Cole-Hamilton: Scotland’s best laid schemes should be in cooperation and consensus

Speaking ahead of Burns Night celebrations, Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton MSP has called on the Scottish Government to ditch its plans for separation and focus on resolving the crises which are escalating across five areas: NHS, cost of living, education, climate change and local government.  

Mr Cole-Hamilton called on the government to address these problems by taking the following steps:

• NHS: Recruit and retain staff by drawing up a burnout prevention strategy that gives health workers annual leave and TOIL guarantees.

• Cost of living: Insulate people from the rising cost of living with a national emergency insulation programme.

• Education: Invest in education by scrapping the pointless £17 million national testing of P1s and boost teacher pay and conditions.

• Climate change: As well as a national insulation programme, introduce measures to boost the uptake of EVs and remove barriers to the rollout of solar power.

• Local government: Halt the billion-pound bureaucratic takeover of health and social care, giving back power to local authorities across Scotland.

Mr Cole-Hamilton said:   

“Today, we are celebrating our shared culture, our collective heritage, our common history. Today is not a day for division.  

“Burns often wrote about the divisions that hold society back, inspiring our imaginations with the need for deep-rooted change and a better world. More than 200 years later, we desperately need that change. Patients can’t get the treatment they need, households are straining under the weight of the cost of living, children are looking at an attainment gap that is still depressingly wide, climate pledges are falling by the wayside and people are struggling to access crucial local government services.  

“It has always been my belief that Scottish politics must search for more common ground because our solution to these crises lies in a united response. That's why I am calling on the government to ditch its plans to break up the UK and redeploy every civil servant working on its separation papers to focus on the issues that affect everyone, regardless of whether you are a unionist, federalist or nationalist.

"Scottish Liberal Democrats are calling for an array of measures, including recruiting and retaining NHS staff through a burnout prevention plan and recognising the value of teachers by boosting pay and improving conditions.  

“The best laid schemes of this country should lie in cooperation and consensus. They do not lie in division and destruction.”