Meeting of the Parliament 04 March 2025
I welcome the First Minister’s strong support for the principle of Ukrainian territorial integrity, its independence and the principle of self-determination.
The First Minister has acknowledged that personnel and other resources from Scotland may be deployed in any coalition of the willing as part of democratic Europe’s response to Russian aggression. Does he agree that the decades-long depletion of armed forces personnel and equipment in the UK armed forces means that we require rearmament, whether with European Union partners or non-EU partners? Does he agree that that should contribute to more effective recruitment of armed forces personnel, driven by improved pay, greatly improved equipment in relation to individual conventional weapons and cyber-resources, and the provision of relevant training opportunities, rather than squandering any resources on the immoral, utterly ineffective and increasingly irrelevant nuclear arsenal?