Meeting of the Parliament 14 May 2019
I have made it clear that there is nothing in the Government’s motion that I could disagree with. However, sometimes there is a sense that the Parliament is a bit like a scene from “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, the Hans Christian Andersen book: when anybody speaks out, everybody else is in complete denial.
There is no question but that the years of austerity have impacted on communities throughout Scotland, and anybody who says otherwise is in complete denial. As an example, we know about the importance of play, but play parks are disappearing. My granddaughter—her mum tells me—spent the weekend with her pals playing in a play park, yet those parks are disappearing. Councils say that they cannot maintain the simple things in communities, such as play parks, anymore. That is the impact at a practical level.
I was out campaigning on Friday in Cowdenbeath and a lady from Quarry Court came up and spoke to me about the parking issues there and in Blackburn Drive. She told me that she has a parking space that is marked off due to her mobility issues, but that she has to be home by lunch time because, if she is not, she cannot get parked. Year after year, that community has been crying out that it needs car parking. A community planning model in which local people set out their local priorities in a community plan would work. Those people would be able to say, “That’s our priority”, and they would then be able to influence the decisions and the spend. The problem is that, if the council turns round and says, “We’ve had to slash these budgets and we haven’t got any money to put in parking places”, people’s lives are disrupted.
Angela Constance acknowledged that austerity is a key issue.