Labour are getting on with the day job
WHEN I urged Nicola Sturgeon to get back to the day job, I didn’t imagine that one of her first moves would be to vote in favour of cutting off puppy dog tails.
Choosing to lift Labour’s ban on tail docking of dogs was one of the first actions of this SNP Government after the election – helped, once again, by their Tory allies.
But that wasn’t her only cut.
The day before that, SNP MSPs voted to start a process towards cutting the tax levied on air travel, which benefits the wealthy the most.
Today, the Nationalist government plan to break up the British Transport Police because Sturgeon is refusing to listen to concerns from staff and experts.
With voters turning against her, it’s little wonder that the First Minister is increasingly rattled.
Last week, when I raised with her a damming report from Scotland’s public finance watchdog about college cuts, she couldn’t defend her record so resorted to an astonishing attack on the experts who produced the report.
This isn’t what the day job is supposed to look like.
It’s not what people – having endured 10 years of spending cuts, division and excuses – want from our government.
So, while the SNP struggle to find a purpose now that voters have clearly rejected a second independence referendum, it is Labour who are getting on with making Scotland a fairer country.
With the SNP a minority government in Holyrood, we can
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make positive changes from the opposition benches.
That’s why Labour’s James Kelly last week formally introduced a parliamentary Bill to repeal the SNP’s hated Football Act.
And yesterday, our environmental spokeswoman Claudia Beamish confirmed her plan to move ahead with a law to ban onshore fracking.
We have a slate of Member’s Bills for the next four years.
Daniel Johnson will try to give parents the legal right to demand school breakfast clubs.
Monica Lennon will attempt to end the scandal of period poverty by ensuring free access to sanitary products.
There’s also a plan to level the playing field for pubs tied to breweries, courtesy of Neil Bibby, which will give customers more choice over the drinks on sale.
In our health service, Labour’s Anas Sarwar is setting up a workforce commission to answer the really big questions about our NHS – and we will continue to fight to end the pay cap imposed by the SNP on staff.
On the economy, Jackie Baillie and Richard Leonard are set to produce an industrial strategy to show how Labour would reverse the trend of low-paid, insecure work which has summed up a decade of nationalism.
And all the while we’re holding the SNP to account in Parliament.
Last week, Labour MSPs tabled hard-hitting amendments to the Child Poverty Bill to ensure the SNP government use their powers to really tackle child poverty.
And we’ll do the same with the SNP’s vague Social Security Bill.
This is the difference Labour MSPs are making in the Scottish Parliament.
Bold plans to make Scotland a fairer and better place to live, work and grow up in.
That’s what the day job looks like, Nicola.