police Scotland's submissions at the time that the bill's costs had been, quote, grossly underestimated, sometimes completely unaccounted for, followed last week by the SPF warning the act will lead to frontline spending restraints and reduced ability to deliver effective policing. Whether that be Scott Wortley warning the legislation, quote, leaves it open for pressure to be put on people through vexatious complaints, which take time and energy to defend, Roddy Dunlop at the time warned about potential weaponisation, followed last week by a 74-year-old mild-mannered pensioner being left traumatised, distressed and shaking, having been arrested for reportedly being vexatiously accused of a verbal hate crime. Or whether that be the Society of Editors warning, the reasonable person test stands every chance of being hijacked and used to silence free speech and penalise a free media, followed by Scottish Pen recently expressing deep alarm at police officers potentially questioning a comedian saying an offensive joke or an actor reported for communicating, threatening or abusive material. Or finally, the law society's concerns that the freedom of expression provisions lack a degree of clarity and sends confusing messages, so people don't know what the boundaries are or unintentionally commit a hate crime, to which we now see the pantomine hate monster telling us before you know it, you've committed a hate crime. The minister going on national radio last week and the cabinet secretary just yesterday in this chamber wrongly stating that behaviour must be threatening and abusive if even the government that passes the legislation can't get it right. What chance does the public have? Yet, Presiding Officer, despite all the warnings, instead of doing their job and dispassionately and competently assessing this law, ensuring that it turned basic principles and intentions upon which we were all agreed into coherent, clear, workable law, supine MSPs in the last Parliament from all parties bar the Scottish Conservatives voted through this act. Presiding Officer, we cannot ignore the role and approach of the then cabinet secretary for justice. A man who the official record shows hid behind the shield of government numbers whilst attacking with the sword of sarcasm and supposition to defeat sensible amendments from across this chamber, who set his face against the voices of Civic Scotland warning him over and over that, whilst the principles of hate crime protection may be sound, the implementation would be exactly what we now see coming to pass. Presiding Officer, this was the author of what was at the time the most controversial bill in Holyrood history, First Minister, on its implementation, who hasn't even bothered to come to the chamber today. Presiding Officer, this suggests two things about the current First Minister. Either he was so blinded by dogma, by ideology, he was prepared to throw good law, good principles and workable protections against hate crime under a bus, or he simply was incapable of understanding how laws are drafted and operate, or perhaps both. Presiding Officer, I said whilst amending at stage 3, we must make good law to protect people, but we must also make good law, law that does what it needs to do without unintended consequences. The previous parliament failed to achieve that, and Scotland has on its statute booked an act that won't work, will be counterproductive and in many respects looked like being actively prejudicial. In the streets and in my inbox, people across Scotland are frankly shocked by how this unworkable legislation wormed its way into public life, rammed through by a group of craven SNP MSPs, egged on by Labour and Liberal Democrats. Presiding Officer, let this parliament write the wrongs of the last, consign this appalling hate crime act to history and with it the premiership of this incompetent First Minister. I call Christine Grahame to be followed by Paul O'Kane. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. Well, I've been called craver now, which has news to me. Cards on the table, Presiding Officer. I prefer light, not heat, and fact, not fiction, so some fact. Let's go to the hate crime statistics, pre-dating the legislation. Between 2014 to 2015, the hate crimes recorded each year, and I'm saying crimes, in Scotland was between 6,300 and 7,000. So hate crimes not new, though perhaps the public, like many of us, were not aware of the extent. Fact, just under a third of hate crimes in Scotland involved a victim who experienced the incident at their place of work or whilst undertaking duties as part of their occupation. Fact, most of those victims were working in retail or other service industries. Fact, in 2020 to 2021, one in four recorded hate crimes had a police officer victim rising to 37 per cent for religion and 45 per cent for sexual orientation aggravated crimes. In January 2023, the police recorded nearly 7,000 hate crimes in 2021 to 2022, so those have been going on perhaps with us not realising an unnotice. So what happened in the rest of the UK? Well, ours is similar to legislation, not the same, but similar to England and Wales, where the law recognises five types of hate crime on the basis of characteristics of disability, race, religion, sexual orientation and transgender identity. We have introduced age, which is good and I hope will lead older people to report offences against them in part because they are old, simply because they are old. Elsewhere in the UK, England and Wales criminalise stirring up hatred, and that is important, stirring it up on grounds of religion since 2007 and sexual orientation in 2010. In Northern Ireland, the law recognises the five characteristics of disability, race, religion and sexual orientation. Of course, the legislation follows Lord Bakkerdale's independent review in 2018. I turn to just a few of his recommendations. One, recommendation 10, there should be a new statutory aggravation based on age hostility. That is when an offence is committed and it is proved that the offence was motivated by hostility based on age or the offender demonstrates hostility towards a victim based on age during or immediately before or after the commission of the offence, it would be recorded as aggravated by age hostility. The court would be required to state that fact on conviction and I underline this. Take it into account when sentencing. We are talking about aggravations to crimes that have already taken place. That is what an aggravation is. Recommendation 15, the current provisions in relation to stirring up racial hatred under the Public Order Act 1986 should be revised and consolidated in a new act containing all hate crime and stirring up of hatred legislation. Recommendation 16, a protection of freedom of expression provisions similar to that in sections 29J and 29JA of the Public Order Act 1986 and section 7, OBFTCA should be included in any legislation relating to stirring up offences. What has followed, and I am glad that it is admitted by the Government, is a failure to communicate adequately to the public that these offences are not new, with the exception of age as a characteristic, which I am sure the chamber would welcome. That omission, in my view, has been exacerbated by a deliberate Conservative campaign of disinformation—not disinformation, not misinformation. To me, that is barefaced opportunism, which most probably fuelled the many spam complaints in the first week of the legislation, which has in its second week dropped by 75 per cent. Now, I share Fergus Ewing's concerns regarding Murdo Fraser's experience and the experience of others and I trust that the cabinet secretary will give his full comments due consideration, because I think that you have hit the nail on the head there. I, too, will quote from Adam Tompkins, former Conservative MSP and Professor of Public Law, who stated in March, that offensive speech is not criminalised by this legislation. The only speech relating to sexual orientation, transgender identity, age or disability that is outlawed here is speech, which is, and this is not quoted, but I have added this, these are cumulative, not alternatives. One, a reasonable person, two, would consider to be threatening or abusive and which three, my emphasis, was intended to stir up hatred and four, was not reasonable in the circumstances. All tests have to be met. Unfortunately for me, the charge is not led by considered contributions, such as Lewis Smith or even Jamie Greene, but as usual by Russell Finlay, who is not known for similar forensic talents to Adam Tompkins with regard to legislation, but as apparently an insatiable appetite for the next tabloid banner headline with his self-indulgent, flamboyant and frequently reckless contributions here and indeed in committee. That may offend Mr Finlay, but her trustee will appease it. That is an example of my right to expression of free speech, which I know he will defend to the hilt. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. Whilst I was not in this Parliament at the time of the legislation passing, I recognise, as colleagues have, that the legislation was accepted in good faith and sought to act on the findings in Lord Bracadale's review, which we have heard much of this afternoon. We all want to take a moment to recognise that hate crime is pernicious and deeply damaging. At Lord Bracadale in his review went out of the way to highlight the particularly challenging circumstances of growing Islamophobia and antisemitism in Scotland and sought through his recommendations to bring together and consolidate the law in order to make things better in terms of accessing recourse in that regard. However, I think that what we have to reflect on also is that the past fortnight since the act came into force, it has to be an instructive lesson for the Government. It has been a clear demonstration of how the chaotic implementation of a law intended to improve protections for individuals and communities from hate can actively undermine confidence in that law and, indeed, in the operation of that law more generally. It has already been outlined by a number of colleagues and, indeed, in her opening contribution, that the principles of the Hate Crime Act around consolidating hate crime legislation into one body of law, tackling damaging hate crime incidents has, I think, been weakened by the botched implementation from the Government. I think that we need to reflect on a number of issues within that today. Pauline McNeill highlighted this. The omission of misogyny and sex-based hate crimes has left women feeling unprotected. There has been woeful communication, I think, leaving people in the dark about what the bill does and does not do. I think that implementation has been undermined by an adequate training and resourcing for Police Scotland. We have to reflect that there have been three years since the passing of this legislation to ensure that many of those issues have been dealt with. Indeed, to ensure that the police are properly supported in training officers, to ensure that there is clear guidance on practical implementation and interpretation, and to communicate clearly with the public about what is changing. Of course, we have already heard about that three-year delay in terms of the misogyny element that could have been brought into the bill. Of course, we are still waiting for progress on the standalone misogyny law. I think that the inconsistent communication around the act has understandably confused matters. On whole, although I agree with the general principles of the law, we have to look at the serious problems that have been posed. There have been a number of helpful contributions that reflect on some of the challenges, most notably Liam McArthur and Fergus Ewing, which highlighted much of what can be done to improve the legislation and to take that time to reflect. I think that quoting those words from Adam Tomkins as we have heard a number of times is important. He said that if we focus on what the act actually means, rather than on what intermediate and temperate voices on both the left and the right are falsely claiming, it means that we might yet make a success of it. That is where my contribution comes from today. As I say, that implementation has not been a good example of how to go about introducing new legislation in Scotland. I hope that the Government is in a self-reflective mode, because I think that it has to take stock of the challenges and problems that have been highlighted throughout the course of the debate today. The absence of clear communication and guidance is an issue around the police being well resourced and supported, and ensuring that progress is made on what is missing from the act as well. It is clear that there are a number of things that could now be done in order to reflect on the act and to move forward. We have to face the facts of where we are now and what we can do. I think that Pauline McNeill's suggestions and the suggestions within the Labour amendment clearly point to what can be done. The Justice Committee should take an action to immediately undertake work to review the implementation of the act, to look at the specific issues that I have mentioned here this afternoon and other colleagues have as well, and to get into the business of understanding the level of complaints and what the nature of those complaints were in the first week of implementation and what has now happened in terms of that dropping in numbers. That is very important post-legislative scrutiny work that should be undertaken by the Justice Committee, and that is why we are calling for that today, because that is crucially important in terms of moving forward. It is also important that the Government reflects on the broader point about how we resource the police in Scotland. I am seriously concerned about the issues that have been raised by the Police Federation and others about how Police Scotland has been resourced and supported. I have to ask the cabinet secretary to reflect on the cuts that have occurred in community policing across Scotland and the real challenges that have been proposed. I think that I am in my final 30 seconds, so I am sure that she will want to reflect on that within her concluding remarks. I will return to where I began, which is that the intent of this law is right. I think that we are all agreed in this chamber around the challenges that exist in terms of pernicious hate, but it is clear to me that this Government has failed in terms of the implementation of the law, building public confidence and that it must now act, as we have asked for in our amendment, to take action in order to rectify the situation. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Can I just repeat a point made previously, a quote mentioned previously by Orgy Nicol, when she said that the senior law lecturer, Andrew Tickell, having mentioned the following, can it really be Scottish Tory policy that harassing the disabled, assaulting ethnic minorities and dobbing anti-Semitism abuse on a synagogue should not be, in Scots law, treated as aggravated by prejudice, because that is a big part of what repealing the hate crime act would achieve? That was his words. However, we have also, during the course of this debate, said that the Tory spokesperson, when invited to do so, refused to condemn hate crimes or even to acknowledge the existence of hate crimes in Scotland. Given the fact that the Tory motion proposes no replacement to the hate crime act, we have to ask a different question, which is this. What is it about the absence of effective legislation against hatred, against these vulnerable groups mentioning the act that the Tories find so attractive? The motion is performative. I have raised a point of order at the start of the debate. The motion will have no effect on the law as it currently stands. What underlies the Tory motive behind the motion? It is, I think that Stuart McMillan was right, the latest iteration of the toxic elements of the Tory group trying to attack everything about this institution. We have seen attacks on the police, attacks on the judiciary, attacks on the courts and attacks on this parliament. Of course, they could do what they usually do, go to the big brother down south and say, why do not you strike down this law of the Scottish Parliament? I wonder actually if any Tory MSP has asked the Tory Government, Alasdair Jack, if he would consider striking down this law. Of course, the trouble for them is that, of course, in a few months' time, you will see the throwing out of the most venal Government that we have seen in loving memory. Who will then go to play to beat down the Scottish Government? I heard one Tory member refer to hiding behind the numbers. What he was talking about was the majority of this Parliament voting for this. He calls that hiding behind the numbers. That reveals the true nature of the attitudes of the Tories towards democracy in Scotland. Of course, we have seen a campaign with our usual friends. The reason they sometimes see so certain of their case in this chamber is because it is parotied every single word by their friends in the right wing media. That gives them some feeling that they have seemed to have encouraged Douglas Ross to his feet. If he can be brief, I will take his intervention. Douglas Ross. I am grateful to Keith Brown for giving way. Can he explain, does he agree with Lord Hope, the former deputy president of the Supreme Court, who said that this legislation is unworkable and should be repealed? I can answer that very beautifully by saying, no, I do not agree with Lord Hope. I think that over time we will see as we are starting to see already that the act, if people act in good faith, of course can be effective at protecting the people that seek to protect. The reality is that the premise of this debate today, the Tories' objection to this policy and the level of misinformation and mischaracterisation of this act, I am afraid to say that it is permeated in public discussion, is really nothing to do with tackling hate crime at all, but actually a sad indictment of the political, media and online climate that we are living in today, where outrage increasingly takes precedence over facts. It therefore falls on all of us in this chamber, as the cabinet secretary said yesterday, to have a debate that is at least rooted in reality, respect and facts. The climate that has been created has consequences, and the thousands of false complaints made against people who obviously did not commit hate crimes are not only a huge waste of police time, but a sad indictment of the misunderstanding of this act that has been peddled for all the wrong reasons. The fact that nothing has come out of many of these thousands of complaints actually proves the point that just because someone is discussing or criticising aspects of the protected characteristics and that someone has been offended, shocked or disturbed, does not make it a hate crime and is therefore quite rightly not criminalised by the law. Can I say that, although of course, and we heard this through the passage and I will say for the passage of this act as well, of course people have got the right to be offensive to other people, including those within those groups. They do not have to do, though. There is no obligation to be offensive to those people. Let us have a thought for the people in those groups that are suffering anti-Semitism, anti-Islamophobia, who are suffering if they are at parts of groups that are characterised in this act because of the constant attacks on them, encouraged by the climate that we are now seeing. They are living, as has been said, very often fearful in their own homes, and that is largely to do with the public discourse around this. Although we have the right to do that, we do not have an obligation to be offensive to people in those groups. I absolutely defend, and of course, as others have done, defend the right to be offensive if that is what people want to do. That is part of free speech. However, the misplaced anger and frustration generated by the reaction to this act is far too often channeled and not least on-line towards the groups in which the act seeks to protect. Strudman Millan mentioned the effect on many members in this group. I, like many members, have had six threats now. I have had attacks on the constituency. My office manager was in office in the court all day yesterday trying to take forward a case against somebody who wanted to kill me. The abuse is constant. We all know that it is happening, but let us accept some responsibility when we feed that atmosphere. It has real-terms consequences. We have seen that then at Westminster. We do not want to see it happening here. I think that the difference that we have made is that we have two different visions in my view of Scotland. One is that we can have a law that challenges hate, that has an effect of being able to protect vulnerable communities. We have the Tory vision for Scotland, where such protections are no longer there. There is no legal framework. Not only will we not have the new provisions within this act, we will take away previous provisions that will be the least protected part of the UK. That is the vision that the Tories have for Scotland, and we should reject it at a decision time. Thank you. We move to winding up speeches, and I call on Katie Clark up to six minutes, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer, and I am pleased to close this debate on behalf of Scottish Labour. Hate and prejudice has no place in Scotland, and robust laws are needed. We know that there has been a rise in the number of recorded hateful incidents over a number of years. As has been said in this debate on a number of occasions, we already had hate crime legislation in Scotland. However, as Jamie Greene pointed out, this act is more than a consolidation. I was interested in what Audrey Nicholls said about the consultation process leading up to this legislation, which I believe shows again the inadequacy of consultation processes, which consult on general principles rather than specific proposals and a draft bill. As Carol Mocken has said, the Scottish Government has failed to recognise the strength of feeling on this issue in communities. I believe that Mardo Fraser's experience is one of the reasons why the act has been brought into disrepute. Those are sensitive issues, and there has been a failure of leadership by the Scottish Government. The debate in the last Parliament highlighted the complexities of those provisions, and the first few days of the implementation of the act have been shambolic. As Russell Finlay said, the minister herself did not seem to understand the definitions of the offences created by the act, and there has been confusion over what is and what is not a hate crime. The police have been overwhelmed with complaints and the Scottish Police Confederation have complained about poor training. The Scottish Government response yesterday was to announce a fact sheet. The case of the implementation of this legislation has led to a loss of public confidence. Siobhan Brown has said again today that there is a high threshold for criminality, but that has not been part of the communications strategy. She also pointed to a fall in the number of complaints since the first days of the act. Again, however, today, she has made ambitious claims as to how the act will help to marginalise groups. It is therefore hardly surprising that there has been a large number of complaints being made, and I think that the fact that Lord Hope has said that this act is unworkable shows the consequences of failures of communication. As Pauline McNeill said, there is merit in some of the provisions in this act, for example the aggravators. As has been said, Scottish Labour argued strongly during the passage of the act that the characteristic of sex should be included in the legislation. We still believe that this characteristic should be added now, and it should not be necessary to wait for misogyny legislation. The failure to include sex—yes, of course. Rachel Hamilton Women were abused during the passage of the bill. They are abused now. I believe that the SNP used the concerns of the working group to bring forward sex as an aggravator in the stage 3 of Johann Lamont's amendment. They are using the work that they have done on misogyny now as the justification for actually bringing forward that, whereas at the time they should have done that. I think that is Labour going to call for a reform of this bill or a repeal? I believe that the failure to include sex as a characteristic has been extremely damaging to the reputation of this act and indeed to the Scottish Government. I do believe that we need to look at how this piece of legislation has been implemented before we consider the misogyny legislation. As I say, our view is that sex should be added as a characteristic of this bill as an aggravator, but indeed as a characteristic at this stage. The Scottish Police Federation, as she knows, warned that training was just not going to be good enough to handle the inevitable surge in complaints and reported that officers had only been allocated a two-hour training course. We understand that when the legislation came into operation that one in still five had still not completed this course a week after it came into effect, the backlash of the hate monster campaign concludes the view that the communication of what this legislation means has been disastrous and indeed is flagged by the faculty of advocates and indeed by many others. Although the bar for prosecution remains high, there are concerns by many as to how hate crimes are being recorded. The Scottish Government has pledged to systematically and collect data on hate crimes in line with UN recommendations, but, as my colleague Pauline Neill has said, the Scottish Government must set out in its guidance the extent to which it believes the recording of non-hate incidents of human rights compliant, particularly given that in England and Wales, the fixatious complaints are no longer being recorded. It is for all those reasons that we believe that this act needs to be reviewed. As we say, we recognise the need for strong and robust hate crime legislation, but guidance and training in relation to this act needs to be urgently reassessed and sex must be added as a characteristic. Thank you, and I call on Angela Constance up to seven minutes, Cabinet Secretary. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. The premise of the Conservatives today is that they are right and everyone else is wrong, and I think that that diminishes their position and the propositions that they have put forward. It is, of course, important that none of us seek to rewrite history, and some members have spoken very well about the excellent cross-party collaboration as the hate crime legislation passed through Parliament. Yes, there were parliamentarians, the minority, who were fundamentally opposed to it, and some members such as Liz Smith and Jamie Greene have explained in a cogent and legitimate manner and clearly their particular position. It is also to the credit of those who did oppose the bill or who are concerned about it that they put aside their political affiliations and worked on a cross-party basis to amend the bill. Therefore, I am confident that we have robust legislation that will protect those who are vulnerable to harm caused by hatred and prejudice whilst protecting the freedom of expression. It was Parliament at its best, and I will pay tribute to Adam Tomkins, who has probably never been so widely quoted in this chamber. The fact that he voted against the bill, I think, is extra credence to some of his remarks. When he says, propagandists on both sides want to turn up the heat and, once again, much nonsense has been written about what the law will mean. Of course, Christine Grahame made a plea that we need more light and less heat, not just now. In that regard, as I stated yesterday, I will own my responsibilities in that regard. However, I will also challenge others to do likewise, because the last few weeks have been instructive on a number of counts. We know that misinformation and confusion, such as people claiming—not just now—that we have a law in Scotland that means that we cannot say anything derogatory about disabled people. That is a clear example of misinformation that fuels concerns and will seek only to embolden the small minority of people who genuinely pose a threat of abuse and violence. I will not repeat everything that I said in my statement yesterday, because I very much want to help to move matters on and reflect and address some of the substantive issues that members have raised. I will come on a non-crime heat instance and misogyny legislation in a moment. Before I do that, I want to emphasise that, in all of this, we must not lose sight of those who experience hatred and prejudice every day, and it is those voices who have been overshadowed, and it is those voices who have not been heard. I think that Liam McArthur, Carol Malkin and Jamie Greene all spoke well to that in their own way. It was during a session conducted by Glasgow Disability Alliance to form the hate crime strategy that an individual stated that the way that it impacted on my health is that you get so much of it that you just do not want to live no more. Of course, I have to acknowledge the correspondence sent in by 14 organisations today to MSPs, including them, who are utterly supportive of the legislation and what it means to the communities that they represent to be fair to them—not just now—to be fair to them. They have also made a plea, as some members have, for more accessible information, and we will certainly act on that and pursue that. We will do that in collaboration, but it does need people to work together on a fair and equal footing. The very fact that there are 445 police-recorded hate crimes in the first two weeks reinforces the importance of the legislation and shows that it is working. Notwithstanding the high volume of anonymous online complaints, which have, of course, fallen by nearly 75 per cent, we know that not all incidents of hate crimes are reported and do not all come to the attention of the police. We still continue to have an issue where hate crime is underreported. I seriously run out of time, and there are some issues that I wish to address with respect, Ms McNeill. In terms of police funding, £1.55 billion goes into policing in this country. In terms of non-crime hate incidents, the purpose of that process is to focus on the vulnerability of complainers. I will restate that it is important that policy is clear about what information is held about citizens and how it is used and what circumstances. I have discussed that with the chair of the SPA, and I will do so again. I am more than happy to engage with MSPs on that. It is important to, again, put on record that Police Scotland is indeed looking at the guidance that came from the College of Policing and is reviewing its own position, even though that guidance does not directly relate to Scotland. In terms of misogyny legislation, we have a very clear programme for government commitment. It should come as no surprise. Our commitment was to implement the findings of the Baroness Kennedy review. Our commitment was, at the time of the passage of the hate crime legislation, was that the Scottish Government would respond to the recommendations on that independent report after a year. In terms of Katie Clark's very important remark, one of the reasons that we consulted on draft provisions on a misogyny bill was very much to get into the specifics and the details early on. In my plea to members across the chamber, as let's not start fighting up about a bill that has not yet been introduced, let's work together now for the sake of 51 per cent of the population that are indeed a majority and not a minority. I will end by saying that if the Hate Crime Act is repealed and full, Scotland would be the only country in the UK without specific legislation to protect communities from hate. What message would that give victims? What message would that give perpetrators that what hate crime will not be tolerated so much for the party of law and order? Indeed, it sounds like soft justice to me. Thank you. I call on Sharon Dowie to wind up the debate up to nine minutes, please. Apologies for the unorthodox approach, but I have attempted to intervene in the cabinet secretary. I was wholeheartedly support Christine Grahame's flamboyant attack on me, but I was slightly disappointed at her refusal to take an intervention. She made a very serious allegation, which is our party's responsible for disinformation—multiple SNP members have accused us of misinformation. I would like any member over on these benches to intervene on my colleague with any example of misinformation from myself or from my colleagues. Thank you for that. The Hate Crime Act came into force in the first of this month. Already, as my colleagues have outlined clearly today, it has been a disaster within just a few weeks of coming into force. My party warned that this would happen. We warned that it would risk free speech and overwhelm the police. We warned that when the bill was first introduced. We reiterated that throughout the parliamentary process and submitted amendments to stop that happening. We have repeated it countless times in the years since this Parliament voted for it and called for the law not to go ahead. Just before it came into force, we again warned Humza Yousaf directly in this chamber that this law was unworkable. In just a fortnight, our criticisms have already been proved correct. Before getting into the substance of our arguments, I want to deal with the developments yesterday in this new law. Yesterday, seemingly in panic mode, the SNP gave a statement in this Parliament on the implementation of this new law. The Government barely accepted any responsibility for how badly this law has gone. They seem to be blaming everybody else for their own mistakes. They are now desperately claiming their highly controversial new law, which they used to hail as groundbreaking, is barely any different to older laws. They are still arrogantly dismissing almost all criticism. They are refusing to accept just how flawed this law is, even as it unravels day by day. The Government responds to the last fortnight of chaos was to issue a fact sheet about the Hate Crime Act. Let me give the SNP a real fact sheet. The new law is already overwhelming the police with complaints. It is already taking officers away from the front line. I thank the member for giving way. I hear what she says about the number of complaints that were submitted in the first week. If it comes to light that any groups or organisations were orchestrating what looks like an attempt to police waste time, would she condemn those groups? I do not condone any groups wasting police time because the police are under enough pressure, as it is. The lowest number is 10,000, so we do not condone that. It is already being misused by activists. It is already putting neighbours against neighbours and communities against communities. It is already limiting free speech in Scotland. Those are the facts, whether the SNP likes them or not. That is why my party has brought forward this debate, seeking to repeal this law, because the longer it continues, the worse it will get. The more damage the Hate Crime Act will do. Does the member believe that hate crime laws in England and Wales should be repealed? There is a complete difference between the laws in Scotland and England and Wales, in that they would be led to misinformation as well. If it is not removed immediately, the consequences for free speech in Scotland will grow more severe. The SNP and every other party in this Parliament needs to urgently find the nerve to admit their mistake in passing this law, hold up their hands and resolve to fix this mess. That is an argument that my colleagues have put forward strongly and eloquently today. Opening the debate, my colleague Russell Finlay said that this law transformed the bus place of the Enlightenment into a place where free speech has been debased and devalued. He passionately outlined our concerns that this law, a Clypes Charter, or snitches, will turn people against each other—not only neighbours against neighbours, but ordinary people against the police. He highlighted our real fears that the SNP had put the police in an impossible position. They are forcing officers to interpret this vague and poorly defined legislation. Humza Yousaf is effectively using our police force as a shield to deflect all the flaws in this law. Instead of fixing the problems before the law was passed, all those problems have just been shifted to the police. Russell Finlay summed this up perfectly when he said that our opposition to this law is about letting our police officers do their jobs. The Government should listen and reflect on this point that exhausted and overworked police officers are now being ordered by the SNP to police our speech. I also want to focus briefly on the excellent contribution from my colleague Liz Smith MSP on what makes good law and whether this act stands up to that test. Liz Smith asked the question, has this Parliament shown itself capable of passing good law? In her speech today, she dismantled any notions from the Government that this act represents good law. Her comparison of this flawed law to previous mistakes in the Gender Recognition Reform Act, the Offensive Behaviour at Football Act and the Named Persond Act was fitting and appropriate. As she said, there are strong parallels between this hate crime law and mistakes that SNP have made in the past. In her speech, she underlined clearly that one of the central problems with this law is the murky and vague definitions littered throughout the legislation. As a result, there is no clear line between merely offensive behaviour and offensive behaviour that is criminal. As she noted quoting the Scottish Police Federation, this means that there is a potential for many people coming to the police's attention who should not have a knock at their door from officers. On that point, I will also comment on Murdo Fraser MSP's speech, which is already seen personally first hand how hate crime laws can be misinterpreted. Today, focusing his own experiences with the ridiculous enforcements of non-crime hate incidents. What happened to Murdo Fraser, the police recording his details despite no evidence of a crime was unacceptable and wrong and should be called out by every party in this Parliament. He expressed that inconsistencies in how police deal with complaints. There seems to be one rule for some complaints and an entirely different rule for others, which seems to be dependent on the nature of the topic. There are obvious double standards that are certainly a consequence of the introduction of the Hate Crime Act and the misunderstandings that it has created. Murdo Fraser gave SNP ministers a chance to intervene and explain how the police are using non-crime hate incidents, but nobody replied. I also want to mention the powerful speech today from my colleague Liam Kerr, who throughout the parliamentary process nobody did more to continually highlight the flaws in this law. He tried to be constructive, submitting amendments to fix the worst aspects of it, but time and time again SNP ministers refused to listen. Actually, in a closing speech, Angela Constance made a comment of, we are right and everyone else is wrong, but I would say that that would reflect more on the SNP because they do not listen to amendments from around the chamber. His warnings have been proven right. He could be forgiven if he had just stood up today and said, I told you so, but he did not. He once again made convincing arguments about why the Hate Crime Act must go. As he said, this law will not work. It is counterproductive, ideologically driven and incompetent. The SNP Government should reflect on the many warning society today that I have now come to pass. In other contributions—I think that I am running out of time, so I will conclude. My party's concerns about the Hate Crime Act have already come to fruition in just a fortnight. It is having a detrimental impact on free speech in Scotland. It is stretching already overworked under resourced police officers. It is turning communities against one another. Far from limiting hate in Scotland, it seems to be increasing the divisions in our society. Every party in the Parliament must stand up for the principle of free speech in Scotland, Labour and Lib Dem members must wake up and vote to remove this bad SNP law. I urge everyone across the chamber to support the Scottish Conservative motion today. Thank you. That concludes the debate on repealing the Hate Crime Act. It is now time to move on to the next item of business, which is consideration of business motion 12867, in the name of George Adam on behalf of the parliamentary bureau, setting out a business programme. Any member who wishes to speak against the motion should press their request to speak button now. I call on George Adam to move the motion. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I moved. Thank you, Minister. I call on Megan Gallacher to speak to in move amendment 12867.1 up to five minutes. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Yesterday I raised concerns over the ability for elected members to seek a statement from this SNP Government on the cash review. I have tried as many levers as possible so MSPs can raise questions about the cash review findings and whether this Government will adopt all 32 recommendations. I will. John Mason. Would the member not agree that it would be useful for the Government or anyone else to take time and reflect on this before making a statement? Megan Gallacher. This has been years in the making and the Government has had over a week since the review was laid. If John Mason will afford me the opportunity, I will be able to go into other examples of other countries who happen to be following the same pathway as the cash review. In his response yesterday, George Adam MSP said, cash review deals with services in NHS England, not in NHS Scotland. That is true. However, his response shows a clear lack of basic understanding when looking at the overall picture. Scottish children do not respond differently to puberty-suppressing hormones in comparison to children in England. If he had read the report, he would also have known that Scotland is referenced, so this notion that Scotland is different than the rest of the UK is for the birds. Whether George Adam and his Government likes it or not, the cash review raises serious concerns about gender care, especially surrounding psychological support assessments and evidence. Many MSPs have reiterated the importance of making sure that this conversation is respectful. I agree, and that is why I have been calling for a statement so that all opinions can be expressed and to finally get some answers from this Government. I have tried to get some answers again today. I asked the question during health and social care portfolio questions, a simple question. Will the Scottish Government adopt the recommendations of the cash review, including limiting the use of puberty blockers in cross-sex hormones? I still did not get an answer. When she asked when a ministerial statement would take place, no response from the minister Jenny Minto, I would give way to the minister if she is able to give us a date just now. Nothing. A portfolio session is just not enough time to scrutinise a near 400-page report. The Scottish Government has made it clear that it does not want to talk about the review, as it has been dodging every opportunity to bring forward a statement. The worst of it is that Scotland will end up being an outlier. Other countries, such as Belgium and the Netherlands, are all implementing policies similar to the recommendations that are contained within the cash review. I will. My colleague invited the Opposition benches to intervene, and they have not done so, but Keith Brown seems to have plenty to say from a certain position. I invite him to maybe take to his feet. Ms Gallacher continues. The SNP cannot bring itself a pause to puberty blockers until a final decision is made on the future of gender care here in Scotland, but they need to understand that caution must be taken when we are looking at this. Children and young people cannot wait weeks or months for this Government to get their act together. We have heard every excuse, despite MSPs in this chamber raising the issue of puberty blockers in gender care for years. I will continue to raise this issue, not just because I am deeply concerned about the lack of evidence to protect our children, but because this Government cannot be allowed to bury its head in the sand any longer. I will finish with what I said yesterday. Parents, carers and young people and those who have been failed by gender-affirming care in Scotland need and deserve answers. This Scottish Government is failing them by refusing to respond. Therefore, I will move the amendment in my name. I agree with many of the comments from Megan Gallacher, but standing orders prevent me from speaking directly to the amendment. I wish to however express disappointment that there is not a statement on the cast review in the business for next week. The report from Dr Hillary Cass is of considerable importance for the Scottish Government, for the clinicians involved in the Sandiford specialist service and for the children and young people with gender dysphoria. Despite that, the Scottish Government's position is frankly incoherent. First, we have ministers saying that it is nothing to do with the Government and it is for clinicians to decide. Now we have the Government involved in working groups to consider the recommendations. You simply cannot have it both ways. We have ministers and now backbenchers saying that they need time, but they have had Dr Cass's interim report since February 2022. Her recommendations on puberty blockers more recently and Scottish Government officials and clinicians have been talking to her during the whole time of the review, so her recommendations should not come as a surprise. During the passage of the Gender Recognition Reform Bill, ministers rejected any amendments to do with the cast review from your own colleague Claire Baker and others, and they dismissed it entirely. Do you just believe that they are going to dismiss the fully published cast review entirely? I genuinely hope not, because I would like to see the cast review implemented in full. It is a considered evidence-based report, and ignoring it lets down staff and a generation of young people and their families. Making a statement to Parliament is the very least we should expect, because this is ultimately about openness and transparency and doing the right thing for gender dysphoria services in Scotland. Presiding Officer, let me illustrate this. Since the cast report came out, the Minister Jenny Minto, who is not here, and the CMO have been backwards and forwards—oh, sorry, I didn't see her before. I correct the record. I'm delighted to see the Minister here, so she can now confirm what I'm about to say. She and the CMO have been backwards and forwards to Greater Glasgow and Clyde health board. No one can decide what to do about puberty blockers and who should actually take the decision. A press release, I'm told, is to be issued tomorrow after FMQs. Isn't it always the case that this SNP Government care more about the optics rather than the substance? This Government cannot continue to hide away behind closed doors on an issue of such importance. I would urge ministers to allow a statement on the cast report next week that this Parliament should be treated with respect, so should the people of Scotland. I refer members to my comments that were made just over 24 hours ago. Can I also add once again say that the Scottish Government will make its views known when it has reviewed the information, and we will take it from there? The question is that amendment 12867.1, in the name of Megan Gallacher, which seeks to amend motion 12867, in the name of George Adam, on behalf of the parliamentary bureau setting out a business programme, be agreed. Are we all agreed? The Parliament is not agreed, therefore we will move to vote and there will be a short suspension to allow members to access the digital voting system.