Latest news with #JamieHepburn
Scottish Sun
20 hours ago
- Politics
- Scottish Sun
Spads being offered six-figure salaries as cost of advisers soars
Scottish Labour Deputy Leader Jackie Baillie blasts "sleekit attempt" to sneak figures out during a by-election BILL CLAIM Spads being offered six-figure salaries as cost of advisers soars Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) SNP chiefs were accused of making a 'sleekit' bid to use the Holyrood by-election as cover to sneak out the soaring costs of their special advisers. Figures published by the Nats Government reveal that 17 Spads - political appointees hired to support ministers - were in post as of May 7 this year. Sign up for Scottish Sun newsletter Sign up 2 Deputy leader of the Scottish Labour Party Jackie Baillie at the count for the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election Of those, one was earning a salary between £108,781 and £116,435, while seven were in a pay band of between £84,983 and £97,644, while a further nine Spads were earning between £71,393 and £78,719. The total cost of special advisers employed during the financial year for 2024-2025 was a whopping £1.7million. A request for the information was submitted by a backbench SNP MSP on the day of the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election on June 5, with a response provided by minister Jamie Hepburn the following day. The move has prompted accusations from political rivals of using the by-election as an opportunity to 'sneak' out the figures while journalists focused on coverage of the vote. Scottish Labour Deputy Leader Jackie Baillie said: 'Scots are sick of footing the bill for an SNP government that is failing to deliver. 'This sleekit attempt to sneak these figures out during a by-election won't hide the fact the SNP cannot be trusted with taxpayers' money.' And Scottish Tory shadow finance secretary Craig Hoy added: 'The SNP have wasted a shameful amount of taxpayers' money on their army of spin doctors. 'You'd be forgiven for thinking John Swinney snuck out these bombshell figures on a day when people's minds were elsewhere.' The number of Spads fell to 17 over the past year, with 19 having been in post prior to May 7 this year - three of whom were earning salaries of over £108,781. A Scottish Government spokesperson said: 'Due to the appointment of a new First Minister in May 2024, there were several changes to the special adviser team. The number and total cost of special advisers reduced in comparison to the previous year.' Scottish Labour's shock win in Hamilton stuns establishment as SNP face 'false' campaign blast But, Scottish Lib Dem MSP Willie Rennie MSP hit out: 'The SNP are investing more effort in making excuses for their failures in government.'
The National
07-05-2025
- Politics
- The National
Supreme Court ruling is bogus excuse for dropping misogyny bill
A public consultation on the proposal to create five new misogyny offences closed almost 20 months ago. Since then, no bill has been published. No analysis of the consultation has been published. As the parliamentary calendar shed weeks and months before next Holyrood election, the Scottish Government produced a range of more and less plausible explanations for these delays. READ MORE: SNP confirm every Holyrood election candidate – see the full list At first, questions were fended off on the basis the consultation was being carefully considered and final proposals refined. Once that holding position lost its virtue, we were told a draft bill would materialise 'imminently.' 'Imminently' then transformed to 'after the Supreme Court's judgment in the For Women Scotland case'. Last week, 'imminently' became 'after the next Scottish Parliament election, maybe, depending on who is in power'. Nobody seems all that surprised. In answer to a parliamentary question on Friday, Jamie Hepburn confirmed that the bill was just the latest Sturgeon-era flagship proposal sunk by changes in the political weather. Various reasons were given. Many have the merit of actually being true. Hepburn told MSPs this is a 'complex area of law and policy'. Given the short time left in the calendar, he said, there is sadly 'insufficient time for a bill to be finalised and introduced in this session'. But Hepburn also invoked what a friend defines as the highly useful but normally dubious 'for legal reasons' defence – the perfect escape hatch for the under-pressure politician because it is majestically vague, vaguely menacing, gives the decision an air of responsibility and is difficult to disagree with because it is difficult for anyone without a legal background to dismantle what you're talking about. The minister stressed that 'clear and unambiguous' provisions would be needed in any misogyny law and 'this would include the implications of the recent Supreme Court judgment'. Reading between the lines, you might come away with the impression that the Supreme Court's judgment has a straightforward read across into what Holyrood can and can't legislate for in terms of misogyny, or all legislation involving concepts such as women or misogyny. But it doesn't. Lord Hodge's decision dealt with the narrow question of what the concept of 'sex' means in the context of the Equality Act and whether the holder of a full gender recognition certificate is protected from discrimination in their certified sex. As a pretext for dropping the misogyny bill, this is convenient but entirely bogus. You'll notice naked political calculation wasn't one of the reasons given for discontinuing the progress of the bill at this stage, despite being perhaps the most potent factor in explaining why it was axed. As minds focus on the next Holyrood election, as the SNP choose their battles and think about the impressions they leave the voting public with about its priorities – you can understand the political calculation which says now is not the time for a misogyny bill. In its way, last week's controversy was more than a decade in the making. It was Alex Salmond's government which first pursued the illiberal and misconceived Offensive Behaviour at Football legislation back in 2011. When the SNP lost their majority at the next Holyrood election, the opposition parties found the numbers to repeal the Act, making good on a promise in 2018. READ MORE: UK Government minister refuses to condemn Israel's ethnic cleansing in Gaza As part of SNP's defence of this beleaguered legislation, ministers decided to summon Lord Bracadale to lead an independent judicial review of Scotland's fragmented and inconsistent hate crime legislation. It was an area any tidy-minded lawyer was guaranteed to recommend changes to. The judge turned in his report just two months after the Football Act hit the sod, with most of his recommendations finding their way into the Hate Crime and Public Order Bill, introduced to Holyrood two years later. Unstunningly, the politics, the policy and the detail of the bill proved immediately controversial. Combining the inflammatory material of race, nationality and sectarianism, religious differences between believers and between believers and unbelievers, human sexuality and its critics, transgender rights and gender-critical advocacy, the bill was a lit touchpaper tossed into a powder store. Apparently to the surprise of the Government, combustion reactions predictably followed, demolishing whole sections of the bill, burning out concepts and clauses as the government fought to batter out the flames and rescue the singed but intact essence of the proposals from its constructive and unconstructive critics and their attacks on its real and imagined faults. This time, it was Humza Yousaf's turn to try to farm out a particularly thorny area of controversy. Enter Baroness Helena Kennedy. This grand dame of the law was the perfect figure to hide behind when it came to unresolved controversy about what to do with issues of sex and gender in the bill. Lord Bracadale recommended 'there should be a new statutory aggravation based on gender hostility', allowing prosecutors to attach an aggravator where an attacker demonstrated malice or ill-will towards the victim on the basis of their perceived gender, mirroring provisions on race, religion and sexual identity. Some were unconvinced this was a good idea. Hate crime frameworks ordinarily deal with minorities which experience shows us are particularly susceptible to bigotry and mistreatment. Crimes against women and girls are crimes against the majority of our population and have a different dynamic. Others pointed out that the kind of street harassment women face often doesn't take the form of expressing overt hostility towards the victim, reflected in a recent High Court appeal where an accused person was acquitted on the basis his approaches to uniformed schoolgirls in lonely lanes took the form of a 'polite conversational request' for their numbers and so couldn't reasonably be construed as threatening. By focusing on crimes motivated by hostility towards people's sex or gender we may be capturing incel extremism and violence, but not the everyday public harassment women face, the perpetrators of which aren't ideological extremists, but ordinary men and boys. A third strand of the argument suggested that talking about hate crimes on the basis of sex missed the point, arguing instead that the law should give a name to the real problem – and give its proper title, misogynistic harassment. READ MORE: Pro-independence Plaid to win Welsh elections next year, poll finds In the end, a fudge was settled on. Section 12 of the Hate Crime Act gives Scottish Ministers the power to add sex to the legislation's list of protected characteristics, pending Kennedy's verdict on whether wider changes were needed. Kennedy pushed the Government to go much further, proposing a raft of new offences including misogynistic behaviour, threats of serious sexual violence and new criminal prohibitions misogynistic harassment. The law, Kennedy argued, has the power to 'send a message,' and the message it ought to send is that women and girls should be able to go about their daily lives, work, walk up the street, go to gigs or travel on public transport, without facing the routine badgering and learned hypervigilance as a result of unwelcome male attention. This was music to carceral feminist ears. But the palaver over the Hate Crime Bill should have tutored ministers that navigating proposals like this on to the statute book would be beset with challenges. The proposals would inevitably be subject to the 'how are you defining a woman?' test. But beyond this, the core of what Kennedy proposed to do was controversial. Nicola Sturgeon may have accepted all the recommendations – but there are many reasons why others would have needed significant persuasion. Since the 20th century, our legislative frameworks have generally moved towards gender neutral drafting. If misogynistic harassment was prohibited by the criminal law, you can guarantee someone would end up arguing fairness required misandry gets its own look in. But even more fundamental than that, are questions and doubts about what criminalisation actually achieves. I don't know about you, but when I hear politicians justifying the creation of yet another raft of offences on the basis of 'sending messages' to the public, my suspicions intensify. Inventing crimes is not the easy solution to social problems too many politicians seem to think it is, particularly in the context of an understaffed criminal justice system which is currently incapable of dealing with the raft of behaviours our law already says are verboten. Will criminalising this behaviour achieve primary prevention? And if not, perhaps we should be investing in something else? There are wider lessons of strategy here for future governments too. The received wisdom in politics is often that 'independent review' equals 'long grass.' At all three stages of this slow-burning succession of badly handled PR explosions, the Scottish Government attempted to subcontract itself out of political controversy by passing it over to an independent review. In all three cases, this buck passing and search for political shelter behind the charisma, independence and prestige of a high-profile lawyer has not only extended but materially increased the controversy and criticism the government has ultimately faced.
Daily Record
02-05-2025
- Politics
- Daily Record
SNP Government branded 'shameful' after dumping plan for new misogyny law
Green MSPs have slammed the SNP for kicking the legislation "into the long grass". The SNP Government has been branded "shameful" after dumping plans to introduce a new law aimed at clamping down on misogyny. Nationalist ministers at Holyrood have long promised to improve protections for women and girls. But the Government has now said it does not have time to draw up a law following the recent landmark UK Supreme Court ruling on gender. The decision has sparked anger among Green MSPs who have long called for action on the issue. In a statement, SNP minister Jamie Hepburn said: "This is a complex area of policy and law, and it would be necessary that any Bill which brought misogyny into criminal law contained clear and unambiguous provisions in regard to the circumstances in which they apply. "This would include the implications of the recent Supreme Court Judgment. Given the short time left in this parliamentary session, there is insufficient time for a Bill to be finalised and introduced in this session." SNP ministers have also pushed back plans to introduce legislation to end conversion practices. Kaukab Stewart said the Scottish Government will 'continue to work' with Westminster on a UK-wide approach. She promised that if the UK Labour Government fails to legislate on the issue, an SNP Scottish Government will 'publish its own Bill in year one of the next parliamentary session'. The Scottish Government previously committed to banning conversion therapy – which aims to change or suppress a person's sexual orientation or identity – as part of the powersharing deal between the SNP and the Scottish Greens. Green MSP Maggie Chapman said: "Dropping these bills sends a worrying message about the government's commitment to equalities, and a shameful backward step. "A lot of people have waited far too long for the protections in these bills, and they will be deeply disappointed that they will not be happening as promised. "Violence against women and girls is a national emergency. The misogyny bill was a vital step in ensuring that reports of harassment and assault are taken seriously. "LGBTQIA+ people are put at serious risk by cruel, harmful conversion practices that are currently flying under the radar. So-called conversion 'therapies' are deeply immoral and leave lasting damage for survivors. These abusive practices have no place in a modern, progressive Scotland. "This sends a terrible message. Our government must offer compassion, kindness and reassurance, not only in words but also in laws. "The Scottish Government should not be kicking these bills into the long grass, but that is exactly what is happening. The promises of support and justice tomorrow mean nothing to those being actively harmed by inaction today. "I urge the Scottish Government to reconsider their shameful decision and make good on their promise to improve equalities and human rights in Scotland through these bills today."
The National
02-05-2025
- Politics
- The National
Scottish Government drops plans for misogyny bill
In response to a Government question, it was revealed that ministers said there was 'insufficient time' for the misogyny legislation to be brought forward, in part due to the implications of the recent Supreme Court ruling on the definition of a woman under the Equality Act 2010. Jamie Hepburn, Minister for Parliamentary Business, said that any legislation which sought to criminalise misogyny would have to contain 'clear and unambiguous provisions in regard to the circumstances in which they apply'. READ MORE: Labour mayor rips into Keir Starmer after narrow victory over Reform In a statement on Friday morning, Equalities Minister Kaukab Stewart also revealed that the Scottish Government would drop plans to ban conversion practices for LGBT Scots for the rest of the parliamentary term. Both pieces of legislation formed part of the Bute House Agreement with the Scottish Greens, which ended in April 2024. The Greens said the rollback on equality laws was a 'shameful' move. In his response to SNP MSP Rona Mackay's question in Holyrood, Hepburn (below) said: 'The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring people are protected from misogynistic abuse and we had previously committed to the introduction of a Misogyny Bill. 'This is a complex area of policy and law, and it would be necessary that any Bill which brought misogyny into criminal law contained clear and unambiguous provisions in regard to the circumstances in which they apply. This would include the implications of the recent Supreme Court Judgment. (Image: PA) 'Given the short time left in this parliamentary session, there is insufficient time for a Bill to be finalised and introduced in this session, therefore the Scottish Government has decided not to proceed with this Bill in this parliamentary session.' He added that ministers are 'committed to ending conversion practices' and would negotiate with the UK Government over the contents of a UK-wide legislation. Hepburn said if this is not successful then the SNP would commit to publishing legislation in the first year of the next parliamentary session, after the Holyrood 2026 election. Equalities minister Stewart confirmed the move in a statement published on Friday morning. She said: 'Scotland remains absolute in our commitment to equality, the rights of the LGBTQI+ community, and ending conversion practices. READ MORE: Reform UK win by-election by six votes in major blow to Labour 'We will continue to work with the UK government on legislation extending to Scotland, that applies across all settings and protects all ages, is trans-inclusive and does not include any exemption for consent. 'However, if we do not make progress through a collaborative approach, the Scottish Government will get on with the job of ending these harmful practices in Scotland and intends to publish its own Bill in year one of the next Parliamentary session.' Scottish Greens MSP Maggie Chapman, who earlier this week survived a Tory-led bid to remove her from the equalities committee in Holyrood, said: 'Dropping these bills sends a worrying message about the government's commitment to equalities, and a shameful backward step. 'A lot of people have waited far too long for the protections in these bills, and they will be deeply disappointed that they will not be happening as promised. 'Violence against women and girls is a national emergency. The misogyny bill was a vital step in ensuring that reports of harassment and assault are taken seriously. 'LGBTQIA+ people are put at serious risk by cruel, harmful conversion practices that are currently flying under the radar. So-called conversion''therapies' are deeply immoral and leave lasting damage for survivors. These abusive practices have no place in a modern, progressive Scotland. (Image: PA)'This sends a terrible message. Our government must offer compassion, kindness and reassurance, not only in words but also in laws.' Chapman (above) said the Scottish Government should not be 'kicking these bills into the long grass'. 'The promises of support and justice tomorrow mean nothing to those being actively harmed by inaction today. 'I urge the Scottish Government to reconsider their shameful decision and make good on their promise to improve equalities and human rights in Scotland through these bills today.' The misogyny legislation, introduced following a report by Baroness Helena Kennedy, was supposed to be published in Holyrood in 2023/24.
Yahoo
18-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The Scottish Parliament has once more proved its uselessness
If there was one case that shattered any pretence the Scottish parliament had about making a good name for itself, it came two years ago when a convicted rapist was sent to an all-female prison when he claimed to be a woman. And now we have further confirmation with the astonishing case of a nurse who was suspended from duty and may face the sack, after she complained about a doctor, who was born a man but who identifies as a woman, using female changing rooms. Sadly, for yet another high profile case both the Holyrood presiding officer Alison Johnstone and SNP minister Jamie Hepburn, rejected demands for a full debate on this latest scandal. The public deserve an explanation – the MSPs didn't get much of one. The case of the rapist. Isla Bryson, locked up for a time in an all-women's jail outside Stirling, highlighted the dangers that the UK government averted when it was forced to veto former first minister Nicola Sturgeon's controversial gender legislation. This would have allowed people over the age of 16 to change their gender by simply making a public declaration. If her Bill had become law, critics claimed, trans men could have gained access to female-only safe venues, such as prisons, changing rooms and public toilets. But Sturgeon losing that battle led people to expect that the issue was settled. However, it is clear from the case of Sandie Peggie, a nurse with NHS Fife, that it is far from over. When she challenged transgender Doctor Beth Upton, in female changing rooms on Christmas Eve 2023, she was accused of 'misgendering' Dr Upton, which led him to file a complaint. It was Nurse Peggie who was suspended and investigated for bullying, even though legal experts are adamant that NHS Fife were legally obliged to provide single sex spaces at places of work. But it is she who now faces dismissal after a 30-year career, even though her tribunal will not resume until July. The case is currently dominating the news agenda north of the border as well as being the 'talk of the steamie' (steamie being hotbeds of gossip in the old time tenement wash-houses) and in the pubs and cafés. However, shamefully, the one place where this almost open sore in Scottish society is hardly mentioned is its parliament. In a bizarre reversal of the enhanced democracy that devolution was supposed to bring to Scotland, the parliament's presiding officer rejected Tory demands to ask urgent questions on the issue and the SNP government refused to make a statement – both claiming that the issue was sub judice. However, the Tories' Murdo Fraser, who is a solicitor, insisted that the issue of sub judice did not apply in this case as it was an employment tribunal, not a judge-led criminal case sitting with a jury. And his colleague Tess White insisted that Nurse Peggie was not the perpetrator in this case but the victim. In the mind of many, one of the worst aspects of this case is that NHS managers deferred to an 'equality and human rights officer', rather than a lawyer, in declaring that the transgender doctor identified as a woman and had a right to access single-sex spaces. But this was just another example of how in the Scottish parliament's short and undistinguished history it had failed to get to grips with an important issue of public concern. And it proved again that either this institution, or the people running it, aren't up to the job. Or both. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
