Meeting of the Parliament 21 February 2018
That very argument has been made before, when we were in coalition, and Mr Mason dismissed it. Now he wants to resurrect it to patch up the SNP’s pathetic campaign to justify this tax rise. It is important that people are honest, open and up front before election campaigns, but the SNP has not been. We believe that tax rises should be for a specific purpose—to make sure that we invest to make a change so that people see the outcome at the end of the process. That builds confidence in any tax rises, and progressives like me believe it to be important that we make that case.
Today, figures have been announced that show that unemployment in Scotland has gone up by 14,000. That should be a warning signal for the Scottish Government. To be fair, I will say that the UK figure has gone up as well, but the Scottish figure is above the UK average. We should have a budget today that reflects and meets that big challenge.
A second challenge that is coming down the track is Brexit, which I am sure the cabinet secretary will agree is a big threat. That is the one thing that the Scottish and UK Governments agree on. In all the models that have been put forward, the predictions show that there will be a hit to the Scottish and UK economies of between 2 per cent and 9 per cent as a result of Brexit. Based on whatever model we choose, there is going to be a hit. We should have a budget that matches and meets the potential challenge that is coming. We should have a budget for the long term that is bold and meets those challenges but—yet again—this budget is a missed opportunity.
The SNP is often behind the curve on the big issues that come forward. On the pupil premium, it took five whole years before the Scottish Government admitted that that UK Government plan was working and was closing the attainment gap by five percentage points. We are therefore five years behind the curve, and a generation has missed out.
Thanks to the SNP, colleges were starved of funds for a good five years and 150,000 places were cut. The SNP has finally admitted that the policy was wrong and is opening the doors for part-time and mature students and women to take up opportunities, but it was behind the curve for a good five years.
On nursery education, I am sure that I bored everybody in Parliament when I went on—[Interruption.] Members agree. I went on and on about nursery education because it really matters, but it took years for the SNP to accept that there was a case for two-year-olds getting nursery education. Two-year-olds are now skipping through the doors of nursery schools, thanks to our advocacy. Yet again, the SNP was behind the curve.
The SNP’s approach on mental health has been the worst of all. Thanks to the SNP, the mental health strategy was delayed for more than a year and the suicide prevention strategy was delayed. As a result, investment in mental health was delayed.