FMQs unpicked: Thursday January 23 2025

The Scotsman

Dale and Alistair discuss the goings on at First Minister's Questions in the Scottish Parliament

Transcript

00:00Hello and welcome to the Scotsman's Politics Show. We're here to unwrap and unpick First

00:05Minister's questions for another week. And it was certainly a fascinating one, Alistair,

00:10and it started off with not political banter at all, but a warning from the First Minister.

00:16Yes, so John Swinney standing up at the start to make a statement about the storm, Storm

00:21Eowyn I think it is, that's meant to hit across central, well across Scotland really tomorrow,

00:25but there's a red weather warning, a very rare red weather warning that's been put in

00:29place across central Scotland, across Glasgow, Edinburgh, the Lothian, Strathclyde area.

00:36It's obviously quite a rare occurrence to have that, John Swinney saying that people

00:40need to take it seriously, avoid travel if possible. We actually caught up with the First

00:46Minister just after FMQs there, a few of us journalists just talking to him a bit more

00:50about this, and the Scottish Government's resilience room, SCOR as they call it, basically

00:56their kind of emergency meeting that they have with various kind of partnership groups,

01:01is meeting at half one today, so we should probably expect some further developments

01:05on this, I think, before the end of the day. And of course we're seeing that, I think Glasgow

01:09has already announced that all schools and nurseries will be shut tomorrow. I think we

01:12should expect other local authorities, if they haven't already, to follow suit with

01:16that. So yeah, kind of quite a serious situation facing Scotland in terms of the storm that's

01:22coming tomorrow, with that red weather warning in place from 10 o'clock in the morning to

01:26five o'clock in the late afternoon.

01:29Yeah, we can confirm, Alastair, as we're recording this, East Lothian has confirmed all schools

01:34will shut. Some key schools in Edinburgh, including Mary Erskine's as well, has announced

01:40that it's closing. So I wouldn't be surprised if we see widespread closures across the red

01:45weather alert area. If you want to know, check with your local council or school or follow

01:51our latest coverage here at scottsman.com for those closures. And just to confirm, it's

01:56the first red weather alert for the Central Belt in seven years, which I believe is since

02:02Feast from the East, which was obviously snow and other events, but this is for high winds

02:08with a forecast of up to 100 miles per hour in coastal areas. Please read the Scotsman.

02:15We've got the full advice on what you should do in the build-up and throughout the storm

02:18tomorrow. Back on, I guess, more the politics and the exchanges today, what was the attack

02:25from Russell Findlay?

02:27So Russell Findlay very much going on the health service and in particular going after

02:33Neil Gray, the health secretary, who's been having a tough time over recent days. People

02:36might have seen a lot of the coverage around this on the back of the row over so-called

02:41limo gate, his use of ministerial cars to travel to football games. This was obviously

02:46a big story in previous weeks. It's kind of had a further development when it turned

02:50out that he, well, he stood up on Tuesday actually and apologised to MSPs for inadvertently

02:57misleading Parliament. He essentially said that notes had been taken for all meetings

03:02that he'd held at these football games. And so he, his initial position was that it was

03:06quite right for government ministers to attend sporting events. Sports will fall under very

03:12broadly his portfolio in the Scottish government. And during these games, he will have meetings

03:17with various people such as footballing authorities, maybe other people that have invited him along

03:22to these events. And he told MSPs through an answer to another politician a while ago

03:29in Parliament about this, that notes had been taken for all of these meetings. That turned

03:32out not to be the case for some of the games. He says that this was just a mistake. He just

03:37misspoke when he was replying to someone that his actual formal statement that he'd given

03:41in Parliament at the time was accurate. So Russell Finlay bringing this up today in First

03:46Minister's Questions, effectively calling on John Swinney to sack Neil Gray, both for

03:52what he called his dishonesty in this case, and also for the state of the wider health

03:57service with waiting times, for example, continuing to be an issue for the Scottish government,

04:02bedblocking, all these things that we've been speaking about a lot when it comes to politics

04:07and First Minister's Questions in general. But again, you know, it doesn't really seem

04:12like Neil Gray is going to go anywhere, but opposition politicians very much taking an

04:17opportunity to kick the government over this. And even Anna Sarwar actually, who went in

04:21on a related health issue on the issue of bedblocking, delayed discharge, also had a

04:26pop at Neil Gray and effectively called on John Swinney to sack him. But, you know, ultimately

04:32political parties, if they're serious about this, would put a motion of no confidence

04:36forward and administer if they seriously wanted to do something about this. So this

04:39is kind of just political rhetoric, but it's fair to say that Neil Gray's had a tough time

04:45of it and is, yeah, is under a lot of pressure in Holyrood.

04:50Speaking of that rhetoric, I thought it was a clever move of Russell Finlay to say Neil

04:55Gray was in the running to contest Michael Matheson and Humza Yousaf as people that perhaps

05:03hadn't performed particularly well on the health brief over recent years. So certainly

05:08using that history around ministerial posts as a weapon against John Swinney and the SNP.

05:15I was curious about the exchanges between Anna Sarwar and John Swinney. I thought John

05:21Swinney did quite well in the performance. What was your view Alistair?

05:26Yeah, I think he did. I think he did quite well. He was quite robust in his answers to

05:31Anna Sarwar. I mean, Anna Sarwar brought up a press interview that John Swinney had

05:35did in which he referred to himself as full on John. John Swinney has a strange tendency

05:40sometimes in interviews to talk in the third person and to talk about John Swinney doing

05:45this or that. But he called himself full on John and said, you know, Scottish public are

05:48getting him at his most full on. He's really, really serious about Anna Sarwar kind of throwing

05:55this back at him in the Scottish Parliament. And John Swinney effectively saying, well,

05:59this just shows that Anna Sarwar is poring over my press interviews because he's really

06:03worried about his own position and Labour's own position in the polls. People watching

06:08this might know that Scottish Labour and Labour across the UK have been struggling in the

06:12polls. We've had unpopular policies under Keir Starmer's UK Labour government, such

06:18as the move on winter fuel, two trial benefit cap, all these things which have damaged Labour

06:23in the polls. And John Swinney taking advantage of that to throw it back in Anna Sarwar's

06:29face. I think John Swinney cuts quite a confident figure in the Scottish Parliament chamber

06:34at the moment. He's someone that very much feels he's gone and he's come into the swing

06:38of things. And he's looking at his own position. You know, if you were talking about this time

06:43a few months ago, the SNP were in a very sticky situation, obviously hugely damaged by various

06:49things. Humza Yousaf's leadership was seen as quite chaotic. I think John Swinney has

06:54steadied the ship. He's got things back on track, as it were. You know, he's not massively

06:59increased the SNP's polling results, but he has stopped that decline that we were seeing

07:05under Humza Yousaf. And I think they're looking ahead to that Scottish Parliament election

07:09in 2026 and feeling pretty confident about it. I think going into that election, effectively,

07:15the SNP will try to play off against the UK government. They'll try to make this an election

07:19about the UK government's record in the sense that the SNP will be kind of comparing themselves

07:25to Labour all the time, whereas Labour want to make that election all about Scottish public

07:30services, the NHS, social care. So it will be interesting to see how those two narratives

07:37come together and approach that election and which one ends up winning out.

07:40At the time of recording as well, we are still looking ahead to a ministerial statement on

07:47the National Care Service as well today, where we expect plans to be further watered

07:52down. You'll be able to read the latest, once that statement's made, at scotsman.com about

07:58exactly what the SNP government are going to do with that key piece of reform, one that

08:04was once lauded by former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. So please tune in to get all the

08:11latest on that. Alistair, thanks for taking time out at Holyrood to join me. Thank you

08:17for all our viewers and readers for watching in. And pick up a copy of the Scotsman tomorrow

08:22for all the latest.

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