Meeting of the Parliament 20 February 2024
I, too, pay tribute to Donald Cameron and welcome Tim Eagle to the Parliament. I say to Mr Eagle that he has big shoes to fill.
On behalf of the Scottish Labour Party, I welcome Jim Fairlie and Kaukab Stewart to their first appointments as ministers and welcome Fiona Hyslop, who is the SNP’s comeback queen. Before I turn to each of those members, I will make a few general observations.
The new ministers have a hard task ahead of them. They have to wrestle with poor budget decisions in their portfolios and with keeping their Green Party colleagues on side—which I know Jim Fairlie has views about. They also have to wrestle with ensuring that their devices have the correct data packages applied when they go on holiday, because roaming charges—or, more accurately, their cover-up—are why we are in this position.
We have an SNP Government with 30 cabinet secretaries and ministers—the largest-ever Government in Scotland—at a cost of more than £3 million in salaries alone. I keep asking myself whether they are worth it. With ferries not sailing, the A9 not being dualled, new hospitals and general practitioner surgeries being cancelled and 830,000 Scots on waiting lists, I fear that the answer is no.
The Government is failing, and I am not convinced that the addition of more ministers will stop the ship from sinking. If the SNP Government continues to grow, as it has done since 2007, I am sure that there will still be plenty of opportunities for those who did not get picked this time to get a turn before 2026.
In particular, I welcome Jim Fairlie to his post as Minister for Agriculture and Connectivity. Mr Fairlie is well liked by all across the chamber, and his knowledge of the agriculture sector will, no doubt, be invaluable to Parliament. However, Mr Fairlie comes from one of the SNP’s factions that advocates change rather than the status quo. It is recognised that he is a fig leaf for the First Minister, who did not want to recruit the actual change agenda candidate, Kate Forbes, to his team. I am sure that Mr Fairlie will be more than up to the job in her absence.
I also welcome Kaukab Stewart to her new position as Minister for Culture, Europe and International Development. I recognise that she is the first woman of colour to become a minister in Scotland, and I congratulate her on that achievement. However, the brief brings with it a lot of travel. In fact, many positions in the Scottish Government seem to include a fair bit of globetrotting, but I will leave it to Ms Stewart to decide whether charging the taxpayer £11,000 to deliver a 15-minute speech in Los Angeles is better value than popping in via Zoom.
I also welcome Fiona Hyslop back to the Scottish Government in her role as Cabinet Secretary for Transport, Infrastructure and Connectivity. She was doing the same job as a minister and is clearly being promoted because she knows where the bodies are buried for the ferry fiasco and the lack of dualling of the A9. Members who have been in the Parliament as long as I have will know that Ms Hyslop has worn many hats under each of the SNP’s First Ministers, so she will doubtless bring a wealth of knowledge to the brief.
Having been in the Cabinet of, and then demoted by, both former SNP First Ministers, Fiona Hyslop has survived them all. I am reminded of Persephone, who, in Greek mythology, leaves the underworld for six months of the year and goes back for the remaining six. For Fiona Hyslop’s sake, I hope that she at least occasionally makes it out of the underworld that she is about to enter.
I offer the Scottish Labour Party’s good wishes to the three members who are going into the Government today, but the Government is tired, out of ideas and out of road. Scotland has got worse under the SNP and, no matter how gifted those individuals may be, the die is cast. Change is coming.
14:44