Seamus Logan

The plain fact of the matter, if we look at the percentages, is that it was a bigger landslide. Labour Members would also do well to take consideration of the now 73 MSPs in favour of independence for Scotland. This Union has now been served with its redundancy notice, like so many workers in Scotland these last two years—like the workers in Grangemouth, who should have been treated in the same way as the steelworkers in Scunthorpe, the 1,500 jobs that could have been created at Ardersier, or the derisory coastal growth fund allocation to our precious fishing industry. Now this chaotic Government have turned on their leader, scapegoating him for their collective failures. The wonder of it all is that the branch manager of the Labour party in Scotland has not resigned, for he carries responsibility for this abject failure of the Labour party in Scotland. We have not abandoned our pensioners, the vulnerable, the disabled, our young people, our students, our apprentices or our children. Unemployment is lower in Scotland than in the rest of these islands. Most of all, we have not demonised the many thousands of people who come from abroad to work in our essential services, or those who seek sanctuary from war, famine or persecution. They are not taking away our jobs, houses or GP appointments, as some populist politicians would have us believe. Years of austerity managed that and, sadly, Labour is continuing in that vein with its planned assault on the welfare system. Is the former Health Secretary now ensuring that the King’s Speech included a relentless focus on the health service, on labour shortages in social care, on an end to the privatisation of our health service, on the availability of lifesaving drugs, and on reassuring this House about the hidden costs of the US-UK pharma deal by publishing his Department’s impact assessment? No. He focuses on his own personal ambitions to enter No. 10 Downing Street. He should not have been allowed to resign; he should have been sacked. Finally, I wish to highlight the Palantir contract, which was discussed recently in Westminster Hall. Many Members from across the House spoke about it, and only yesterday I learned that NHS England has allowed staff from the US tech firm and other contractors to access patient data before it has been pseudonymised, despite internal fears of a “risk of loss of public confidence”. An internal NHS briefing has said that it would allow “unlimited access to non-NHS staff” to part of the NHS’s federated data platform, which holds identifiable patient information. That should concern everyone in the House, no matter their political persuasion. Indeed, it should concern everybody in the country. Members across the House have called for the Palantir project to be reviewed next year, and I urge whoever replaces the erstwhile Minister for Health Innovation and Safety to act on that misuse of our NHS data. In conclusion, the Scottish National party will continue to have a relentless focus on matters relating to health and social care that are reserved to this Parliament during this Session, and on matters that adversely affect our small businesses. But the real solution to these issues is to give the people who live in Scotland the democratic right to bring this Union to an end, and allow Scotland to become an independent nation if it so chooses. The concept of Britain just is not working any more.