It’s just not fair to leave our children in limbo

Sometimes as a politician, it’s hard to separate an issue with political repercussions from home life. this debacle over student guidance is one of those times.

Family comes first always, but in times like this, it’s hard to even remotely consider anything beyond what’s best for your kids.

in some topsy-turvy world, if i had stood for the sNP instead of as a scottish tory councillor, i would still be raising how muddled and mixed up this guidance for university students has been. As a parent of a student involved in this mess, i don’t think i would have any other choice, regardless of my political affiliation.

my daughter is studying at edinburgh University at the moment. Just like thousands of other young people out there right now, she’s waiting to hear if she will be able to come home over Christmas.

it’s a cliché, but what every parent wants, more than anything else, is for their child to be happy and safe. it sounds very simple, but that’s really all there is to it.

At the moment, every student is having to deal with safety concerns. We’ve seen, not just on these shores but in the United states too, that Covid is spreading quickly through university campuses.

there’s no doubt that university life – as exciting as it can be – is also, unfortunately, ideally suited to the spread of a virus like this one. it can be tough, knowing that your daughter is in a place where she is more likely to catch this virus, even if she is also of an age where it most likely won’t cause her any serious harm.

But i’m acutely aware, and so is my daughter, that there are wider considerations at stake here. it’s not just about how much the virus will or won’t impact young people. it’s about how it can so quickly and easily spread through communities. Nobody wants to go back to lockdown and even more importantly, nobody wants to see the death rate rise again. that’s unthinkable.

Now, nobody of any political persuasion is pretending there’s an easy solution to this that will keep everyone happy and protected. it’s not going to be straightforward. there’s no panacea that will let students continue their education totally uninterrupted and completely suppress the virus at the same time.

But it still feels that we could have been much better prepared for this. We’ve known students were going back for a long time now. this was a situation we saw coming. Health adviser Devi sridhar has been warning about the potential for the virus to spread when universities return for some time.

so questions do need to be asked about why we didn’t install a far more wide-ranging mass community testing programme, to find out exactly who was harbouring the virus and keep it contained.

AND what doesn’t help are the mixed messages. i heard scottish Government national clinical director Jason Leitch say students could return home to their parents. then, in a U-turn the scottish Government said that wasn’t the case.

the clarification eventually came – but confusion had already spread. it might not seem like much for some people, to wait a weekend to find out what’s happening.

i’m lucky my daughter is happy, but there are lots of parents who will have been dealing with worried kids last weekend. starting out at university is difficult enough. it already impacts on young people’s mental health.

it’s really not fair on those young people, some only 17, to have been left in limbo like this when they are just starting out in the wider world.

everything is tougher in a pandemic – for my daughter, being a student. And for me, being a parent and being a politician.

But at the moment, the latter pales in significance compared to my worry as a parent about how our young people are being treated.