Meeting of the Parliament 09 December 2025
I thank the minister for giving Parliament the opportunity to have a debate on veterans, and I thank Susie Hamilton for the work that she has done over the past year. I am delighted to say that I, too, welcome the work that the Scottish Government has undertaken to help our veterans—the veterans who stood by us.
I do not need to remind Parliament that national service stopped being a requirement in 1960 and that the last national serviceman probably left the services in 1963. Many of us do not know how many veterans are out there. We probably do not know that a person we are talking to is actually a veteran until we see them wearing a medal at a remembrance Sunday parade, whether it be a campaign medal or a medal for valour.
We could probably all put our hands on our hearts and name some of the conflicts that our soldiers have been involved in since the second world war. We could probably reel off Northern Ireland, the Falklands, the first Gulf war, the second Gulf war, Afghanistan and probably a few others. However, do we really know the extent to which our armed services have been involved in those conflicts and where they have been deployed? I can list a few. We have been involved in 45 official conflicts and many others besides. We could talk about Libya, Sierra Leone, Yugoslavia, Belize, Gambia, Angola, Oman, Tanzania, Uganda, Cyprus, Malaya, Kenya, Aden and many more. I will not list them all, but there is a huge amount of them.
To my mind, we owe a debt of gratitude to those veterans who stood by us, fought on our behalf and, when they were not fighting, helped to keep the peace in the places that I have mentioned. They allowed us to rest easy in our beds at night, so we owe them the ability to have a bed themselves. After the 1914-18 war, we gave many returning soldiers smallholdings across the country to allow them to come back to a house and to farm the land. I think that that was a great idea. Over the past 110 years, Veterans Housing Scotland, which we know a lot about, has been helping veterans to obtain housing.
I remind members that, currently, about 176,000 people across Scotland have served our country. Fifty per cent of those are over 65 years of age. In my area, in Moray, we have a high proportion of veterans—about 9 per cent of the population. In Highland, the proportion is slightly less, at 5 per cent. Those veterans play a huge part in society. Their great contribution has been recognised in the NHS and Police Scotland reports that we have read, which recognise that veterans bring so much to us.
Businesses across the country recognise the skills that veterans bring, whether in problem solving or in being worldly wise when they look to address problems. In my opinion, we need to encourage veterans to move to and settle in Scotland, and to help them do that. That is why the Conservatives have lodged an amendment that seeks to increase the availability of housing for veterans who move back here.
In the reports that she has presented the Scottish Veterans Commissioner makes the point that we need to do more on local housing strategy. In the amendment lodged on behalf of my party, I propose that the Scottish Government should talk to the UK Government to see whether any armed forces married quarters could be made available to retiring service personnel to facilitate them moving back to Scotland, possibly at a reduced rent for a period of up to a year, so that they can bring their skills back here and we can seek to use them.