Dr Scott Arthur

I start by thanking the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) for introducing the debate—it took us two goes to get here, but I thank him. I was inspired by his bravery in admitting that he was on the committee that oversaw the building of the Scottish Parliament, because I think it was 10 times over budget, but perhaps those are skills we can deploy to build ferries in Scotland. Perhaps they are already; I do not know. It has now been 26 years since the Scottish Parliament was established with the promise of empowering our nation. For that to work, it has always been the case that the Government in Scotland need to have a can-do attitude. In the early years under Scottish Labour, the Government made significant progress, as we have already heard. We abolished tuition fees. We introduced a smoking ban, free personal care, and free bus passes for older people—that is one of my favourite ones—and we reintroduced the rail link to the Borders. One of the most amazing things that I read today was that during the 1999 to 2007 Parliaments, life expectancy in Scotland increased by 2.3 years. These are the wonders of a Labour Government. Of course, we also oversaw a vital expansion of social housing in Scotland, something that is needed today. The pace of change during that era was incredible, as Scotland was finding its feet with its new Parliament, which felt like a bit of an experiment at the time but is now here to stay. In the two decades since then, however, the SNP Government have overseen a period of stagnation and decline across all of the same areas.