Meghan Gallacher

Labour promised £150 million to help meet that pressure, but families and schools are still waiting to see it.

Private schools are under mounting financial pressure, while state schools are being left to pick up the pieces as more pupils transfer across.

Scotland’s schools were already under huge pressure thanks to years of SNP-Green mismanagement, and Labour’s VAT raid is now piling on even more.

Labour’s VAT raid on school fees is looking increasingly indefensible, yet they seem determined to plough on regardless of the mounting evidence that their policy is hurting families and schools.

Nationalist ministers must give councils the resources to deliver essential local services and strengthen community cohesion before this turns into a crisis.

This development does raise concerns about the impact on teaching resources and community cohesion.

Central Scotland deserves better than broken promises, delay and managed decline. The people of Lanarkshire deserve the hospital they were promised.

Your government cannot claim that the NHS is its priority while patients are told to wait and prisoners are given certainty.

But John Swinney can still find the money for the swanky new HMP Glasgow, which has seen costs spiral to over £1 billion. This exposes the Nationalists warped priorities.

Cynics will be asking why the former health secretary Neil Gray was still claiming that everything was on track for the new Monklands Hospital just weeks before the Holyrood election.

Given this broken promise, can you please confirm whether any formal risk to the approval or deliverability of the Monklands Hospital business case was recorded on any official Scottish Government risk register before polling day.

Communities across Lanarkshire and Central Scotland were promised a new Monklands Hospital before the election. Now, after votes have been cast, they are being told that the project is too expensive and must be sent back to the drawing…

Rather than fixating on one-off payments which seem today to have done very little, the SNP Government must act to help its leaders form a multi-year plan that secures jobs and learning for students.