Hansard

Thank you, Presiding Officer. I want to take a moment to thank all the members of the Parliament’s staff who have served me my breakfast, put up with my rants about the information technology system and supported me in committees of the Parliament—right down to Paul Grice, whose advice and support I have valued very much over the piece.

I should also mention my personal assistant Alison McKenzie, my constituency office—the font of all knowledge—and everyone who has worked for me over the period, including Colin Borland, Jill McNeil, Craig Davidson and Richard Cook.

Presiding Officer, in one of my first speeches as a newly elected member of the Scottish Parliament, one of your predecessors indulged me by allowing me to announce the birth of Chloe, the second of my four grandchildren. In a few weeks, Chloe, like this Parliament, will turn 17. She is one of the first of the devolution generation who have grown up every day with a Scottish Parliament as part of their lives. That tiny baby has become a beautiful young adult, and in many ways the formative years of this Parliament have mirrored that familiar journey from infancy to maturity. We certainly had our teething problems and our sleepless nights when, very early on, we tackled the discrimination and inequality that existed in Scottish society and made up some ground on that, and when we had to deal with cost of this beautiful building. At that time, we sometimes felt as if we were under siege.

Through time, we have found our place in Scottish life and our confidence. However, as we did not have the ability to tackle seriously the imbalances to which Iain Gray referred, or to raise our own money, many of our debates lacked political maturity, and at their worst resembled a stroppy teenager complaining about not getting enough pocket money. Tensions became so heated that we even threatened to leave altogether. However, we have agreed instead on a new settlement. We should at least take satisfaction that at the end of today we will come together and agree that this is a significant day for us all, as the Deputy First Minister said.

We are now a 17-year-old Parliament that is about to come of age and is ready to take on more responsibilities and to earn more of its keep, excited and enthused by the opportunities that that will provide. Of course there will be challenges; it will change politics and how we do politics.

We have been given our key to the income tax door. However, as someone who has served Hollywood—[Interruption.] That was my senior moment—although we have seen Hollywood techniques sometimes. As someone who has served Holyrood as a party whip, a member of the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body, a committee convener and a proud chair of the parliamentary Labour Party group, and who argued strongly for such powers to come to Scotland even when the policy was not popular in my party, I think that I am qualified and entitled to question whether we have demonstrated sufficient responsibility to exercise them. My experience tells me that this Parliament has not kept pace with change. It must do so soon if its work is to be effective for the people whom it serves.

I was reminded this week that Robin Cook came to the Parliament when he was the Leader of the House of Commons. This Parliament was new, and there were things here to be learned for his journey of reform at Westminster. It saddens me to say that now we have to do a bit of learning from Westminster and how it runs its business.

It will, of course, be for the next Scottish Government to decide its policies, how the new powers can be used to implement those policies and how we should tackle the big issues that we have been discussing here: how we build a successful economy, how we transform the health service to make it even better than it is, and—the biggest challenge of all—how we tackle the inequalities that affect and exclude so many of our population.

It will be this Parliament’s responsibility to ensure that there is accountability, scrutiny and even opposition, when it is necessary. We must ensure that we are capable of meeting that challenge, or we will face the consequences. The role of Presiding Officer will be key in doing that, and I pay tribute to Tricia Marwick for the job that she has done as an advocate of change and reform for our Parliament. I note that she has said herself that she has not been able to win all the arguments.

How can we ensure that the Presiding Officer’s successor can take on that mantle and ensure that our procedures, structures and ways of working are fit for a modern powerful Parliament? I believe that we need to ditch the current convention; I believe that the way in which we elect the new Presiding Officer is integral to changing Holyrood. Why not have an open election in which all members—not just those who are favoured by the leadership or the party whips—are free to put themselves forward and allowed to stand on their own manifesto of reform, thus gaining a mandate that cannot be restrained by those who oppose change? Those ideas could be put forward in hustings, to engage with people beyond Parliament on their expectations of Parliament, and cross-party support should be necessary, if not compulsory.

Equally, the status and independence of our committee conveners need to be elevated and protected so that finally our ambitions for our committees are realised. We all wanted our Parliament to be different from—better than—Westminster, and in many ways we have succeeded, but we must be open enough to recognise that in some ways it has not worked and other systems are better. The power and functions of committees is one area where we need to get it right.

We must also ensure that our parliamentarians and our opposition parties have the resources and the means to do just that. A strong opposition is vital to our democracy, and we need to ensure that it is equipped do its work effectively.

Alas, that is a debate that will be taken forward by members in the next session of the Scottish Parliament, of whom I will not be one. This is my last speech as an MSP after 17 years. On my first day as the MSP for Greenock and Inverclyde—the first elected representative to have been born and bred in the area—I stood just a few feet away from Donald Dewar when he made his famous speech to open the Parliament. He said:

“In the quiet moments today, we might hear some echoes from the past: the shout of the welder in the din of the great Clyde shipyards.”

I was a caulker/burner, not a welder, but I hope that I have provided more than just an echo of Scotland’s industrial past. I have always tried to be an authentic voice for working people in my community and the families there, and for the many communities like it.

When I entered the gates of the shipyards on the lower Clyde at the tender age of 15—even younger than my granddaughter Chloe is now—I thought that I had a job for life. I could never have imagined that 50 years later I would be representing my colleagues, my family and my neighbours in the Scottish Parliament. What an honour that has been.

We have seen what bad Governments can do when thousands of men’s and women’s livelihoods are taken from them and their communities plunged into mass unemployment, with all the associated problems that they must still live with. I have also seen what good Governments can do in regenerating such communities by attracting jobs, building new homes and schools, and allowing people to live healthier lives. Good government comes when the Government is forced to test its ideas, build consensus and correct mistakes.

Chloe and her generation will look to the Scottish Parliament for good government that protects people when they are vulnerable and provides them with opportunity when they are ready to take it. I know that there are good people in the Parliament and that there can be good government. I will watch members from afar. I wish them well for their future and the future of the Scottish people. [Applause.]