Meeting of the Parliament 01 May 2024
If members will permit another viewpoint to be heard, I say that that would leave little more than a year and a half until the legally required dissolution for the 2026 election.
In that time, what would happen to the legislation that is urgently needed? The Housing (Scotland) Bill, which contains measures on homelessness prevention and long-term rent controls, has just been introduced. We need a climate reset following the admission that Scotland is years behind where we should be on emissions cuts. One of the few areas of climate policy that have been praised in the past couple of years is the heat in buildings programme. Legislation on that will be needed soon if that is to be completed in time to accelerate the emission cuts from a previously neglected sector. All that and much more would be delayed. Then, after less than two years, we would have yet another Government with a different policy agenda altogether, potentially.
Fixed-term Parliaments are intended to give stability, and they have done so in contrast with more than a decade of chaos in Westminster politics. [Interruption.] It should be clear to everyone that both Labour and the Conservatives do not want stable self-government for Scotland. The Greens do.
We already had the best option—a stable, progressive and pro-independence majority Government—and I regret that it has not been allowed to continue. The Government will no longer be a majority Government, but minority Governments can work. It has happened before and it can happen again. It is not beyond the ability of any political party in the chamber to work constructively in that context, if it chooses to do so.
However, a minority Government must reach out and bring together a majority in Parliament. For that to happen, it will need to remain a progressive Government. We need a reset on climate; an acceleration of emission cuts, not defeatism; a bold commitment to equality, not a shabby compromise with the nasty, divisive culture war mentality that we see elsewhere; and continued redistribution, which will be all the more important if an incoming UK Labour Government carries out its threat to stick to Tory fiscal rules, which will mean even more austerity. That progressive agenda is still capable of providing stable government for Scotland, instead of the chaos that the Labour motion seeks.
15:19