Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 27 April 2022
I absolutely accept that that is the intent of the fund, but I dispute the efficacy in meeting its intention. When we see those metrics, they do not give us great hope for optimism.
This is the first time since the Victorian age that life expectancy has fallen in this country. Food bank use is rising, too. The worst part is that each of those economic ailments is a symptom of political choices. A political choice has been made to reduce the value of the shared prosperity fund to 40 per cent less than the EU structural funds, and that will compound the misery that families face in Scotland.
I turn my attention to the Labour amendment, which references the funding cuts that Scotland’s local authorities have experienced. We know that those have been disproportionate and that the Scottish Government has hammered local authority budgets during the past decade.
Every year, councils across Scotland are forced to make cuts as their budgets are slashed disproportionately. It is the Scottish Government’s centralising instinct and approach to economic sustainability, and its tacit acceptance of Tory laissez-faire economics, that sees Scotland’s productivity lag drastically behind the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. This year is no different, with £250 million of cuts imposed, which is on top of a cumulative total of £6 billion during the past decade.