News about Jackie Baillie

Nearly 10,000 attempts to purchase Oasis tickets were made using Scottish Government devices on the day they went on sale. Holyrood servers recorded thousands logins to Ticketmaster for the band's Edinburgh gigs next year when the gold-dust briefs were released at the end of August, in 'a blatant abuse of government resources'. Official laptops and mobile phones clocked 9,078 visits to the site with fans desperate to secure their entrance to Murrayfield when the Mancunian outfit arrives for the Scottish leg of its world tour. Scotland's Health and Social Care Secretary, Neil Gray (top right), was one of those who used a government device to try and secure his place, with the SNP politician admitting he joined the queue for tickets during a discussion on Alzheimer's disease.

Human body parts and blood from Scotland's hospitals were stored unlawfully at a depot in Scottish health secretary Neil Gray's constituency, The Mail on Sunday can reveal. Trucks and containers used to store surgically removed organs, tumours and dressings soaked in body fluids, have been held at a site in Shotts, Lanarkshire - in contravention of environmental regulations. The lorries have been stationed at the Hassockrigg Ecopark, situated just ten miles from Mr Gray's constituency office, because Scotland no longer has the equipment to process the most hazardous clinical waste. As a result, it has to be taken hundreds of miles to England and Wales by NHS Scotland contractor Tradebe Healthcare to be incinerated alongside the rest of the UK's hospital waste.

There's a meme I'm particularly fond of that sees a US comedian shoot his co-star then turn to camera, deeply upset, and ask why someone else made him do it. The image popped into my head last week as I watched one politician after another line up to wring their hands over Grangemouth. On Thursday, Petroineos announced the closure of its refinery with 400 workers facing redundancy. Asked about it at First Minister's Questions, John Swinney pledged to 'support the workers of Grangemouth in their time of need' and said that it was 'important parliament acts with solidarity'. Scottish Labour 's deputy leader Jackie Baillie called it 'a time of great anxiety' but assured Holyrood that 'the UK Labour Government is ready to support the workforce and secure a viable, long-term future for the site'.

Hypocrisy, thy name is Holyrood. It's only the second week back from recess and already I'm scunnered with the lot of them. First Minister's Questions opened amid solemn speechifying about the news of Grangemouth's impending closure. It was a time of 'great uncertainty' for the workers. The local community was reeling from 'this significant economic shock'.

Health secretary Neil Gray has been accused of 'shameful' disrespect after trying to buy Oasis tickets during a meeting about Alzheimer's. The SNP MSP even joked about being in an online queue after checking his phone. The levity was in spite of more than 90,000 people in Scotland suffering from dementia. Mr Gray, who replaced disgraced Michael Matheson in the health brief in May, was condemned for his conduct at a party conference fringe meeting on Saturday. Organised by St Andrews University and titled 'Brain health research: How Scotland can lead the world', the panel featured several leading medical academics.

Nearly 10,000 members have abandoned the SNP in the last year as the mass exodus from the party gathers pace. The latest SNP accounts published yesterday show the party had 64,525 members at the start of June this year, which is down compared to 73,938 last June. It is a far cry from the peak from five years ago when it had 125,000 paid-up members.

Scotland's 'shameful' drug death toll was laid bare yesterday after a rise of nearly 12 per cent in the past year. New figures show drugs claimed the lives of 1,172 Scots in 2023 - up 121 from the previous year's total - in a huge blow to the SNP 's 'national mission' to tackle the tragedy. Cocaine fatalities soared to nearly 500 and now account for more than two out of five of the total, fuelling concern over growing use of the Class A drug among middle-class Scots.

The number of patients quitting NHS waiting lists in Scotland to go private has skyrocketed, new figures have revealed. Labour said the 'shocking surge' was driven by people facing record waits for life-changing treatment under the SNP. At least 14,383 Scottish patients have turned to private healthcare since 2019, with several health boards seeing numbers double in four years. In the Ayrshire and Arran area, 357 patients were removed from NHS inpatient and day case waiting lists after being admitted to the private sector or choosing to pay in 2019.

Thousands of Scots are attending A&E departments to get dental treatment amid claims the service is 'on the brink of collapse'. Some desperate people calling NHS 24 with teeth and gum problems are now being directed straight to hospitals that are already stretched to breaking point. New figures show that between April 2021 and last month, a total of 11,783 callers to the non-emergency hotline were told to attend A&E to have their dental pain dealt with.

The Government says it has already started to work on fixing the service and that the effort to get 40,000 extra appointments a week up and running as promised 'starts straight away'. Mr Streeting (left, outside Downing Street; and right, with Sir Keir on a visit to a hospital in Worksop) has also begun talks with junior doctors, who have been accused of holding politically motivated strikes ahead of the Conservative Party conference and the general election .

Were you up for John Nicolson? It was 4.23am when the news came in that the grandest of all SNP MPs had lost his seat. If Scotland had a Portillo moment it was this, not only because Nicolson's pristinely coiffured mane rivals that of the formerly fop-haired Tory grandee but because his notional majority was almost 13,000. I squinted at the BBC 's results table to inspect its outrageous conclusion, but the numbers added up. Nicolson had been unceremoniously dumped in favour of Labour . Perhaps it's his regal manner but it was almost as if the electors of Alloa and Grangemouth had voted out the Queen Mother .

Furious patients, their families and parents of children treated at Scotland's crisis-hit hospitals are considering staging a walkout from an inquiry into their care, The Mail on Sunday can reveal. Dozens of families have been called to give evidence to the Scottish Hospitals Inquiry, which is probing NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde's superhospital, the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital (QEUH), and the Royal Hospital for Children and Young People in Edinburgh. The inquiry is looking to determine whether problems with the construction of the £842 million Glasgow superhospital led to environmental infections. Among the parents in the family groups is Kimberly Darroch, mother of ten-year-old Milly Main, who contracted an infection and died at the QEUH. Charmaine Lacock, whose daughter Paige Rawson was treated for leukaemia, has also given her testimony.

The Scottish Tory general election campaign has been thrown into chaos after Douglas Ross announced the shock decision to quit as leader. The Scottish Conservative leader announced he will step down as leader following the general election. He came to the decision after concluding that anger about his decision to stand to become an MP had become a major distraction for the party's campaign.

Scotland's cash-strapped National Health Service has pledged to pay private companies £850 million to carry out NHS work in a desperate bid to ease pressure on its struggling staff, this newspaper can reveal. A Mail on Sunday investigation today lays bare the enormous scale of NHS privatisation under the SNP government, as the beleaguered health service increasingly attempts to outsource its core day-to-day functions. Since January 2023, contracts worth hundreds of millions of pounds have been awarded to private firms - many of which are based in England, with some as far afield as Denmark and the Netherlands - to help with diagnostics, testing, X-ray assessments and treatments. It means that, as the taxpayer-funded health service battles record waiting times and stretched resources, thousands of Scottish NHS patients and their records have been diverted to the private sector. Hospitals and GPs are increasingly relying on a cadre of privately employed staff to bolster their dwindling ranks.

Scotland is facing a cancer timebomb, with a post-pandemic surge in cases just the 'tip of the iceberg', a surgeon has warned.

Sir Keir Starmer has vowed there will be 'absolutely no deal under any circumstances' with the SNP in the event of a hung parliament. Launching Scottish Labour's General Election campaign, he accused the Nationalists of having 'lost any sense of ambition', claiming their only interest after the vote on July 4 was to 'sit on the opposition benches and protest'. The Labour leader pledged to make Scotland 'central to the mission' of a Labour government as he addressed supporters at an event in Glasgow's Gorbals on the second full days of campaigning. Sir Keir told reporters there would be 'absolutely no deal with the SNP going into the election and no deal on the other side of the election under any circumstances', insisting 'there is no way an incoming Labour government could work in any way with the SNP, whose only ambition is to break up the United Kingdom'.

Mr Matheson was found to have breached the MSP code of conduct by attempting to use expenses and office costs to cover the bill for a parliamentary device. Later announcing he would cover the costs himself, Mr Matheson revealed his children had used the device as a wifi hotspot to watch football during a holiday in Morocco. The SNP MSP's punishment was handed down by the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee at Holyrood on Thursday following a long-running probe.

Mr Yousaf sacked Green co-leaders Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater from junior ministerial roles after a week of furious infighting between and within both parties. Tensions have been rising between the two parties over the government's approach to trans rights, while Net Zero targets were watered down last week. It prompted the Greens to set a vote for next month on collapsing the 2021 deal. But Mr Yousaf acted first to spare his own blushes, with Mr Slater and Ms Harvie reportedly leaving Bute House, the FM's Edinburgh residence, before the meeting started. At a hastily arranged press conference Mr Yousaf confirmed the end of the agreement, saying: 'It has served its purpose.'

Scotlands's gender clinic has 'paused' the prescribing of puberty blockers after 'days of shameful silence and dithering' from the Scottish Government. The Sandyford clinic in Glasgow said no prescriptions would be issued to new patients and under-18s would not get other gender hormone treatments. The U-turn comes after a review of gender services for children in England found there was 'not enough evidence' puberty ­blockers are safe or effective. The findings by Dr Hilary Cass piled ­pressure on the NHS in Scotland to scrap the controversial practice of giving such drugs to gender-questioning children.

Puberty blocker prescriptions for children should be immediately halted in Scotland in the wake of the devastating Cass review, an MP has demanded. A report published yesterday found children have been let down by a lack of research and 'remarkably weak' evidence in gender care. The Cass review found the quality of evidence on whether puberty blockers are beneficial for youngsters was 'poor'. Nationalist MP Joanna Cherry is now leading calls for the drugs to be 'removed from use in Scotland'. The report by Dr Hilary Cass said the use of the hormone drugs in trans children is traced back to a single Dutch study that found they may improve mental health, and the practice 'spread at pace' without further scrutiny.

Patients will be rationed as a result of the NHS's unprecedented cost-cutting initiative. One of the country's biggest health boards has unveiled plans to reduce its 'treatment capacity and treatment options' in an attempt to save money. NHS Lothian is now drafting steps to'stop providing services,' with a rundown of what might have to be cancelled. Health professionals have warned that cutting medical services for patients who are smokers or obese are likely to result in limiting surgical access for couples trying to have a baby.

Last year, thousands of cancer patients in Scotland endured agonizing waits for care, with queues for care touching a record high. More than 5,000 patients who needed potentially life-saving medical attention were held on long lists for more than two months. Despite urgent referrals, nearly 1,500 people with suspected cancer waited more than a month for treatment to begin. Patients should be seen within 62 days of being referred to, but last year, only fewer than three-quarters of patients were seen within the time frame, according to recent reports.

Michael Matheson, a disgraced man, was fighting to save his career last night after being found guilty of incorrectly charging taxpayers £11,000 for his iPad roaming bill. According to the bombshell results, the former health minister may now be barred from the parliament building or be allowed to request reimbursements.

Following a new poll that revealed that independence has fallen off the list of Scottish voters' priorities, the SNP has been dealt a new blow. According to a Redfield & Wilton Strategies poll, less than half of five Scots (16 percent) said the issue of independence would determine their vote in the general election. This compares to nearly two-thirds (64 percent) who said that the economy will be one of the three most significant issues that could influence their decision. The poll found that 52% of Scots would vote 'No' to independence at a new referendum, relative to 42% who favor splitting up the United Kingdom. Following a slowdown within the party last year, the results are expected to raise the barrage among SNP figures regarding their chances in the general election. At the 2019 general election, the SNP gained 48 seats and 45 percent of the vote. However, the Redfield & Wilton poll revealed that they are now level-pegging with Labour, with both groups backed by 34 percent of Scottish voters.