Meeting of the Parliament 21 February 2018
That is not what the Fiscal Commission has been telling us or what its figures disclose. The productivity figures for Scotland suggest that Scotland is among the poorest-performing parts of the UK. Like too many SNP back benchers, Mr Mason wants to absolve the Scottish Government of any responsibility for the performance of the Scottish economy. The SNP needs to start taking responsibility for what is happening in Scotland.
We are talking about a budget that should have put growing the economy first. It should have been a budget for growth. Instead, it is a budget for cuts in public services and higher taxes. As Sir Tom Hunter, one of Scotland’s leading business figures, put it,
“The perception, if you are a talented person sitting in London, Manchester or Birmingham and Scotland wants to attract you, is that you may think Scotland is a high-tax economy.”
We should be listening to Tom Hunter, to Liz Cameron of Scottish Chambers of Commerce and to the voices of organisations such as the Confederation of British Industry, the Federation of Small Businesses, Scottish Engineering and the Scottish Retail Consortium, all of which have warned about the damage that having higher income tax rates could do.
I am no fan of his politics or of his music, but even Morrissey got it right when he said of the First Minister,
“Those hands will be in anybody’s pockets.”
The SNP Government has chosen to ignore all those voices and has delivered a budget that is bad for Scotland. That is why we should vote against it at decision time tonight.
15:17