I am honoured to give my maiden speech today as a new representative of the Highlands and Islands region. I declare an interest in that my wife is a practising GP.

Before I talk about health, I offer my thanks to the parliamentary staff who have supported me this week and to Donald Cameron as he begins work as a Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Scotland. It speaks to Donald’s character that politicians from all parties praised his contribution to this Parliament over the past eight years. I did not quite realise how big his shoes were, so I will have to get some big shoes from somewhere. He is well known and respected, and the UK Government’s gain is our loss.

Like my colleague Douglas Ross, I live in Moray with my family, and I share Douglas’s infectious passion for the region. No two communities are the same, and residents across the Highlands and Islands face distinct and unique challenges, whether that is needing to get a ferry, paying more for deliveries, recruitment difficulties or needing to travel hundreds of miles for healthcare. The news on Monday that there will be a significant delay to the delivery of an MRI scanner and to the refurbishment of the mental health ward at Dr Gray’s hospital in Elgin is yet another serious blow for Moray and the wider community.

Although those challenges are many and varied, our region and its people have much to offer. As I mentioned earlier, my wife is a practising GP, so I know and live with the daily challenges that are faced by those on the front line in primary care. However, it is not just the GPs; there are the advanced practitioners, the physios, the front-line staff at the desk, the administrators, the practice managers, the pharmacists and more. People in those professions and many others do not just switch off at the end of the day. Their job is a part of their lives, and they do an amazing job despite the difficulties that they face.

There are many great things that this Parliament can and will do, but it is a fundamental essential that we get the most basic needs of the Scottish people right, and access to healthcare that delivers quality, timely care to patients from staff who are valued is one of them.

GPs are the beating heart of primacy care services, yet Public Health Scotland’s website today shows a drop of 40 GPs in the past year alone. The SNP’s promise to deliver 800 more GPs by 2027 is, frankly, looking increasingly hollow. It leaves me asking big questions. Where will the Government get those GPs from, and is it truly listening to patients and GPs at present?

To add to that pressure, the number of registered patients is increasing. Reform is clearly needed to deliver modern, efficient and local health services and, in the case of my constituents, it is vital that the trend of rural depopulation is tackled.

Although I enter Parliament at a later stage in this session, I bring with me many lessons learned from serving the community of Buckie during my time on Moray Council. I am deeply proud to be a part of that community. It has immense spirit, which was so prominently displayed when a large part of the town travelled to Glasgow to support Buckie Thistle Football Club against Celtic in the Scottish cup recently.

As a councillor, I firmly believed that I was only truly capable of serving my community if I listened to those whom I served. Ultimately, it is their lives that are made better or worse by the decisions that we take here. Although I will challenge the Government when it is necessary to do so, I want to work with all politicians, because that is what our constituents expect of us.

I look forward to delivering for the Highlands and Islands, but I end with perhaps one of the most urgent requests to the Government. Primary care is calling out to the Government from the shadows that it needs more help to bring it back into the light so that it can shine. [

Applause

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