The Scotsman Bulletin Monday April 28 2025 #Gender
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00:00Hello and welcome to the Scotsman's daily video bulletin for this Monday. My name's
00:05Dale Miller. I'm deputy editor of the Scotsman and I'm joined by our investigations correspondent,
00:11Martin McLaughlin. Martin, we're going to get into shortly a couple of stories that you've
00:16been writing about in recent days, but firstly, I wanted to flag the front page of today's Scotsman
00:23and we led on businesses. This is specifically from CBI Scotland saying,
00:28Swinney must ramp up new house building to get the Scottish economy moving again. We know there's
00:34a lot happening in the background economy wise. A lot of the pressure is coming from the US
00:39with tariffs having been increased to a flat 10%, but also there's still ongoing pressures
00:46on Scotland's economy from things like the cost of living crisis, but also some of the national
00:53insurance steps taken by the UK government. John Swinney is addressing the STUC Congress
01:00in Dundee today. We expect he'll have more to say. He'll be certainly throwing the can back in the UK
01:06government's direction, saying they must stand up for Scotland more. There's some interesting
01:10political dynamics taking place around these arguments at the moment. You can read that story
01:17info at scotsman.com. Martin, you're also writing about the Scottish Council that is, I guess,
01:25hiking the number of areas where they'll enforce parking. It's not Edinburgh, which is good news for
01:30those who live and work in Edinburgh, but it is another major Scottish Council. Yeah, Dale, Glasgow City
01:37Council, and they already have around 24 what are known as controlled parking zones in the city,
01:44effectively areas in and around the city where you have to have a permit to park. The idea of that is
01:51it's a way of curbing car use in and around the city, preventing people dumping their cars and
01:58commuting into town. But it's also quite a big revenue generator for the council. I think they generate
02:06around about £5 million a year. So at a time when local authorities are looking behind the couch for
02:13every bit of spare change they can find, there's obviously a feeling at the council that this is a
02:20way of driving revenue and furthering its environmental goals. They're going to be introducing 12 additional
02:27controlled parking zones across entire swathes of the city. Now this is a way of generating revenue and
02:36curbing emissions, but there are knock-on effects, not least around whether the public transport
02:43infrastructure in Glasgow is good enough to take the slack of all this. It remains incredulous for
02:50those of us living in the west coast of Scotland that Glasgow City subway is operating until quarter past
02:57six on a Sunday evening. I mean, I think most European cities are operating up until around midnight. So
03:05between that and long-standing gripes around trains and bus provision, there are wider concerns around
03:13people's ability to simply get in and around. And that also extends to some areas of the city
03:20where these zones are going to be introduced. You know, Glasgow as a whole generally has lower car
03:25ownership than the Scottish average. And these zones are going to be put in place in some relatively deprived areas
03:32such as Sight Hill. So there are kind of wider questions about the impact of all of this.
03:37And Martin, I know you wrote and we published an exclusive from you on Saturday around public transport.
03:46This was specifically Consumer Scotland had done some polling around it and were asking,
03:54there was basically a reflection in that, that the public wanted to support net zero, but the cost of public
04:00transport, the availability and the journey time were all significant factors, why they couldn't.
04:05I was interested, Martin, I want to get your thoughts on that as well. I felt like Consumer Scotland went
04:11as far as they could as sort of an extension or partial arm of the Scottish Government to be critical
04:17about the approach towards public transport in terms of setting out the recommendations and what came from
04:23that poll. Yeah, absolutely. And like you say, Consumer Scotland, they're a non-executive department of
04:29the Scottish Government, they will rightly point to themselves as being an independent statutory body that was set up
04:35three years ago after legislation that came through Holyrood. But for a body of that in that proximity to Scottish
04:42ministers to make such a series of pretty damning recommendations, it is serious and it does show the level of
04:50discontent that has been expressed by people that took part in that research. You know, it's issues not just around cost, but issues of accessibility, the length of time journeys take,
05:02and even, you know, concerns around safety on public transport, which is an issue that's especially important to women who took
05:10part in the research. So there's a lot for the government and transport partnerships to get their teeth into here.
05:16Martin, I could talk to you all day about what I perceive as lack of joined up thinking around the public
05:23transport system here in Scotland. But we've got other things to talk about. Gender. Now, the Supreme Court ruling
05:29we knew would be significant. It really has been the number one talking point for the past two weeks.
05:34And there was a basically a verdict last week that affected same sex toilet provision. And you're writing
05:42a story about this for the weekend. Yeah, that's right, Dale. Obviously, kind of the main flashpoint
05:48in this issue was the Supreme Court ruling, which basically set out the definition of women in terms
05:54of the Equalities Act. But last week, there was a separate Court of Session review and that was a judicial review
06:01that was brought by primary school there. And the parents brought the case because Scottish Borders Council
06:11only had mixed sex toilets in place at the primary school and they wanted to see single sex provision.
06:19The Court of Session effectively found in their favour. In the end, Scottish Borders didn't contest it. They accepted
06:26that they were effectively in breach of the law. So now the judge has issued an order whereby every
06:33school in Scotland is going to have to ensure that they have single sex provision. The exact number of
06:40schools in Scotland with mixed sex only toilets is understood to be relatively small. But even so,
06:47it does add to the Scottish Government's backlog of work around this. You know, Mr Swinney hasn't exactly
06:54set the heather on fire in terms of responding definitively as to how the Government are going
06:59to respond to this. And on the issue of bathrooms and schools, there has been a pre-existing pledge by
07:07the Government to revisit the guidance. But that's going to become even more important in light of this
07:14decision. You know, because otherwise schools and local authorities are going to find themselves
07:19possibly subject to legal action in the week of this case. Martin, I have been fascinated by the
07:25political approach to this because we've got at the Scottish Government level where we've consistently
07:31to date seen John Swinney not probably directly address the answer to the question around the definition
07:37of a woman. But Sir Keir Starmer sort of took the other approach and did voice and accept and back
07:43the Supreme Court decision, which was, it's fair to say, a partial U-turn on what he'd said previously.
07:49But it does, I guess, draw a line and allow the Government to move forward at UK level in some sense.
07:59It's politically expedient for the likes of, you know, John Swinney, whether it be by choice or
08:06accident to be relatively vague around his responses to this. But the real-life repercussions are
08:12you know, growing, there is concerns. I spoke late last week to the NES UWT Teaching Union,
08:19who pointed out there's an urgent need for clarity around how this ruling is interpreted in day-to-day
08:25practice in schools because, you know, it shouldn't be left to head teachers and teachers to interpret the
08:31law. And there should be very clear guidelines set out by the Government. So I expect that pressure will
08:37will only grow in the days and weeks ahead.
08:39You can read all about the stories we've discussed on this video at scotsman.com. Please follow us
08:46on Facebook, Instagram, Blue Sky X, all social media platforms for all the very latest in news.
08:53John Swinney, as I said, is speaking at the STUC Congress today and we will carry the latest from
09:00him. You will be able to get that full wrap in tomorrow morning's print edition of the Scotsman,
09:05as well as across the site. Martin, thank you to you. Thanks to everyone else for joining us.