Chamber and committees

I do not get as much time as many others do.

Scotland does not need Reform; Scotland needs independence.

16:32

Can I even get started? Mr Massey got six minutes, so I would like to use up my seven minutes after his huge ramble.

Anyway, I appreciate that the low-emission zones policy might inconvenience Baron Offord of Garvel, depending on which of his five cars he is driving at the time, but it will add years to the life expectancies of thousands of Scots. Two years on average, I believe, is the difference that reducing air pollution can make to life expectancy.

I will also respond to the motion title, which proclaims that “Scotland Needs Reform”. Scotland does not need—or want—Reform UK Ltd. The party’s politics are not welcome and its rhetoric about “strangers” is simply dangerous. I know that some of our Reform UK MSPs get upset when they are quoted, so instead I will use a quote from one of Reform’s MPs, reflecting on what voters in Makerfield thought of Reform:

“We were either too racist or not racist enough”.

At this point, I will take an intervention from any Reform MSP who wants to tell us whether they think that their party is too racist or not racist enough.

What?

Perhaps I will use some different quotes:

“I told you time and time again, I’m protecting the country”.

“Enough is enough. I have had enough”.

Those are some of the words that a topless Lewis Hawkes screamed as he was arrested in Edinburgh just last week. I am not going to repeat the rest of what he said, as it makes me feel physically sick to my stomach, but he also made a reference to “our daughters”. He has since been charged with five counts of attempted murder linked to terrorism.

I cannot help but think how familiar some of his words were, and how I seem to have heard them before. I wonder whether the MSPs who have been joining “street patrols” or the ones calling people “strangers” might see some similarities, too. I am not expecting them to stand up and hold their hands up, but those who are capable of quiet reflection may wish to try it.

I seem to be the sort of person that Reform UK members say that they care about. I am a woman, and they seem to think that I need protected. I had a working-class upbringing, living on the farms that my dad worked on. I did not go to university; I earned my living by working in petrol stations and supermarkets.

My partner and our daughter have both worked in the oil industry, and my dad and granda served proudly with the Gordon Highlanders. I do not believe for one second that Reform UK cares about people like me; it cares about division and power, and crypto donations from dodgy billionaires. Reform UK does not represent me—it disgusts me.

I am under no illusion that folk are frustrated at so much of what is happening, and not happening, in the world today. Across the past two decades, we have lurched from the financial crash to austerity, to having a Brexit vote thrust on us, to a pandemic, to a European war and a cost of living crisis. In Aberdeen, we can also throw in the added challenges with oil and gas jobs. Throughout that time, we have seen inequality grow. We have seen the world’s richest folk become even richer, and we now have our first trillionaire. While we have seen the economy grow, across the western world we have seen living standards decrease.

Some folk who have never struggled before are now struggling, and some folk who have struggled their whole lives now doubt that things will ever get better for them. They are seeing the consequences of austerity, of a lack of investment in jobs and of a lack of spending in their local communities. They are feeling the consequences of social security being stripped back. They are angry and rightfully so. They are being failed by a Westminster system that is not working in their best interests.

Today, we have the billionaire beneficiaries of that system and their pet politicians in Reform UK trying to tell us that the real reason for the state of society is immigrants, trans people and even wind turbines. If we got rid of all the migrants, we would not be any better off. Who would they blame next? Who would they target next? The same folk who were leading the fight against “benefit scroungers” a decade ago when they were in the Conservative Party are now in Reform UK saying that we should “look after our own”. Maybe I am just not seeing what Reform MSPs are believing. For example, Baron Offord of Garvel may know more about small boats than I do—he spent the last election campaign boasting that he owned a fleet of them.

Let me finish by talking about where I see the effects of migration in Aberdeen. Where there used to be empty shops and empty buildings, there are now Polish food shops, Romanian stores, Indian takeaways, African food shops, Chinese restaurants, Malaysian supermarkets, Buddhist temples and, two doors down from my constituency office, there is a Filipino supermarket. Churches are staying open due to new members, and charity shops have new volunteers. For centuries, Scotland has been a nation of emigrants, with its people travelling all over the world, and I am proud of that. I am delighted that, over the past few decades, the world is coming to Aberdeen and, quite frankly, we are all the better for it.

No, I will not take an intervention from a jack-in-the-box who can stand up and speak later.

Please excuse me if I do not respond to every point in the motion—it is a 400-word rambling mess, and I have only seven minutes to speak.

I will start—because it has especially irked me—with the motion’s reference to low-emission zones. That is not a net zero policy; it is a public health policy. The simple idea is that the folk who live in our city centres, and the children who go to city-centre schools, deserve to have clean air in their lungs to breathe. Who’d have thought it, eh?

I appreciate—

I congratulate my neighbouring MSP, Jack Middleton, on securing his first members’ business debate. He has chosen a very good subject: a topical one that matters to folk right across Aberdeen and the north of Scotland.

I grew up watching “North Tonight” on Grampian TV. When I was little, I would watch the news and learn what was happening around the world, followed by what was happening across the north-east. It made the news matter to me when I was a bairn. It was everything that local journalism should be: high quality, engaging and trusted. That is why I kept watching the programme under the various different names that it has been called over the years, and continue to do so. I am one of 277,000 folk across the north-east and the Highlands and Islands who tune in to STV to watch it. I imagine that the vast majority of those hundreds of thousands of viewers will be far from happy with the idea that their local news will no longer be local.

I know that I have given the viewing numbers already, but I want to emphasise how phenomenal they are for STV North news across the north of Scotland. There are 277,000 viewers—a 40 per cent viewing share—all tuning in to “STV news at Six”. In a world of myths and disinformation online, where folk are increasingly questioning news sources, there is something we can trust in the fact that we are able to turn on the television and watch the local news on STV, or, for that matter, walk into a shop and pick up a copy of The Press and Journal and the Evening Express. That trust and local connection resonates with folk in Aberdeen, and it means that they are more willing to trust those outlets on matters that are further away from home, too. That is why the decision by STV is disappointing.

Our local news is being taken away at the whim of a London-based chief executive, with the decision being rubber-stamped by London-based Ofcom. STV’s argument is that it wants to focus on digital output instead. It feels that it can try to address the lack of truth that exists online by leveraging the trust that folk have in its news output. The problem is that the foundation of that trust is built on STV’s local and regional news. I would love to see more STV content on social media, but STV will be able to retain the high level of trust that it enjoys only for as long as it continues to anchor itself in our local communities.

Aberdeen faces an uncertain future. We are an oil capital whose businesses have been battered by the energy profit levy. We are a coastal city during a climate crisis. We are home to critical national infrastructure, while Russia is becoming more of a threat. We are a cash cow whenever the UK Government cannot balance its books. Despite being surrounded by farms, wind farms, fishing boats and oil rigs, people are struggling with their food and energy bills. With all that going on, if folk cannot find news from a source that they can trust, some will turn to outlets that tell them what they want to hear instead. Local journalism builds trust, and the need for high-quality local journalism across every format is greater than ever. That includes TV coverage, and it includes STV North news.

STV and Ofcom are both in the wrong here, and I hope that one of them will see sense and reconsider before it is too late.

18:43

Thanks to the ambition of our Scottish National Party Government and the action that it has taken on child poverty, child poverty rates in Scotland are substantially lower than the UK levels. However, it is appalling that the Scottish Government still has to spend money on mitigating the UK Government’s lack of action. Will the cabinet secretary update the Parliament on the impact that long-standing UK Government policies such as the bedroom tax, the benefit cap and the local housing allowance freeze have had on Scotland’s progress towards ending child poverty?

Labour’s national insurance hike continues to place huge pressures on the budgets of our public services, as it costs them an estimated £400 million per year. I find it unacceptable that our public services are paying the price for that Westminster stealth tax. Will the minister join me in once again calling on the UK Labour Government to fully compensate our public services for that tax hike, so that they can continue to deliver the high-quality services that folk in Scotland deserve?

Living, working or studying abroad is a hugely enriching experience in which we encounter new cultures and skills. What estimation does the minister make of the social and educational impact on Scots young people, who are being denied the opportunity to expand their horizons in a way that was previously facilitated through freedom of movement within the EU and programmes such as Erasmus+?