Hansard

Today’s motion reflects on an extraordinary life and an extraordinary campaign that achieved so much for people with motor neurone disease. Gordon Aikman’s response to his crushing diagnosis has resulted in better services for people who face that terrible illness.

Today we are discussing all that Gordon has achieved and the on-going legacy of his campaign—on which we have had many excellent and very considered speeches—but in these early days since losing him, all of us who knew him are still hurting at seeing someone with such ability, commitment, passion and warmth being lost to us at so young an age.

If members have read Gordon’s moving article about his experience of receiving the news of his diagnosis or spoke to him while he was waiting for confirmation of it, they will know just how devastated he was to get the news just as he was starting a new relationship with his husband Joe. For someone to receive that diagnosis and choose not to retreat into themselves and not to curl up and pretend that the nightmare was not happening was a huge achievement. Such a response would have been understandable, but that was not Gordon’s choice—that was not who he was—which is why people and families who are affected by MND are benefiting from his strong legacy today.

On Saturday at Gordon’s funeral, I sat next to one of the MND nurses. We had met before. She was one of the nurses who helped to care for my mum when she was diagnosed with MND. It had taken more than a year for us to get the diagnosis. It is a complex disease and, for many families, the road to diagnosis can be confusing and frustrating. Perhaps that is also the case for members of the medical profession, but it seemed that there needed to be a greater level of knowledge and awareness of the indicators of the condition. My mum was diagnosed not long after Gordon and, at the time, that nurse spoke to me about how stretched the service was and the importance of the work that Gordon was doing.

Gordon’s response tells us so much about the man he was, but it is important that, while we recognise what he did on MND, we do not lose sight of how talented and brilliant a person he was before his diagnosis. From being head boy at Kirkcaldy high school, he went on to the University of Edinburgh, where he was an activist who was committed to playing his part in fighting for a better society. That took him into student representation and, from there, to working here in the Parliament for my husband Richard Baker MSP. That was when I first met Gordon, and I often talked to him more than I did to Richard in the Parliament—he was a more reliable source of information on Richard’s diary than Richard was.

Gordon was a positive, funny and charming man. He had many friends in Parliament, and he was a good matchmaker. We all enjoyed his and Joe’s wedding, and seeing him as happy as he had made other people.

In his work for Richard, Gordon quickly established himself as intelligent, resourceful and tenacious. He was then poached away to work for the Labour group. He was happy to work late nights and for long hours, and he could achieve more in one day than many of us could achieve in a week. Every task was done efficiently, effectively and inventively. If some piece of research needed to be done or some important fact needed to be found out, he would find a way to get that information—as the Scottish Government well knows.

Gordon was a great communicator, writing speeches, columns or news releases. While everyone else was throwing out ideas haphazardly, he would put together a focused and effective campaign plan. Before his diagnosis, he was already one of the best political operatives of his generation. It was no surprise that he was promoted to such a senior position as director of policy in the better together campaign. It was a huge blow to the campaign when he could not continue in the role.

Gordon used all his experience, talent and skills to amazing effect in his fightback campaign but, if he had not developed MND, he would still have achieved great things in his life. He had a passion for life. Although the disease must have brought him pain and heartache, he took lots of pleasure, excitement and love from his life. I enjoyed seeing the many pictures on social media of his travel adventures—and woe betide the airline that stood in their way. Gordon turned on his campaigning skills and exposed an airline for its treatment of wheelchair users, showing that his commitment to positive change reached beyond specific MND issues to equality for all people with a disability.

This afternoon, we are celebrating a great campaigner, but we mourn the loss of a talented young man and a wonderful person; a great friend full of humour, fun and warmth; and a cherished husband, son, brother and uncle full of love for his family. He was also a political animal. He was part of the Labour family, and I know that he would have loved Kezia Dugdale’s speech this afternoon, which reflected much of who he was.

MND is a brutal and cruel disease that takes lives all too soon and leaves behind devastated families. Let us pay tribute to Gordon’s bravery and brilliance not only by improving services and support for people with MND, vital as those things are; let us also work together to ensure that there is far more research in the future to find a cure for the disease. Gordon also felt passionately about that. He raised significant sums of money to help with research for future generations.

With the scientific excellence that we have in Scotland and our world-leading research in life sciences, we should aspire to be the country that finds the cure for motor neurone disease. We should seek to lead in research to provide effective treatment. Scotland should be the place where we finally beat the disease. That would be a fitting tribute to Gordon. It would be fitting recognition of someone who achieved so much in such a short life.

For all of us who hold his memory dear and miss him so much, let us all pledge to work together in the Parliament to ensure that his campaign does not stop today, but goes on until we have realised the future that he fought so hard for.