Hansard

I begin by adding my tribute to Bruce Crawford. I have to admit that my tenure and his on the Finance and Constitution Committee will overlap only briefly. Nonetheless, I recognise the contribution that he has made to Parliament. He is a parliamentarian who has widespread admiration across this chamber, so I wish him well with his retirement.

We must ensure that we recover and rebuild from this pandemic. That is the imperative for this budget and it is how it should be judged. The budget lines that it prioritises will determine whether we have the capacity to undo the damage that has been done. Additional funds being spent on the right things will ensure that we build resilience as we learn to cope with the virus. Spending funds on the wrong things will mean that we will continue to struggle and will fail to cope with the virus as it continues to linger.

This budget and the coming parliamentary session must be focused on recovery from a virus that has shattered our public services, communities and economy. However, as the emergence of new variants makes clear, this virus is persistent. It will not end with the vaccination programme. The vaccination programme will merely stabilise the situation and give us the ability to cope with the virus. Therefore, in that context, we must focus not only on recovery but on building resilience.

On-going infection control and social distancing will have a profound effect on our ability to deliver healthcare and education, disrupting businesses that rely on contact with customers and continuing to place a strain on social interactions. Therefore, we need strategic measures and bold steps to build and secure that recovery and resilience. We need to move beyond the week-to-week measures that are necessitated by crisis and learn to cope.

On the Labour benches, we are clear that improving the pay of social care workers would have been such a move. Currently, the median pay for social care workers across the UK is around £10 an hour. The critical and vital work that they do, caring for the most vulnerable in our society, has been undervalued and underpaid for far too long. The pandemic has simply underlined and magnified that. That is why Labour has made the call for social care workers to gain an immediate increase of £12 an hour, with a plan to implement £15 an hour, to recognise their work and to build a care system that is skilled, effective and resilient.

I am only a week into my post as finance spokesperson for Scottish Labour, so I thank the cabinet secretary for already having a number of meetings with me in the previous days.

Our priority going into the budget was to correct a key structural failing that has been exposed by the pandemic: the inadequate pay of social care workers. I know that the cabinet secretary agrees with that sentiment and agrees that those workers have been at the forefront of the response, and I know that she accepts that good social care is preventative spend that can save money and remove pressure on our health service, because ensuring that vulnerable people are healthy at home is better for everyone than fighting to treat them and get them well again in hospital. She knows those things, but the Government has made different choices.

Make no mistake: increasing pay for social care workers would be a financial challenge. I accept that, but the cabinet secretary has the financial headroom to deliver it. As confirmed at the Finance and Constitution Committee yesterday, the budget has an additional £1.3 billion of recurring funds in it, but other things have seemingly been prioritised. The recent UK budget delivered another £1.2 billion, albeit in non-recurring funds, but that has been allocated to other things, and more than £1 billion in Covid money carried over from the previous financial year has been prioritised for other issues.

The direct cost of increasing pay for social care workers across the public, voluntary and private sectors would be around £480 million, which is a large sum, but in the context of those additional funds, realistic and deliverable. Four hundred and eighty million pounds would transform the pay of such critical workers in such a critical service. Compare £480 million to the £100 million that the deal with the Green Party secured, which amounts to nearly 1 per cent above inflation and does not necessarily carry through to NHS or local authority workers. I say bluntly that social care workers deserve more than the 20p per hour that this budget seems to imply they are worth.

There are of course elements of the budget that I commend. I welcome the commitment of £45 million to replace the eye pavilion in Edinburgh, but we need to see the detail and I am worried by the caveated words from the cabinet secretary in response to Sarah Boyack. Waiting times were concerning before Covid and are now at very serious levels. The budget needs to step up so that we no longer need to make the choice between treating the virus and treating cancer. Money to reduce class sizes and extend free school meals is welcome, but £60 million against the £1 billion that is spent every year on schools will struggle to counteract the gaps in our children’s knowledge, and we are yet to see the progress on free school meals that was promised by previous budgets, before we rush to welcome the latest announcement.

Local government has carried the burden of much of the economic response to Covid but, despite the sums promised in this budget, there remains a Covid funding gap that is estimated to be £518 million on top of the real-terms cuts that local government has experienced since 2013 of £937 million.

Our economy is shattered. The simple fact is that many consumer-facing businesses will struggle to survive; despite pledges, guidance remains unclear. Funds remain slow in being delivered to the businesses that need them. I have heard first hand from bed and breakfast owners in my constituency that they have had to cash in their pensions because their applications to the discretionary fund have been declined. Despite Scottish Government promises, many funds remain underclaimed. The budget should have been about spending better as well as spending more.

Those are the choices that have been made by the Government and those priorities are supported by the Greens and Liberal Democrats. Those concessions improve the budget, which is why we voted for those amendments, but I fear that they are not the bold strategic steps that are needed to transform social care or deliver the recovery and resilience that is required. For those reasons, Scottish Labour cannot support the budget at decision time. I do not state that with pleasure or relish.

The pandemic means that no one wants the squabbling over the budget that old politics would expect, but I also strongly feel that challenging times require Opposition parties to challenge the Government. The budget will undoubtedly pass, but I ask those who support it whether the budget meets the challenge of building recovery and resilience.

I sincerely hope that the budget does not hold back money for gimmicks or flourishes for the SNP in the coming election. If it does, we will look at how what is being spent measures up to what could have been paid for—the additional pay for social care workers, which they deserve. Care workers will certainly compare their pay packets with the budget to see whether their true worth is being valued.