What a first week back at Westminster. Tories lecturing the rest of us about how the civil liberties cost of vaccine passports are worth paying because we are not in ‘normal times’ when they won’t even wear a mask. Asylum seekers giving harrowing evidence before the human rights committee about their journeys to the UK while Priti Patel announced plans for Border Force to turn back refugee vessels in the channel, despite the dangers and the potential breach of maritime law.  And, at Scottish questions, it was the usual yah boo sucks carry on while SNP MPs tried in vain to get answers to major questions such as what the UK Government can do to assist in the fight to reverse the terrible toll of drug deaths in Scotland, and what they can do to facilitate a ferry link from Rosyth to the continent. 

This week I travelled down to Westminster for the recall of parliament, hoping to speak in the debate on the situation in Afghanistan. Alas, I didn’t get taken and nor did most of the SNP MPs who had asked to speak. I’m still glad I went. The level of the tragedy in Afghanistan and the level of concern of my constituents is such that it was my duty to be there to try to articulate our concerns for the Afghan people, particularly women, abandoned to a terrible fate by the insouciance of the Johnson administration and President Biden’s weakness. 

If I had got to speak, I would have focused on the humanitarian disaster unfolding before our eyes. I would have said we need to help the living, but we must not forget the dead - 71,000 Afghan civilians, 69,000 Afghan soldiers and 457 British servicemen and women killed, and many more on all sides with serious and life-changing physical and mental injuries.

Monday’s move to level zero allowed me to resume constituency visits and I have had a busy week visiting organisations and businesses across Edinburgh Southwest. From paddle boarding on the union canal at Wester Hailes, during what felt like the monsoon season, to learning about how best to make localism work. It's been lively and stimulating. 

Some meetings are still taking place on Zoom and at a Community Council meeting on Monday night the chair asked me what I thought was the most important issue facing his community over the next few years. Following on the publication of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report earlier that day, I had no hesitation in saying it was climate change. 

Last weekend the Sunday National exclusively reported that plans to establish an expert group to examine how the border with the rest of the UK will work for an independent Scotland will be put forward at the SNP conference. 

I welcome the renewed impetus to set up such a body. After backstage discussions at the SNP conference in Spring 2019 it was agreed that I would chair a committee to look at the implications of Brexit for the England/Scotland border, after an independent Scotland rejoins the EU.  My plan was to take evidence from a variety of people and bodies and then to draw up a paper which would inform party policy for the next independence referendum so that party spokespersons and activists could have answers to the  questions on this topic posed so often by journalists and members of the public. Despite prompting, this project never got off the ground. I  hope that if conference passes this motion the resources and wherewithal will be found to make it happen.