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Chamber and committees

Official Report: search what was said in Parliament

The Official Report is a written record of public meetings of the Parliament and committees.  

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Dates of parliamentary sessions
  1. Session 1: 12 May 1999 to 31 March 2003
  2. Session 2: 7 May 2003 to 2 April 2007
  3. Session 3: 9 May 2007 to 22 March 2011
  4. Session 4: 11 May 2011 to 23 March 2016
  5. Session 5: 12 May 2016 to 5 May 2021
  6. Current session: 12 May 2021 to 9 February 2025
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Displaying 791 contributions

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Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]

Local Libraries

Meeting date: 5 February 2025

Michael Marra

I thank Mark Ruskell for securing the debate, and I thank the campaigners and professionals whom I had the privilege to meet this afternoon, whose passion for our public libraries across Scotland was evident.

I could more than fill four minutes with my personal love of libraries, their atmosphere, the smell of them and the quiet sounds. I could list my favourite ones—the Mitchell library in Glasgow, the Shaw library at the London School of Economics and Political Science and the British Library by King’s Cross—but none of those comes close to Lochee library in Dundee, where I hold my surgeries and where my mother took my infant children for their Thursday morning reading group. The library was built among the mills where my family worked when they arrived from Ireland. For many people in Lochee, it served as a literal and metaphorical escape from those mills.

The fact that many of Dundee’s public libraries have survived is due partly to their being protected by the listed status of their buildings. That leads to the very difficult situation in which many of the libraries that are most at threat in Dundee are in the post-war housing schemes that line the city’s periphery, because they do not have listed status. Removing the library function from the listed buildings would leave them as burdens on the council, rather than assets. Many of the communities affected have been engaged in a long-term fight to hold on to their libraries. As colleagues have pointed out, there are real equality issues, given the pattern of poverty in my home city.

That brings me to Douglas community centre and library, in the east of the city, which is currently under threat. Proposals to close that facility have been put in front of the council in the current budget round. The local management group raised a petition, which attracted 794 signatures. This weekend, following a door-to-door campaign, the number of signatures collected passed 1,000. I congratulate all the campaigners who are fighting to protect that facility.

The community libraries in question are to be replaced by a library space in a new community campus miles away from Douglas. A council officer described her experience of seeing the plans for that library space; she told me that she wept when she saw them. The existing libraries are to be replaced by—literally—three shelves of books, not just for the children of the school but for the community at large.

As colleagues said at lunch time, that gives rise to a question about the concept of adequacy that sits within the legislation. Nobody thinks that what is proposed is an adequate replacement. The council is playing the game and the legislation in order to cut libraries and remove them from people. I support all the comments that members have made about the social purpose of our library system, what it can do for people and how important it is as a place of refuge, friendship, learning and advice. The libraries in my city are part of that, and we must protect them.

18:09  

Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]

Local Libraries

Meeting date: 5 February 2025

Michael Marra

In Dundee, various library facilities are being closed, with three shelves of books proposed as a replacement. Does the minister agree that that is not in any way an “adequate” replacement for those facilities, in terms of the legislative framework that he pointed to?

Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]

Medication Assisted Treatment Standards

Meeting date: 5 February 2025

Michael Marra

On 16 January, the cabinet secretary met me to discuss the status of MAT standards in Dundee, so he already knows about my concerns that service users and providers in my home city are very sceptical about the continued improvement in the self-assessment reports. What independent validation of the MAT standards assessments is in place?

The experience in Dundee, where many of the recommendations of the Dundee drugs commission of 2019 remain undelivered, does not tally with the self-assessment that is in front of us today.

Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]

Portfolio Question Time

Meeting date: 5 February 2025

Michael Marra

The minister will understand the frustration from around the chamber because of the number of projects that members want, but the infrastructure investment pipeline is something of a holy grail for the Government. It is fabled and never found, and it is difficult to determine where it might be. We expected it with the budget in December 2023, but it never came. We were told that we would have to wait until after the spring budget in March 2024, but it never came. Next, the cabinet secretary for finance said that it would come with the medium-term financial strategy in May 2024, but it never came. Can we have a commitment from the finance minister that it will come before the summer recess?

Meeting of the Parliament

Budget (Scotland) (No 4) Bill: Stage 1

Meeting date: 4 February 2025

Michael Marra

Frankly, it was Scottish Labour that called time on the amateur dramatics, the threats of the far right, the collapse of industry and the doomsday future that the First Minister was predicting because we secured the £5.2 billion that we want to go to the front line. That is why we have taken this position.

Meeting of the Parliament

Budget (Scotland) (No 4) Bill: Stage 1

Meeting date: 4 February 2025

Michael Marra

Week after week, the First Minister says that things are not really that bad, but admissions of crisis are wheedled out of him in moments of weakness. Daily, he denies the reality experienced by so many people who have come into contact with our NHS, our schools and our justice system.

Scots are paying ever more, and getting less in return. Every institution is weaker after 18 years of John Swinney and the SNP. A Government that will not admit when things are going wrong is never going to turn things around.

Our country needs a new direction. We need a Government that is invested in making things better, turning things around, and doing the hard work of fixing what the SNP has broken. This is not as good as it gets. Our country desperately needs a new direction.

15:07  

Meeting of the Parliament

Budget (Scotland) (No 4) Bill: Stage 1

Meeting date: 4 February 2025

Michael Marra

It is certainly right that the member highlights the challenges that the issue presents for businesses, the third sector and the public sector across Scotland. That is clearly the case, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer has taken a difficult decision. However, if he is completely opposed to how the £5.2 billion that he talked about in the first part of his speech was raised, how does he think that it should have been raised? What is his alternative?

Meeting of the Parliament

Budget (Scotland) (No 4) Bill: Stage 1

Meeting date: 4 February 2025

Michael Marra

Is that the answer?

Meeting of the Parliament

Budget (Scotland) (No 4) Bill: Stage 1

Meeting date: 4 February 2025

Michael Marra

No thank you, sir.

To be fair, however, John Swinney had one suggestion, which was for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to raise income tax in England to match income tax rates in Scotland. Surely, the man who negotiated the fiscal framework would know that doing that would reduce the amount of money that came to Scotland. [Interruption.] Well, the First Minister might want to listen to the Fraser of Allander Institute, which said that his fatal misunderstanding of public money would cut Scotland’s budget by £636 million—

Meeting of the Parliament

Budget (Scotland) (No 4) Bill: Stage 1

Meeting date: 4 February 2025

Michael Marra

No thank you, madam.

Those decisions have had devastating consequences: a lost year in Scottish house building, while homelessness hit record high levels, and tens of thousands of children woke up in temporary accommodation on Christmas day. The uplift in local government funding this year will not put right the damage that has been done by more than a decade of budget cuts—most of which were authored by the First Minister—which treated councils as an afterthought and decimated their funding. Only the SNP could think that reversing some of its worst mistakes was a triumph.

This budget could have been so much more. A time of increased investment should be the moment for a serious Government to seize the opportunity to reform services for the better, but the SNP has declined that opportunity. In the past 15 months alone, Audit Scotland has published five major reports calling on the Scottish Government to urgently prioritise and act on public service reform.

The Auditor General is now banging his head against the SNP’s brick wall every month. The Auditor General, the Scottish Fiscal Commission and the Parliament’s finance committee are all of one voice, yet nothing ever changes.