 The final item of business today is a member's business debate on motion number 1493, in the name of Monica Lennon, on feminine hygiene products. This debate will be concluded without any questions being put. Would those members who wish to speak in the debate please press a request to speak buttons now? I call on Monica Lennon to open the debate. Around seven minutes, please, Ms Lennon. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I'm really delighted to have the opportunity to lead this discussion on access to feminine hygiene products in Scotland. I say a discussion because I am encouraged by the potential for consensus that I sense is building around this issue and evidenced by the cross-party support for the motion in my name. I hope that this debate can help to raise awareness of the financial and health inequalities linked to menstruation. Osterity and the poverty it creates has a disproportionate impact on women, and period poverty is a secret but very real occurrence of shame and embarrassment for women and girls. This distressing, gendered inequality is one that must be confronted. I am optimistic that women and girls across Scotland will be able to look to their Scottish Parliament tonight and know that this generation of MSPs will rise to the challenge. To remain healthy and safe during menstruation, women and girls need adequate access to tampons, sanitary towels and related products. However, it is an uncomfortable truth that not every women and girl in Scotland can afford to buy essential feminine hygiene products when they need them. My discussions with organisations such as Bernardo Scotland, Scottish Women's Aid and the Trussell Trust confirm that. Just today, a former food bank manager in Dundee told me the heartbreaking story of a young woman who declined the offer of sanitary products because she had not had a period in seven months due to lack of food and malnourishment. Poverty is wreaking havoc with women's bodies. I have been having private conversations with volunteers at food banks and teachers in communities across Lanarkshire and Falkirk in the central Scotland region that I represent. Their stories have convinced me that this is a national issue, and one that I decent and fair-minded Scottish society simply cannot ignore. I have also been following with interest the growing menstrual equity movement across the globe. My feminist heart did a little dance when New York City Council voted 49 to 0 to approve a measure to give women and girls in schools, prisons and homeless shelters access to feminine hygiene products free of charge. After a successful pilot in Queens and the Bronx that brought free pads and tampons to students in 25 public high schools, the mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio, posted a Facebook video where he said that girls should not have to miss class because of their periods. That is a message that I hope we can all endorse. Why are we having this debate today? At the beginning of this summer, I asked the Scottish Government some questions. What recent action had it taken to assess the affordability of feminine hygiene products and the cost of periods to women and girls? Whether it considered feminine hygiene to be a health issue and what action was it taking to tackle the stigma around periods? Last month, the health secretary, Shona Robison, in her reply advised that no specific work had been done to examine that. I found the reply in full rather disappointing on a number of counts. One, that no consideration was being given to the lived experience of women and girls in poverty in relation to their periods. Two, that the link between feminine hygiene, poverty and health was dismissed. And three, that the Scottish Government did not think there was any particular stigma around periods in Scotland. And four, and perhaps the most concerning part of the reply, was that food banks were suggested as a solution for women and girls in need of sanitary products. I have to pay tribute to Daniel Sanderson, a political reporter at The Herald, first of all for paying attention to parliamentary questions, but for taking an interest in reporting the issue in a way that has allowed the debate to open up. In particular, I am grateful to the team at Engender and to Nicky Ray at Barnardo Scotland for speaking out about the needs for the Scottish Government to undertake further work to build the evidence base and take appropriate action. I am also grateful to the minister for public health and sport, Aileen Campbell, for her recent reply in the chamber when she committed to listening to women's organisations and looking into the issues that have been raised. Women and girls in Scotland need the Scottish Government to undertake a comprehensive assessment into the accessibility and affordability of feminine hygiene products, and I hope that we can get a firm commitment on that. I am also grateful to members across the chamber tonight, including Gail Ross, Gillian Martin and Elaine Smith, who have been particularly encouraging and Councillor Leslie MacDonald in South Lanarkshire for assisting me with some local fact-finding visits. In all of our communities, women are helping women daily, and I recognise the efforts made by groups, including women for independence, to collect donations of sanitary products. Debates about what is now being termed menstrual equity are not new. Back in 1986, Gloria Steinham was writing that if men got periods, they would brag about them how long and how much boys would talk about their menstruation as the beginning of their manhood, that there would be gifts, religious ceremonies and that sanitary supplies would be federally funded and free. Like a hearted period jokes aside, there is a matter of serious principle here. Menstrual care is healthcare. Women's rights are human rights. I will finish with a couple of questions 3. Let us ask ourselves what use is a free prescription for period pain relief if low pay and insecure zero-hour contracts are forcing menstruating women to stuff their pants with toilet paper? What difference will the attainment challenge make if you are a girl sitting in class with the embarrassment of a saturated sanitary towel between your legs? Should we really say, try a food bank to a mother and her daughters fleeing domestic violence when there is no guarantee whatsoever that the donation pile will include the tampons and towels that they urgently meet? Deputy Presiding Officer, it has been a privilege to open this debate. I look forward to the Scottish Government and indeed to the entire Scottish Parliament proving that we are ready and willing to tackle this gendered inequality so that terms such as on the rag really are banished to history books. I am suddenly on. I will now move to the open debate and I call Gillian Martin to be followed by Annie Wells. What kind of societal issue is access to period products? It is not just a single issue. It is of course a poverty issue. Households with low incomes will prioritise how they spend what little money they have. Top of that priority list will be food, then rent, then heat and power. Women managing a household for which getting food on the table is a struggle every week just simply won't have the money to spend on period products for themselves. Targeted provision for women on low incomes could be an option. Of course, at the extreme end of poverty, we have women in the streets without homes who every month must find a way to cope with the demeaning and distressing situation of bleeding for five days with no access to their own bathroom, much less tillers and tampons. It is also an attainment issue due to lack of access to period products young women from low-income families often forced to miss school. If you do the arithmetic, a young woman with no access to period products may stay at home until her period is over, which could be around five days a month. Added up, that could lead to a young woman with no access to missing a quarter of her schooling. So, targeted school provision could also be an option. I am interested to hear that Monica Lennon has already mentioned the issue in New York, which made my heart sing too. It is also a women's health issue. When access to period products is limited, women may not change their tampons or pads as often as is safe. Toxic shock and sepsis is more likely to happen to women in low incomes. Women who do not have the luxury of changing tampons every couple of hours, as is recommended. However, it is also a control and abuse issue. Often, women who are subjected to domestic abuse or coercive control by their partner are denied access to anything that is simply for their own use. I was shocked to discover that, often an unspoken issue, as I met with Syrenians in Aberdeen, who provides support for people from a range of challenging circumstances. Their domestic abuse support officer told me that many women do not have access to period products because their partner stands between them and access to them through a range of abusive behaviours. Behaviours such as prohibiting their purchase or use, rationing their availability to control the movement of their partner, or giving access to a range of hygiene products only in exchange for sex, or simply keeping a woman from accessing her own money so that purchasing them is impossible. Not all women who cannot buy tampons come from low-income homes. An ideal solution would be to have open and universal access, but we must be realistic about what our national health service can afford to do in a situation in which we have limited fiscal control and a set budget with significant demands on it. In an ideal world, we would have some kind of mechanism, perhaps a card available to all women to use at their discretion to access period products when they need them, perhaps similar to the C card, which gives access to free condoms. At the SNP National Council in May, we passed a motion to look into the possibility of such a mechanism. I believe that there is merit in piloting such a scheme to investigate how it could work, what the take-up would be and what the costs associated with it would be. Could we see a reduction in admissions to hospital? Could we see more girls in deprived areas accessing their right to education? Could we see more women having control over their health and their lives? Some creative thinking around this could unlock the answers. As a quality spokesperson for the Scottish Conservatives, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak about this topic today. I think that we are all familiar with the debates surrounding the much-opposed tampon tax this year and last. I was pleased to see the UK Government acting decisively on the issue to ridd sanitary products of their 5 per cent VAT rate. In March, UK Government leaders spurred on the debate, which led to all 28 of the EU leaders agreeing that individual states should have the option of removing tax from sanitary products. Although some have accused the Government of going silent on the issue, I would like to reiterate that only this summer, Minister David Goll said during a committee treasure meeting in July that the Government anticipated the zero rate being in place by 1 April next year, even if not yet formally legislated for. In the meantime, the £50 million revenue raised by the tax is still being transferred to women's charities. I think that we are all in agreement that sanitary products are a necessity, and, as a starting point, I would like to back today's motion to make feminine hygiene products more accessible to women and families who struggle to afford them, particularly when we consider that contraception, for example, is already provided free of charge. When women and girls lack access to affordable and hygienic products, they can resort to using, as Monica has said, old drags, cloth or other unhygienic materials. In some cases, the lack of access can result in girls missing school and women avoiding their workplaces. In other cases, women resort to using the same item for a prolonged period of time, increasing their chances of developing the potentially fatal toxic shock syndrome. I was pleased to see the efforts of constituents in my own region in highlighting that issue, particularly for homeless women. Last year, a group of students from the University of Glasgow launched their own campaign group, The Homeless Period, advocating better access to sanitary products for homeless women. At Christmas time, the Glasgow University red alert society collected hundreds of essential toiletries, including such products, to donate to a homeless charity. Nationally, as Monica has pointed out, I would also like to thank the efforts of women's aid and the Trussell Trust and, of course, Bernardo's for the work that they have done in raising awareness of this issue. To conclude for this evening, I support the sentiment of this motion today in making feminine hygiene products accessible to those who cannot afford them, and I back Monica's motion. I congratulate Monica Lennon for securing this debate. It is a very important issue for all women, but especially women with medical conditions or, indeed, in financial hardship. I think that this was brought home to me a couple of weeks ago when Kezia Dugdale was collecting for Edinburgh Women's Aid. She had a box in her office and she was encouraging us all to make contributions. What they really needed for women in their service was toiletries and sanitary products. It was quite sad that that was something that we were collecting for and was not supplied as a very basic necessity for them. It is a big problem throughout Scotland where people do not have the finance for those very basic supplies, but it is a bigger problem in rural Scotland because everything costs so much more in the small shops that supply those areas. People in financial hardship cannot travel to the big towns, cannot access cheaper products and sometimes you can pay twice as much as you would in a town, in a rural shop. Bearing in mind that you can be using 12,000 of those products over a lifetime adds a huge burden to those living in those areas. There is also less access to organisations such as the Tristle Trust. Monica mentioned her work in supplying such products to women and that will provide a lifeline, but they do not operate as much in rural areas as well. We need to look at other ways of doing it because it is a health risk. Others have mentioned toxic shock syndrome. It is important that we encourage people to change products as often as possible, because if not, it can have a real health risk. We cannot be prescriptive about the types of product use because everybody has different needs. Health conditions can lead to a much greater need for different products such as polycystic ovaries, fibroids and the like, which can make periods very long, very heavy and can mean that people need a lot of products rather than what a woman would normally use in a month. The motion talks about New York. I think that we all applaud them for what they have done in supplying free sanitary products in schools, prisons and in homeless shelters. However, as others have said, contraceptive supplies are free on the health service from GPs and other health providers. That indicates that we see that as an essential intervention. The same is with incontinence supplies. They are provided by community nurses free of charge to those who need them. Surely, we should look at sanitary products in exactly the same way. It is about dignity. It is about rights to hygiene and health. I am wondering if we can look at some way of getting those products out to people, either through the health service, but people may complain that this is not a health issue. Someone might not be accessing their community nurse or GP because they just simply need the products. Maybe we could look at people on benefits or people who have needs that they could apply, maybe for a voucher once or a card once to give them supplies and that they could use that in a shop. People like health visitors and family nurses have access to young families and could introduce them to that kind of thing. Speaking about the debate, it brought to mind a report that I heard of last week about women taking time off work because of menstrual problems such as PMT and pain. They were embarrassed to tell their employer the real cause of their absence, because they were pretty sure that they would not get a fair hearing and that they should be pitching up and doing their work, and it was only an excuse. It really is an equality issue for women. They should be able to take time off if they are not well and if they are in pain and discomfort. We need to make sure that access to very basic products is a human right and is a dignity right. That should be met with understanding and care, and we should do something about that to make sure that people have access to those products. I also thank Monica Lennon for bringing this important subject before Parliament, and I pay tribute to the excellent speeches that have come before me. I welcome the chance to try to dispel the stigma that exists in society around periods and feminine hygiene products. For many women, feminine hygiene products such as tampons, pads and pantyliners are just thrown in with the weekly shop and their price isn't taken into consideration, but as women we have no choice. Those items are as essential as the other items of food in our trolley. Whilst I applaud Marathon runner Ciaran Gandhi for bringing the issue into focus when she free-bled during the London Marathon, that was to make a statement, and I don't think that it's entirely inappropriate in everyday life. I agree with Monica Lennon's motion when it says that sanitary products should be freely available for women in shelters, schools and prisons, and indeed we should be looking at ways that that can be done. Rhoda Grant mentioned before that only last week, Kezia Dugdale did a great thing and collected toiletries for Edinburgh women's aid after they made a plea for supplies, but I wonder how many packs of tampons and pads would have been donated if it didn't say toiletries and sanitary products, because a lot of time the term toiletries just conjures up pictures of toothpaste and shampoo and deodorants, because menstruation is rarely talked about, it can be easily forgotten about, only ever mentioned ingest when a woman seems to be on edge yet must be that time of the month, but there is another issue, Annie Wells touched on it and we need to talk about it, but currently women's feminine hygiene products are still taxed at 5 per cent by Westminster and this was only dropped in 2001 because it used to be at 17.5 per cent and was at this rate since 1973. Natasha Presky on The Independent last year says, there's nothing luxurious about my period, so why is the government taxing tampons as if there is? It's essentially having a tax on a uterus and there has rightly been outrage that sanitary products have been subject even to the 5 per cent VAT as luxuries and so not a zero rated essential unlike things like jaffra cakes, flap jacks, flap jacks and that base amongst other things. The SNP in 2015 general election manifesto said that we would support the abolition of VAT on sanitary products. No other manifesto had that commitment and we have led opposition to the tampon tax at Westminster. Mr Osborne announced in his autumn statement last year that the £15 million raised each year from the tampon tax would in future be used to support women's charities and services until the EU was persuaded to allow the UK to scrap the VAT on sanitary items. Over 300,000 people signed a petition last year to call for an end to this unfair charge. Alison Thewl, SNP for Glasgow Central, tabled an amendment to the finance bill, calling on the Westminster Government to introduce zero rating on tampons and sanitary towels, and the SNP supported the Labour amendment that did the same. Although the amendment did not pass, changes in EU policy have been agreed and changes to the tampon tax should be reflected in the autumn statement and I welcome Annie Wells' tale in the chamber today that this is to be so. The SNP has long called for the abolition of the unfair tampon tax and it took five years of inaction from the Tory Government for George Osborne to set out when we can expect the VAT rules to be changed, because, unlike the UK Government, whose austerity has disproportionately hit women, this Parliament is committed to the cause of gender equality. I have said this before and I will say it again. Sanitary products are not an optional luxury, they are an essential product for over half the population. Presiding Officer, in conclusion, women should not be made to pay over the odds for sanitary or feminine hygiene products that are a necessary part of life. I want us to be able to speak more freely about periods and menstruation, not have to whisper, it's that time of the month, or make excuses to hide our sore tummies or make a joke about our mood swings. These things are real, it's not embarrassing, it shouldn't be hidden, this is nature and none of us would be here without it. Thank you. I move to the last of the open speeches, Alison Harris. Deputy Presiding Officer, I'm pleased to contribute to this debate today and at the outset wish to state that I also believe that feminine health products are not a luxury but are very much a necessity. As such, I welcome that, following discussions earlier this year with the European Commission, the UK Government will next year be able to reduce the existing 5 per cent VAT rate on these products to zero. I congratulate all those involved in pushing for the removal of the so-called tampon tax. For centuries, we have lived in what was very much a man's world. Men wrote the medical books, became doctors, designed medical products and often paid only cursory interest in the result of the regular cycle of women's bodies. Women were left to improvise and use whatever material was readily at hand to make an attempt at maintaining hygiene and dignity. The first mention of any feminine hygiene product occurred in an account of a fourth century Greek woman who was said to have hurled one of her used menstrual rags at an unwanted gentleman collar. The word rags were literal. As from the earliest times, old fabrics, animal skin even moss were just some of the components used. Later cotton pads became more common, but of course hygiene and often the inability to wash the pads caused many infections. The later Victorian era saw the arrival of the first commercial products. Despite their increased effectiveness, few Victorian women were prepared to ask a shopkeeper invariably a man for them, and of course cost was also a factor even then. It is ironic, Deputy Presiding Officer, that out of the horrors of the First World War came products that would lead to major advances in the field of feminine hygiene. French nurses tending the wounded noticed the great ability of the curard military bandages to absorb blood and started using them in place of their homemade menstrual rags. At the end of the war brought great changes for women. It brought the first rights to vote, and women became more confident as the world entered into the roaring 20s. Few women now felt any embarrassment at buying products essential to their health and well-being. The interwar years brought the introduction of the product, which the inventor, Dr Haas, named Tampax. Since then, this product and other tampons, towels and pads, have been further developed and have become easier to use, better shaped and more absorbent. However, convenience has come at a price, not only to the environment, as many of the components of the modern tampon or pad take just as long to degrade as disposable nappies, but also to our purses. I hope, Deputy Presiding Officer, that the potted history of feminine hygiene products shows just how essential feminine hygiene products in whatever forum have been throughout history. In the past, and sadly in many places even today, women have resorted to improvised and uncomfortable solutions, often risking their health and comfort as a result of the natural cycle of their bodies. Victorian women were reluctant to purchase the early commercial products for fear of embarrassment. It is therefore good that today the Scottish Parliament can discuss the matter openly, fully and not with the slightest embarrassment. I congratulate Monica Lennon on bringing this motion forward. I now ask Aileen Campbell to close this debate around seven minutes, please minister. Thank you, Presiding Officer. A week or so ago, I responded to Monica Lennon's question on this topic by saying that it is an unacceptable and uncomfortable truth that for some of the most vulnerable in our society, who are the most impacted by the UK Government's austerity programme, sanitary projects can be unaffordable. I still remain of that opinion, and I am grateful for the chance to join Monica Lennon in her members' debate this evening and others, including Gillian Markton, who has worked tirelessly on this issue, in considering what more can be done to tackle this gendered inequality. I am also grateful for the work of Engender, the Barnardos, the Trussell Trust and Scottish Women's Aid for their efforts in raising awareness of that. The motion today makes specific reference to recent legislative changes in New York City that have provided for the provision of feminine hygiene products in schools, prisons and homeless shelters, particularly for women who may struggle to buy their own products. I know, too, that there has been discussion in Sydney in Australia about the free provision of menstrual products in public buildings such as libraries or in homeless shelters. The conversation in Sydney has, I understand, been set in the context of facilities that are most often used by disadvantaged communities, but in all of those examples, the unifying element is poverty. That is why the Scottish Government is doing what it can to mitigate the impact of austerity and is why we are responding to the need to tackle poverty and inequality with action. That was the clear message from the public during our fairer Scotland conversation with more than 7,000 people across the country. As a result, we will publish a fairer Scotland action plan later this year. We want to tackle the underlying causes of poverty and ensure that progress on that equates to nobody in Scotland struggling to afford day-to-day essentials that, for women, include sanitary products. I hear in Monica Lennon's story that a woman has not had a period for seven months due to a lack of food as a story that we simply should not hear in 2016 and should, I think, be consigned to the historical Victorian anecdotes that we heard from Alison Harris. Sanitary products are not a luxury, as Gail Ross and others have pointed out. When it comes to cost, they are items that simply should never have been taxed. That is why the SNP highlighted pledged action on the issue on VAT on sanitary products in our manifesto in 2015. We are the only party to do so, as Gail Ross pointed out. I am proud that the SNP has championed the case for removing the unfair and discriminatory VAT that has been levied on sanitary products in the UK and pay tribute to the work of my friend and colleague Alison Thewlis for her efforts. Women in Scotland will face lower costs for sanitary products once the zero rate of that takes place. It is important that the UK Government delivers on its promise to introduce the necessary legislation so that the zero rate of VAT can take effect. It is also important that shops and businesses pass on this reduction in tax to the women buying products. That change, when it arrives, will have been a long time coming and finally rights are huge wrong. But reducing the rate of tax is not all that needs to happen. We need to understand what the level of unmet need is in Scotland, and we need to have a clearer understanding of the problem that we are trying to solve. I am grateful to all the contributions this evening that I explored the wider issues of period pain, the consequences of toxic shock syndrome and sepsis of sanitary products, if they are not changed often enough. I will do that. I refer back to the Scottish Government's reply of 9 August, where we were told that feminine hygiene is not a health issue. Is that a matter that the Government has had time to reflect on? Has that view changed? I also said in my response to the question that you had last week that me and a whole host of other ministers are interested in this because it does transcend many narrow portfolio boundaries. I do not think that that is a weakness. I think that that is a strength that we should try to make sure that we look at this in the round, whether that is my colleague Jeane Freeman, the social security or others who have an interest in equality's issues. Part of the debate in New York that Monica and Gillian have mentioned was that young girls can sometimes feel embarrassed if they have to go and ask for someone for sanitary products during the school day. While I know that most schools in Scotland will provide sanitary products in some way, either through dispensers and toilets or through supply by staff, no girl who needs access to products while in school should feel embarrassed. They should not feel stigmatised or unsure how to go about accessing them. Having a period should not be a barrier to a girl fulfilling her educational potential, a point that I think was made also by Gillian Martin. The New York legislation also makes provision for sanitary products in prison. In New York, I understand that, in some cases, women in prison have in the past had to buy products with their own money. I would like to reassure members that prisons in Scotland are already legally required to provide sanitary products to women in custody for free. I mention that because we are not in a standing start where we have made progress on some of those issues already in Scotland. However, there are also additional areas that we need to be cognisant of. Those have been points that were made by Monica, Gillian and Annie and so many others. We need to have a greater understanding of the lack of access to sanitary products to women who are facing and experiencing domestic abuse and women who are experiencing homelessness. Those are areas that across Government need to engage with the third sector and those who have a deeper understanding of the problems that are persistently happening across our country. Furthermore, Rhoda Grant also made an excellent contribution about the cost for women in rural and remote areas, in terms of them being more costly in smaller shops or in addition to finding the money to buy products to buy the transport to get to the shops in the first place. In conclusion, I am grateful to Monica Lennon for raising the topic for discussion. I remain keen to explore what more can be done to tackle this gendered inequality within the limitations of the current settlement. Motivated, though, both by my role as minister for public health and as a woman united with the other female speakers this evening, to do what I can to improve the lives of girls and women in our country and ensure that, in 2016, they can live in dignity.