Meeting of the Parliament 30 September 2015
I am sure that Mr Findlay will reflect on Jackie Baillie’s desire to move the debate on from Jeremy Corbyn as quickly as possible. I do not think that that will stand her in good stead.
It will do Jackie Baillie’s prospects in the Corbyn Labour Party no good at all when I say that I agree with much of her speech. We certainly agree that the Scottish Government needs to be more ambitious if it is to improve employment and economic performance, although we might well differ about the policies that are required to deliver those things.
Jackie Baillie’s speech was sadly lacking in one aspect. She failed to properly attribute success for increasing employment to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, who is the true author of that policy. Our amendment seeks to remedy that deficiency in recognising that employment in Scotland has increased by 175,000 since 2010, not by accident but as a result of the policies pursued by the UK Government. Those policies, of course, have been continually opposed and criticised by the Labour Party.
Do members remember Ed Balls? He is now a figure in the distant mists of Labour memory who was once a significant figure in the Labour Party. Some of us can even remember him claiming that the chancellor’s approach would not work. It was Mr Balls who, in a famous speech to the STUC in 2012, warned:
“we ... risk a lost decade of slow growth and high unemployment which will do long-term damage.”
None of that came to pass, of course. We also remember Labour’s favourite economist, Professor David Blanchflower, claiming that unemployment would go up to 5 million, with widespread social unrest. Both have been proven to be totally wrong. Perhaps an apology from Ms Baillie in her speech would not have been amiss. In fact, we have seen growth in employment, in full-time employment and in the number of hours worked. We have also seen increases in wages, and wages are now rising ahead of inflation.
However, we recognise that there is more to do. In particular, wages among the poorest in society have to be tackled, which is precisely why the UK Government has introduced the national living wage. That will come into effect from next April and rise to £9 an hour by 2020. It is hard to imagine any measure that will have a more positive impact on earnings for the least well-off, and it was no surprise that it was warmly welcomed by the Living Wage Foundation. That is coupled with increases in the tax threshold, which mean that many of the poorest are paying no income tax at all on their incomes.