5 ways the SNP are letting down the North East of Scotland

From the inability access to modern digital infrastructure to a lack of local, appropriate healthcare, communities in the North-East of Scotland are being left behind by the Scottish Government.

As the elected MSP for Aberdeenshire West, I have come to expect a lack of attention given to the North-East of Scotland from the SNP/Green Scottish Government.?With almost daily failures of the Scottish Government being reported, I thought I would highlight some of the most damaging consequences in the North-East.

1: Schools and Education

In years gone by, Scotland took pride in itself on educational excellence. In recent years though, our education standards have slipped, with former Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi describing them as “in freefall” as our ranking in the international Pisa tables dropped.

Despite this, the Scottish Government doesn’t appear to be ensuring the North-East can access quality education – with Aberdeenshire Council receiving only 25 of the 49 newly qualified secondary teachers that were requested. Teaching vacancies plague the North-East, as my colleague Douglas Lumsden MSP wrote in June, the council received only two of the 11 new maths teachers required.

Newly qualified teachers are rightly able to choose the location they wish to work in, however with a higher cost of living in the North-East, there needs to be incentivisation to ensure our future generation is well educated.?

The lack of focus on education is clear when you consider that a number of schools, including two in Aberdeenshire West, have not been inspected since 2004 and I wrote just last month on the devastating impact of cutting educational spending in Scotland.

2: Emergency Services

Across Scotland, the emergency services are strained by the Scottish Government, resulting in the number of incidents with ambulance wait times of over two hours rising by 805% in four years.

In the North-East, patients have been forced to wait twice the target time for an ambulance to arrive during life-threatening emergencies according to the Press and Journal. The fantastic ambulance staff and paramedics are under-resourced by the SNP, adding to the pressure they are under.

However, it is not just the ambulance service the Scottish Government have managed to damage, as the average wait time for fire engines to arrive has risen every year since the 8 brigades were centralised in 2013. The centralisation of services to the central belt saw a loss of local knowledge of the North-East amongst call handlers.

To make matters worse – police have also been cut across Scotland, with numbers of officers at the lowest level in 14 years. Across the North-East, 13 Police stations are either shut or in the pipeline for closure (see Aberdeen Live), including Kemnay police station in Aberdeenshire West. This comes at a time when rural crime is on the rise.

3: Broadband

Connectivity and broadband issues are not new to North-East communities, and as a rural business owner and MSP with a team spread across the constituency, I know the importance of a quality connection.

It is therefore entirely unacceptable that the Scottish Government is leaving the North-East behind in the rollout of superfast broadband. Having been delayed by five years, the northern section of the R100 scheme is now not due for completion until 2026. As I wrote late last year, this would be truly catastrophic for the 60,000 homes and small businesses affected across the North of Scotland.

4: Transport

The SNP/Green coalition is determined to cut off the North-East of Scotland. Firstly, by introducing a workplace parking levy to discourage car usage in the rural North-East of Scotland and encourage us to use public transport. All the while, SNP ministers used ministerial limos to and from the COP26 Summit last year.

I’m sure many of you will also remember the newly-nationalised ScotRail cutting 700 services for two months, causing havoc on the railways and cutting off the North-East from the rest of Scotland.

One of the flagship SNP policies, introducing free bus travel to under 22’s has seen just 44% of youngsters in Aberdeenshire receive a pass and the Scottish Bike Loan scheme, costing the taxpayer ￡145,000 has seen just FOUR applications.

To add insult to injury, roads are falling apart across the North-East, with major upgrades to both the A90 and A96 required, but postponed due to the Greens in government.

?5: Community Hospitals

At a time when the emergency services are under strain and transport is limited by the Scottish Government, you would be forgiven for thinking keeping healthcare local was a priority.

However, as you may be aware if you follow my Facebook page or read my newspaper columns, this is not the case. Across the North-East, keeping care in the community is not a priority of the Scottish Government, with Insch Hospital still closed despite Nicola’s personal promise to get it open.

The hospital, which celebrates it’s centenary this August is a lifeline for the local community, however local residents either now need to travel to Inverurie where they struggle to get a bed, or take the near-hour journey into Aberdeen.

Whilst I am glad that Aboyne and Glen O’Dee Hospitals remain open, the strategic review which recently closed for engagement suggests their future is in doubt.

All of these five issues above and others have been allowed to worsen by a Scottish Government only interested in breaking up the United Kingdom and who is able to abuse their position and misuse all the means at their disposal to achieve it.

Until we get a Government in Holyrood actually interested in governing for the benefit of all of Scotland's citizens, then the further this decline will be and the longer, and more costly, it will be to rectify.