Douglas Ross told to ‘grow up’ in fiery Scottish leaders’ TV debate

Douglas Ross was told to “grow up” tonight as the Scots Tory leader was slammed by Nicola Sturgeon and Anas Sarwar at the first TV debate of the 2021 election campaign.

The MP was criticised for saying he would not work with the First Minister due to her demands for a second independence referendum while at the same time calling on Labour to help the Conservatives protect the union.

The leaders clashed during a lively BBC debate that was dominated by the constitution and how the country can recover from months of gruelling lockdown.

On the issue of independence, Ross told Sarwar: “I wonder why Scottish Labour can’t understand the threat we are facing. The audience get it, why don’t you?”

But Sarwar fired back: “Douglas, you know I don’t support independence and you know I don’t support a referendum.

“Grow up. Don’t you know we are in the midst of a pandemic? Have you not noticed that 10,000 of our fellow citizens have lost their lives?”

Sturgeon told the Tory leader it would be up to Scottish voters to decide if they wanted to remain in the UK once the pandemic came to an end.

But she was forced to defend her leadership during the covid crisis as several audience members asked how she could be considering an IndyRef2 while the pandemic was still raging.

The First Minister said: “I’ll leave other people to judge if my focus has been on the pandemic or not over the past year. People have seen me literally every single day lead the country’s fight against covid and I have literally spent almost every waking moment doing that.

“I will continue to do that for every single day that is required out of that crisis, because it is not over yet.

“I’ve spent today not on the campaign trail, but in the Scottish Government headquarters talking over with my clinical advisors, making sure we’re continuing to try to take all of the right decisions.”

Sturgeon added: “Recovery is not a neutral thing.

“So long as so many of the decisions lies in the hands of Boris Johnson and Westminster – that often the people of Scotland haven’t voted for, then the danger is we take the wrong decisions and go in the wrong direction just as we’ve been dragged out of the EU against our will.”

But Scottish Conservatives leader Douglas Ross insisted: “We can’t have a recovery and a referendum.”

The Tory MP said the focus must be on “rebuilding Scotland”.

He hit out at the SNP, accusing them of wanting to “take us through another divisive independence referendum”.

Ross said: “The Scottish Conservatives want to stop them. The future of our country is at stake.”

The future of the NHS was also a hot topic for the leaders as non-emergency hospital services gradually reopen.

Sarwar said that due to the backlog in NHS Scotland, a woman from Glasgow had been told she could not receive cancer treatment in Scotland.

The Labour MSP continued: “Just this week, I spoke to a family of Mary.

“She’d been diagnosed with ovarian cancer and been told by the NHS in Scotland that due to the backlog of Covid, they are not treating recurring cancers, and would only be treating first time cancers.

“Meaning that she will not be getting her treatment in Scotland.

“She has been forced to travel south in order to get that operation.”

Sarwar insisted he wanted to “focus on what unites us as a country, not what divides us”.

He told the debate audience: “This year has been the hardest of our lifetime. That’s why this election must be about you, your family and our national recovery. Not egos, settling scores, or going back to the old arguments.”

He pledged: “Alongside defeating the virus, I am determined to restart our economy and create jobs, to restore our children’s education and look after their mental health, and renew our NHS so that it never again has to choose between treating a virus or treating cancer.”

Sturgeon said that five years ago she committed to investing £500 million into the NHS over the life of the parliament.

The First Minister added: “We’ve now done over three times that, not including the Covid investment. That’s a sign of the way we were investing, reforming, integrating health and social care to start to bring down waiting times.

“Covid stuck and has had a devastating impact on the ability of our NHS.

“It has performed magnificently, but to deal with non-Covid cases. We are right now working on the plans to bring to bare temporary operating facilities, mobile units, to quickly bring down the backlog.”