Meeting of the Parliament 25 March 2026 [Draft]
It is a pleasure to follow Beatrice Wishart, who, as we all know, has been a real champion for her communities in the time that she has spent here. I also pay tribute to my friend and colleague Oliver Mundell, who has shown us what a constituency MSP should be, and to John Mason, with whom I have had the pleasure of working in the community. I say to John that working with him has always been interesting—I will leave it there.
I also pay tribute to Mairi Gougeon, who is, frustratingly, always happy and upbeat no matter what the situation. Although we disagree on some things, I know that she and I share a passion for locally produced food. We have worked hard together on that, and I appreciate her support.
I thank Jamie Halcro Johnston for bringing this debate to the Parliament. As always, I want to introduce a slightly different approach to the subject and so I will talk about how we should develop health policy. We must start from the position that services should be available to our communities no matter where they are, whether they are urban, rural or on islands.
We should all have access to GPs and to dentistry, pharmacy, accident and emergency, and maternity services. Access to those things should be statutory across our country, no matter what. The same should be said for education and community activity. However, how we deliver that uniformity of service will vary across urban, rural and island settings. There is an acceptance, especially in our rural and island communities, that people will require to travel to access some services—for example, trauma or specialist health services.
I have tried to bring to the chamber my belief that healthcare will be revolutionised by the adoption of technology. No one will benefit more from that than our rural communities across Scotland—it is they who will benefit disproportionately. We are way behind the rest of the world in adopting that kind of technology, which will deliver services in a more effective way across our country.
Connectivity, which has been mentioned, is a lifeline for all our communities. I live in East Kilbride. I know how poor the roads are there, how infrequent the buses are, how infrequent the rail services are and how difficult it is for people to get out of their cars. For rural and island communities, connectivity is a lifeline. As Jamie Halcro Johnston said, roads, rail networks and ferries—we keep coming back to ferries—are key to keeping those communities where they are and stopping migration away from them.
The chamber will welcome the fact that this—eventually—is my last speech in this parliamentary session.
If we are to deliver for all our communities, including our islands and rural communities, we will require to do something that this Parliament has been very poor at: cross-portfolio working. That is what we need to do if we are to deliver people’s basic needs across all our communities.