Hansard

There we go again—the same old playbook: blame somebody else. The harsh fact is that 40 per cent of the hip and knee replacements that happen in our country happen in the private sector because of this SNP Government’s incompetence.

Our schools are also feeling the strain after two decades of the SNP. The poverty-related attainment gap stubbornly persists, teacher numbers have been decimated across Scotland, and teachers, pupils and parents are fearing for their safety as discipline breaks down in schools across Scotland—and again this Government turns a blind eye.

John Swinney mentioned tackling child poverty, but we all know that we cannot properly tackle poverty unless we address the structural issues, one of which is the need to ensure that people have safe and secure homes to live in. Under the SNP, for too many Scots, that is not the case. We are in the midst of a housing emergency. Record numbers of homeless children are being left to spend their nights in hotels and bed and breakfasts, and house building completions are at a record low. A generation of young Scots feel totally frozen out of the housing market, with home ownership an unattainable dream. Again, the responsibility for that lies with John Swinney and this SNP Government.

Just this morning, the human cost of SNP failure was demonstrated again. There have been 1,017 deaths from drug abuse in the past year and 6,000 such deaths since the drugs crisis was declared. The rate of drug deaths is still three times higher in Scotland than in the rest of the UK and is the highest rate in Europe. Every single one of those deaths is avoidable—precious lives lost needlessly because of the scourge of drugs. Again, some of that relates to this Government cutting the number of rehab beds, cutting our hard-pressed police and so much more. Again, the responsibility lies with John Swinney and this SNP Government.

We all know that John Swinney has only one priority in the next eight months—to somehow try to cling on to power—and he is going to use the independence card to keep his knackered, failing Government in power. He is not interested in improving people’s lives today, fixing services tomorrow or making Scotland a better place any time soon; he is just desperately talking about independence—but why is he doing it? John Swinney is many things, but he is not daft. He has been in this game a very long time and he knows that he cannot stand in the election on his record, because Scots have had enough. That is why he wants to make the election about independence—not because he believes that he can achieve it, nor because he thinks that the SNP can win a majority, but because he thinks that it is the only way that he can keep enough people together to sneak over the line and cling on to power. It is cynical, it is desperate and it is John Swinney all over, but I do not believe that it will work, because Scots are canny and can see right through it. [Interruption.]

John Swinney shouts about focus groups, but the focus groups say, “You guys are out and getting beat,” because whether Scots voted yes or no, people have had enough. They want a Government that gets back to basics—that fixes the NHS, schools and transport—and they know that the SNP is failing on every measure. John Swinney wants to talk about focus groups. Ask the people of Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse who helped to beat the SNP. Ask the people in Barrhead who helped to beat the SNP. I promise that, in Scotland next year, they will help us to beat the SNP all over again, because, after nearly two decades, Scotland is crying out for a new direction.

People want a Government that will fix public services and get the basics right. They want a Government that shares their ambitions for Scotland’s future. We will tackle the housing crisis by actually building the homes; we will get our businesses growing by backing entrepreneurship; we will stop the antisocial behaviour in our schools by banning mobile phones, supporting teachers and supporting our communities; and we will fix our NHS by taking on the bureaucrats, empowering doctors and pulling out all the stops to clear the backlogs. That is the new direction that Scotland needs—new thinking, new ideas and new leadership, not the same old arguments from the same old knackered SNP.

I move amendment S6M-18671.2, to leave out from “welcomes” to end and insert:

“notes that the Scottish National Party (SNP) administration has overseen the development of a housing emergency, allowed NHS waiting lists to soar, leading to a two-tier system with those who can afford to pay going private, been forced to scrap its legal climate change targets due to its own inaction, wasted billions of pounds of public money through incompetence and bureaucracy, and stood by while school standards declined; recognises that SNP incompetence means that people in Scotland are not feeling the benefits of the £5.2 billion in additional funding delivered by the UK Labour administration, which is working to restore public services and kickstart economic growth, and believes that Scotland is a country that is full of potential but that it is being failed by the SNP administration, and that, at the election in 2026, people in Scotland can choose a new administration that shares their ambitions and works to deliver the services that they deserve.”