Meeting of the Parliament 11 January 2024
What a pompous and insensitive title for a debate. We have heard lofty speeches about “Wha’s like us?” at a time when people are stuck in ambulances outside accident and emergency departments and are waiting in pain on ever-longer NHS waiting lists; when children from poor backgrounds are stuck in poor educational outcomes; when people who are desperate for a home see the SNP Government slash the housing budget; and when the drug death rate remains the highest in Europe.
This debate is a sign of a Government that has lost touch with the lives of ordinary people and their struggles. The debate is not about public service values: it is all about the SNP Government setting out its excuses and providing cover for what will be a savage budget ahead. Ministers are hunting for everyone and anyone as the cause of what is a financial predicament of their own making. Brexit, the Tories, the pandemic and probably, somehow, also the Welsh Labour Government and Keir Starmer are all to blame, according to the SNP, as the true cause of the SNP’s own mismanagement of the public finances and failure to reform public services.
I have a test. The more the SNP people hunt for blame, the more we know the deep financial hole they are in. I agree that the Conservatives have been a terrible Government, and I agree that Brexit is damaging, too, but those are not new revelations. They have not just happened: we have known about them for some time.
Why is the SNP suddenly surprised and panicking now? We have heard for years the warnings from the Christie commission, Audit Scotland and the Scottish Fiscal Commission. Take the Scottish Fiscal Commission. It warned in May 2018 that the Scottish Government was facing a £1.7 billion shortfall in public finances over the following five years. The commission said back then—five years ago—that expected wage growth reductions would result in a significant drop in income tax revenues, as Scotland’s economy would lag behind that of the rest of the UK, with growth remaining below 1 per cent a year until 2023—which was last year.
The Auditor General warned at least as far back as 2018—again, five years ago—that the NHS was not in a financially sustainable position. He repeated his warnings in November 2022. He said that
“Failure to make the necessary changes to how public services are delivered will likely mean further budget pressures in the future”.
Now, Scotland’s NHS boards are forecasting a deficit of £395 million this year. Way back in 2011, 13 years ago, the Christie commission warned about the need to increase preventative spend to stop demand swamping public service capacity.