Meeting of the Parliament 01 March 2016
This has been an interesting debate. I will return to some of the excellent contributions that were made, but before I do that I will pick up on two points. The first is the Scottish Government’s criticism that the UK Government’s national living wage is not the same as the living wage. Of course, today that is correct, but by the end of the Westminster parliamentary term I suspect that it will not be. I also point out that the UK Government’s national minimum wage is higher than what the SNP proposed at the general election and is higher, too, than what was in the white paper, which detailed what it would have been if we had become independent. The Scottish Government is correct to point out the facts, but a little bit of context is necessary.
Gordon MacDonald and Christian Allard raised the second point, which was absurd and, in some ways, lessened the quality of the debate. They said that, over a 30-year period, the UK Government has intentionally taken the low road while the Scottish Government has taken the high road. No Government wants to take the low road—there is not a political party in this place that wants to go down that track. Of course, Governments have got things wrong over the years, but if what those members said was true, the Scottish share of income tax receipts would be far higher, in percentage terms, than the UK share. We all know that that simply is not true.