Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 27 January 2021
The pandemic has knocked the country sideways, with 100,000 lost lives, grieving families and broken friends. Unemployment is skyrocketing, children have lost out on precious education and thousands are waiting an age for hospital treatment. Waits for mental health support were already long, but they are now intolerable. It will take all our combined efforts, ingenuity and commitment to recover from the pandemic. It will take our undivided attention and a needle-sharp focus.
It beggars belief that anyone—even the most committed and dedicated supporter—should suggest that this country should now, as we start to plot a recovery, turn its attention to another independence campaign and referendum. We know what it was like last time: all consuming, divisive and costly. Brexit gives a more recent example of just how thorny, complex, prolonged, divisive and costly independence would be. It would be even worse than Brexit.
Young people who are desperate for work cannot wait for that. Children who are in need of a good education and people who are desperate for a hip operation or for mental health support cannot wait, nor can businesses that are on their knees. They cannot afford to wait while the SNP has yet another independence campaign.
We have had a hell of a time in the past year. The past decade has been divisive. Let us make the next decade be about not only what unites us, but what makes our lives better. Let us put the recovery first.
I was going to compliment Mike Russell and say that he will be missed from the Parliament. Then I heard his diatribe; I cannot compliment that. To say that the problems of the vaccine roll-out are either those of the manufacturers, of the care homes because vaccination there takes longer, or of the Opposition for daring to ask questions is not worthy of Mike Russell or of his contribution to Parliament over the years.
The Government is increasingly evasive and secretive. Take yesterday, when I asked John Swinney about the number of vaccines in storage. In reply, I got a description of the ordering process to be followed by GPs. Trust in the SNP on the vaccine programme is at rock bottom. It is not me who is saying that—my inbox shows that people are genuinely concerned. They see the numbers. We are 140,000 vaccines behind England. England is speeding up, we are slowing down. For a Government that frequently points out how useless Boris Johnson is, that is a terrible record.