Meeting of the Parliament 11 March 2015
I was speaking to one of Mr MacKenzie’s colleagues, who said, “Unfortunately, Mike MacKenzie sometimes leads with his chin when he intervenes.” That was a perfect example. We are not asking for projections for the rest of time. We would have been happy with short and medium-term projections; we would have been happy with the projections that any other Government would have to do if it was suggesting such a policy.
We believe that the situation is going to get more difficult because of the two underlying trends that were outlined by just about every economist in the run-up to the referendum: that cost pressures will increase with the demographic challenge of an ageing population, which is set to accelerate faster in Scotland than in the rest of the UK, coupled with the fact that revenues are likely to drop. In particular, oil revenues are volatile and will diminish over time.
That is the reason for our amendment. In recent years, the Government has been happy to publish its projections. We have had bulletins, a balance sheet and the “Outlook for Scotland’s Public Finances and the Opportunities of Independence” report. We are saying that the Government should publish that again, because two things have changed: the short and long-term tax takes for oil and gas have changed, and we now have the Government pushing full fiscal autonomy instead of independence. Let us see the figures; let the Government demonstrate to us how much better off it thinks we will be, and then the country as a whole will have an opportunity to look at the figures and make its own judgment about who is right.
I move amendment S4M-12591.2, to insert at end:
“, and further calls on the Scottish Government to publish an updated Outlook for Scotland’s Public Finances to take into account changes to the projected public finances since the original publication in May 2014 and also to reflect the current Scottish Government policy of seeking full fiscal autonomy”.
15:13Motions, questions or amendments mentioned by their reference code.