That this House has considered St Andrew’s Day and Scottish affairs.
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for the opportunity to mark St Andrew’s day and to discuss Scottish affairs. As a Fife MP, I begin by noting that the town of St Andrews is at the opposite end of the kingdom from my constituency, and it is always a pleasure to see the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) in her place. St Andrews is obviously not as important or beautiful as anywhere in Dunfermline and Dollar, but it is a place long associated with Scotland’s patron saint and, of course, famous for being the home of golf.
Across Scotland, we celebrate not only our connection to St Andrew, but the thread that runs through our national story: a generous spirit, a quiet strength and a belief that community, work and learning can change lives. As the Member for Dunfermline and Dollar, I see those qualities every day in the people and places that have shaped our history and will build our future.
Today I want to speak in three parts: Scotland as it was, Scotland as it is, and Scotland as it could be. In doing so, I will speak to the opportunities that different generations have experienced, the prospects that Scotland now must champion, the importance of our infrastructure and the lessons we can take from St Andrew’s life itself. I will also celebrate organisations—
I thank the hon. Member for giving way, especially so early in his speech. He talks about Scotland as we were. Does he share my concern that too often our history has been oversimplified, over-romanticised and focused on William Wallace, Robert Bruce and this entanglement with England, and has not looked at Scotland’s contribution not only to British but to world history and our achievements in engineering, for example?
I thank the hon. Member for her intervention and, indeed, for sponsoring my application to the Backbench Business Committee. She has anticipated one of the points that I will make later, and I should say that my speech does not mention either of those key figures in Scottish history she mentions, but it does mention many others. In this speech, I will embody some of those names that are particularly associated with my part of the world, such as King Malcolm, St Margaret and Mary Queen of Scots, through to Andrew Carnegie and beyond. I do not intend to start a civil war this afternoon, so I will perhaps not dwell on the most famous person to be born in Dunfermline: a certain Charles I—a name well known in these parts, of course.
When we talk about Scotland as it was, we should be proud of our history, but we should also acknowledge the difficulties and errors that have led to our present. As well as celebrating Scots abroad in every corner of the world, every airport people land in and every bar, we must remember Scotland’s past—the past we see when we look up in cities like Glasgow and across the country and see the remnants of the slave trade that Scotland also profited from. When we talk about the British empire and its legacy, both positively and negatively—as we rightly should—Scotland must also be part of all sides of that conversation. We must weigh the legacy that older generations built, the conditions they enjoyed and the sacrifices they made against the obligations we owe to younger people today.
In my constituency, Dunfermline is a place where the past walks with us. It is simultaneously Scotland’s newest and oldest city, and beneath our streets lies St Margaret’s cave, a place of reflection linked to a queen whose charitable deeds still resonate. It reminds us that the spiritual heart of our country rests not in institutions, but in the everyday acts of care for neighbour and stranger.
I am a London MP, but I feel that I must step in for the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who is not here. But my intervention does have a connection to the subject of the debate. It is about the vibrancy of Scottish universities. People from my constituency travel as far as Scotland to get a world-class education, and during a recent trade envoy visit to Nigeria, I spoke to Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office staff who had studied at Scottish universities. Does my hon. Friend agree that we must invest in education, as that is a good way to achieve economic regeneration and support?
I could not agree more. St Andrews University, which I mentioned at the beginning of my remarks, is the heart of education in Scotland, along with institutions in Edinburgh, Glasgow and elsewhere across the country. [Interruption.] I see that university arguments are breaking out already among Opposition Members—or is this a rare moment of agreement between the SNP and the Lib Dems? I should add, as someone who went to Stirling University, that we have many universities across the country that are able to contribute.
More employers should co-design curricula; colleges must be funded to deliver practical, modern teaching; and learners of all ages must be supported with opportunities, transport and clear progression routes. There is so much more that we can do to make it as easy for a care worker to earn a digital health certification as it is for a technician to gain offshore safety accreditation, or for a veteran to translate military skills into civilian qualifications.
I turn to the uncertainty that young people face in their future. Most people now approaching retirement have never seen world affairs so unstable, never dreamed of a land war in Europe, and never saw global power politics of the sort we have today, but that is the future that young people are navigating. A continuing series of once-in-a-generation crises affect this generation of young people. The war in Ukraine, which is fuelling rises in the cost of living, is one of the most long lasting they will see, in a world that has spent the resources that are needed to tackle the problem.
That gives me the opportunity to talk about my favourite topic: the contribution of the defence industry to Scotland. It will come as no surprise to anyone in the House that I am talking about this. Not only do young people have to face the security, technological and economic threat from Iran and China, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but they are the ones who will be asked to fight it—hopefully only in economic and social terms. Scotland’s defence footprint—in shipbuilding, aerospace, cyber and logistics—is both strategic and local. From the yards that turn steel into hulls and the bases that secure our airspace, to the small and medium-sized enterprises that supply components and services, defence sustains skilled employment, supports innovation and anchors communities. We should celebrate the engineers and fabricators, and the logisticians and technologists—world-class workers whose labours keep our nation safe and advance our industrial capability.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Dunfermline and Dollar (Graeme Downie) on securing this debate, which gives us an opportunity to consider some of the important issues facing Scotland. As a Member of the Scottish Parliament in 1999, I was very disappointed not to have the opportunity to take part in the debate reflecting on 25 years of devolution, because I wanted to pay tribute to three colleagues whom we lost over the summer. The first is Sir George Reid, who was the second Presiding Officer. Although an SNP Member, Sir George always put the Parliament ahead of politics. Indeed, I voted for him in the 1999 election for Presiding Officer against party advice, which was to support Lord Steel. I have never regretted that decision.
I also pay tribute to my colleague Jamie McGrigor, who was one of the great characters of the Scottish Parliament. Many a night was spent—after parliamentary proceedings, Madam Deputy Speaker—with his guitar and several drinks consumed. Finally, I pay tribute to my constituent, the late Ian Jenkins, who was the first Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale, a Liberal Democrat Member of the Parliament and a very well-respected figure. Even when he left the Scottish Parliament, he played an enormous part in the community across the Borders, and he is greatly missed by all who knew him.
It may surprise Members to hear that for my constituents, this is not the single most important debate taking place at the moment, or the one that will most affect them, because at this very moment, SNP-led Dumfries and Galloway council is proposing that £68 million be invested in a flood prevention scheme in Dumfries. Only a few months ago, that scheme was to cost £25 million. The cost of the scheme has ballooned, with no proper explanation, to £68 million. There may be a few moments left in which to influence councillors, if I have any influence at all with them, so I urge them to reject that proposal, which, in my view, would be a criminal waste of money for a council that is closing rural schools and struggling to provide basic services, such as maintaining our roads. I hope that my plea makes it across the ether to Dumfries.
In my previous life as an academic, I got a little bit involved in that project, but that was many, many years ago, so I am really surprised that it has not yet been delivered in some shape or form. I am sure that the local authority is working hard on it, but surely if the work had taken place much sooner, it would have been much more cost-effective, and would have delivered benefits to people well before now.
I am sure that we do not want to go down the blind alley of a long discussion about this flood prevention scheme, but it was the subject of a public inquiry, because—this is one of the most important parts of the issue—it does not command public support. That, in my view, is the reason why there have been numerous delays and it has not been progressed. Today is the opportunity to end all the uncertainty and say, “No, this project is not going ahead.” But of course, in our democracy, it will be for councillors to decide, and we will respect their decision.
As all of us representing constituencies in Scotland know only too well, the story of the past two decades of SNP government has been one of stagnation, mismanagement and, in many cases, outright failure in stewardship of our public services. Education standards in Scotland’s schools are on the slide. We have fewer police on the streets, and those streets and roads are in a poor state of repair, as vital transport infrastructure does not receive the investment that it needs. But of all Scotland’s public services, few are under such intolerable strain as our NHS.
Just a few weeks ago, the SNP’s Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care was boasting of cutting NHS waiting times, while ignoring the fact that there are now 86,000 cases of patients who have been stuck for more than a year on waiting lists. That is higher than in 2022, when the Scottish Government pledged to “eradicate” the problem by September 2024. More than a year on from that broken promise, SNP Ministers are claiming that they will wipe out waits of over 12 months, this time by March next year—conveniently, just in time for May’s election.
The right hon. Member is giving an impressive speech and a very important speech for Scotland. Does he agree that in May next year, Scotland will stand at an important crossroads where our future may be decided on how we pursue that election and who wins it, and that the time has come for change to address the problems of which he speaks?
The hon. Lady will be pleased to hear that change in Scotland is the theme of my speech, because I agree that we desperately need it.
In relation to SNP promises, we have heard it all before. Year in, year out, SNP boasts about bringing down waiting times ring hollow in the ears of patients whose experience is of being left to languish on those very same lists. It is not just on waiting times that the nationalists have let Scotland’s patients down. Emergency departments—the service people turn to in their most desperate hours—are overwhelmed. A year ago, more than 76,000 people waited over 12 hours in A&E before getting treatment, compared with just 784 in 2011.
I am grateful to the right hon. Member for giving way, but I am struggling a little bit to reconcile his rhetoric with the facts. The fact is that waiting lists have been falling in Scotland for five months in a row up until now. He then moved on to emergency healthcare. Scotland’s core A&E functions outperform England’s and Wales’s consistently, year after year. How does he reconcile that dichotomy?
As Members across the Chamber know, this is a well-used SNP tactic of constant comparison with other places, rather than focusing on the SNP Government’s delivery compared with their promises. It is clear that there is a huge discrepancy between what has been promised by the Scottish Government and what has been delivered.
Is it not the case that there are more people waiting more than two years in individual health boards in Scotland than in the whole of England? Does the right hon. Member agree that that is a disgrace of the Scottish Government?
I do. What the hon. Lady points to is the shuffling of figures that we have just seen, so that the best figures are presented, but those 86,000 people I mentioned who have been on waiting lists for more than a year are erased from the debate. It is all about smoke and mirrors.
Analysis of this astonishing increase in waiting times by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine found that it has likely contributed to more than 1,000 needless deaths, despite the best efforts of frontline staff who have been failed by the SNP’s inaction. And what of the strain on those hard-working NHS workers? Last year, data revealed that NHS frontline staff were forced to cover understaffed shifts on 348,675 occasions. That is hundreds of thousands of times when there were simply not enough staff on hospital wards and in other care settings to meet Scotland’s healthcare needs. A recent report by the Royal College of Nursing Scotland warned that over the year to May 2025,
“at no point has NHS Scotland employed the number of nursing staff needed to deliver safe and effective care.”
The warning signs have been there for years, but the Scottish Government have failed to act on workforce planning, and it is patients and health service workers who are paying the price of that failure.
Of course, the healthcare crisis in Scotland is not restricted to our hospitals. Anyone who represents a rural constituency like mine will be acutely aware of the often severe pressure on GP services, where face-to-face appointments can be difficult to obtain, and that is to say nothing of the near impossible job of getting registered with an NHS dentist. In Dumfries and Galloway, which has one of the worst rates of NHS dental registration, more than 40% of residents are not registered with a dentist. That is not because they do not want to be, but because practices are not taking on new patients, and thousands of existing patients have been deregistered.
It is especially generous of the right hon. Gentleman to give way again. He touched on general practice. I am not suggesting for one minute that everything is perfect in Scotland, but our constituents enjoy 83 general practitioners per 100,000 population, compared with 67 GPs in Wales and 64 in England. How much worse must it be for constituents in England and Wales?
I am afraid we are back to the old record, Madam Deputy Speaker. We have heard it so many times. It does not wear thin; it must be digital now, so that it can be reproduced in just the same words that I have heard for the last 20-odd years. What the hon. Gentleman says does not relate to the experience of my constituents in Dumfries and Galloway when getting a dentist. They hold the Scottish Government accountable for whether or not they have a dentist, and for the promises that the Scottish Government have made in that regard. SNP Ministers say that the situation with dentists is “challenging”, but that is no substitute for the action we need to solve Scotland’s dental deserts, like Dumfries and Galloway.
And what of Scotland’s social care system—the very services meant to protect the vulnerable, the elderly, and those in need? Unions and public service watchdogs have repeatedly condemned persistent delays in discharging patients. Those delays clog up hospitals and deny timely care to people who should be at home or in community care. Staffing is chronically inadequate, care homes are overstretched, home care services are chaotic, and families often wait weeks—sometimes months—to get support for loved ones. Long-standing plans to deliver a national care service collapsed this year, having consumed tens of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money, but without delivering a single additional hour of social care to those who need it. It is the record of the SNP Government summed up: make bold promises of reform; spend millions of pounds; blame everybody else, but especially Westminster, when it all falls apart.
For years, the SNP has made bold promises—promises of better health care, stronger social care, more GPs, more nurses, reduced waiting lists and an improved social care framework, but the facts speak for themselves. GP and dentist numbers remain too low, and constituents like mine struggle to get appointments. Too many newly qualified young medical professionals leave Scotland, even as vacancies are unfilled. More than £2 billion has been spent on agency and bank nurses, and midwives, over the past five years because of a lack of proper workforce planning. One in nine of Scotland’s population is currently on an NHS waiting list in Scotland, and despite the hard work of NHS staff working in the most challenging of circumstances, public satisfaction with the NHS in Scotland has plummeted to the lowest level since devolution. Once we strip away all the self-congratulatory boasting of Scottish Government Ministers, this is the reality of the NHS in Scotland after two decades of SNP rule: an older person waiting weeks for home care; a mother with a child waiting years for mental-health support; a nurse driven to burnout; a cancer patient left on a waiting list so long that even Scotland’s First Minister says it is “not acceptable”.
The right hon. Gentleman is making a clear case about recruitment in Scotland, which is a fair point, but a key issue that has caused recruitment difficulties, not just in Scotland but in the rest of the UK, is Brexit, which his party supported—and now we are in this state today. According to the Royal College of Nursing, the UK Government’s new visa rules will mean that the NHS would “cease to function”. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that there needs to be a bespoke visa system for Scotland, so that we can get adequate resources and people into the places that need to be filled in Scotland’s NHS?
One factual point worth making is that one third of those people who supported independence voted for Brexit. As the hon. Gentleman knows, when in government I looked at various schemes that could operate separately in Scotland, but ultimately we found that they were unworkable.
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Few names loom larger than Andrew Carnegie. Born in Dunfermline, Carnegie’s journey from a weaver’s cottage to global philanthropy is the essence of the Scottish ladder of opportunity: education, enterprise and duty to community. Carnegie understood that libraries, learning and practical skills were not luxuries; they were the engines of mobility and civic confidence. The more a society invests in open knowledge, the more its people can change their lives.
Beyond Fife, Scotland’s identity was also forged in its coalfields. In Lanarkshire, Ayrshire, the Lothians and beyond, coal powered our factories, heated our homes and drove our railways and ships. Coalfield communities were not just clusters of employment; they were webs of support, with co-operative societies, miners’ institutes, working men’s clubs, brass bands—the social infrastructure that turned wages into lives.
Yet we must be honest. Older generations grew up in an era when the opportunity of a path from school to a skilled job was more certain, when housing was more affordable and when public spaces were continually endowed. For many, the apprenticeship or the training scheme led to stable employment and social housing, and the state, industry and unions wrestled—however imperfectly—towards fairer settlements. That does not mean life was easy. The safety net was less secure, working conditions were tougher, child poverty was higher and life expectancy was shorter, but the stability and prospects for generational improvement were clearer.
Let me move on to Scotland as it is, in my eyes. Where has the Scotland of the past led us? What do we see around us? I will focus on the support that we provide to older people in need, compared with what we provide for the young. We see an intergenerational gap in assets, wages and housing security. Graduates and non-graduates alike report difficulty finding stable, well-paid work in their field. The cost of renting has increased, a deposit for a mortgage remains out of reach for many, and the certainty associated with long-term careers is less common. For the first time since world war two, our children’s generation is projected to be poorer than that of their parents. Younger people come from an uncertain past. The financial crisis of 2008 left deep scars. Brexit—a decision made by older people—has reduced young people’s opportunities. The pandemic not only affected the people who were also hit hardest by the crash, but, by hitting their children, became intergenerational. In that pandemic, we asked young people to sacrifice their tomorrow to protect the today of their elders.
St Andrew spoke of the importance of service to others, respect and compassion. What better example can we find of those values than our nation’s young people? Is it any wonder, though, that those young people, with their uncertain past and present, look around and wonder why older people are the ones with the skills that the economy needs, and which young people have never had the opportunity to get; with the wealth that young people have never had the opportunity to gather; and with the security of their own home, while young people languish in childhood bedrooms? On top of that, successive Governments have granted older generations certain and increasing income—something that younger generations will likely never know.
This is not intended to be a counsel of despair; it is a call to rebuild the ladder with more rungs and stronger rails, and a call for clearer signposts. The answer lies in a proper economic strategy and skills. The UK Labour Government have acknowledged mistakes of the past, in which a university education was presented as a guaranteed path to securing higher income—a myth blown truly and utterly wide open. The Government have sought to place apprenticeships on the same level of importance and pride, because our economy desperately needs technical and professional skills. We need both learning by doing, and learning by the book. To misquote slightly a book that many of us read at school—I am sure that our teachers will be delighted to know that we still remember it—we need the Chris of the land and the Chris of the book. Scotland should be the best place in the UK to learn a trade, upgrade a qualification or pivot mid-career.
When it comes to energy, Scotland stands at the crossroads of legacy and leadership. The North sea still matters for investment, jobs, tax revenues and world-class expertise. At the same time, renewables are no longer a promise; they are a present reality. We have offshore wind, onshore wind, tidal, hydro, solar and emerging hydrogen technologies. The lesson of the first energy era is plain: if we export raw resource and import finished value, we risk missing wealth multipliers. In the second energy era, Scotland must build, service, innovate and train our workforce for the new jobs—good-quality, well-paid jobs—that follow.
Thanks to this Labour Government, our ports, fabrication yards and grid infrastructure are being upgraded, but the benefits will not be felt for years, and it is likely that costs will rise by far less than they otherwise would, rather than being reduced in absolute terms. As in the financial crisis, we are asking young people to thank us for avoiding a not-experienced counterfactual, rather than for real improvements.
Despite the challenges, I believe that Scotland stands on a solid foundation—we are outward-looking, innovative and compassionate—but to be future-focused, the promise of real and practical opportunity must be renewed for everyone: the nurse in Dunfermline, the apprentice in Dollar, the graduate in High Valleyfield, the veteran retraining in Rosyth, the parent seeking a second chance at college, and the care leaver negotiating their first tenancy. If St Andrew teaches us anything, it is that influence need not be loud to be profound. Tradition tells us that he was a bridge-builder, a bringer of people to a higher calling, and a man whose life spoke of hospitality, humility and service. In a divided age, Scotland could choose to lead by those virtues—welcoming, learning, working, serving—not as slogans, but as social habits. Scotland talks a great deal about those virtues, but we should remember that we face the same challenges in making them real as people in other parts of the United Kingdom and the rest of the world. We are not alone, nor are we exceptional. The rules apply to us as much as to others.
We must build a settlement in which older generations can contribute their wisdom, mentor apprentices and access retraining at any point without stigma, and in which younger generations find and build dignity through quality careers that help them to secure housing, develop skills and find stability and progression, so that they have the opportunity to build their life, and to hand the world on in a better state than it was in when it was given to them.
We can design skills pathways that reflect our national character by being practical, rigorous and humane. Imagine an ecosystem in which Carnegie’s legacy of free libraries becomes a digital learning commons, college workshops are connected to local firms, defence apprentices rotate into civilian advanced manufacturing, and energy sector traineeships are co-delivered by colleges, employers and unions. Credentials should be stackable and portable, so that a 19-year-old turbine technician can later specialise in grid management or hydrogen systems, or any other sector, without the need to start from scratch.
In celebrating St Andrew’s Day, we should always embrace our civic and cultural soul. Let me take the House back to St Margaret’s cave in Dunfermline, where Queen Margaret—whose saint’s day is on 16 November, just two weeks before St Andrew’s—came to pray over 900 years ago. It is a reminder that reflection and service are not opposites. Carnegie’s legacy tells us that public learning multiplies across generations. Our local institutions —schools, colleges and voluntary groups—prove that community is built by hands, hearts and habits. If we want Scotland as it could be, we must sustain the places where Scotland is: the library, the workshop, the youth organisations, the working man’s club, the community centre, the church hall, the café, the sporting venue and, yes, the pub, the bookies, the chippy and the bingo. The quiet networks of trust are the strongest parts of our infrastructure.
We must build a fairer society, with more opportunity, more dignity and more security for every young person starting out, and for every older person seeking to contribute anew. Scotland as it was gave us our foundations. Scotland as it is demands our fidelity. Scotland as it could be awaits our work.