'PARLIAMENT is now on summer recess, a welcome opportunity to spend much more time in the constituency talking to the people who really matter – the people I represent. I’ve a busy programme of visits and surgeries arranged but we also managed to join a dozen family members on a break in County Antrim; as my siblings live in three different countries we don’t get many chances to all get together.

In the final days of the last Parliamentary session we had a debate on replacing the UK’s nuclear weapons submarines. I honoured my election promises by voting against this. 58 of Scotland’s 59 MPs voted against having these hideous weapons anywhere in Scotland, but a number of Labour MPs voted with the Tories to impose Weapons of Mass Destruction on Scotland.

We also had the long overdue report of the Chilcott Inquiry into the Iraq war. During the debate I recalled the two men from my constituency who lost their lives, and other MPs paid tribute to the fallen from elsewhere in Fife. The families of those who died were offered a very brief preview of the report just before it went public. Tony Blair and his team of spin doctors got an advance copy months earlier but no amount of spin can hide his responsibility for inducing Parliament into perhaps the worst decision it’s made in living memory. There’s a huge amount of evidence to suggest that Blair misled his own cabinet, his Government, Parliament, and the people of the UK, about why he was so determined to send our troops to war at all costs. We owe it to those who never came back, and to the many more who came back with horrific physical and psychological injuries, to have this evidence tested in a court of law.

David Cameron’s “Resignation Honours List” highlights yet again the insidious and often corrupt nature of the UK honours system. I’m all in favour of recognising exceptional public service. It’s absolutely right that we have a way of publicly acknowledging the years of unpaid service to the community by people like Alex Burns in Cardenden or Sandy Russell in Kinglassie, both of whom fully deserved the awards they received a few years ago, and in my time as leader of Fife Council I met a lot of council employees who went well beyond their official job requirements because they believed in the job they were doing. These are the people who deserve medals and other honours. The system becomes devalued when a failed Prime Minister can dish out gongs to someone just because they campaigned for him in an election or because they donated money to his party.'