Meeting of the Parliament 11 December 2013
I am simply putting into context the information that Mr Brown shared with Parliament. I am just trying to be helpful to Parliament by sharing objective statistical information with Parliament. That is what I am renowned for in this debate in Scotland.
In the interests of statistical completeness, I point out that the fact that the economy has not grown at that extra 5.9 per cent has resulted in the chancellor incurring borrowing of £197 billion more than he anticipated in 2010. In this debate, since 2010, I have argued for modest changes in capital expenditure. In 2011, I argued for an extra £1 billion of capital expenditure in Scotland, which would have translated into a financial burden of £10 billion across the United Kingdom. I do not have all the quotes in front of me, but I am pretty sure that Mr Brown or maybe Mr Johnstone might have weighed in on that point and said that my proposition would have spooked the markets. However, it would have been only £10 billion, compared with the £197 billion of additional borrowing that has been required to make up for the fact that economic performance has been nothing like it was supposed to have been in 2010.
For the sake of completeness, we must consider all those points of information if we are to examine the financial performance of the UK Government.
As I said, I am delighted that we are in a period of greater economic performance and that the Scottish economy is outstripping the performance in the rest of the UK, with higher growth, lower unemployment, higher employment and lower economic inactivity. The Scottish Government will remain focused on trying to support ways in which we can deliver an even greater performance in that respect.