Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 03 March 2021
I welcome Monica Lennon to her new role in the Scottish Labour Party and commend her for the fine challenge that she posed for Anas Sarwar. I know that we will be able to find common cause on many issues, just as our two parties have done in the past. In that spirit, we will support her motion today.
The Liberal Democrats want a needle-sharp focus on recovery from the pandemic. We will always put recovery first. Any distraction, such as another independence referendum, would let down the thousands and thousands of people who are desperate for work.
First, I will say a few words about today’s UK budget. We support some of the measures, including the extension of the furlough scheme, the extension of self-employment support and the support for 600,000 more self-employed people—the excluded, for whom my colleague Jamie Stone MP has been leading the charge. We also support maintenance of the £20 uplift in universal credit.
I am disappointed with a few things in the budget, including the freezing of the personal income tax allowance from 2022 until 2026. The freeze will hit people who are on the lowest incomes hardest, and will bring more low-paid people into the scope of income tax. That was an issue that we in the Liberal Democrats successfully pursued in Government, so we are disappointed that it is being undermined now.
Most important of all, the budget does not match the scale of the challenge of recovery, in particular for the many small businesses that are on their knees right now, and the millions of people who are still excluded from support altogether.
The UK budget delivers £1.2 billion of normal consequentials, much of which is driven by the restart grants. There is also doubling of the resource borrowing limit to £600 million for the next three years. That will be helpful in my discussions with the Cabinet Secretary for Finance later today.
The Scottish Liberal Democrat economic plan focuses on skills and long-term career advice, new graduate placements with small businesses, new retraining grants for people who need them and enabling more employee and community ownership of businesses.
During the pandemic, serious costs are being borne by all in society, but they are being borne especially by young people. Our 24-point plan includes a myriad of measures that will stand by those people. We support a national accredited internship programme for graduates, which would include short-term bite-sized placements with Scotland’s small and medium-sized enterprises.
We want to provide funding for a training bond, coupled to careers advice, that can be used to support people of all ages to pay for further skills development throughout their careers. It is important that support continues throughout a career, rather than there being shorter-term interventions, as is often the case.
We would expand the apprenticeship programme with colleges, universities and businesses to enable more young people to access places. It would target sectors including low carbon, care, education and artificial intelligence.
Reform of business rates is also required. We want to take the burden off high street retailers and allow them to compete with online rivals. We will encourage enterprise agencies to recognise the value, beyond traditional economic measures, of more diverse sectors, such as care and education.
We advance those measures and more in our 24-point plan. After years of division over referendums and the shock of the pandemic, the economic position in Scotland is fragile. Businesses need greater certainty to face the future, and workers need reassurances that they will not be allowed to fall through the cracks.
Unfortunately, even before the pandemic, the Scottish Government was not doing enough to ensure that everyone could get ahead in life. Scottish Liberal Democrats have long argued that the Government should be using its procurement powers to ensure fair wages and conditions throughout the supply chain.
We have also been critical of the Government’s willingness to pay out millions in economic support to firms such as Amazon, while letting down small home-grown businesses here. Under our proposals, our high streets would be able to compete on a level playing field with online rivals.
If Scotland is to recover from the pandemic, we need to ensure that everyone has a chance to thrive. That means getting talented graduates into small businesses, ensuring that education and retraining are available for life and using the power of the Scottish Government to boost small business.
We must put recovery first.
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