By Bill Heaney
Deputy First Minister Shona Robison took over from Humza Yousaf for First Minister’s Questions in the Scottish Parliament today.
And was the victim of a dressing down from Labour leader Anas Sarwar for promises she made years ago and never fulfilled.
Robison, pictured left, was in a feisty mood, but the failed former Health Secretary, came off second best in this debate.
Labour leader Anas Sarwar said “Shona Robison promised to end delayed discharge eight years ago.
“Since then nearly four and a half million bed days have been lost, £1.1 billion has been a wasted and more than 2,300 people have died while waiting to leave hospital.
“Now people are being asked to pay for that failure during a cost-of-living crisis.
“One in four households are facing a council tax rise of up to 22% – an average of £740 a year.
“Income tax rises are looming for people earning as little as £28,000 and workers could be forced to pay £15 a day charge to drive to work – all on top of the Tory mortgage bombshell.
“Imagine for example a family where – the Mum’s a nurse, the Dad’s a teacher and they’ve got two young kids.
“Their energy bills skyrocketed and they’re still paying 50% more. That’s £2000. Their food bills are up almost 20%. They’ve been hit with a mortgage increase of over £2,000 a year.
“And now the SNP want to make that worse by asking both to pay more income tax, hundreds of pounds more in council tax and £15 a day in LES charges to get to their work in Glasgow.
“This family is being let down by both Tory and SNP incompetence, both making life harder for working people.
“The people of Scotland can’t afford to pay the price for SNP failure.”
Too right. A cost of living crisis and the SNP want to put tax up. Council tax and income tax.
And the SNP also want to put up the price of a bottle of whisky by over £4.40 or a can of beer by around £0.35.
Add that to the cost impacts of the LEZs and the people who nearly lost their jobs through the proposals to shut down fishing areas.
But the SNP – Green government has no end of money to spend on GRR and other such policies or for Humza to flit off to New York to make a SG donation of £2.5m internationally fight non communicable diseases.
Pity he wasn’t donating £2.5m to the NHS in Scotland to fight diseases.
Mind you the money could have bought a few camper vans so beloved by the last First Minister.