Eilidh Whiteford: ...today can bring ratification significantly closer. I want to acknowledge a number of women on whose expertise on the Istanbul convention I have relied in bringing forward this Bill. I have been lucky to have a formidably erudite team of advisers from all parts of the UK, and in no particular order I would like to thank Lisa Gormley, Marsha Scott, Hillary Fisher, Gemma Lindfield, Cris...
Murdo Fraser: .... This is an historic budget. For the first time, this Parliament has control over an extensive range of taxes in Scotland. He might not think so right at the moment, but the finance secretary is a lucky man because he has more choices than his predecessor ever had thanks to a Conservative Government at Westminster delivering financial devolution. He had the choice to use the new powers to...
Maree Todd: ...am a pharmacist registered with the General Pharmaceutical Council and, until my election in May, I was employed by NHS Highland. During yesterday’s economy debate, the Conservative member Murdo Fraser urged those of us on this side of the chamber to be “less dismal, less miserable, less downbeat and less pessimistic, to be more positive, more cheerful and more hopeful and to show some...
Alison Thewliss: ...Central (Rachael Maskell) that high streets should be at the heart of every community. They are not only a place to shop, but a place to meet where valuable social interaction takes place. I am lucky to have in my constituency not only Glasgow’s amazing and vibrant city centre, but several smaller local high streets, most notably Argyle Street in Finnieston and Victoria Road on the...
Mary Scanlon: ...1,200 wells over the next 10 years, and given the decommissioning budget of £47 billion up to 2050, decommissioning should be regarded as an opportunity to develop skills and jobs. As Murdo Fraser said, we very much welcome the energy jobs task force, which was announced a year ago and which we hope will address skills shortages elsewhere in our workforce. However, we should be aware of...
Murdo Fraser: ...of poor standards or inadequate curriculum development and that, if parents choose their nurseries properly, they will not face those problems. However, I know that too many parents are not as lucky as we were. Rather than have the right to choose and flexibility, they are left having to take their children to the nursery place that the local authority provides. They are left with the...
Chic Brodie: I support the motion, of course. I do so because I am passionate about my nation and about its performance. I have been somewhat lucky in my past to have run international businesses, to have helped small companies to start up and to have turned round companies that have been in trouble. I have never been disappointed, in the challenge that they have faced, by those with whom I have been...
Gavin Brown: ...a couple of bills that I suspect we will happily support without massive enthusiasm and there are one or two that we will definitely argue against, including the proposed land reform bill. Murdo Fraser articulated our position on that pretty strongly. Let us consider some of the key issues that need to be tackled. As a number of members have said, it is extremely important that we start to...
Stewart Stevenson: ...consider energy regulation. I will continue to work to allow her that opportunity. Energy efficiency is really a rather simple measure. A number of members referred to home insulation. We have been lucky enough to get our loft insulation from 200mm up to 600mm. We are just going into the first winter in which we will get the full benefit, but it has already been so effective that my wife...
Stewart Stevenson: ...held dear—particularly in recent times—is that someone who never made a mistake never made anything. If we are able to look forward, that is an excellent way in which to go, and I thank Murdo Fraser and his colleagues for giving us the opportunity to debate this important subject. It is clearly a long-run issue in the sense that we have been engaged in it for decades without having...
Margaret Smith: I will give Murdo Fraser a statistic. When the charges that the Conservatives want to introduce in Scotland were introduced in Australia, participation in higher education by males from the poorest backgrounds decreased by 38 per cent. We already have a lack of equality in educational choice in Scotland. Reintroducing fees, whether up-front, top-up, deferred or whatever, would serve only to...
Ted Brocklebank: ...White, under the leadership of Presiding Officer Alex Fergusson. I cannot commend too highly the official report of the visit, which is due for publication tomorrow. Those who are occasionally lucky enough to go on such visits do so in the realisation that they will be accused of junketing at public expense. However, the most peremptory study of the report would suggest that covering a...
David Whitton: ...creating a new training scheme at Carnegie College in Dunfermline to put 12 youngsters through a new modern apprenticeship in turbine technology. Starting in September, the scheme will allow those lucky 12 access courses to education to gain their City and Guilds certificate for a new technology in which Scotland could lead the world. Indeed, Ms Hubbard went so far as to say that those...
Anne McLaughlin: ..., where I got chatting to some Canadian tourists—a father and son. The father told me that the son had just won the world pipe band championships. It turns out that he was a piper with the Simon Fraser University pipe band of Vancouver. I congratulated him and remember telling him that I knew how good the band must be to have beaten Strathclyde Police pipe band, which had come fourth....
Kenneth Macintosh: ...is being deliberately ignored. I believe that most of us were genuinely shocked in March when the teacher census was published. The surprise was not that the number of posts was down—as Murdo Fraser and many other members have highlighted, we all received e-mails and approaches from constituents who let us know that trouble was afoot. The surprise was the scale of the job...
Jim Hume: ...valley of the Nile. The worst flood that I remember happened in October 1977, when Selkirk lost its bridge and there was much damage to property and loss of livestock but no human loss, which was lucky. Last year I watched as the family dog disappeared into a 12ft-deep torrent of water rushing by the house, which had been a lazy burn of 6in only 10 minutes earlier. It was lucky that the...
Marlyn Glen: I, too, congratulate Murdo Fraser on securing the debate. As we can see, lots of people like red and grey squirrels. As we have heard, the problem is that the two species cannot live together. Grey squirrels, which were introduced to Scotland from America more than a century ago, are causing the endangered red squirrels to disappear slowly. It is our responsibility to prevent that from...
Richard Lochhead: ...wildlife park at Kincraig, but I know where he was coming from. Out of self-interest, I will refer to upper Speyside. Residents of that area, which is in my constituency of Moray, might not feel lucky this week, after the United Kingdom Government's smash and grab on the local whisky sector, but my constituents there feel lucky to live in the midst of the spectacular landscape of...
Murdo Fraser: ..., so drawn was she by the promises made by the previous Administration on the attractions of a career in teaching. My wife does not regret that decision for one moment, and indeed she is one of the lucky ones because she has already been offered employment for the coming year. Sadly, far too many of my wife's peer group face unemployment or, at best, an uncertain future. I understand that,...
Laurence Robertson: ...valid—to the way in which the Nazis seized power in Germany: they fed off chaos. We should be aware of that happening in Northern Ireland. My hon. Friend the Member for South-West Norfolk (Mr. Fraser) gave worrying figures about the level of crime and the difficulty that exists in persuading people to report it. I wish to talk about the impact of organised crime on business and,...
