After 100 days SNP still rule with dither and delay - Alex Cole-Hamilton
Yesterday the Scottish Parliament reconvened after the summer recess and John Swinney's Scottish National Party reach the 100 day mark since returning to office.
You’d think that as they enter their 20th year in power, the SNP would have got the hang of this by now, but despite the glitzy array of promises offered by the nationalist government in this (fifth) first 100 days, much has already been deferred, watered down or forgotten entirely.
The nationalists promised to curb the time it takes to see your GP, but their attempt to honour that is simply to announce there will be additional GP ‘walk-in’ clinics which are incredibly costly and have been chronically underused and roundly panned by medical bodies like the British Medical Association.
Their failure to deliver real change is a huge frustration for those like me who had to wait three weeks for a routine appointment at my local surgery last month.
At the election, John Swinney made big promises about bringing down food prices by capping the price of staple goods in Scottish supermarkets. Leaving aside the question of the legality of such plans and the fears of farmers that they will be forced out of business, it has turned out that they merely plan to publish legislation and begin consulting on the practicalities around it. These are plans that may never actually arrive.
Issuing press releases or consultations about your desire to do something is not delivery. It’s a bit like going to your living room on Christmas morning only to find a note under the tree from your mum asking whether you would like a bike or not.
These first 100 days have been characterised by dither and delay. As wildfires destroyed more than 3300 hectares of Cairngorm moorland and forest, it took ministers nine days to convene an emergency meeting of the resilience committee - far too late to offer any meaningful response to one of the worst such infernos in Scottish history.
The return of MSPs to Holyrood and the publication of the SNP's programme for government on Tuesday is an opportunity to draw a line under the last 100 days and look to a fresh start for our nation’s parliament.
My newly expanded group of Scot Lib Dem MSPs are here to get things done, to hunt for agreement where we can find it and where it serves the interests of the people who send us to parliament.
We need to reach for big and ambitious solutions if we are to tackle the massive problems facing Scottish families.
As such, the approach of this government in the coming year must recognise the importance of improving social care if we are to fix the crisis in our NHS.
It must use all the levers at the Scottish Government’s disposal to cut the cost of living and bring down bills.
It must be serious about finally dualling the A9 and ending the SNP’s ferries fiasco. It must turn rhetoric into action around eradicating men's violence against women and girls and it must take mobile phones out of schools as part of a wider solution to return Scottish education to its best.
This will be a difficult session for the government. The SNP is now facing the business end of its failure to grow the Scottish economy and a huge black hole in the nation's coffers.
Scottish Liberal Democrats will play our part in navigating those massive challenges and will use our new found influence to positive effect but we cannot accept the next 100 days to be as ineffectual as the last.