Meeting of the Parliament 15 January 2026
I thank Maggie Chapman for lodging the motion in Parliament, which I am delighted to support.
A few weeks ago, one Friday afternoon, I sat down with firefighters at the Cumbernauld fire station. It is a station which is set to be downgraded under the so-called service delivery review, with proposals to cut firefighters’ hours, with proposals to cut the number of fire appliances and with proposals to cut emergency cover on the night shift—even though the population that the Cumbernauld station serves is rising; even though, as one long-serving firefighter told me:
“Every bad incident I’ve experienced has been at night-time. It is when the risk is greatest”;
even though, as another younger firefighter told me:
“The very first video you are shown when you start your training is about time critical: the difference that two to three minutes can make”;
and even though, as Scott Fleming, the local Fire Brigades Union representative, told me:
“There are fewer house fires: but the fatalities from house fires have not dropped.”
So, even though these are the experiences, this is the evidence and these are the facts, the minister will tell us that these are purely operational matters for the service to decide, when, in truth, these are life-and-death matters, and so political and moral matters for this Government and for this Minister for Victims and Community Safety to decide.
There are other considerations, too. We also spoke that Friday before Christmas about the new fire station that had been promised when reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete was discovered at the station, which was built back in the 1970s. We spoke about it, because that new replacement fire station has now been shelved, because of the same service delivery review. I have to say that it beggars belief that, as we marked in Parliament just last month, 70 years ago, an earlier generation could build an entire new town in Cumbernauld; now this Scottish National Party Government in this generation cannot even build a new fire station in Cumbernauld.
And what of this week’s budget? Well, as the Fire Brigade’s Union’s Scottish secretary, John McKenzie, has explained,
“the capital budget increase of less than £1.5 million”—
that is for the entire Scottish Fire and Rescue Service—
“is utterly inadequate and sits against an £818 million capital backlog, leaving fire stations not fit for purpose, some held up by scaffolding and many without adequate toilets or running water.”
Meanwhile, the Government continues to throw millions extra for a new information technology system for the Fire and Rescue Service at the US-owned multinational corporation Motorola, having already wasted millions on a botched IT system splashed out to the French-owned multinational corporation Systel.
And just last week in Parliament, I revealed that, while the SNP Government’s budget for the removal of dangerous, highly flammable cladding in the wake of the Grenfell tower tragedy was £35 million last year, only £6 million of that was spent. It is another example of how little this Government regards community and fire safety, how little it understands the risks posed to firefighters and the public by these unsafe buildings, how lightly it takes its serious duty of care to these residents—especially those who are most at risk: children, those with a disability, the elderly and the frail—who are still waiting more than eight years after the Grenfell tragedy, simply for their homes to be made safe.
It is high time that we ended this indifference, this callous disregard. It is time that we saw action and that we saw new investment in our Fire and Rescue Service, in our firefighters, in our communities. That is what I will continue to campaign for, inside and outside this Parliament.
13:16