The National Editor

I was pleased to see Richard Walker, editor of The National, on the Sky Press Review tonight for the first time ever. He was introduced as 'editor and founder' of the paper and I'm not quite sure if that was how he wanted to be introduced or if the Sky presenter just didn't bother to explain properly to the viewers what the National was.

He did well. He was sitting alongside a journalist who is, I think, the royal correspondent of one of the London tabloids. Not exactly a heavyweight but normally pretty talkative. Confident. Sometimes, over-confident. She was slightly nervous tonight, it seemed to me, probably because she was dealing with an unknown quantity. Walker acquitted himself well: calm, authoritative, polite, trying hard not to speak across her, although it was difficult because she was wittering on a lot.

It was great to hear him say: 'Well, immigration is different in Scotland. We want people to come and work here.' He also got the chance to say: 'The NHS in Scotland is different. For one thing it has different priorities - and it's doing much better than elsewhere.' For the first time ever, I heard a Sky journalist qualify a comment by saying of a story in the press: Of course, that's only in England.

But the panel never at any time broached any of the issues that are currently of concern here in Scotland: Brexit, the GERS figures, the state of the UK economy (which, of course, at the moment dictates the state of the Scottish economy), a second independence referendum. Because these issues are not referred to at all in the mainstream media in London.

Still, it's a start. I'd like to think Sky will start to invite journalists from other parts of the UK to come in and comment on their Press Review and Richard Walker is not just some fill-in because it's August and everybody else in the London commentariat is on holiday. We'll see.