Junior Scottish Minister
Under rule 4.8.2 of the standing orders, I wish to formally notify members of the resignation of Stewart Stevenson as a junior Scottish minister.
The next item of debate is, therefore, a debate on motion S3M-7603, in the name of Alex Salmond, on the appointment of a junior Scottish minister. Members should note that the question on the motion will be put immediately after the debate and not at decision time.
14:06
I am pleased to seek the Parliament’s approval of the appointment as a minister of Angela Constance. It is, of course, appropriate that Parliament should have the opportunity to debate recent changes to the Scottish Government’s ministerial team.
First, I would like to pay tribute to Stewart Stevenson. When I replied to his resignation letter at the weekend, I wrote that he had always pursued any task with diligence and devotion. I might have added “dignity and determination”. As a minister, Stewart brought forward the strategic transport projects review, developed our approach to planning reform and took forward the Forth replacement crossing project to the point of parliamentary endorsement, which I hope it will receive later today. Above all else, I should say that his successful championing of our world-leading climate change legislation is an achievement of which any politician in any Parliament would be immensely proud. [Applause.]
Stewart Stevenson’s successor to the transport and infrastructure portfolio, Keith Brown, also brings with him a substantial record from local government as a councillor and a council leader, and Parliament and the Scottish Government, as a member and as the Minister for Skills and Lifelong Learning. As has been well documented in the press, Keith previously served as a royal marine as part of 45 Commando, which fought in the Falklands war—an experience that might stand him in good stead in the days ahead.
I have heard it said that the extremity of the Scottish climate should lead us to focus less on climate change, as if there were an either/or choice. I disagree fundamentally with that. I would have thought that the extremes of our climate serve as a reminder of why we must act on climate change. They remind us of the importance of climate and of why it should remain a key priority for this Parliament and this Government as we build on that world-leading legislation. To ensure that the policy remains a top focus for this Administration, it has been combined with the environment portfolio, under Roseanna Cunningham.
Keith Brown’s move to transport means that we need a new minister to take over the skills and lifelong learning portfolio, and I am pleased to nominate Angela Constance for that role. Angela has proved herself to be an extremely able parliamentary performer in committee and in debates in the chamber and, before becoming an MSP, she was a mental health officer in her native Livingston.
I am told that the appointment, subject to parliamentary approval, of Angela to the Government team will make the MSP block a much quieter place. That is not a reference to Angela but to three-year-old Cyrus, who has made quite a home for himself in this Parliament.
I believe that Angela Constance will be an asset to the Government in the skills and lifelong learning brief, and I welcome her warmly to the Administration, pending parliamentary approval.
I move,
That the Parliament agrees that Angela Constance be appointed as a junior Scottish Minister.
14:09
I thank Stewart Stevenson for his work as Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change, and for the courtesy that he showed to me and to other Opposition spokespersons during his tenure. It was no easy task to pilot the Climate Change Bill through a subject committee in which the Government had two votes and the Opposition the whip hand. However, even as the bill was extensively amended, Stewart Stevenson retained his equanimity and good humour, and collectively we ended up with legislation of which the whole Parliament can be proud.
To replace Stewart Stevenson, the First Minister has chosen an ex-marine—I presume not just because he is the handiest with a shovel, but because he is capable of taking forward the resilience agenda for this winter. In education, Keith Brown’s talents were sometimes overshadowed; the great panjandrum is not inclined to share the limelight. However, he can now don his high-visibility jacket and hard hat in the few months that remain until his ministerial career comes to an end on May 6. In the meantime, I wish him well in his new post.
I also wish Angela Constance well as she becomes minister for skills and lifelong learning. I presume that the reason why she is not also designated as schools minister, as both her predecessors were, is that the SNP has so far commissioned only one new school. Three ministers and only one new school is a less-than-outstanding record, but at least Pumpherston and Uphall Station community primary school near Livingston—the only new school for which the ground has been broken—is in Angela Constance’s constituency. Perhaps she should have been designated in the singular—the school minister. That might have reminded other members, and the rest of Scotland, that nearly a quarter of children are being educated in schools that the Scottish Government has rated as unsuitable due to the failure of the SNP’s Scottish Futures Trust.
I urge Angela Constance, who has won the respect of colleagues—she has respect on the Labour side of the chamber, as she does on the Government side—to apply herself to the tasks of creating more apprenticeships, improving the quality and range of vocational educational opportunities and ensuring that resources are used effectively by Skills Development Scotland.
If she acts diligently on those matters, she will have the support of members on the Labour side of the chamber. If, on the other hand, she is pressed into service as an apologist for the many broken promises of the current Administration, such as the trashing of the class-size pledge, the Liberal Democrat-like betrayal over student debt, the numbers of qualified teachers who are left without jobs, the mismanagement of the implementation of curriculum for excellence—[Interruption.]
Order.
I tell Michael Russell that I could go on.
If that is the case, we will have robust exchanges.
14:12
We are here today because of the resignation of Stewart Stevenson as transport minister. Mr Stevenson was fond of regaling us with tales of all his previous employment, from airline pilot to inventor of the internet, but the man who has had every job now has no job.
On a personal level, we should recognise Mr Stevenson’s contribution as a Government minister and accept that he acted honourably in resigning when he did. In reality, however, he had little choice. What cost him his job was not the severe weather, but his inadequate response to it. The lesson of his resignation is that on occasion, a little less arrogance and bombast and a little more humility are required from Government ministers. That is a lesson hard learned by the former transport minister, and one to which his boss should pay attention.
I remind the First Minister that Mr Stevenson had to resign not because he had lost the confidence of Opposition parties, but because he had lost the confidence of the public, and even—if our friends in the press are to be believed—the confidence of members on the SNP side of the chamber, including his ministerial colleagues.
I congratulate Keith Brown on his new position. The former royal marine is noted for his pugilistic style, and I am sure that next time we have a transport crisis, Labour Party press officers will be keeping out of his way.
I also congratulate Angela Constance on her appointment to Government in an important role, to which she will bring her experience as a social worker. According to one jobs website that I looked up, social workers assist people in managing their daily lives, coping with issues, navigating relationships and solving personal and family problems. It sounds like she would have been better suited to working for Ed Miliband.
I wish both ministers success in their new roles. If I had one word of advice for them it would simply be this: it is always worth paying attention to the weather forecast.
14:14
In this short debate, the Liberal Democrats make it clear that we will not oppose the appointment of Angela Constance to the Government. It would be churlish, to say the least, to oppose what is probably the last-ever SNP appointment to Government. I could be wrong, of course, because it is still more than three months until dissolution, so there could be more ministerial resignations and dismissals to come, and more hurried replacements from the SNP back benches, so there may still be time for Michael Matheson, Alasdair Allan and my fellow north-east MSP Brian Adam—I do not know what he has done wrong—to make it to the Government payroll, but we will have to wait and see.
I noticed that with the departure of Stewart Stevenson after the serious debacle of last week, the First Minister accused others of political game playing. I seem to remember that the SNP was quite adept at that when it was in opposition; it often made trivial calls for ministerial resignations. I well remember one in which Fergus Ewing called for the resignation of a Labour minister after the minister failed to wear a hairnet on a visit to a fish-processing plant.
This resignation was over a serious issue, when the transport minister confessed to deep regret—[Laughter]—which is more than I can hear from the SNP back benches, over his lack of support for members of the public who were trapped overnight in the snow and the fact that he called the reaction of the authorities to the situation “first class”, when it was clearly not.
I wish Keith Brown luck in his new role. There is clearly a consensus across the chamber that he has a tough job ahead of him.
Lastly, I welcome Angela Constance to her new role. Some people less generous than myself might question whether working for Mike Russell represents a promotion or a punishment. However, for the good Government of Scotland, the Liberal Democrats wish her well in the short time that she has left to make an impact, and we look forward to May next year when we hope to support a completely new ministerial team.
14:16
It must be difficult for the Opposition to respond to a debate such as this. They must decide whether to be graceful or to be funny or, in the case of the three speeches that we have heard, none of the above. Des McNulty at least made an attempt to start off in graceful fashion, but he got waylaid about schools—I say “waylaid” because Keith Brown was the Minister for Skills and Lifelong Learning; he was not the schools minister. However, since Des McNulty raised the question of education, this is probably a suitable point at which to remind him that we have built or refurbished 330 schools. We know that that cannot be what Labour had planned because, after all, its manifesto said that it would build or refurbish 250, so the fact that there are 330 makes the case for a substantial achievement in that direction.
The last point that I make to Des McNulty is that the Committee of Public Accounts, I think, of the House of Commons has exposed the farrago of the private finance initiative. Even a Tory-dominated committee has come to a conclusion on the scandal of the Edinburgh royal infirmary and the other PFI projects under Labour, so I doubt whether any serious person will revert to that policy.
I expected more from Murdo Fraser. After leaving all the magnificent talent in the whole of the Tory list trailing in his wake, I would have thought that he would have been in a charitable mood following the high anxiety of recent days, but clearly he is not.
In the same vein, I say to Mike Rumbles that this Administration has had three ministerial departures, compared with 17 in the first four years of the Labour-Liberal Administration and 11 in the second session of Parliament. Amid all the range of talent that that Administration called on—17 members in the first session and 11 in the second session—the only person who was never called upon to serve as a minister in eight years was Mike Rumbles. Maybe humility is called for.
That concludes the debate on the appointment of a junior Scottish minister.
The question is, that motion S3M-7603, in the name of Alex Salmond, on the appointment of a junior Scottish minister, be agreed to.
Motion agreed to.
That the Parliament agrees that Angela Constance be appointed as a junior Scottish Minister.