Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 20 April 2022
I welcome this short debate and acknowledge the concerns and anxieties of households that face energy costs and costs of living that are skyrocketing. I will not repeat all the mitigations that the cabinet secretary outlined in her opening speech, but I will say that they are required solely because of the oppressive policies of this Tory Government, which knows—and, by its actions, demonstrates that it could care less—about the poverty that it is inflicting on the most vulnerable in society.
This economic disaster can be traced right back to the days of the Liberal-Tory coalition of 2010 to 2015, when austerity was seen as a solution to the banks’ collapse. Billions were taken from health and local government budgets, attacking the standard of living of ordinary decent folk, while the rich got richer and the economy was encouraged to function on consumerism that was fuelled by low interest rates and credit, both commercial and individual.
It was a house of cards primed for collapse. Brexit was pursued in the middle of a pandemic, and an oven-ready deal turned out to be a pig’s breakfast, which has now been compounded by an energy crisis.
This economic house of cards is collapsing after nearly 12 years of Tory rule. Who will suffer? Not the chancellor and his tax-avoiding wife—who declared, as a non-domestic taxpayer, that she did not intend to permanently reside in the UK, which saved her millions in UK tax while the rest of us are paying hikes in national insurance and some are losing universal credit. Not Boris Johnson, who apparently does not know what a party is—although he did have £50 to pay that fine. Not heartless Priti Patel, who is paying to export miserable desperate souls to a country with dubious human rights. They are so removed from what is decent and the reality of ordinary lives that I despair.
It will, as always, be the pensioners, those on low pay, the disabled, the disadvantaged and the single-parent families who pay the price for the Tories’ selfishness and incompetence.
The solution offered by the Opposition parties here is to raid public funds from our health and education budgets to, once again, try to ease poverty that has come about entirely as a result of the actions of the UK Government. Much has been done by the Scottish Government, but mitigation has its limits. Already, £600 million a year is being spent on just that.
Do our people deserve this? Did they vote for this? Consider this: at the most recent UK election, in 2019, Labour returned one MP, the Liberals returned one MP, and the UK party of Government, the Tories, returned 6. The SNP has 45 MPs. In the 2021 Scottish Parliament election, the Tories returned 31 MSPs to the SNP’s 64. Throw in the 62 per cent vote to remain in the EU, and we can see that the people have spoken in election after election.
Independence would end the mitigation of the actions of Governments and consequences of policies that we did not vote for. For the first time in generations, we could run our own economy with the competence that is so lacking among the Tories, with the goal of a socially just society that protects the vulnerable, not the privileged.
It is time for mitigation to end. Surely, even the remnants of the Labour Party and the Liberals in here can see that, or will they keep propping up this failed UK Government, which has been rejected time and time again by the Scottish electorate?
15:58