Photocall

There was a photocall in the Scottish Parliament this afternoon arranged by Kate Forbes, the new MSP for Skye, Lochaber & Badenoch who has been working assiduously , along with Iain Blackford the MP for the area , to help the Brain family who face deportation.   

This is a classic case of the UK Government applying blanket rules in the hope that it can drive down numbers of people from other places staying in the country without having any regard to individual circumstances or issues.

Making the Brains - and particularly Gaelic speaking Lachlan who is 7 - leave Scotland when they came here perfectly legitimately and with strong cultural affinity and ambition would be an outrage and the event was well attended by SNP and Green MSPs with the First Minister centre stage.  

All of us hope the campaign which continues to grow and attract much media support will be successful , for humanitarian reasons first of all.  Though as Scotland is far from full up we also need to be able to develop a distinctive Scottish approach to migration.