Meeting of the Parliament 06 February 2014
I will intervene on Kevin Stewart’s intervention so that I can devote some of my four minutes to what I hoped I would be able to say.
That was a long-way-round way of saying that John Swinney did not fulfil the commitment that he made that the floor funding amount would be 85 per cent of the Scottish average. Aberdeen is at about 80 per cent—79 per cent, in fact—of the average. John Swinney may come up with all the excuses under the sun about fire and police, but the commitment was to Aberdeen City Council, not to the police or the fire services.
My calculation is that Aberdeen citizens are being short-changed by £89 for every man, woman and child. John Swinney said that that would not happen. He will come up with a long and complicated explanation—as he normally does on such occasions—about how it is a three-year settlement and it has to be agreed at the beginning, but the commitment was for the full term and he was not able to follow through and fulfil it. People in Aberdeen will ask Kevin Stewart why he did not raise that in the chamber when he had an opportunity to stand up for his city instead of standing up for his Government.
However, I welcome the extra contributions that local government is receiving for nursery education and free school meals; we supported the budget yesterday on that basis. We argued for the nursery education measure before Christmas, so we are delighted that it is now being implemented. The task force that I have been invited to join to ensure that it is implemented effectively will be good; I hope that it will ensure roll-out to two-year-olds from vulnerable and workless households. People throughout Scotland will welcome that.
I will remark again on Kevin Stewart’s outstanding speech—it was as if the world had not changed in the past two years. He forgot to mention that 130,000 extra jobs are being created because of the Con-Dem coalition, as he would describe it. He said that that plan would not work but it has, and it is delivering. We need to do more, but without Kevin Stewart’s advice.
14:56