Michelle Thomson: There are a significant number of women stepping down, and that really is unfortunate

“There are a number of reasons why I’m leaving. The first is a personal one: my father is 92 and lives on his own at home with a care package and needs quite a lot of monitoring and support. And if I don’t do it, nobody else will. It’s just the nature of these things. My husband has been very supportive while I’ve been an MSP, but it’s my father, not my husband’s father.  
“The second reason is that I have come to the conclusion that I can probably do more to shape things outside of parliament. And by that, I mean I expected that the parliamentary term for me, given my background and long business hinterland, would mostly be around business, finance, economics, growing the economy, and creating jobs.  
“But in reality, a lot of it was about other issues. Helping Scotland be the best it can be is very dear to my heart, and I think I’d probably do more outside. I don’t have any plans yet, and I’ve had a few requests in, and I’ve put a few feelers out, but I really feel it’s way too early to start working that out.  

“This parliamentary session has done a lot of good things around supporting people, but I think it’s been less focused on how to increase the tax base... It needs to be both sides of the coin – supporting people but generating the wealth to pay for that support. And I think over time, and it was probably before I entered [parliament] in 2021, the balance shifted from not being equidistant to that.  
“A lot of good work was done in the last parliament, most notably by Kate Forbes, but I still think there’s a lot further to go, and it’s really important that we do that. With John Swinney coming in as first minister, things have started to right themselves and I hope that the work continues. I was very heartened by his softening of tone around the granting of licences to Rosebank and Jackdaw. Recent energy security concerns serve as a reminder for many people that we have natural resources that we can use for the betterment of people in Scotland, and I think we should use those resources. The companies involved are critical enablers for a just transition – they’re the ones making the investments. 

“Questions need to be asked, because there’s a significant number of people stepping down. There are also a significant number of women stepping down, and that really is unfortunate.  
“We are already seeing many debates with six leaders, all of whom are men, and I was very disappointed that, for this election, the SNP chose not to put in place positive measures to ensure parity between the sexes. It’s not good enough to say, ‘we nearly did it in 2021, so we don’t need to do anything this time’, because it feels to me that the gains that women make feel too elusive. If we end up with a parliament which is incredibly fractious, that is very male dominated, it will not serve us and it won’t resonate with the people in Scotland. It’s healthy to have a parliament with ‘aw perts’.   

“When I was a young woman, I fought strongly against the idea of any [positive action] measures being put in place. I took the view that I would work incredibly hard, that I was bright enough, and that I could do it on my own merits. As I got older, I started to realise that, actually, without some positive steps, things do not change at the speed that they need to. And I’ve changed my view. 
“There are also quite a number of women who have chosen to step down because they find the environment of politics very difficult. I didn’t find it particularly difficult in the chamber, where I know some women did. I quite like the sparring and believe that if you can hold your ground, if you can get in the ring, have your boxing match, get out and go and have a pint, that’s fine. That didn’t worry me, but I do know that it did worry other women.  

“I expected that my expertise, mostly around business, would be the predominant thing for me. But actually, it was around some of the issues with the Gender Recognition Reform Bill. I had a very early decision to make as to how I dealt with that, and I decided to break the whip. It was a regret that it was quite early in the session. I didn’t particularly seek to do that, but I felt that I had to because my concerns around safeguarding were such that I had to bring them to the fore.  “To be honest, my view is that my concerns have been proven right, because we’ve seen a lot of cases subsequent to that [vote]. Having to continually speak up in defence of women’s private spaces, their sex-based rights, has been really very draining, not just for me but for many women across the parliament.  

“I’ve had quite a few personal disclosures to me from other women who had either been raped or sexually assaulted, who therefore had a similar visceral reaction or fear to me about whether a male with fully intact genitals was to come into what was a private space. And some of these women said to me in the parliament ‘please keep speaking out, because I don’t feel I am able to’. Obviously, I will never disclose who these women are, but I can say it was cross-party, and I can also say they said to me, ‘please keep speaking out’. And I did that out of a sense of duty because we are there to speak for those who cannot be heard.  
“But I would also say that it came at some personal cost, because I have no wish to talk about myself. That’s not what I’m there for. I’m there to give voice to other people, and I personally found it quite difficult at times, and I know other women did, and when women are having to justify their very existence as a sex class, something has seriously gone wrong.  

“I don’t think the scale of the rebellion within the SNP group was anticipated, nor the strength of feeling about it, and it was almost like, ‘if we just pass it, we can all forget about it and get on with all the other stuff’.  
“I didn’t personally have a very hard time from either my own colleagues or other colleagues. I felt that people were supportive and understood why I was making the decisions I was. I don’t think it was the same for everybody else. I think there was a general understanding because I’ve spoken publicly in Westminster about other matters that affected me; I think people were sympathetic to that, but I don’t know if it was the case for other people.  

“But the problem is that there are some in politics who will say, ‘never apologise, never explain’, and therefore, having made a decision to move forward with a policy, then to concede that perhaps it didn’t quite work out as was intended, seems to be very difficult.  
“I think there was a genuine desire to make things better for trans people, and I’ve never had any issue with that. I think there’s a place for us all in this world, but you cannot allow the rights of one group to usurp the existing rights of another group, and the complexity in managing what can appear as competing rights, I don’t think, was fully considered, and it was quite fractious. 

“On Grangemouth, I felt it was incredibly important that I was seen and heard to be fighting my utmost to do everything I could, not only for my constituency, which included Grangemouth, but also for energy, and to try to preserve the last refinery in the UK. And it’s quite ironic that, as part of the many statements I made, I emphasised the need for energy security. I spoke about what I saw as the grave perils of making ourselves reliant on other global providers, when you looked at the potential geopolitical challenges coming down the track, and here we are. I was very critical of the inaction I saw from the UK Government, which sat on its hands for far too long. Energy resilience is fundamental, and too many people had forgotten that.”