Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 08 June 2022
I will come on to that, but I think that the context is important.
I recently wrote to the Chancellor of the Exchequer with a comprehensive funding package that would fully address the unprecedented rise in the cost of living. Instead of following that approach and using the fiscal headroom that was available to him to support people and businesses now, the piecemeal package that he announced makes it highly likely that more support will be needed later, when energy prices rise significantly in the autumn. In other words, while right now people sit in cold houses and turn to food banks, the chancellor is sitting on a substantial election war chest. In contrast—this relates to Daniel Johnson’s question—we are doing all that we can in response, and our amendment to the motion reflects the priorities that we have for Scotland’s economy and our public finances.
Our prudent stewardship of our finances and our careful—[Interruption.] That and our careful and ambitious management of the economy have resulted in Ernst & Young Global Ltd’s 2021 “Continued resilience: EY’s Attractiveness Survey Scotland” finding that Scotland has been the top UK destination for foreign direct investment outside London for the past seven years. Scotland’s GDP grew 0.3 per cent in March 2022, compared to a fall of 0.1 per cent in GDP in the UK as a whole. Estimates for January show that Scotland’s unemployment rate fell to 3.2 per cent in the first quarter of this year, which is a joint record low and is below the UK rate of 3.7 per cent. Scotland has a positive trade balance in goods; in 2021 it exported goods that were worth £1 billion more than the goods that it imported.