Jamie Stone

It is a nonsense. Constituents like the hon. Gentleman’s and mine are losing out and have lost out for years. We had a consultant-led maternity service in Caithness until, hey presto, this SNP Government took over; very shortly after, it was downgraded and got rid of—as simple as that. I and others have written to John Swinney inviting him to come north to Wick to get in the back of an ambulance in winter and make the journey for himself to see what it is like. I do not believe we have had an answer, and I expect a dusty one when it comes. It is a scandal and a disgrace, and it is on the watch of the SNP Government. Right now, we have one psychiatrist in the north of Scotland—just one—and we have a huge problem with the mental health of young people. This morning I rang a mother from Caithness, Kirsteen Campbell, who thinks it will be two or three years before her child can be seen by a professional to sort out their problem. During the election, I spoke to a mother in Evanton in Easter Ross, who told me how her child—who I will not name for obvious reasons—had not been to school for a number of years because the school could not deal with the issues that this poor, wretched child had. It is a scandal. In the short time available, I have given just two examples of failures. Turning to the subject of debate, I sincerely hope and pray that the Scottish Government will use this extra money to address these issues finally, before it is too late and something terrible happens on the youth mental health front or a mother or child loses their life. We had an issue where a mother was pregnant with twins, but one twin was born in Golspie and the other had to be born in Inverness. Imagine how awful that is for a family—it is a shocker. I close with this: the two issues I have outlined are issues that really, really matter to ordinary people. We can talk about this or that in politics, but these are the big, chunky issues on the doorsteps. People are not stupid out there. I hear my good friends in the SNP sitting to my left, and they are good personal friends, but something happened in July, when the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Torcuil Crichton) was returned with the bump that he was and when my majority went up from 204 to just 11 votes shy of 10,500. That, I think, is the Scottish people telling us something, and anyone who does not listen to that is simply whistling in the hurricane.