Good afternoon. The first item of business this afternoon is time for reflection. Our time for reflection leader today is the Rev Neil Glover, the minister of Flemington Hallside parish church near Cambuslang.
Presiding Officer and members of the Scottish Parliament, I thank you for the opportunity to address you today.
I wrote this talk to the musical backdrop of 500 high-pitched shouting children—I live next door to a large primary school and it was playtime when I was writing.
At 3 o’clock every weekday afternoon, the road outside our house is crowded with cars and with parents in ever more imaginative attempts to find parking spaces. Five years ago, that overcrowding was even worse. To address the issue, our council produced a plan to reduce the numbers at the school by moving the children from the poorest part of our community—children whose families were least likely to own a car—to a school 2 miles down the road.
There was uproar. There were petitions, meetings and arguments. One of the arguments was taken from Professor Richard Wilkinson, co-author of the renowned text, “The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better”. Inspired by him, we said, “This proposal hurts not only our poorest children but our wealthiest children, for it will cause them to live in a community that has become less fair.”
Two years ago, I heard Richard Wilkinson speak at a conference on public ethics, which was also addressed by the First Minister and a few MSPs. At that conference, people argued for empathy in public life, justice in public life, love in public life. That became too much for Wilkinson. In the middle of a panel discussion, he burst out: “All this talk of empathy and love and justice is all very well, but you also have to talk about structures—structures that reduce or foster equality.”
I am grateful that in this building people change structures. You do that with an apparatus of motions, budgets, amendments and committees. You campaigned in stirring poetry; you now govern in structure-changing prose.
Five years ago, our arguments were heard. A new school was built, and it has a mixed catchment. It is loved by its children, its parents and its staff. It is there because of empathy, equality, love and justice, and also because, in a committee somewhere, someone moved a motion.
Above ground, a structure was built. Beneath, the deeper structures that hold us all together were strengthened. Thank you for your work in finding the structures that will enable a better, flourishing Scotland.
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Business Motion