Meeting of the Parliament 11 December 2024
No. I do not have time.
In the budget, there is up to £50 million for a national care service that even SNP councils no longer support, and there is £8 million for baby boxes that many new parents do not want, need or use.
There is £5.5 million for fake foreign embassies and £12.8 million for a foreign aid budget, although foreign aid is a reserved matter. There is £5.5 million for external affairs policy and advice and £2 million for a Scottish Land Commission that is crammed full of SNP cronies.
Presiding Officer, unpicking the budget reveals that, under the SNP, the benefits bill is now unsustainable, with the Scottish Fiscal Commission warning that it will reach £9 billion within five years. Even before the Scottish Government removes the two-child benefit cap, nearly £1.5 billion more is being spent on benefits than the Scottish Government is receiving in the block grant.
In evidence to the Finance and Public Administration Committee yesterday, the Scottish Fiscal Commission revealed that the adult disability benefits bill is to surge by hundreds of millions of pounds because of the “soft touch” system that underpins it. Professor David Ulph said that sick Scots are staying on benefits longer than people in the rest of the UK, with the DWP removing claimants on review in England at a rate of 18 per cent, compared with just 2 per cent coming off disability benefit in Scotland. That poses what Professor Ulph described as a significant risk in terms of the sustainability of benefits in Scotland.
As the SNP benefits bill soars, the budget continues to be cut in core areas. The enterprise budget is down £33 million; £110 million has been taken from rail services in cash terms; there have been reductions in cash terms to drug and alcohol services; and there has been a council settlement that fails to make up for last year’s council tax freeze and a decade of cuts, which will force many councils to increase council tax next year.
It is clear that the Government has more money than ever before, but what the Government is going to do with it is less clear, as the Fraser of Allander Institute has recognised.
We welcome the increased funding for health, but more money alone will not solve the crisis in our national health service. It needs leadership and it needs a delivery plan. That is something that is evident from today’s headlines. The Herald has “Number of NHS GPs in Scotland drops again”. The Daily Mail says that accident and emergency delays are evidence of NHS collapse, and The Scotsman headline says, “Bed blocking high nine years since SNP pledged to end it”.
Therefore, whether this budget cuts funding or increases it, we know that, under the SNP, our public services are only getting worse.
The budget is bad for business, it is bad for taxpayers and it is bad for Scotland. That is why the SNP urgently needs to change course to back our pro-growth tax cuts, to reform public services and to restore sustainability to Scotland’s public finances.
I move,
That the Parliament believes that the draft Scottish Budget 2025-26 will not deliver good value for taxpayers; notes its continuation of the Scottish National Party administration’s high-tax agenda, which has damaged economic growth in Scotland; condemns funding for free bus travel for asylum seekers, which could have instead been used to provide 6,600 pensioners in Scotland with a full Winter Heating Payment, and calls on the Scottish Government to cut income tax to 19% for those earning up to £43,662, introduce full business rates relief for pubs and restaurants across Scotland for 2025-26, and raise the threshold at which house buyers pay residential Land and Buildings Transaction Tax to £250,000.
14:57