John McAllion: I add my thanks and congratulations to anyone who had anything to do with the bill, even the ministers, whom I do not usually congratulate on such occasions. In particular, I mention the clerks to the Health and Community Care Committee, who have performed truly heroically during the passage of the bill. Even to my jaundiced eyes, the civil servants who were on the bill team seemed to be...
John McAllion: Is the minister aware that the recently announced review of adult mental health services in Tayside proposes the closure of acute beds in Angus and Perth and the concentration of services at the Carseview hospital in Dundee, which is a public-private partnership hospital that is run for profit by the private sector on a 25-year lease? Given that Carseview was built to service Dundee, what...
John McAllion: Does the First Minister accept that in a democracy such as ours the real betrayal of our armed forces would have been not to challenge and go on challenging the political decisions that are forcing them to lay their lives on the line? If so, will he assure me that our democracy will not now be confined to the boundaries of either Westminster or Holyrood but will continue to include the...
John McAllion: To ask the Scottish Executive what recent discussions it has had with Scottish Enterprise Tayside about encouraging enterprise and innovation in Tayside. (S1O-6614)
John McAllion: In answers to previous written questions about the spending and investment decisions of Scottish Enterprise and its local enterprise companies, the minister told me that those were operational matters for Scottish Enterprise. When I turned to my local enterprise company, it told me that I could not get access to that information, because it was commercially confidential. How can MSPs, or...
John McAllion: No member of this Parliament is responsible for the fact that just seven weeks before a Scottish general election we find ourselves on the cusp of a major war and need to debate where the Parliament stands in relation to that war. Although it is naive to assume that the war will not be a factor in the outcome of the Scottish general election, I honestly ask those who participate in the debate...
John McAllion: It is because I feel compassion for the people of Iraq that I am opposed to the horrendous strike against them that the Governments of the United States and, unfortunately, the UK are planning. Those who are troubled by the United States and UK Governments' revisionism in relation to the United Nations charter can also support the amendment. The charter is crystal clear: the Security Council,...
John McAllion: The tragedy for Johann Lamont and me is that our party supports the Americans, who use those vetoes against the interests of the Palestinian people. That is the point that I am trying to make. Britain has been one of the closest allies of Israel and America in the United Nations Security Council and that is why we have the problem.
John McAllion: It should be challenged inside the United Nations. If we abandon the United Nations completely, what else will there be to get some sort of discipline? The reality is that under the UN charter, there are simply no grounds for any pre-emptive attack against the people of Iraq. Therefore, those who are opposed to such an attack—and I know that members on the Labour benches are opposed to such...
John McAllion: I endorse everything that the member said. I want to concentrate on this issue, because it sometimes angers me to the point of distraction when I hear spokesmen from the United States of America speak about their concern for the humanitarian suffering of the people of Iraq. Those people never showed a flicker of humanitarian concern when the UN officials responsible for humanitarian aid in...
John McAllion: I, too, congratulate Margo MacDonald not just on being a wonderful convener of the wonderful Subordinate Legislation Committee, but on securing this important debate. Every MSP has received massive correspondence on the issue, which shows its importance. In introducing the debate, Margo MacDonald twice described the directive as "stupid". I have received a letter from one of my constituents,...
John McAllion: To ask the Scottish Executive what discussions it has held with Dundee City Council about proposals for investment in public sector housing. (S1O-6517)
John McAllion: Does the minister accept that the council and the Dundee Federation of Tenants Associations want to keep council housing in Dundee through the mechanism of arm's-length organisations, which are being pioneered by John Prescott in England? Does she also accept that they are unable to do so because the level of residual housing debt and the poor condition of the stock are such that Executive...
John McAllion: I welcome the minister's statement and I assure him that there is nothing wrong with following Susan Deacon's lead. He should try that more often in other policy areas. A major gap in the redesign of the NHS is the continuing lack of local democratic accountability at the health board level. Partnership forums are fine, but the 15 NHS boards will remain appointed, unelected, undemocratic and...
John McAllion: The Tory motion admits that spending on the NHS has progressively increased since 1999, but it goes on to regret that the extra spending has been brought about by an increase in the tax burden imposed on everyone. The first point to be made is that any increase in the direct tax burden on Scots is certainly not the responsibility of this Parliament or Executive. For the past four years, the...
John McAllion: Sorry, I do not have time, but I will debate with Brian Monteith outside at any time. My belief is that we do not have enough resources. The yardstick should not be how much we spend on the national health service now as compared with the pre-devolution period—
John McAllion: Sorry, but I do not have time. The yardstick should not even be how much we spend now compared to what was spent by the previous Tory Government in those dark days of long ago. The yardstick should be how much we spend compared with what is actually needed to provide patient care at the level that the people of Scotland desire. For example, the Executive's short-life action group on ME...
John McAllion: To ask the Scottish Executive when it last met Dundee City Council to discuss proposals for investment in city schools.
John McAllion: Because I come from Dundee, I do not know of the circumstances of the ban to which Mr Gorrie referred. However, I know that James Connolly, who was a figure in Irish and socialist history, is well known as a socialist and is supported by people across political parties and that he and his supporters are the last people who could be called sectarian.
John McAllion: It always amuses me to hear Tories claiming that they stick to their principles even to the point of self-sacrifice. If they are committed to the first-past-the-post system and opposed to any form of proportional representation, why do they not stand only in the constituency element of the elections to the Scottish Parliament, which is fought under the first-past-the-post system? That would...
