Meeting of the Parliament 20 January 2016
Now I am going to come to David Stewart. He tells us to repent because we are sinners. Then he tells us that one of the reasons is the VAT issue. I have the motion in front of me but nowhere does it refer to the VAT. How come? Is the VAT issue not important enough?
When, again, the fire chief was asked by the Justice Committee how big the issue of VAT was, he said that it was “massive”. That is the word that he used—“massive”—but it is so massive that Labour and Mr Stewart do not include it in the motion. Fair enough, he did speak about it, but he knew about the issue at the time that he wrote the motion—we all knew, right from the start, that there was a possibility that the UK Conservative Government would withdraw some money from Police Scotland and from the Fire and Rescue Service.
We knew that that could happen, and not only the Scottish Government but the Scottish Parliament and the Justice Committee have asked very strongly for that money back. What are we actually talking about when we talk about detrimental effects and when we ask about the Scottish Government’s response?
Let us talk instead about the numbers of firefighters. There is a new model for the fire and rescue services in Scotland, and a number for whole-time firefighters has been set out in it. That figure is 3,709, and as far as I know we are still exceeding that. How come that has not been mentioned in the motion?
Going back to the VAT issue, I note that the two Labour members who have just spoken forgot to mention all the exemptions that the Conservative Government and the Westminster Parliament are giving other organisations. The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service is the only one in the whole of the UK that has to pay VAT. The situation is ridiculous. The organisations that are exempted include not only the BBC and the Metropolitan Police, but the Olympic legacy organisation and the transport agency Highways England, both of which were granted VAT exemption after 2013.
When Pat Watters, chair of the SFRS board, wrote to the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and every Scottish MP, the reply that he received was that there were regulations and exempt organisations but the SFRS was not one of them. Why? No reason was given. As I have said, VAT is a massive issue.
Perhaps I can finish on what I was going to say, which is how much the chamber supports our firefighters, particularly after the flooding in Ballater. Our firefighters, both retained and whole time, are doing a fantastic job in Ballater, Inverurie and across Aberdeenshire, and they have my thanks.
17:27