Meeting of the Parliament 16 June 2026 [Draft]
I start by paying tribute to Jenny Young and thanking her for securing this debate. Members’ business motions often talk about celebrating something, but the topic of this debate is clearly not something that we want to celebrate; rather, it is something that we want to mark, and we want to do so with a degree of solemnity, for the sake of Jo’s family.
I served in Westminster from 2017 onwards, so I was not in the same intake as Jo, who entered Parliament in 2015. However, she entered Parliament alongside my other half, who is an English Labour MP—which, by the way, has really taken cross-party working to a new level, and is not something that would recommend to everybody—and I have also had the pleasure and privilege of serving alongside Jo’s sister, Kim, who was referred to by Mr McArthur earlier. She epitomised what was clearly a family value of being kind and compassionate.
When I arrived at Westminster in 2017, I made quite a deliberate decision. As somebody who had joined a political party at the age of 11 and was incredibly tribal, I made a very deliberate decision to spend time with other parliamentarians. This is the first time that I have spoken about it, but I used to play tennis on a Wednesday morning with Kim Leadbeater—Jo’s sister—David Mundell and Sir Desmond Swayne. It would be fair to say that, other than our terrible lack of ability when it came to tennis, there was very little that united us in our politics. However, we could put that to one side, and that is something that we need to learn to do an awful lot more.
Ms Young is absolutely right to touch on Jo’s legacy. The things that she espoused in terms of tackling loneliness and isolation are incredibly important, and in that respect, I want to touch on what I refer to as my gap years between Westminster and the Scottish Parliament, which were important for me in reflecting on how I behaved as a legislator and as a politician. During that two-year period, I worked for the Good Faith Partnership, as I have noted in my register of interests. One of the things that I was involved in was the warm welcome campaign, which was set up to deal with loneliness and isolation in our communities. On one of the first visits that I undertook as an MSP, I had the privilege of visiting my own parish church, St Paul the Apostle, which has a warm welcome hub. I encourage all members to seek out and visit its local warm welcome space to see how loneliness and isolation, the very issues that Jo Cox campaigned on, are being tackled.
Recently, I saw a documentary that dealt with the Dunblane massacre that took place 30 years ago. I was struck by the fact that Lord Robertson and Michael Forsyth appeared together in the documentary. They sat and reflected on how they, as Secretary of State for Scotland and shadow secretary of state, handled the situation back in 1996. I thought that it was very unusual to see a Labour and a Conservative politician sitting alongside each other talking about something that united them. However, it was a sad moment, because the thing that united them was grief: George Robertson lived in Dunblane and his kids went to that school, and Michael Forsyth was the local MP. It struck me that we have probably lost something in terms of how we conduct our politics.
I mentioned earlier the two years that I spent away from politics. The electorate are never wrong, and that two-year period gave me the ability to think about how, if I were to go back into politics, I would want to contribute to Parliament and legislate. I reflected that, in the seven years that I was at Westminster, there were occasions on which I would go for the jugular; indeed, I would sometimes make a two-footed tackle against Stephen Kerr. However, in coming to this place, I have made a conscious decision that I want to contribute a bit more thoughtfully—although there will be occasions when I will get it wrong.
I want to end on this point, because I picked up on the slight biblical reference that Ms Young made earlier. For me, a lot of what we are talking about comes back to the language that we use. In the first few weeks of this session, I have been slightly concerned about some of the language that I have heard in the chamber. I am not going to name individuals, because that will not help, but my plea to all members is to be slightly mindful of the language that is used in here. As I seek to do that, I will certainly take with me the verses in James, chapter 3, on taming the tongue.