The Politics Show - FMQ Roundup September 07 2023
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00:00 Hello and welcome to the FMQs roundup for our Scotsman Politics Show.
00:11 It's the first First Minister's questions coming out of recess.
00:15 My name is Dale Miller.
00:16 I'm head of news at the Scotsman and I'm joined by political editor Alistair Grant.
00:21 Alistair, it was a busy one and we had some news on a new public inquiry.
00:26 Can you film it?
00:27 Yes, this is the first FMQs, First Minister's questions after the summer recess.
00:31 Like you say, I'm here just in the garden lobby of the Scottish Parliament, just directly
00:35 after it taking place.
00:36 I think probably the main announcement from that First Minister's questions was that
00:41 confirmation by Humza Yousaf, the First Minister, that there will be a full public inquiry into
00:46 Sam Eljamel, the disgraced surgeon that worked for NHS Tayside.
00:51 This has been a long running thing.
00:53 It's been a long campaign by some of those that were affected by Eljamel.
00:58 I think he was suspended by NHS Tayside in 2013.
01:01 So it's been a number of years in the making.
01:03 It's also a little bit of a U-turn for Humza Yousaf.
01:07 He was previously not keen on the idea of a public inquiry.
01:10 He preferred an independent review, which he said would provide those answers but wouldn't
01:15 perhaps take as long as a public inquiry.
01:18 We all know how long public inquiries can take.
01:20 You just have to look at the Edinburgh Tram Inquiry as an example of something that's
01:24 run on far longer than maybe people expected.
01:26 But it's something that will be welcomed by campaigners, very much welcomed by opposition
01:31 politicians like the Tory MSP Liz Smith, who has called for this for quite a long time
01:36 as well.
01:39 And Alastair, outside of the public inquiry confirmation, a lot of continued chat about
01:44 concrete.
01:45 Of all things, people will be becoming familiar with the acronym RAC now.
01:49 Can you just talk us through what the updates were?
01:51 Yes, this is RAC.
01:53 It's Reinforced Auto-Claved Aerated Concrete, known as RAC.
01:58 It's obviously a massive issue in the news right now, UK wide.
02:01 There's obviously been announcements from the UK government on the back of this.
02:05 Humza Yousaf today confirming that 40 schools across Scotland are thought to include RAC.
02:11 There's a kind of ministerial statement on this expected in Holyrood in the afternoon.
02:15 There'll obviously be a lot of concerns around what this means.
02:20 Callum Ross, obviously the Scotsman's educational correspondent, has done a number of stories
02:24 about this.
02:25 Schools across Scotland that have had areas partially closed off because of the presence
02:28 of RAC and the fears that that concrete is potentially dangerous and at risk of collapse.
02:34 So we're expecting more details in that ministerial statement in the afternoon.
02:38 But interestingly, Humza Yousaf as well saying that it's something that the Scottish government
02:42 and local authorities have been aware of for years, for a number of years, they've had
02:46 this kind of bubbling away in the background.
02:48 So I think there'll be questions about the steps that have been taken in that kind of
02:52 intervening time.
02:53 This is obviously something that's hit the headlines quite recently, but it's been bubbling
02:57 away in the background.
02:58 And there are those questions about what has been done to maybe try and take a bit of action
03:02 on this.
03:03 And Alistair now confirmed 40 schools have RAC and investigations continuing.
03:09 You can read all the latest from Kellam on the site on that issue.
03:13 Douglas Ross, he was almost overshadowed in the end, even though he led off questioning
03:18 and it was wrong.
03:19 It was a classic area for the Tories.
03:22 Yeah, this is kind of classic.
03:23 It felt like we'd never been away from Holyrood when this got brought up.
03:26 It was just a kind of classic issue for the Tories, a very big on justice issues in general.
03:32 He was bringing up that issue, that kind of pilot that's ongoing in the north east of
03:36 Scotland right now, where the police have said they essentially won't investigate some
03:40 crimes.
03:41 So Douglas Ross essentially trying to get Humza Yousaf to say exactly what those crimes
03:45 are that police will no longer investigate.
03:47 Humza Yousaf quite keen to keep bringing the conversation back to the press release that
03:52 the police themselves put out, where I think they said that essentially if there's no threats,
03:56 no risk and there's no proportionate lines of inquiry, then the police won't investigate.
04:02 Humza Yousaf as well, quite keen to defend the funding that the Scottish government has
04:07 put into the police in recent years and keen to point out something that he often points
04:12 out in FNQs when this gets brought up, that Scotland has more police officers per capita
04:17 than England and Wales.
04:18 That's a statistic that he's very fond of bringing up when it comes to this issue.
04:22 But yeah, it was a classic territory for the Conservatives.
04:25 I noticed Humza Yousaf had a bit of fun with saying why Douglas Ross on that line of questioning
04:32 will never be First Minister, to a few laughs in the chamber.
04:37 Yeah, Humza Yousaf as well, I think accusing him of sensational language and a bid to attract
04:41 headlines.
04:42 I mean, God forbid people want to get headlines on the back of First Minister's questions,
04:47 but I mean, it's a serious issue.
04:49 There ought to be a lot of people worried about the police not investigating potentially
04:54 low-level crime.
04:55 It kind of begs the question, I guess, as to what people can do when those things happen
04:59 to them, if they should even bother reporting them to the police.
05:03 So it is a serious issue and obviously on the back of it, concerns about police funding,
05:07 something that's been raised by the Scottish Police Federation quite a lot, concerns about
05:12 dropping police numbers as well when you look at it over a period of years.
05:16 So it's an issue that feeds into quite a lot of existing concerns about the state of Police
05:20 Scotland.
05:21 You can read about everything that happened at First Minister's questions in our live
05:26 blog.
05:27 I'll put a recap up on the site.
05:29 Rachel Amory's put all that together.
05:30 It'll be a fantastic read.
05:33 And please go to the politics tab for all the latest in what we've spoken about, as
05:38 well as confirmation of that public inquiry.
05:41 Thanks very much for joining us.
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