Scotsman Politics: FMQs unpicked with Dale and Alistair - Thursday November 28 2024
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00:00Hello, and welcome to the Scotsman's Politics Show.
00:04We're here to unwrap and unpick First Minister's questions.
00:08My name's Dale Miller.
00:09I'm Deputy Editor of the Scotsman,
00:11and I'm joined by our political editor, Alastair Grant,
00:14who's coming live to us from Holyrood.
00:16Alastair, it was an eventful session,
00:19both inside the chamber and outside as well.
00:22Let's address the buildup first.
00:23There were two big protest demonstrations
00:26outside of your buildup to outback kills.
00:29Yeah, there's two protests going on.
00:30One of them's by a trade union, Unite.
00:33It's about Grangemouth, the potential job losses
00:36at Grangemouth, the closure of the oil refinery.
00:38And the second one is by NFU Scotland, the farmers' union,
00:42protesting the way farmers were treated in the UK budget,
00:45the way they were treated more widely by the government.
00:47Specifically, they are annoyed
00:49about the inheritance tax changes
00:51that were announced as part of the UK budget
00:53by Chancellor Rachel Reeves.
00:55So they've been outside Parliament.
00:56I think they had a tractor with them
00:58when the Grangemouth protests came past.
01:00I could see it outside our Holyrood office
01:03just in front of the Scottish Parliament.
01:05As you can see, they had a brass band.
01:06They had lots of banners.
01:08They had massive kind of unison balloons.
01:11And so it's, yeah, it's really colourful protests.
01:14And they voted to pick today
01:16because it's First Minister's Questions,
01:18and they want to cause an impact.
01:19Aren't we, Matt?
01:21Now, Alastair, I suspect that tractor
01:22will be getting an LEZ fine,
01:24but that's probably a side note
01:26to the actual protests as well.
01:28We know how effective those images were
01:30coming from London last week
01:32when there were similar protests.
01:34So that's one to watch,
01:35and the UK Labor government
01:37won't give any ground on their position there.
01:39Alastair, First Minister's Questions
01:42actually opened with an interjection
01:44from Alastair Johnston,
01:46the presiding officer over Winterfield Banks.
01:49Oh, Kirsten.
01:50Yeah, so this is a leak, actually,
01:52in the press today on the action
01:56the Scottish government's going to take
01:57to alleviate the winter fuel payment cut
02:00that was announced by the UK Labor government,
02:02by Keir Starmer.
02:03He got a lot of heat over this over the summer.
02:06People will probably remember.
02:07And it's emerged that the Scottish government
02:09is going to partially reverse that cut in Scotland
02:13to make about almost a million more pensioners
02:15eligible for the Scottish devolved version
02:18of that payment.
02:20Although I think it will effectively mean
02:22that those pensioners who are not
02:24in receipt of pension credit will get less money,
02:26and we'll get a few details of that
02:28in a statement this afternoon.
02:29Alastair Johnston, the presiding officer,
02:31very annoyed that this has been leaked to the press.
02:33John Swinney was talking to journalists yesterday
02:35and was making a big song and dance
02:37over the fact that he can't give the details away
02:39before the statement is made in Parliament.
02:41MSPs have to hear it first.
02:43He can't tell the media about it beforehand.
02:45And then, obviously, it's come out in the press.
02:48And this has happened a couple of times in the past,
02:49and Alastair Johnston always gets annoyed about it,
02:52always says she's going to launch an investigation.
02:55I'm not sure how thorough these investigations are.
02:57I'm sure they are very thorough,
02:58but they never really seem to go anywhere.
03:00But yeah, so she was annoyed that it's come out in the media
03:03before the statement has officially been made in Holyrood.
03:07And Alastair, it's interesting that these announcements
03:10that are being made this afternoon,
03:11officially, the Scottish Parliament,
03:13on the back of Labor, Scottish Labor, that is,
03:16themselves proposing that they would take
03:18a different approach with the winter fuel payment
03:20separate to the UK Labor government.
03:22So a lot of politics at play there.
03:24You'll be able to read the full details
03:26of what's in that announcement at scottsman.com.
03:30Alastair, just on the actual chamber itself,
03:32there's a slightly different topic from Russell Finlay
03:35that they challenged John Swinney over.
03:37Yeah, I mean, in a way, it's a favourite topic.
03:40Russell Finlay's, it's crime,
03:42it's the criminal justice system.
03:43It's a topic that he's very comfortable with,
03:45very comfortable with raising.
03:46He was obviously formerly a crime journalist,
03:49something he knows a lot about.
03:50He was raising a couple of specific cases
03:52in Parliament today,
03:53one of them the case of Denise Clare,
03:55who was raped by the footballer David Goodwillie.
04:00She, at the moment, is trying to get funding,
04:03legal aid funding, to take a private prosecution
04:06through the criminal courts.
04:08John Swinney was effectively saying that.
04:11She has asked the Scottish government about this,
04:12and John Swinney was saying the Scottish government
04:14was taking too long to respond to that request.
04:17He was sort of apologising for that.
04:20Russell Finlay also raising a kind of wider point
04:22of the early release of prisoners
04:24that we've seen in a couple of batches recently,
04:27and specifically raising concerns over the fact
04:29there's not a so-called governor's veto
04:32in the latest plans the Scottish government has
04:35to release prisoners early.
04:37The governor's veto was in place
04:39in a previous early release batch
04:40and allowed prison governors to step in
04:43and stop prisoners being released.
04:45Prison governors' property were going to be a danger
04:48to the public, shouldn't be released.
04:50This time round, John Swinney is saying
04:52that, baked into the plans,
04:54they're not going to include those people
04:55who have been, for example, convicted of a serious assault
04:59or domestic violence.
05:00So there's no need to have that in place,
05:02but Russell Finlay raising concerns about that
05:05and just unhappy with the process more widely.
05:10Obviously, Russell Finlay raising an issue
05:12very close to his heart in terms of criminal justice.
05:14Anna Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader,
05:16was raising something that Scottish Labour
05:18loves to raise in Holyrood,
05:19and that is the state of the NHS,
05:22the state of the health system.
05:23Specifically, he was referencing a report
05:25that was out yesterday at the Institute of Fiscal Studies,
05:30which was essentially looking at the rate of recovery
05:35of the NHS in England and Scotland after COVID,
05:38taking waiting lists, all those kind of things into account.
05:41And they found that Scotland's recovery is slower
05:44than England's.
05:45Anna Sarwar raising concerns around that.
05:48John Swinney was asked about this yesterday as well
05:50when I was at the dinner with him by journalists.
05:53He was basically saying that the Scottish government
05:56has ploughed money into the NHS,
05:58and Scotland also has specific issues that it's dealing with.
06:02Yet, to be more, to be a little bit in general about it,
06:05those issues are that the Scottish population
06:06is proportionally more unhealthy
06:08than the English population.
06:09That's something the NHS in Scotland has to deal with.
06:12But very much two issues that the two party leaders
06:14are quite comfortable with.
06:16I thought that, just finally,
06:17the other interesting thing that came out of SMQs
06:19was a question by an SMP backbencher, actually,
06:22Kenny Gibson, I think, on the national insurance rise
06:27that was announced by the UK Labour government
06:28as part of the Chancellor Richard Rees' budget.
06:31And Kenny Gibson effectively setting up John Swinney
06:35to make a political point that the money
06:37that the UK government is going to give
06:40to the Scottish government in compensation
06:42for the impact of that rise on the public sector in Scotland
06:45will leave, in the words of John Swinney,
06:47Scotland short-changed by more than 400 million pounds.
06:51So that money's going to have to come from somewhere,
06:53sets up what could potentially be quite a difficult part
06:56of the Scottish budget next week
06:58when it's unveiled in Hollyrood on Wednesday, December 4th.
07:02Just six days now to go until that budget,
07:04which is going to frame a lot of the debates
07:07throughout next week.
07:08Alistair, thank you very much for joining us.
07:11You can read all the latest across what's happening
07:13in the world of Scottish politics at scottsman.com.
07:17Thanks for joining us and go out and buy a copy
07:20of the playbook tomorrow if you need it very fast.