Cole-Hamilton: SNP Government must accept failures on M9 crash

Speaking in the Scottish Parliament this afternoon during First Minister’s Questions, Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton MSP said:

“In the early hours of 5th July 2015, John Yuill and Lamara Bell were returning from a camping trip when their car left the road on the M9.

“The police were alerted to the crash but didn’t turn up for three days. All the while, Lamara was still alive, trapped, calling for help. She may have survived if help had arrived sooner.

“In the weeks beforehand, my party had been warning about the chaos in the call centre at Bilston Glen, caused by the rushed centralisation of the police by the SNP Government. John Swinney was Deputy First Minister at the time.

“The fatal accident inquiry system is so broken that it has taken 9 years to report on the deaths of John and Lamara, with final conclusions only published last week.

“Will the Deputy First Minister accept that her government has failed on two counts: first, the botched centralisation that contributed to this tragedy in the first place, and second, the intolerable wait for answers the families have had to endure?”