Hansard

I posed a question, and I was hoping that Mark McDonald would attempt to answer it, but he did not. Of course we support those goals, but I mentioned them to draw a contrast. If the member and his party can focus their spending on the NHS, the police and the small business scheme, what is it about education and investing in our young people’s future that so offends them?

The truth is that the SNP can do one of three things in order to rectify its position when it comes to education. It can cut areas that are protected under its current plans; it can make even bigger cuts to an even smaller number of unprotected areas such as transport, culture or justice; or it can, as we have done, be honest about the need to find new resources. The choice that we on the Labour benches have made is not an easy choice, but we cannot go on in Scotland with a Government that pretends to stand on the left but, when it comes to the crunch, stands for nothing.

That is why Scottish Labour has made a very clear commitment to protect education spending in real terms over the next five years. We can do that honestly because we have set out how we will use the powers that we have and the powers to come, with a 50p top rate to invest in closing the gap in our schools so that a child’s chances in life do not depend on how much their parents earn, the Scottish rate of income tax being set 1p higher to protect schools and local services from cuts, and half a billion pounds more investment in our future.

That is our choice. That is the Labour choice, and when people reflect on it and realise the scale of the cuts that are coming to their communities, they will know that the truth cannot be avoided. There is a choice. Some of us can pay a little more, or we can all get a lot less. We should make no mistake—the cuts are so severe that we will all be affected by them. They will eat into the very fabric of our society and the social contract that binds us all together. They are not just cuts to our schools, but cuts to the future prosperity of our nation.

If we believe—as I do—that the greatest natural resource that this country has is its people, we have to invest in their future. We are faced with a global race for skills and knowledge, and the only way that Scotland can compete in that race is by investing in all our people.

SNP ministers say that they have no choice but to cut funding for schools and nurseries, yet the reality is that we have no alternative but to invest in the future. We simply cannot afford not to do that. Time and again, I have heard the First Minister say that education is her number 1 priority. I ask members to forgive me for saying that the hundreds of millions of pounds-worth of cuts to schools and other public services is a funny way of showing it.

New analysis by economists in the Scottish Parliament shows that, under the SNP’s plans, more than £2.2 billion could be stripped from Scotland’s public services in the next five years from areas that the SNP Government refuses to protect. That is a 16 per cent cut to schools. That is not Labour’s figure but the Scottish Parliament information centre’s figure. We cannot afford to cut our schools and nurseries in that way.

If we want to close the gap between the richest and the rest and give every young person the skills that they need to grow our economy and succeed, we need to invest in our schools. That is why we have to use the powers that we have and the powers that are coming to protect education spending. Faced with a choice between using the powers and making cuts to our children’s future, the only responsible choice is to use those powers.

How on earth can so many other areas be priorities for the protection of spending while our schools, colleges and universities are not? That is the massive contradiction at the heart of this SNP Government. If education is a personal priority, a political priority and a policy priority, it should be a budget priority. I say to the SNP front bench, “If you want to show that you value education, don’t deliver a speech that promises that you mean it; deliver a budget that proves that you mean it.” I say to SNP members: vote today to commit to protecting education spending in real terms over the next parliamentary session.

Our commitment to protect schools and other services by setting income tax at 1p higher than the rate set by George Osborne has been looked at by SPICe, the Institute for Public Policy Research, the University of Stirling, the Resolution Foundation and the House of Commons library. All have concluded that, contrary to the First Minister’s claim that the policy is regressive, it is progressive.

Our commitment is fair and it is the only viable alternative to cutting education now, yet still the SNP opposes it. Almost every argument the SNP has mustered against it can be debunked with the facts. There is a litany of evidence to prove that the policy is fair. There is an abundance of voices that say that it is workable.

However, one argument that the SNP offers cannot be broken down by facts, because it is about how SNP members feel and who they are. I have heard SNP minister after SNP minister denounce Labour’s plans as a punitive tax rise. As recently as last night, the finance secretary was decrying our policy as a “tax grab”. The SNP candidate in Edinburgh Western called it “Labour’s tax bombshell”. SNP members have used that pejorative language, despite being warned against doing so by the Scottish Trades Union Congress and countless trade unions, because it is the language of the right-wing press and the Tory party.

I know that the SNP thinks that it can cynically exploit our commitment to ending austerity, but let me say this: the SNP will pay a political price if it chooses cuts to education over using the powers that we have now to invest in our children’s future.

The First Minister told the people of Scotland:

“the only party with the unity and the conviction to stand strong against austerity is the SNP.”

Today, the SNP is united in opposing the only alternative to austerity that has been put forward in this Parliament. What happened to that strength? What happened to that conviction? I hope that the SNP will vote to protect education today, and I hope that tomorrow it will vote to provide the means to do so, by rejecting John Swinney’s do-nothing budget.

That is the choice—today and in future. We must use the powers that we have to protect education, or we must accept cuts to our future. Labour has chosen not to cut into our future. Where do the other parties stand?

I move the motion in the name of lain Gray,

That the Parliament agrees that education spending should be protected in real terms over the next five years.