The Scotsman Bulletin Thursday May 29 2025 #Hamilton

The Scotsman

Transcript

00:00Hello, welcome to the Scotsman's Daily Video Bulletin for this Thursday.

00:04My name's Dale Miller, I'm Deputy Editor of the Scotsman and I'm joined by our Deputy

00:08Political Editor, David Boll, who's coming to us from the Scottish Parliament.

00:13David, we're going to talk about the front page firstly, and it's a big part of the reason

00:18I've got you on because we led with an exclusive from a union boss urging John Sweeney to act

00:25as the NHS faces an incoming catastrophe.

00:28I want to talk to you about that a little bit more.

00:32Also our transport correspondent Alistair Dalton reporting on a further delay for the M8 in

00:38and around Glasgow.

00:39If you've used the M8 in recent years, you'll be familiar with a couple of sections where

00:43you've hit pretty much ongoing roadworks heading back to pretty much the COVID pandemic and

00:49they're not going away anytime soon, which is probably not welcome news, but you can read

00:54the full details on that story at scotsman.com.

00:57But this letter, David, talk us through why it's been written, who it's coming from and

01:03what the concerns are.

01:04Yeah, so this is a letter from Unison to John Sweeney and it comes after they sat down and

01:09spoke to him about the UK government's immigration white paper, which Keir Starmer launched earlier

01:16it's quite controversial, both in terms of rhetoric on migration and some of the specific measures,

01:22particularly to end the special social care visa, which the care sector, particularly in Scotland,

01:30is extremely worried about.

01:31It's basically going to decimate the sector in terms of workforce.

01:34There's already a lot of pressure on social care workforce in Scotland and it is feared that this

01:40will just exacerbate things.

01:41The UK government would say that it would just encourage employers to recruit from the UK.

01:47But as the letter points out, pay is a big issue.

01:51It seems a low paid job and it's not an attractive prospect for a lot of people.

01:56Unison very much on the same page with John Sweeney about the problems with this, but actually wanting

02:04John Sweeney himself and his government to bring forth some action themselves and use every lever

02:09that Holyrood has to kind of mitigate some of this and to ensure that jobs are protected and the sector

02:15is protected. A lot of that is down to making it a more attractive job for people to take up,

02:22but also making sure there's a lot of flexibility in some of the workforce planning that is coming

02:27forward from the Scottish government to be able to react to however this plan from the UK government

02:34lands for the Scottish social care sector. So it's just a lot of asks that John Sweeney himself

02:42has been told and urged to bring forward and to kind of preempt some of these problems that are poised to

02:49come this way. And we do know that John Sweeney at the program for government early this month made

02:56some pledges around what they were going to do with appointments to try and create more in the NHS.

03:02There was a bit of pushback about those plans from some parties including the British Medical

03:08Association that felt it wasn't tackling enough of the problem and there was going to be a drop in

03:14the ocean in terms of the pledge. Also, the background to this, David, as you'll probably

03:20know, is a record high in terms of outpatient two-year waits was reported earlier this week.

03:26So all of this pressure around what the immigration white paper might mean on staffing comes with

03:34things in terms of waiting times, not getting any better currently on the NHS here in Scotland.

03:39Elsewhere, another big political story this week has been this row over a video that involved

03:48Anasawa that's been used by reform. It's not often, David, you get both the Scottish Labour leader and

03:55John Sweeney from the SMP singing from the same song sheet and saying that the use of this video was

04:01wrong. Sweeney's used the word race baiting. There's been a lot of criticism of reform about it. I wanted to

04:07get your take though. You've been to Hamilton a bit over the past week. You've been there a couple of

04:12times. What's been the mood on the ground in the constituency and do you think this row will have

04:19any impact when it comes to Thursday's by-election? Yeah, the row has certainly overshadowed the

04:25campaign. That's for sure. We've got quite a crucial political by-election next week and this row has

04:32kind of overshadowed all that talk about who's going to win because in reality it's unlikely to

04:38sway anyone. Reform are not, this isn't a new thing for them to deal with. They've had these kind of

04:44race rows before. They kind of thrive on it and they're appealing to a certain type of people who

04:50will be taken in by this. And Labour kind of had a choice whether to just ignore it or to call it out

04:55fully. And they've chosen, which is fair enough, to call it out. And as you said, John Swinney has

05:02kind of backed Hanasawa, as have the Greens and other parties. And it kind of is one of the only

05:10things that has brought Labour and the SNP together is this kind of uniting to kind of call out this.

05:16It's very hard not to call it racism. It's just a very misleading video. And we saw another one by

05:22Nigel Farage yesterday in the second one. And to be fair to Hanasawa, he's probably done well by

05:28reacting to it the way he has, but it's not going to really sway anything that we see in the vote

05:33next Thursday. It does look, if you look at national polls, we don't actually have any local polling for

05:38the constituency, but the SNP are by far ahead enough to assume they're going to win that seat or

05:45they're at least going to it as favourites. However, the race for second is a bit closer and

05:51reform really, I mean, they're saying they can win the seat, which seems very unlikely.

05:56But they do think they have a good chance of coming ahead of Labour, which would be quite

06:00humiliating for Hanasawa and his chances of winning that Holyrood election next year. He insists that he's

06:06still in this by-election to win it and to win the election next year. But coming third to reform

06:11would really be a huge kind of humiliating dent in that ambition.

06:15It'll be interesting. I wonder whether there'll be some significant fallout if that did come to

06:21pass. We know Hanasawa earlier this week was still talking about it effectively being a battle between

06:28the SNP and Scottish Labour. But if reform do come second, you can see that a crisis meeting within

06:36Labour may be necessary less than 12 months out now from the Scottish Parliament elections.

06:43Our political correspondent, Rachel Amory, has done a bit of an explainer just talking

06:47you through what will happen for the by-election next week and who the candidates are. We've only

06:53spoken about these three parties, reform, Labour and the SNP, but other parties have candidates that

06:59they're putting up as well, including the Greens and some of the smaller parties and there's an

07:05independent candidate as well. So you can read that piece at scotsman.com if you're curious about the

07:10build-up and who is standing in that by-election next week. All our political coverage today and

07:18throughout the coming days, you can go to the Politics tab in the navigation bar and we'll

07:24bring you the latest from First Minister's questions later today. David, thank you for joining us and

07:30thanks to everyone else for tuning.

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