This week in parliament I spoke to a range of organisations who were working in coalition to highlight the dangers of climate change and call on the Scottish government to take a lead in climate change issues ahead of The 21st session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on […]
A group of third and fourth year pupils from Beath High School were in the Scottish Parliament this week to see where Scotland makes its legislation. The pupils tried out the committee rooms, experienced the chamber and had some time for reflection in the reflection seat in the office of local MSP Alex Rowley […]
This week the Scottish Government brought forward their Community Charge Debt (Scotland) Bill, a piece of legislation designed to write off all outstanding Poll tax debt. In practice the vast majority of this debt has already ether been effectively been written off or is uncollectable due to the law of negative prescription and the length […]
I am concerned that the budget being brought forward for this year by the Finance Secretary disproportionately cuts the budgets of local councils who end up taking a bigger share of the austerity cuts. For me this is of real concern given that councils are already suffering from the fact that the council tax freeze […]
Today I spoke in the Local government and regeneration committee debate on there 8th report in to the Flexibility and autonomy of local government. I stated that while I welcome the report I believe that this report should mark the start of a much wider debate in to the future shape of local government and I set out my intention to continue to push for […]
This week I spoke in the debate which proceeded the First Ministers statement on the Scottish Independence Referendum result and set out my belief that we must unite and work together to tackle the real issues that my constituents and people across Scotland discussed on the door step every day of the independence campaign. I […]
This week in the Scottish Governments debate on Scotland’s future I set out a vision for Scotland which put fairness and social Justice first. A vision which is about listening to the needs of our people and responding to them with effective policy to bring about real change. My vision is a Labour vision based […]
This week I spoke in the Scottish Government debate on welfare reform and made the argument that we need to have a clear strategy aimed at tackling poverty and tackling the causes of poverty. I believe we must be more ambitious than simply arguing for improvements in welfare benefits; we must strive to give every […]
This week I spoke in the members debate on Gaza about why I believe action must be taken to end the killing of innocent men, women and children now. I also believe that we must make sure that no weapons manufactured in the UK are being exported to Israel and that the United Nations must […]
Today I again made it clear that we must have a radical policy on housing and a clear plan to build 10,000 houses a year over the next 5 years in order to tackle Scotland housing crisis. I spoke in support of the Housing Scotland Bill with the clear caveat that although I support the […]