Thanks for the generous and kind messages

I wish to thank everyone who sent me such kind and generous messages when I recently announced my intention to step down from the Scottish Parliament at the elections next year; it is much appreciated.

During the eight months before I depart the scene I will do all I can to help and support my constituents.

Top of my priority list will be to ensure that the new Monklands Hospital is located at one of the two short-listed sites in Airdrie and not Gartcosh.

It would be absurd to build the new hospital on top of one of the most toxic sites in Scotland. That must be resisted.

The other two big challenges for all of us over the next few months will be dealing with the coronavirus pandemic and the economic recession resulting from it, which will badly affect the whole of Lanarkshire.

Like everyone else in the country, I hope that a vaccine or treatment for Covid-19 will become available sooner rather than later. It will be impossible for life to return to anything like normal until that happens.

Meantime, we have to adjust our lives to ensure that we protect each other from catching it.

That means abiding by the rules about social distancing, wearing masks in confined places, washing our hands regularly, getting tested immediately if anybody has symptoms associated with Covid-19 and self-isolating until the outcome of any tests are known.

Despite the superb efforts of our NHS staff, it will take some time for GP surgeries and hospitals to get back to a normal level of working.

That means that the waiting times for operations and other procedures, as well as surgical appointments, will get longer until there is enough time to clear the huge backlog that has arisen from the months of lockdown. We will all have to be patient.

For obvious reasons it will also take many months, possibly years, before the economy gets back to normal. Unemployment will continue to rise as will the number of business failures.

To minimise this fallout, the UK and Scottish governments need to take more action to save existing jobs, where possible, as well as creating enough new jobs to let us get back to full employment as a matter of urgency.

High levels of unemployment can be as damaging to the nation’s long-term health as a pandemic.

Taking his leave Mr Neil will step down at next year’s elections