Meeting of the Parliament 04 February 2015
I will give way in a second.
I turn to the resilience fund. There can be doubt that what we are witnessing in the North Sea with the drop in oil prices has the potential to have a significant negative impact on the economy of Scotland. The scale of the job losses could exceed the scale of the losses at Ravenscraig. Only this week, we heard that Shell is drawing up plans to close the Brent field and that BP is making billions of pounds’ worth of spending cuts due to the drop in oil prices. A total of 133,000 jobs in the north-east of Scotland are supported by the oil and gas industry, including 46,000 in the constituency of Gordon, where Alex Salmond is standing in the general election. There may be the risk of an economic tsunami in the north-east, but all of Scotland will be badly affected.
The potential loss of jobs is bad enough, but the loss to public revenue is of the order of £6 billion. I will make that sum real: it is the entire schools budget for Scotland. However, the SNP’s response has been so slow that it has been positively glacial. Both the UK and Scottish Governments need to do much more to help one of Scotland’s key industries.
Our call for a Scottish office of budget responsibility is about building trust and transparency into the forecasting of the nation’s finances. As the Smith agreement transfers even more powers over taxation and welfare to the Scottish Parliament, we need to be sure that our scrutiny inspires confidence. We need a body that is wholly independent of Government and is able to oversee our public finances and economic forecasting in a hitherto unseen way.
I am genuinely disappointed that John Swinney does not appear to have listened to any of our proposals; there can be no denying the need that lies behind them. Our approach is measured, proportionate and costed—the money is there. It appears, however, that rather than work together, the SNP will put party interests before the interests of the people of Scotland. If the proposal comes from Scottish Labour—[Interruption.]