Meeting of the Parliament 25 February 2026 [Draft]
I associate myself with all the remarks that have been made so far. I only got to know Jeane when I arrived in the Parliament in 2016. A year later, I ended up on the Social Security Committee as we took the Social Security (Scotland) Bill through the parliamentary process, and I got to know her very well over that year and a half. She often phoned me up and helped me to draft my amendments. What was striking every time was that, if she said that she would do something, it happened. We could trust her word completely.
She also had a very personal touch. I remember that, on a Friday morning, I was walking through Astley Ainslie hospital on my way to a meeting. She had heard that something was going on in my family, and she phoned not to talk about social security but to ask me how I was doing. That is a mark of the person that we remember this afternoon.
The thing that struck me most was the way that she could work with other politicians from other Parliaments. At the time, a number of negotiations were on-going with the United Kingdom Government. It is fair to say that the politics of the then minister in London were probably as far away from Jeane’s as they could be. However, I had the privilege of sitting in on a couple of those meetings and watching her not score cheap political points but consider what was best for the people of Scotland, which was a lesson that I learned and that we all need to learn when we do our politics. We can make cheap political points, but what effect does that have on the people of Scotland?
That was also her approach when she devised and took the Social Security (Scotland) Bill through the Parliament. Social Security Scotland is one of the things that she worked on that will continue to be in place. She designed it, drove it and, perhaps most important, worked with the disabled community and with members across the chamber to make it the best that she could.
I, too, pass on my respect and thanks for Jeane. I say to Susan and Jeane’s family how sorry we are for their loss. We have lost somebody who really made a difference to individual lives in Scotland. That is surely a legacy worth having.