Pin-drop moment as Sarwar heaps pressure on Sturgeon
ANAS Sarwar is toughening up at First Minister’s Questions – but toughness doesn’t always mean fireworks. Sometimes the most resonant questions are those delivered in measured tones about impossibly difficult, even distressing, matters.
For two years now, Sarwar has made it his mission to keep the loss of two child patients at Glasgow’s Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in the headlines.
The family of one youngster, ten-year-old Milly Main, has had to battle to get justice. The family of the second child has still not been reached.
Sarwar reminded the First Minister that, two years ago, he revealed the contaminated water scandal to Holyrood with the help of NHS whistleblowers.
‘It was met with denial, delay and attempts to bully into silence by the health board,’ he reminded her.
Since then, there had been ‘a discredited independent review’, and a public inquiry and police investigation were in the works. ‘Every step of the way, we have had to fight the system bit by bit, piece by piece to uncover the truth,’ he said.
This was pin-drop territory. You couldn’t hear a thing except the damning tones of a prosecutor full-sending his case. He noted that the second child’s death was not reported for investigation and that the Crown Office had to ask him for details of the case.
Nicola Sturgeon was the spirit of caution. You can’t push back too aggressively on such matters, which the First Minister accepted were ‘serious’.
She continued: ‘I want to leave no one in any doubt about how seriously the Government and I take these issues or about how determined we are…to get to the answers and the truth.’
SARWAR did not let up. He was relentless without being aggressive. He reminded the First Minister that she ‘gave parliament a personal commitment’ that ‘every effort’ would be made to contact the second family. Had they been found yet?
She did not answer initially and it took more pressure from Sarwar to get her to address the point. In sum, the family’s whereabouts was still unknown. The whole thing was unremittingly grim.
Sarwar’s recent toughening comes after a run of strong performances by Douglas Ross. If both can keep it up, their twin fronts would make life more difficult for Nicola Sturgeon, especially if Alex Cole-Hamilton, the recently installed Lib Dem leader, establishes a distinctive agenda for his party. The more remorseless the opposition becomes, the more rattled Sturgeon will get, and a rattled Sturgeon will be prone to mistakes.
Ross dedicated his questions to teasing out government support for a forthcoming Tory Bill on a right to recovery from drug addiction. He wanted Sturgeon to ‘commit to her government fully supporting’ the eventual legislation but she quibbled, with some justification, that she couldn’t sign up to a Bill that hadn’t been tabled yet.
In my official capacity as deputy head of metaphors, the Holyrood Sketchwriters Union, I am dutybound to endorse stooshies, rammies and square goes but the heckling of Ross while talking about drugs deaths was a bit vulgar.
Chuntering at your opponent while he’s on his feet is a time-honoured tactic for throwing him off his game, but it should be deployed selectively when the subject is sensitive.
If Ross were more of a cynic, he’d have got his PR minions to clip up these scenes and stick them on social media.
Shorn of context, the sight of SNP tribalists badgering an opponent as he asked about saving lives would have appalled even partisan Nats, let alone regular punters.