Meeting of the Parliament 16 November 2017
Given that many of us were laying wreaths on Sunday to pay tribute to the fallen and to those who have served their country and defended its values, it is appropriate that we are having this debate, to which there have been many fine contributions from all parties around the chamber.
The cabinet secretary kicked off the debate by speaking about changing landscapes: I guess one changing landscape has been the political landscape in Scotland and how we support veterans in this country. We must not forget that, since devolution, and especially since the SNP Government’s election in 2007, we have had the first veterans minister, the veterans fund and, of course, Scotland’s first veterans commissioner in the form of Eric Fraser, who is in the gallery today. I join other members in paying tribute to his good work on the many issues that he has highlighted. I thank him for visiting Forres in my constituency a few months ago, where he met local people and discussed some of the issues that face veterans in the local community.
Another changing landscape is my constituency of Moray, which has played such a key role in defending the nation throughout the 20th and, now, 21st centuries. That has largely been through the presence of the RAF and the Royal Navy over those years. Even today there are many symbols of that presence to be seen in Moray, particularly from world war two. The beach defences, which are now under the care of the Forestry Commission Scotland, are still there and are a tourist attraction in their own right, and the many now-redundant airfields in the area can be seen by visitors and local people alike.
We still have RAF Lossiemouth, which is the only RAF base in Scotland today, and we have the Kinloss barracks, which was formerly the RAF Kinloss base. There is still a huge military presence in Moray; so many men and women are still playing their role defending the country and doing their good work. As a result of the presence over the past century or so, and today’s presence in those two establishments, many veterans live in Moray. As I have said before, if we were to measure the number of veterans as a percentage of the population in Moray, we must be at or near the top of the league for the whole of Scotland.