Meeting of the Parliament 01 April 2015
I will come on to address how that will come about, but first I want to go through some of the implications of different responsibilities being exercised in Scotland since the Government came to power in 2007.
We have managed to increase the value of Scottish international exports by 40 per cent; business research and development spending has increased by 29 per cent; and the Scottish productivity rate has gone from being 6 per cent lower than the UK rate in 2007 to sitting at around the same level as UK productivity. I therefore dispute the dismal assessment that is put forward by those who say that we cannot possibly exercise distinctive responsibilities to create better economic performance. Despite everything that was said during the referendum campaign about no one wanting to invest in Scotland, we have been ranked the first or second most attractive part of the UK for inward investment in every year since 2006.
As well as enabling us to tailor economic policy to encourage investment in job creation, full fiscal autonomy would ensure that decisions about the level and composition of taxation and public spending in Scotland reflected the needs and preferences of the people and businesses of Scotland. That point is important, because fiscal autonomy would enable us to take a different course of action.
Mr Brown cited a variety of numbers, but all the analysis that he mentioned does not take into account the potential benefits of fiscal autonomy. He cited the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which said on 11 March:
“full fiscal autonomy would give more freedom to pursue different, and perhaps better fiscal policy, and to undertake the radical, politically challenging reforms that could generate additional growth. There are undoubtedly areas where existing UK policy could be improved upon.”
That rather makes my point for me. In a nutshell, that is what fiscal autonomy would give us an opportunity to do. It would enable us to take decisions that built on the economic record that I set out a moment ago to deliver a stronger economic performance.