TRACKER
First Minister’s Questions
22 March 2011 By Katie Mackintosh In the last First Minister’s Questions
before the parliamentary elections in May, Labour’s leader in the Scottish Parliament, Iain Gray, asked First Minister Alex Salmond what happened to his promised bill to abolish student debt. “Did the bill just slip his mind or did he
never have any intention of ever bringing it forward?,” Gray asked. Salmond replied by accusing Labour of introducing “back-door tuition fees”. “If Iain Gray had not voted for the back-door tuition fees that Labour introduced, we would not have had to abolish them in 2007. Iain Gray is not going to persuade many students that they were not paying back-door fees under the Labour Party. Of course, if the Labour Party’s position is that it introduced front-end fees only in England and just back-door fees in Scotland, it will have some diffi culty with the student population, who will believe no more than anyone Labour’s last-minute conversion to free education,” he said. Gray turned next to the promised
Referendum Bill, saying MSPs had “lost count of how many times it was defi nitely coming to the Parliament.” “Has the Scottish Government had a
deathbed conversion to the Union,” he asked.
Salmond scolded Gray for wandering between subjects but reaffi rmed the SNP’s commitment to independence. “I am happy to confi rm that the SNP
will offer the people of Scotland the right to vote on their constitutional future,” he said. For four years the First Minister has
been “distracted by a referendum that never was,” Gray charged, while in the meantime unemployment in Scotland “raced ahead of that in the rest of the country,” he said. He also criticised the Government for a fl urry of “frantic” announcements in recent weeks, which he said had been “held back and timed for party advantage.” However, he added: “That does not
make up for four years of promises broken, schools unbuilt, projects
A complete round up of all forthcoming parliamentary business
First Minister’s Questions pg59 Motion of Thanks pg60 Main Chamber Business pg60 Forthcoming Events Diary pg63 Ministerial Statement pg63 Bills and Debates pg64 Committee Reports pg68
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cancelled, criminals released and thousands extra on the dole. Time is up. Has the First Minister not failed on all the issues that matter to the people of Scotland?” “Iain Gray should have the grace to welcome the employment announcements that I have brought to the chamber, which are good news for Scotland. I have been looking at his record as the Minister for Enterprise, Transport and Lifelong Learning—yes, he was the enterprise minister. In all the time in which he was enterprise minister, Iain Gray’s top employment fi gure in Scotland was 2,407,000. Employment in Scotland is now substantially higher than that—2,480,000,” Salmond countered. “If, after a world recession in which the Labour Party played a substantial part when it was in government, we have managed to achieve an employment total—after eight months of rising employment in Scotland—that is higher than the one that Iain Gray achieved when he was enterprise minister, he should learn to welcome that achievement.” Scottish Conservative leader Annabel
Goldie pressed the First Minister to concede the impact her party has had in delivering policy this session. “In addition to voting for the measures
on the police, the Scottish Conservatives did indeed vote for a council tax freeze; we also voted for help for small business, for a town centre regeneration fund, for a new national drugs strategy and for a £26 million boost to business, construction and housing. Those were all delivered by Scottish Conservative votes—we have made the difference.” Goldie “should not underrate her persuasive powers”, Salmond replied, but added that having seen some of the Labour Party’s recent policy announcements he is confi dent of greater support for SNP proposals in the next Parliament. “It is true that, in order to deliver
the council tax freeze, the votes of Conservative members were very important. Now, of course, we have the votes of Labour Party members as well. That joint articulation of the benefi ts to families in Scotland has fi nally got home to the Labour Party, just a few weeks afore we go to the polls,” he said. “I do not wish to say that Annabel
Goldie’s support is redundant or superfl uous in any sense but, as the next Government, we in the SNP can confi dently look forward to the Labour Party’s support in opposition in implementing our policies.” Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Tavish
Scott pointed out that, once again, the parliamentary session is ending with men and women from our armed forces in confl ict. He asked the First Minister what is his position on the Scottish military bases? Salmond replied that he “strongly
supports” Scottish air bases, which are under threat from cuts. A Royal Navy Trafalgar-class submarine has launched cruise missiles at anti- aircraft defences in Libya this week, Scott noted. “Trafalgar submarines and their
successor Astute-class submarines are to be based in Scotland, at Faslane. Does the First Minister welcome and support those submarines and all the associated jobs being based on the Clyde,” he asked. “As Tavish Scott should well know, we have never argued against conventional weaponry in the Faslane base. Indeed, he and I, along with the other party leaders, put forward that point of view in our joint submission to the armed forces review,” Salmond replied. “At a time when our armed forces are
being called into confl ict, we should be careful not to trespass into party-political arguments on the matter, particularly because the bases that are under threat in Scotland are not under threat from this Parliament or this administration.”
First Minister’s Questions
17 March 2011 By Lynne Whitelaw First Minister Alex Salmond began
by saying he will later be meeting with Scottish Power Renewables to discuss the Sound of Islay tidal project that had just been confi rmed – the world’s largest tidal project so far.
Labour leader Iain Gray accused
Salmond of endlessly recycling renewable energy announcements. He
said that Scottish unemployment was still rising while Salmond made the same announcements again and again. Salmond said that the announcements were not recycled and many are updating progress. He added that Scottish employment was rising. Gray said that the unemployed “deserve more than a rousing chorus of Alw
ays Look on the Bright Side of Life”
from the First Minister and again stated that unemployment was rising. Salmond replied that there were “Andy Kerr statistics” on unemployment and Offi ce of National Statistics (ONS) fi gures and most would trust the ONS stats. Gray said that the SNP had spent less
than Labour did on capital projects but Salmond argued that while the previous Labour/Lib Dem coalition spent £9bn, the SNP had spent £14bn. The two also disagreed over employment in the construction industry, with Salmond saying it had increased and Gray disputing this.
Salmond accused Labour of stealing
SNP policies such as the council tax freeze and free university education. Making reference to the Labour conference taking place that weekend, he said: “You don’t need a Labour conference to change policy; all it takes is for Iain Gray to wake up in the morning.” He later added that Labour would not be trusted in government again. Conservative leader Annabel Goldie
asked how long sex offenders could actually be expected to serve in relation to their sentences. She said that the SNP 2007 manifesto promised to end automatic early release, but nothing had been done. Salmond said that it was a Conservative government that introduced automatic early release. Standing in for Lib Dem leader
Tavish Scott, Mike Rumbles asked why Salmond was refusing to meet the Ballater Business Association (BBA). Salmond replied that Enterprise Minister Jim Mather met with them. Rumbles said that the September meeting with Mather was a “disaster”, adding that some businesses were not qualifying for the Small Business Bonus and this was causing diffi culties for them. Salmond said he was “rather puzzled” by Rumble’s description of the meeting as the BBA had written to Mather to say the meeting had been constructive.
28 March 2011 Holyrood 59
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