Meeting of the Parliament 16 December 2015
I thank the Deputy First Minister for advance sight of his statement. I am sure that there are many things in the budget that Liberal Democrats can support. As always, we will make a very positive and constructive case for investment in key areas such as mental health, childcare, and infrastructure for the north-east and the Highlands and Islands. We will continue to be constructive.
However, it is quite clear that, since the last time the Deputy First Minister delivered his budget, employment in Scotland has gone down—fewer people are now in work. That clearly shows that we cannot trust the SNP on the economy. I do not think that we can rely on the SNP on mental health, either, because it has cut the share of the NHS budget that is spent on mental health. On childcare, the SNP’s record is pretty woeful—it cannot even deliver on the commitments on childcare that it made in previous budgets—and the police reforms have not saved the money that they were intended to save, so John Swinney is having to patch up the police budget to cover up the mistakes of the past.
I listened very carefully to what the Deputy First Minister said about increasing taxes. He made it quite clear that business rates have not raised the income that he expected would be raised; as a result, all that he is doing is plugging the hole that was already there. The Deputy First Minister has spent his entire political life campaigning for more tax powers, but what does he do when he gets them? Nothing—he makes no change. He leaves the rate exactly the same as in England. How can he tell the chamber that he is rejecting austerity when he is not raising a single penny more, even though he has the tax powers to do something about it?