Meeting of the Parliament 14 December 2016
I welcome the opportunity to talk about tax this afternoon. I thank the Tories for bringing the debate to the chamber. I also thank them for the simplicity of their motion, because it gives us a chance to talk about first principles: what motivates us and what our priorities are. Is it not interesting that the Tories always start with the money?
The motion says:
“That the Parliament believes that families and businesses in Scotland should not be taxed more than those elsewhere in the UK.”
Surely they would never dream of lodging a motion that said that the Parliament believes that public services in Scotland should not be any better than those elsewhere in the United Kingdom. That is really the crux of the matter. If we want to protect our valued public services, we have to talk about how we pay for them and who pays for them.
I am a democratic socialist. I believe in the power of Government to transform people’s life chances. I believe that there is nothing inevitable about poverty. I believe that we do not have to accept inequality. My vision for Scotland is one awash with universal high-quality public services that everyone invests in and for which everyone pays their fair share.
I believe in this Parliament. It has been a feature of my whole adult life that came to being in my formative years. I was 15 in 1997, when Labour won the general election; 16 when the referendum that created this place took place; and 17 when the Parliament’s doors opened. I have always believed in this place as a means for Scotland to take its own decisions, in the best interests of the people of Scotland; if we do not accept that, we do not believe in devolution at all.
Austerity is hurting Scotland, and the poorest are hurting the most. I see that across the region that I represent. I have seen a mum working three part-time jobs, two of them on zero-hours contracts, with no security about her finances from one week to the next. Her bus and train fares are going up, but her wages have been frozen. I see the council cuts in her community taking away the breakfast clubs that help her to get to her jobs, and I see cuts to colleges that have taken away from her her chance of getting on in life. I see the cuts taking away the care of the tenement stair and diminishing the quality of her local community. The grass is overgrown, and the sense of pride in the community is deflated. I see her worry about the social care that her mum gets at home, with 15-minute visits. I see her local library being closed and that one place that she could take her kids to for free disappearing altogether.
It does not have to be that way. We can choose to do things differently.