00:00Hello and welcome to the Scotsman's Daily Video Bulletin for this Tuesday.
00:04My name's Dale Miller, I'm Deputy Editor of the Scotsman and I'm joined by political correspondent Rachel Amory.
00:12Rachel, we are coming out of festival season, we are gearing up for politics to return with a bang,
00:19not that it's really gone away at all, but just firstly to pick up on the front page of today's Scotsman.
00:24And we're leading on the exclusive from our investigations correspondent, Martin McLaughlin,
00:30who writes about the Kirk hit by resignations over plans for an Israel hotel.
00:37Fascinating story, this one.
00:39We know the Church of Scotland is grappling with issues around its building portfolio,
00:44it's been selling off a lot of properties due to dwindling congregations and other financial issues.
00:50You can read that story in full at scotsman.com.
00:53And you can also read some of Jane Bradley's coverage wrapping up the fallout from the festival,
00:58including the numbers compared to last year, and there'll be more.
01:03There'll be an interview story coming from Fringe Society Chief Tony Lancaster later today available on the site.
01:11Rachel, firstly, there's a bit of a story coming out today, the latest Scottish crime statistics,
01:19and there's some good key takeaways there.
01:21I know you're still looking at this, but what were the things that jumped out at you?
01:26Yes, there's lots of statistics being published today, but the ones that we're going to concentrate on first are these crime statistics.
01:32Now, they have only just been published, so we're only just seeing the headlines of what it is just now.
01:35It doesn't necessarily paint a great picture.
01:38Overall, it shows that crime in Scotland has increased by a percentage point over the past year.
01:44And if you delve in a bit further to the numbers, we can see other patterns merging through.
01:49So, for example, violent crimes are also up by 1%.
01:53And also what's quite concerning is violent crimes are also up 12% on what the statistics were in June 2021.
01:59So, you can see a pattern over the course of the past few years post-pandemic of this happening.
02:05Perhaps most concerning, I think some people would argue, is the statistics on sexual crimes.
02:11They're actually up 5% in the past year and also up 9% in the past four years as well.
02:18So, that's probably something that we're going to have to take a little bit more of a look into.
02:21I'm sure throughout the day there'll be plenty of reaction to this.
02:25We'll probably see the government trying to set out what they need to do at this point as well.
02:29But overall, it doesn't look like a great picture when you're looking at the crimes recorded in Scotland.
02:33It seems that across the board, crimes have gone up.
02:36And when you look at the most serious crimes, such as sexual crimes and violent crimes,
02:40they're also increasing by quite a bit more, particularly if you look at the long-term picture there.
02:46Rachel, we know this comes against the backdrop of something that the Scotsman's reported on a fair bit,
02:50which is the increasing pressure on resources at Police Scotland.
02:53And it'll be interesting to see the reaction in and around these particular statistics
02:59and what people think that the key driving reasons are behind particular sexual crime
03:06rising over the past four years.
03:09Rachel, away from that, I wanted to revisit.
03:12You wrote an exclusive that you can read at scotsman.com was first published yesterday,
03:18but has been a big talking point in recent weeks.
03:22And that's the issue of immigration.
03:23There was the Understanding Scotland economy tracker produced courtesy of the David Hume Institute.
03:30And I thought it made for interesting reading.
03:31Can you just tell us the key points out of it?
03:34Yes, a lot of this tracker does focus on the economy.
03:37But perhaps what was most interesting was the political shift that we're seeing on the issue of immigration.
03:42immigration. So we're now seeing that immigration for Scottish voters is actually one of the top priorities.
03:48The only thing that people are ranking as more important are the NHS and the cost of living crisis.
03:53So that means that certain issues such as the economy and trust in politics are now deemed to be not as important of an issue as immigration is to Scottish voters.
04:04Now, what is quite interesting is this was not the case even as early as May this year.
04:09So over the summer, we have seen quite a big increase in terms of how important people think it is as a political issue.
04:15And that probably does play out when you look at the media coverage over the summer holidays.
04:19We've seen multiple protests outside asylum seeker hotels, for example, not least two at the weekend in Perth and in West Hills.
04:26And earlier this month, Falkirk as well. There are more protests planned throughout the UK, including in Scotland, for the next couple of months as well.
04:35So that probably marries up with that rhetoric that we've been seeing over the summer holidays.
04:39It is also a much bigger issue politically for voters than it was a few years ago.
04:46And it's now about 20 percent of voters think it's a really important issue, whereas two years ago, for example, maybe only about five percent.
04:53So quite a big political shift that we're seeing from this economy tracker.
04:57The other thing the tracker is looking at, of course, is household finances.
05:01And unsurprisingly, it is saying that five households are continuing to feel the pinch, continually having to scrabble to make ends meet.
05:08They don't have any savings because only their income only covers their essentials, for example.
05:14And things such as leisure activities, dining out, takeaways, things like that have all been cut back on.
05:20And probably not news to a lot of people. I mean, there's a lot of people out there really struggling with the cost of living crisis.
05:25And so that's perhaps not as striking a statistic as the immigration one, because we were kind of expecting that.
05:31We're seeing a lot of people struggling economically right now.
05:34I thought, Rachel, Susan Murray, the director of the David Hume Institute, she's written an op-ed that's been published at scotsman.com.
05:45And she sort of talks through how concerns over immigration can tie into things like the economy, people struggling perhaps for work, perhaps with their personal finances.
05:56She summarised it really well.
05:59You can go to the Opinion tab from our homepage if you want to read that piece and a bit of context around what may be feeding into those figures.
06:07Just lastly, Rachel, we're a week away from Holyrood officially returning from recess.
06:14It's felt like it's been a decent break across the festival, albeit that a lot of the politicians have spoken at the festival over the summer.
06:21But what do you think will be the key talking points that will come up next week?
06:27Yes, it's a week today that Parliament goes back and will get back into the swing of things.
06:32What's good to note about this particular return after summer is this is the last return to Parliament before the 2026 holiday election.
06:41I think that is really going to dominate issues going forward.
06:44We've already seen that the Parliament has kind of become a campaigning Parliament for the past probably 18 months now.
06:51Particularly when you're looking at parties like Scottish Labour, for example, during First Minister's questions each week,
06:56we always get this rhetoric from the Scottish Labour leader of vote Labour, here's why you should vote for us, here's why we're better than the SNP.
07:03So we're just going to see that ramping up and ramping up a bit more.
07:06I think we're going to see a lot more speeches that are aimed at voters as opposed to aimed at trying to progress legislation, for example.
07:14That's really going to dominate politics going forward in Scotland for the next year.
07:19There have been plenty of issues that have been bubbling away over the summer.
07:22I think the two biggest issues politically have probably been immigration and asylum seekers and there are going to be sort of gender reform, culture wars, for example.
07:31I think those two issues are going to continue to dominate headlines.
07:35And I think there'll be a lot of talk about that when we go back to Parliament.
07:38Because I'm sure there are plenty of politicians who have got things that have been building up over the summer that they now want to have discussed in that official setting.
07:45I certainly know there are some MSPs putting forward requests to have certain motions heard when the Parliament goes back.
07:53So keep an eye out for those two issues.
07:55I'm sure they will also be raised frequently over the next few months.
07:59You mentioned about the issue of gender, Rachel, and the Sandy Peggy Tribunal hearing due to resume Monday, potentially Tuesday next week, just for the next step of that.
08:10So I'm sure many of the politicians will be asked about that coming into the first day back at Parliament on Tuesday.
08:17You can read all the stories we've discussed on this bulletin at scotsman.com.
08:22If you ever can't find our political coverage, there's a politics tab available from the Navigation Bar.
08:27You can get there off the website.
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08:40We'll have a key story on the Trams Network following on from the release of the consultation process yesterday.
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