My Week In 5
This week I was pleased to sponsor the “Peace at the Heart” exhibition in the Scottish Parliament, showcasing the many elements and benefits of a “Peace Education” approach in Scotland’s schools. You can read more about the travelling exhibition & further work of Quakers in Scotland here : https://www.quakerscotland.org/news/peace-heart
During this week’s Education Children & Young People’s Committee, I focused my questions to the Cabinet Secretary Jenny Gilruth on how a resetting of relationships and the new fiscal framework under development between Scottish Government and Cosla will assist in providing clarity on ring-fencing & directed spend in Education for local authority budgets. You can watch my contribution and responses on the following link :
On Tuesday, I was delighted to host the parliament’s Cross Party Group on Music where all members were enthusiastic to hear about last weekend’s first ever Scottish Folk Day which took place alongside European Folk Day and resulted in many successful events held across Scotland. It was a pleasure to submit a parliamentary motion on this recently which you can find the detail of here:
Returning to committee work, during the Finance and Public Administration Committee I was able to question Maree Todd, Minister for Social Care, Mental Wellbeing and Sport, on the conditions around legislation and delivery of the National Care Service. This is a critical piece of legislation which has many challenges and requires careful scrutiny by parliament as well as detailed planning to be successfully delivered to meet its objectives. You can watch my contribution and responses on the following link https://bit.ly/3RF6F4j
As well as quite a variety of meetings across the week, I very much enjoyed dropping into the Colleges Scotland Parliamentary Showcase where it was a pleasure to catch up with Forth Valley College Principal Kenny MacInnes and also to attend a roundtable event hosted by my colleague Ivan McKee, with members from FinTech Scotland and Scottish Government discussing innovating opportunities in enabling Fintech exports.
