Meeting of the Parliament 30 September 2015
Christina McKelvie said that she was surprised that she agreed with Jackie Baillie on one thing; I am surprised that I agree with Christina McKelvie on three things. It must be the first time that that has ever happened.
I agree that employment is about empowerment. It is about giving people the life chances to get up, get on and achieve more for themselves and their families. It is about the combination of social justice and economic discipline that we need to create the jobs of the future to give our families prosperity and to give our neighbours, friends and communities the opportunity to get up and get on as well.
I am surprised that I agree with Christina McKelvie on a second point: I am also an accredited living wage employer. That was not difficult because I was already doing it but, nevertheless, it is important to show the way to other employers, who should also pay the living wage.
Even though the Liberal Democrats are no longer in government, I do not wish to disassociate myself from the economic progress that we have made in the United Kingdom in recent years. We got the economy back on track with 175,000 extra jobs since 2010 and 2.4 million private sector jobs in the UK as a whole, 85 per cent of which were in full-time employment. Now, with the United Kingdom, we are managing to compete with some of the best in the G7 countries.
That is good progress and the progress that we made was a direct result of some of the measures that were taken, such as cutting tax for people on low and middle incomes to make work pay and creating the £2,000 national insurance allowance to help smaller employers in particular to take on more apprentices and other employees. The deficit reduction programme also gave confidence to the wider economy that Britain was a good place to do business. Combined with that, the lower rates on corporation tax encouraged businesses to employ more people here and to recruit from, and grow their businesses within, the United Kingdom.
Although we are no longer in power, there is a record to stand on for the progress that we made in that period of government.
I am always amused when SNP ministers boast about the differentials between the employment growth in Scotland and that in the rest of the United Kingdom and then, in the next breath, complain bitterly about the lack of economic powers for the Scottish Parliament. I am not sure how the two can be said in the same paragraph. I am not sure how they can claim that all the progress is a result of their measures but that they cannot take any measures to make progress. Some squaring of that circle from the SNP Government would be helpful.
We need to consider some of the levers that the SNP Government is currently not using to try to advance the economy in Scotland. One of the key levers about which I hear from small businesses in particular is the procurement budget. It is an enormous budget and an economic development tool that the Government should use to encourage more smaller businesses to employ more people locally. The complexity of the system still drives out too many small businesses, as the Federation of Small Businesses agrees.
I urge the Scottish Government to use that lever. We have had the Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act 2014, but the system is still not working. Far too many small businesses find it particularly difficult to get access to that budget. That in itself could be a good economic generator for the local community and local economic development.
I am particularly keen on nursery education. Expanding nursery education not only helps people get back to work, but improves life chances, particularly for those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Children who get that early education have a better chance in later life. In Scotland we still lag behind the performance of the rest of the UK in that area.
The colleges are a big area in which the Scottish Government could have a massive impact in improving the skills of young people—and older people, as well. Older people seem to be excluded from the Government’s plans, which put emphasis on the younger age groups.