SNP tunnel vision on independence harms education, healthcare and economy, says Scottish Conservative Leader

THIS coming week, the Scottish Parliament was supposed to have a debate about the NHS.

We were to look at new evidence on how we can prevent ill health, so we can ease the pressure on our doctors and nurses.

It’s the kind of issue which politicians need to talk about. Because it’s issues like the NHS, and education, and the economy, which have a real impact on peoples’ lives.

Last week, however, we got news the debate has been put off. The First Minister had just announced her plan to hold another referendum. So, instead, the SNP has decided this week we need to spend two days debating... you guessed it... independence.

That’s how it goes in Nicola Sturgeon’s Scotland. Yes to separation. No to the NHS.

I can today reveal a major exclusive to Sun on Sunday readers about how this week’s Big Indy Debate will go.

I am going to say No to independence. Nicola Sturgeon is going to say Yes. Stop the presses.

Just as we have done now for the entire dreary decade the SNP has been in power, voices will rise, tempers will fray and old battles will be argued and re-argued again.

At the end of it, the SNP and their pets in the Green party will win a majority for a referendum. Then it’s straight down to Westminster to enjoy being told they’re not having one.

This is Government, SNP-style. Seek out a grievance. Blame Westminster. Ignore the evidence. Obsess about how to separate the union.

Never mind that the government itself has ignored votes in Holyrood where they have been beaten — over education, the NHS, enterprise, sectarian behaviour at football. Apparently those votes don’t count because they didn’t win but when it comes to independence, Wednesday’s result will be an outrage.

Most folk I know are running out of patience with it all. It’s all so dull. But there’s a much more serious consequence of it too.

It’s that Scotland is being run by a government that isn’t focused on the day job.

It’s been like this for a decade. And the impact on the lives of five million people is now becoming clear.

This is Government, SNP-style. Seek out a grievance. Blame Westminster. Ignore the evidence. Obsess about how to separate the union.

While Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Salmond have been storming barricades, they’ve forgotten to mind the shop.

And here’s what’s happened as a result. Only last week, we discovered that in Education Secretary John Swinney’s home town of Blairgowrie the school sent a letter to parents asking if any of them could teach maths because it was so short of teachers.

Flags for a referendum campaign, tick. Flights to European capitals to muster support for independence, tick. Maths teachers... er, get back to you. And on it goes.

In a country run by the SNP, a police officers’ leader has warned patrol cars are being held together by “duct tape and cable ties” because funding is running out.

Hospitals have missed all but one of their waiting time targets for the past year, we are short of almost 850 GPs and, just last week, it emerged families are to be excluded from an inquiry into baby deaths at Crosshouse Hospital.

And in education — the SNP’s weakest card of all — it’s not just John Swinney’s own local school that’s suffering.

Under their command, Scotland has dropped down the rankings for reading, maths and science. Teachers are bamboozled, parents confused, by the bureaucratic mess of the SNP curriculum.

And if you’re poor, well, don’t expect the SNP to provide an education system that helps you get on.

Kids from poorer backgrounds are seven times less likely to get to top universities as their richer peers.

Nicola Sturgeon has made her domain the only place in the UK that asks its poor students to pay more than its rich, and at the same time, 152,000 college places have been cut since 2007.

How’s that socially just?

The list goes on.

For our farmers, it’s been an absolutely miserable couple of years trying to pick up the pieces from her party’s catastrophic farm payments system.

Since the SNP came into power, they’ve overspent by an incredible £1billion – with major projects from hospitals to bridges over-budget or delayed.

And all of this is under an economic shadow, cast by the self-defeating decision to run the highest-taxed part of the UK.

So what does this have to do with the SNP’s focus on independence?

The answer is simple.

Running a country takes focus. Reforming services takes concentration.

It takes real leadership to make tough calls on what gets money, or where and how and by whom schools and hospitals should be run.

There’s more than enough to be getting on with.

But independence means that already challenging task is ignored. Every second spent plotting the next move on the constitution is a second that should have been spent elsewhere.

Every time Nicola Sturgeon gazes at her political chess board and ponders her next move, she’s not looking at the steadily mounting pile of other, much more urgent, issues in her in-tray.

This isn’t a theoretical point. Some of the SNP’s worst mistakes, like merging the police forces and creating Named Persons happened during the last referendum campaign.

That’s what happens when you get distracted. That’s the real reason to oppose an independence referendum.

Yes, because it’s bad timing. Yes, because it will be divisive. Yes, because the majority of Scots don’t want it.

But more than anything, it’s because it’ll leave us with a Government which won’t put the day job first. And for that we’ll all suffer.