Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 25 February 2021
Mr Mason is right that there are all sorts of factors that lead to people coming to and leaving Scotland. However, if I were him, I would be very nervous about praising the quality of Scotland’s education system, given what we have heard from all the academics and experts who have compared the recent performance of Scotland’s education system with performance in other parts of the world. We seem to be slipping down international league tables. There is a lot of work to do if we are to make Scotland as attractive as it should be to people who want to come here to educate their children.
I will say a little bit about the fiscal framework, which was mentioned in the previous debate but is also relevant to this one. The fiscal framework protects public spending in Scotland, provided that tax revenues in Scotland remain similar to those in other parts of the UK. That is important, and will be particularly important if we end up with a shrinking economy and a falling set of tax revenues. The finance secretary would not have to worry about a falling budget in that scenario, because her budget is protected from reductions, unlike the budgets in all the other countries that she likes to talk about, which face a squeeze on their income. The fiscal framework—which, of course, the Deputy First Minister negotiated on behalf of the Scottish Government—protects the levels of spending in Scotland, and we should welcome that.
In the current year’s budget, the finance secretary has had to account for £300 million of negative reconciliations arising from overestimation of taxes raised during the 2018-19 budget period. The fiscal framework allows the Scottish Government to borrow money in order to fill that hole, which is a very welcome initiative.
We know that the tax changes that the SNP Government introduced have not raised as much money as it predicted they would. I remember, when the tax changes were introduced by the finance secretary’s predecessor, his claims that they would raise up to £600 million—more than half a billion pounds. In his opening remarks, however, the minister gave the game away. In the past year, the tax changes raised only £119 million, which is much less than was originally claimed. That suggests that raising taxes is not a one-way bet in raising additional revenue, as the minister seemed to suggest.