The Scotsman Politics Show - FMQ Roundup September 07 2023 - video Dailymotion

The Scotsman

The Politics Show - FMQ Roundup September 07 2023

Transcript

00:00 Hello and welcome to the FMQs roundup for our Scotsman Politics Show.

00:11 It's the first First Minister's questions coming out of recess.

00:15 My name is Dale Miller.

00:16 I'm head of news at the Scotsman and I'm joined by political editor Alistair Grant.

00:21 Alistair, it was a busy one and we had some news on a new public inquiry.

00:26 Can you film it?

00:27 Yes, this is the first FMQs, First Minister's questions after the summer recess.

00:31 Like you say, I'm here just in the garden lobby of the Scottish Parliament, just directly

00:35 after it taking place.

00:36 I think probably the main announcement from that First Minister's questions was that

00:41 confirmation by Humza Yousaf, the First Minister, that there will be a full public inquiry into

00:46 Sam Eljamel, the disgraced surgeon that worked for NHS Tayside.

00:51 This has been a long running thing.

00:53 It's been a long campaign by some of those that were affected by Eljamel.

00:58 I think he was suspended by NHS Tayside in 2013.

01:01 So it's been a number of years in the making.

01:03 It's also a little bit of a U-turn for Humza Yousaf.

01:07 He was previously not keen on the idea of a public inquiry.

01:10 He preferred an independent review, which he said would provide those answers but wouldn't

01:15 perhaps take as long as a public inquiry.

01:18 We all know how long public inquiries can take.

01:20 You just have to look at the Edinburgh Tram Inquiry as an example of something that's

01:24 run on far longer than maybe people expected.

01:26 But it's something that will be welcomed by campaigners, very much welcomed by opposition

01:31 politicians like the Tory MSP Liz Smith, who has called for this for quite a long time

01:36 as well.

01:39 And Alastair, outside of the public inquiry confirmation, a lot of continued chat about

01:44 concrete.

01:45 Of all things, people will be becoming familiar with the acronym RAC now.

01:49 Can you just talk us through what the updates were?

01:51 Yes, this is RAC.

01:53 It's Reinforced Auto-Claved Aerated Concrete, known as RAC.

01:58 It's obviously a massive issue in the news right now, UK wide.

02:01 There's obviously been announcements from the UK government on the back of this.

02:05 Humza Yousaf today confirming that 40 schools across Scotland are thought to include RAC.

02:11 There's a kind of ministerial statement on this expected in Holyrood in the afternoon.

02:15 There'll obviously be a lot of concerns around what this means.

02:20 Callum Ross, obviously the Scotsman's educational correspondent, has done a number of stories

02:24 about this.

02:25 Schools across Scotland that have had areas partially closed off because of the presence

02:28 of RAC and the fears that that concrete is potentially dangerous and at risk of collapse.

02:34 So we're expecting more details in that ministerial statement in the afternoon.

02:38 But interestingly, Humza Yousaf as well saying that it's something that the Scottish government

02:42 and local authorities have been aware of for years, for a number of years, they've had

02:46 this kind of bubbling away in the background.

02:48 So I think there'll be questions about the steps that have been taken in that kind of

02:52 intervening time.

02:53 This is obviously something that's hit the headlines quite recently, but it's been bubbling

02:57 away in the background.

02:58 And there are those questions about what has been done to maybe try and take a bit of action

03:02 on this.

03:03 And Alistair now confirmed 40 schools have RAC and investigations continuing.

03:09 You can read all the latest from Kellam on the site on that issue.

03:13 Douglas Ross, he was almost overshadowed in the end, even though he led off questioning

03:18 and it was wrong.

03:19 It was a classic area for the Tories.

03:22 Yeah, this is kind of classic.

03:23 It felt like we'd never been away from Holyrood when this got brought up.

03:26 It was just a kind of classic issue for the Tories, a very big on justice issues in general.

03:32 He was bringing up that issue, that kind of pilot that's ongoing in the north east of

03:36 Scotland right now, where the police have said they essentially won't investigate some

03:40 crimes.

03:41 So Douglas Ross essentially trying to get Humza Yousaf to say exactly what those crimes

03:45 are that police will no longer investigate.

03:47 Humza Yousaf quite keen to keep bringing the conversation back to the press release that

03:52 the police themselves put out, where I think they said that essentially if there's no threats,

03:56 no risk and there's no proportionate lines of inquiry, then the police won't investigate.

04:02 Humza Yousaf as well, quite keen to defend the funding that the Scottish government has

04:07 put into the police in recent years and keen to point out something that he often points

04:12 out in FNQs when this gets brought up, that Scotland has more police officers per capita

04:17 than England and Wales.

04:18 That's a statistic that he's very fond of bringing up when it comes to this issue.

04:22 But yeah, it was a classic territory for the Conservatives.

04:25 I noticed Humza Yousaf had a bit of fun with saying why Douglas Ross on that line of questioning

04:32 will never be First Minister, to a few laughs in the chamber.

04:37 Yeah, Humza Yousaf as well, I think accusing him of sensational language and a bid to attract

04:41 headlines.

04:42 I mean, God forbid people want to get headlines on the back of First Minister's questions,

04:47 but I mean, it's a serious issue.

04:49 There ought to be a lot of people worried about the police not investigating potentially

04:54 low-level crime.

04:55 It kind of begs the question, I guess, as to what people can do when those things happen

04:59 to them, if they should even bother reporting them to the police.

05:03 So it is a serious issue and obviously on the back of it, concerns about police funding,

05:07 something that's been raised by the Scottish Police Federation quite a lot, concerns about

05:12 dropping police numbers as well when you look at it over a period of years.

05:16 So it's an issue that feeds into quite a lot of existing concerns about the state of Police

05:20 Scotland.

05:21 You can read about everything that happened at First Minister's questions in our live

05:26 blog.

05:27 I'll put a recap up on the site.

05:29 Rachel Amory's put all that together.

05:30 It'll be a fantastic read.

05:33 And please go to the politics tab for all the latest in what we've spoken about, as

05:38 well as confirmation of that public inquiry.

05:41 Thanks very much for joining us.

05:47 [BLANK_AUDIO]

The Scotsman Politics Show - FMQ Roundup September 07 2023

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