Hansard

We have met on several occasions during the current session of Parliament to welcome the announcement of new ministers. This is a slightly unusual occasion in a number of ways—I will return to that later—but it is a happy occasion because, for once, there is no departing minister to whom we have to express either our thanks or, in some cases, our sympathies.

On a personal basis, I congratulate Angela Constance and Shona Robison unreservedly on their appointments. First, may I say of Angela Constance that she is a confident and capable performer and minister. I hope that she will forgive me if I say that she might also be described as striking. She was one of three to captivate the attention of MSPs when Her Majesty last addressed the Holyrood Parliament.

I have commented before on the exceptional sparkle of Mr Yousaf on that occasion, as he sought to get noticed—out-blinging both the late Margo MacDonald and Christine Grahame. It worked—he is now sitting there as a minister. On that occasion, Ms Constance, too, sported an outfit that could not be ignored. Members might recall the hat with the feather of such elongated length that it allowed her to tickle the fancy of the front bench from the rear of the chamber. There she now sits as a cabinet secretary.

Is there a moral in this? The third member of that striking triumvirate must hope so. Step forward Kevin Stewart, whose cape and train was of such length that the security guards had to act as bearers. Indeed the only thing louder than Mr Stewart’s cape that day was Mr Stewart himself. He must hope, with greater ardour than I think most members might feel able to bear, that his turn may yet come. I fear, Mr Stewart, that it is only because you are a man that you were overlooked today.

I also congratulate Shona Robison, whom I have had the pleasure of shadowing in her former health brief. She has always been thorough and considered and, though capable of it, she is not typically partisan. She is engaging, with a dry line in wit. She is now, of course, the senior half of a political partnership. Her husband is sitting in another place and she is now inside the Scottish Government. To paraphrase Judy Garland and James Mason in a film that was released in the year in which I was born, he must hereafter be known as Mr Shona Robison.

On a personal basis, I congratulate both Angela Constance and Shona Robison. How I wish I could simply leave it there, but it is impossible not to reflect on the circumstances of the appointments. To my knowledge, no Scottish or Westminster minister has ever been appointed as the subject of a party conference speech or, in fact, been reduced to being the subject of a peroration in their leader’s conference address. There is nothing actually wrong with that, except that it does no justice to the Parliament or to the appointment of the two ministers themselves. Nor do I think that the impression given by the First Minister, as I read it in the papers—although it has been corrected somewhat today—that the appointments were simply to fulfil a quota did those ministers any justice. There is nothing wrong with that, if one believes in a quota, but the appointments, without supporting ministers or additional duties, are being funded at taxpayers’ expense, which I think comes across as unseemly.

How much better the appointments would have been had the ministers been given the chance to perform better than failing ministers in the Scottish Government, such as the Cabinet Secretary for Justice or the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning—or at least to have swapped responsibilities to have stood proudly in the first rank—but they were not.

I end where I began, with personal congratulations, but the manner of the appointments adds to the conundrum that is our First Minister. Blessed with manifest political talent, he appears also to be encumbered by less helpful characteristics. The appointments seem focus-group led—an all-too-obvious appeal to women to show that the Government and the First Minister identify with the women of Scotland. Fortunately, we believe, the women of Scotland understand this Government and this First Minister only too well.

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