Chamber and committees

Does the cabinet secretary understand the fear among farmers in my constituency that the Scottish Government now includes members who have previously advocated for a drastic reduction in livestock production and have talked up the prospect of covering 40 per cent of Scotland in forestry?

I would like you to add local authorities to that list. My local authority, Dumfries and Galloway Council, might have a view, given the volume of wind-related planning applications that it receives.

Thank you, convener. I thank the committee for making time for me to speak. I am not generally in the habit of attending this committee, and I recognise that considering petitions is primarily your work, but I was keen to come today to express my support for PE1864.

From my work as a constituency MSP over the past five years, I know that the petition speaks to a real problem and captures the concerns of many people who live in rural Scotland. The present planning system for onshore wind leaves the people who are most directly affected by what are often industrial-scale projects feeling ignored and irrelevant. They come up against developers who spend what seem like endless resources promoting applications and gaming the planning system. They see the views of community councils and local authorities discounted and they are slowly worn down by repeat applications and long-drawn-out, multistage processes. That is not fair and it does not reflect well on a modern democratic country.

I strongly believe that we need to tackle the climate crisis and that, in doing so, there is room for all energy sources. However, that cannot be at the expense of small rural communities. The way in which the process operates needs to be looked at urgently again. It is time that the Parliament gave our communities a voice.

I therefore ask the committee to keep the petition open, at the very least, and to continue to follow the development of the planning framework. I also ask you to consider taking further oral evidence from the petitioner and to see whether there is a way in which the Parliament can give individuals and communities a voice and ensure that the issues are properly explored.

To ask the Scottish Government what analysis it has made of the joint statement by the World Health Organization and UNICEF on the need to prioritise in-person classroom-based learning as efforts to manage the Covid-19 pandemic continue. (S6T-00112)

I know that that commitment will be welcomed by many parents and young people, but it cannot be conditional, as we move forward. Ensuring that our children and young people can attend school in person must be our top priority. Does the cabinet secretary understand that when the Scottish Government talks about the need for caution and the possibility of a reverse gear there is real fear that that might further impact on our schools? No matter what happens with other restrictions, will the cabinet secretary today rule out a wholesale return to blended learning, which so disproportionately impacts those who need our education system most?

I thank the Deputy First Minister for giving way. I am pleased that SNP members think that shouting and clapping are a substitute for ideas to take our country forward. After everything that the SNP has thrown at its campaign for independence and its divisive attempts to break up our United Kingdom by stealth, does he not reflect on the fact that there was no majority in Scotland for an SNP Government that wanted to hold a second independence referendum?

The first 100 days of a new parliamentary session, if not a new Government, is an opportunity to hit the political reset button—an opportunity to do things differently and take the country forward. Never has that task been more important than following the 18 months that the country has just lived through. However, to say that the first 100 days of this new session have been a wasted opportunity is an understatement. I cannot sum it up better than by referring to the lacklustre speech that we heard from John Swinney.

Far from the Scottish Government setting out an ambitious programme to take us forward, all that we see is the same old, tired thinking and obsession with the arguments of the past. Worse still, it does not even seem to have been possible to repackage that and cobble it together into a programme for government in time for the Parliament returning after the recess. What could be more depressing than the realisation that the priority for the Scottish Government’s Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Covid Recovery over the summer was not the wider interests of the people of Scotland, but the narrow political interests of the SNP?

Whatever happened to Nicola Sturgeon’s big, bold offer to work across the chamber? Like so many of the SNP’s promises, the answer is nothing because, rather than building a broad coalition and taking the whole country forward together, the SNP has focused on bringing on board a band of extremists to bolster its case for independence. If the case for breaking up our country in the midst of a global health pandemic already seemed dangerous enough, surely putting into Government people who want to shrink our economy, destroy jobs and condemn those who live in rural communities to being punished for their hard work growing our food and penalised for driving a car where no public transport exists hardly provides any confidence.

I will offer a little advice: that certainly does not move people from no to yes. After all, we should not pretend that the Greens are there in order to champion the environment. No—it is all about their extreme left-wing pet projects and their shared ambition to bring about the end of the United Kingdom as we know it. Today is, indeed, historic, but for all the wrong reasons.

Many will argue that this is the first time that a party has gone into Government in order to make a country smaller and poorer and to reverse the life chances of its citizens. Those who are less charitable might argue that that is what the SNP has been trying to do for the past 14 years. However, we have seen nothing yet. Against the backdrop of that coalition of chaos, the so-called achievements of the first 100 days look even more feeble—merely a placeholder to fill the vacuum while the deal was hammered out.

On education alone, it takes some doing for a Government to pat itself on the back for increasing teacher numbers when it has spent years arguing that its cuts to teacher numbers have had no impact on classroom learning. It is equally absurd to claim that having discussions about the distribution of laptops and iPads is the same thing as delivering them into the hands of the children and young people who need them. That is made even more ridiculous by the fact that some local authorities, such as Scottish Borders Council, and some individual schools managed to do that some time ago, when it made a critical difference.

As I asked after the election, during the 100 days education debate, where are the serious plans for catching up, after an average of 16 weeks of lost learning? Surely our young people deserved a little more than they got. Where are the big, bold ideas to restore standards in our education system? Where is the humility when it comes to admitting that the SNP has got it wrong? Where is the big vision? Why are we so heavily dependent on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s conclusions, when a number of Scottish educationalists and teachers have been sounding the alarm bells for years?

The answer is simple. This is a tired Government that has run out of ideas of its own. It is responsible for so many problems in Scotland—not because it happens to be in office today, but because its policy choices over the past 14 years have created them. The best that it can now do, after falling short on that all-important and expected electoral majority, is to draft in some new passengers for the Government limos. I suspect that, in the absence of any serious ideas from the SNP, we will find that Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater are in the driving seat when it comes to dictating Government policy. That is bad news for my constituents and, for that matter, the whole country.

What a way for a Government to end its first 100 days in office. To put it another way, imagine getting to 5,234 days in office and this being the best that it gets.

Many parents and young people would have liked to hear the cabinet secretary go a little further, but I accept the sentiment and the support for in-person learning.

The World Health Organization and UNICEF also talk about ensuring that the right mitigations are in place. Vaccination is surely the strongest tool that we have. We would not be where we are without the vaccine roll-out, which was guided by the expert advice of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation and others.

I appreciate that there are many complicated questions and trade-offs. Will the cabinet secretary update Parliament on roll-out of the vaccination programme, with regard to young people and the possibility of booster vaccinations for school staff?

Does the Deputy First Minister not think that his point is a bit rich on a day when he has gone into government with a group of politicians who do not believe in economic growth?

I do not disagree with Stuart McMillan’s analysis, but does he accept that it was as a result of cuts by his Government that those charges became commonplace across Scotland?