Roseanna Cunningham A day in the life of this MSP

One of the questions politicians often get asked – and one of the hardest to answer – is: what is your typical day like?

The thing is there is no such thing. It is one of the things that makes this job so fascinating.

For example, over just a couple of days in the constituency recently I met Aviva about jobs, spoke at Crieff Food Hall about local food and drink producers, attended a fascinating presentation from Christians Against Poverty about helping people with serious financial difficulties and paid a visit to Ochil Tower School in Auchterarder to hear the concerns of the staff there about the negative impact that Brexit threatens to have on the work they are doing.

Meanwhile, putting on my ministerial hat, during the same time frame, I co-hosted an event with Dutch government at the World Forum on Natural Capital in Edinburgh discussing how to enable action, across sectors and across national boundaries, and how we can work together to make the changes that are needed to our economies and societies.

There really is no such thing as a normal day in a politician’s life!

One thing that is becoming‘normal’in Scottish politics is the Scottish Government stepping in to make a difference where the UK government is failing.

We have seen it in the many different ways in which the Scottish Government has been mitigating changes to the benefits system and we have seen another example recently with the issue of superfast fibre broadband coverage.

The claim was made that Scotland was not only lagging behind on the roll out of superfast broadband but that this was in some way the Scottish Government’s fault. As the First Minister said, the UK government is“talking so much nonsense it borders on dishonesty.”

The facts are clear on this. This week saw the release of data which shows the benefit for local authority areas from the investment of over £400m made through the Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband programme. The data makes clear the difference made by this investment and the approach taken in Scotland to rolling out broadband connectivity.

Indeed, here in Perth and Kinross, without Scottish Government leadership, only 41 per cent of premises would be connected to fibre broadband - instead, it’s 82 per cent. That massive difference – a doubling in the percentage of properties reached - is entirely thanks to Scotland’s digital programme.

A recent report from Ofcom stated that our Digital Scotland programme had increased coverage by 14 per cent over the previous 12 months – the largest increase out of any of the UK nations.

As a direct result of our investment, we are on track to deliver 95 per cent fibre broadband coverage by the end of this year, with procurement launching imminently to deliver 100 per cent superfast broadband coverage by 2021.

Scotland is the only part of the UK to have such an ambitious target.