Meeting of the Parliament 25 February 2016
No. I have had enough of Mr Macdonald, it has to be said, just like the people of Aberdeen Central at the last election.
The Government is continuing to live up to its pledges to the people. We are freezing council tax to help families throughout Scotland; the freeze is worth approximately £1,500. There have been advances in health and social care integration, and there is an investment this year that will ensure that care workers get the living wage and is to be celebrated. We should all applaud that.
Yesterday, we heard the cabinet secretary announce that the attainment fund would rise to £160 million—a doubling of that fund, which is extremely important. The cabinet secretary, in his speech today, spoke about discretionary housing payments to cover the Tories’ awful bedroom tax, which again hits the poorest in our society, and about funding for kinship carers, which is extremely important.
What my colleagues and I want to see, and what the budget announcement yesterday and the announcement today will deliver, is a pay rise for people on low wages and not a tax rise for our lowest-paid workers. [Interruption.]
If the Labour Party has any credibility whatsoever, I ask it to spell out its policy in full so that the public out there know what it is about. [Interruption.]