Meeting of the Parliament 08 November 2023
The Scottish Government has spent more than £80,000 on papers about breaking up the United Kingdom. It has just wasted more taxpayers’ money on publishing its latest instalment of propaganda, which it now wants to debate in Parliament. Even Humza Yousaf admits that those papers sit on a website and nobody reads them.
Policing is one of the many public services for which the Scottish Government has full responsibility. The outlook is dire for our hard-working police officers, who protect the public. In recent months, we have heard a series of shocking announcements about Police Scotland. One senior officer described Scottish National Party cuts as a “slash and burn”. The Criminal Justice Committee has been told that more than 2,000 police officers could be taken off our streets. The police say that they will no longer be able to investigate every crime in the north-east of Scotland. The Scottish Police Federation put it in the starkest possible terms when it said that “people may die”.
We are seeing a rise in recorded crime, and that is just what is being reported. The former chief constable said that policing is
“not one of the priorities”
of the Scottish National Party Government. Yet, during the current parliamentary session, the SNP Government has not dedicated a single debate solely to Scotland’s police force, although we have already had multiple debates to argue endlessly about independence.
My business motion amendment proposes ditching the SNP’s planned debate on independence and replacing it with a much-needed, long-awaited discussion on the future of Scotland’s police. I am giving SNP members the opportunity to make it clear where their priorities lie. Do they lie with the police and giving them the resources that they need to keep the public safe or with their own political obsession with independence? I know that my party and I will be backing the police, and I urge all members to do the same. [Interruption.]