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Meeting of the Parliament 09 February 2011

09 Feb 2011 · S3 · Meeting of the Parliament

Item of business

Budget (Scotland) (No 5) Bill: Stage 3

Purvis, Jeremy LD Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale Watch on SPTV

Yesterday, I spoke to a major employer in my constituency where there are major concerns about the future of a number of jobs. The company has a heritage that goes back well over a century in Galashiels and—the Borders being the Borders—I know some of the staff who work there very well. It is a profoundly important company for the local economy and it works in a global marketplace in which decisions around the world have an impact locally. That is the back-cloth to my thoughts this week as we come to the final stage of the bill.

The ramifications of the turmoil of the financial crisis, in which Scottish institutions were as implicated as any others, will be with us well into the future. That is why we on the Liberal Democrat benches take the view that the Scottish Government’s budget must do more for the Scottish economy and that its agencies must deliver more and do so better. In that regard, our stance at stage 1 was endorsed by the Parliament’s Finance Committee.

At stage 1, we had the inevitable sparring over the scale of the reductions in the Scottish budget. The SNP takes the view that the reductions are too fast and too deep. I fully understand why it thinks that, but it has never been straight with people and said what the reductions would be if they were not too fast or too deep. The First Minister had an opportunity to do so last week with the Deputy Prime Minister, but he did not take it. However, we now know from the cabinet secretary’s speech, which has provided welcome clarity, that the budget that we are debating at stage 3 has £41 million more for next year than when it was originally published, with £25 million of that for colleges and young people and £16 million for new housing. Any objective analysis would say that that is fair. I welcome the fact that the Government has listened to the views of others in the Parliament—or most of them.

There is a degree of denial from the SNP but, similarly, Labour now seeks to give the impression that there would be no reductions in Scottish spending, even though the UK coalition is reducing the growth in spending over the next five years, whereas Labour proposed to do so over the next seven years. Ed Miliband said some interesting things in his Fabian Society speech on 15 January. It sounds as though Mr Kerr and Scottish Labour were not listening, so let me help them out and remind them what Mr Miliband said. He said:

“Parties don’t suffer defeats like the one we suffered last May because of an accumulation of small errors.

They do so by making serious mistakes, and that’s why I have said what I have said on issues like Iraq, failing to properly regulate the banks, ignoring concerns about economic security and not doing enough to deliver on the promise of a new politics.”

That was Ed Miliband talking about the Labour Party, and it was in stark contrast to Mr Kerr’s comments. Iraq, failing to secure regulation of the banks, ignoring concerns about economic security—those were full measures for which we are now getting a half-hearted apology from the Labour Opposition benches.

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Meeting of the Parliament 09 February 2011

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