Labour’s PFI school scandal

"I'M urging Fife Council to publish full details of any report into West Fife’s PFI schools. The council ordered emergency inspections on schools built under the controversial scheme – that includes Beath High, a building opened in 2003.

The inspections follow the emergency closure of 17 PFI schools in Edinburgh due to safety concerns.

Parents will want comprehensive answers following these worrying closures. Are Beath and other Fife schools safe and what lessons have been learned? This inevitably leads to the wider question of why Labour were so keen to use this expensive way of building our schools in the first place. We all want assurances from Fife Council that our schools are safe for pupils and teaching staff.

Hitting the campaign trail with Annabelle

In just over a fortnight, Scots will be going to the polls to vote for who they want to represent them in the Scottish Parliament. Maybe you have already cast your vote via post. It’s been a pleasure joining Annabelle Ewing who is the SNP candidate in the Times area. Of course, much of the hard work is down to the army of volunteers who give up their free time to knock doors and set up stalls. I am continually astonished at the numbers of people who show such willingness and enthusiasm in their bid to play a part in helping build a better Scotland. Post-referendum Scotland is engaging with politics in a way that would be unthinkable a decade ago. Long may it continue.

'Keep calm and carry on’?

I spoke in the Commons chamber recently in a debate on the Iraq Inquiry Report. It was former Prime Minister Gordon Brown - now my constituent - who ordered the Chilcott Inquiry. But now there is a sense of anger and frustration that, after 10 years of waiting, the report has still not published. My constituents share that anger and frustration. The entirely predictable ‘keep calm and carry on’ attitude appears to be the Government's default setting. I believe they see that as a virtue. Informing us that the final report may be heavily redacted only adds insult to injury, particularly for the families who lost loved ones in Iraq. It is a dreadful situation to endure. The conclusion of the Chilcot Inquiry should be a chance for the government to draw a line under the Iraq misadventure. It is an opportunity to understand where it went wrong and why the UK’s strategy in the Middle East was so feckless that the Blair-Brown Government felt they had no choice but to follow the United States down that rabbit hole. After 134,000 Iraqi civilian deaths and 179 UK soldiers killed in action, we see that we took part in a war that destabilised that country, caused ongoing civil war in neighbouring states and paved the way for brutal terrorist attacks across Europe. The Prime Minister must publish the Chilcott Inquiry report in full, and publish it now".