Meeting of the Parliament 05 February 2020
I need to make some progress.
My colleagues will set out in more detail later in the debate our priorities for public services spending, but when it comes to the national health service, we want all Barnett consequentials that arise from increased health spending in England to be passed on to the NHS in Scotland. Within that envelope, we want a new hospital parking charges refund scheme, whereby the three hospitals in Scotland that still charge for parking—Glasgow royal infirmary, the Royal infirmary of Edinburgh, and Ninewells hospital—can offer refunds for hospital staff and develop a new scheme for protected groups who most need refunds, including disabled patients and sick children’s parents who stay overnight.
We also want an end to underfunding of NHS boards and delivery of NHS Scotland resource allocation committee funding parity.
In order to tackle one of our nation’s greatest public policy failures, we also want a dramatic increase in the number of drug-rehabilitation beds, to be funded by a new £15.4 million scheme to replace the 80 per cent cut in bed numbers under the SNP Government.
In recent years, local government has borne the brunt of budget cuts from the SNP Government, with a 7.6 per cent real-terms cut in revenue funding since 2013—the impact of which we see on communities across the country. We cannot have another year of cuts. As a minimum, core funding for local government needs to be increased in line with inflation, and all the additional extra commitments that have been placed on local councils, which total £497 million, should be funded in full, as should any new or additional commitments.
In relation to justice funding, we recently heard from the chief constable of his worries about cuts to Police Scotland’s budget. We are therefore asking for, as a minimum, an extra £50 million to protect 750 police officer posts.
We want revenue funding for higher education to be protected, at least in real terms, and we want a 2 per cent real-terms increase in capital funding for the sector.
In housing, we want an additional £10 million for expansion of the ending homelessness together fund. I say that on the day on which we have learned about the dramatic increase in the number of deaths of homeless people.
What I have set out in my speech and in our motion does not represent the totality of what we want from this budget; nor does it represent what a Conservative budget might look like. However, it sets out some of our priority areas, and those that we believe the Scottish Government should address, if it wants to win our support for its budget in the coming weeks.
Our package of proposals is not unrealistic, nor is it unduly radical; it represents a credible and affordable package that can be delivered within the overall financial envelope that is available to the Scottish Government. I hope that the Government will sit down and work with us in the weeks ahead to deliver a budget that prioritises growing the economy, expanding our tax revenues and supporting our vital services.
I move,
That the Parliament believes that there can be no justification for either further tax increases or further cuts to public spending and vital public services in the coming financial year, given analysis by the Fraser of Allander Institute, which shows that the UK block grant to the Scottish Government will increase by 2.1% in real terms from 2019-20 to 2020-21 as a result of increases in spending by the UK Government, and therefore calls on the Scottish Government to bring forward a Budget for the coming year that includes measures to help boost economic growth, with no widening of the tax gap between Scotland and the rest of the UK, a reduction in the Large Business Supplement for non-domestic rates to the same rate payable south of the border and protection of all existing reliefs, an investment of all health Barnett consequentials in the Scottish NHS, a scheme for the refund of hospital parking charges, a £15.4 million national drug rehabilitation bed fund and strategy, the delivery of NRAC funding parity, an increase in core funding for local government at least in line with inflation, a protection of revenue funding for higher education and a 2% real-terms increase in capital funding, an additional £50 million for the police to spend on protecting 750 officer roles, and an additional £10 million for the expansion of the Ending Homelessness Together Fund.