Meeting of the Parliament 25 March 2026 [Draft]
I just read out the facts in the record of failure. Let us not forget that John Swinney was the education secretary who marked down working-class kids during the pandemic. When he did that, he told teachers that he did not trust their judgment and young people that he did not believe in their ability.
However, it is not just in the classrooms that he is failing our young people. The number of homeless children in 2021 was 7,500. Today, the figure stands at more than 10,000—there are 10,000 children without a home to call their own on the SNP’s watch. There are starker and more serious failures, too. The number of Scots who are sleeping rough on our streets has increased by 66 per cent since 2021, and almost 5,000 of our fellow Scots have lost their lives since 2021 to a drug deaths crisis that the SNP said was a national emergency. Will John Swinney be honest and accept that that is not a record of success but a record of failure that he should be apologising for?