Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 08 June 2022
It is a pleasure to open the debate on behalf of the Labour Party. I thank the Scottish Conservatives for lodging the motion. The debate is long overdue and urgently needed following last week’s demoralising spending review, when the cabinet secretary heroically attempted to spin cuts that the Tories themselves would be proud of as fiscal prudence—she has done so again today.
However, to put it bluntly, the economic outlook for the next five years is nothing but grim. We often hear warnings of economic uncertainty, and it seems as though not a day goes by without headlines about record fuel prices, record gas and electricity bills and record inflationary pressures.
Of course, those pressures all contribute to the economic forecasts that we are discussing, but the underlying vulnerabilities of the Scottish economy run far deeper than recent price spikes and the cost of living crisis, so I was dismayed to read the Government’s amendment to Liz Smith’s motion. It can only be described as showing the Government burying its head in the sand rather than addressing the failures that it has presided over.
The Scottish Government has done its usual by pointing the finger at Whitehall and highlighting the failings of the Tories—rightly, in this case, but it is also an attempt to distract from the myriad failures that it has presided over in Scotland.
I am afraid that the underlying indicators of economic performance are clear for everyone to see. The Scottish Fiscal Commission’s recent forecasts highlight the stark reality of the challenges that we all face, with productivity stalling, real wages falling and tax receipts significantly lower than previously predicted.
It is an economic forecast that many of us have been warning about for a long time, but the cabinet secretary has point-blank refused to accept it. Take productivity, for example. The SFC states that
“Productivity growth has stalled in Scotland since 2015.”
I repeat—it has stalled since 2015. The single biggest, most important factor in improving prosperity has stalled—seven years of absolutely no progress whatsoever despite repeated warnings.
The cabinet secretary can play the blame game all she likes, and the amendment in her name attempts to do just that, but it is abundantly clear that the Government has no plan for improving productivity forecasts.
We see the same scenario when it comes to average earnings in Scotland. Every year for the next five years, Scotland is forecast to lag behind the UK as a whole. That is not a recent phenomenon. Between 2016 and 2020, earnings in Scotland increased at a slower rate than in the rest of the UK, and the Scottish Fiscal Commission states that, in recent years, the gap has widened, not narrowed. Since 2016, Scotland’s average earnings have grown by 21 per cent, which is 5 per cent less than the UK average over the same period.