Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 08 June 2022
I am pleased to rise to speak for the Liberal Democrats, and I am grateful to Liz Smith for securing the parliamentary time for it.
When the finance secretary outlined the Government’s spending review, she laid bare the price of Scottish National Party economic incompetence. The truth is that, when it comes to the economy, by almost every metric, we are falling behind. The SNP likes to take any opportunity that it can to set Scotland apart from the rest of the UK—well, when it comes to the economy, it has accomplished that mission, but there is nothing in that reality for those on the Government benches to take pride in.
In the past decade, under SNP rule, the Scottish economy has been consistently outpaced by the rest of the UK, which means that we have less money to spend on vital public services, many of which are currently in dire need of funding.
We have seen productivity growth stagnate while we fail to keep pace with earnings growth in England and Wales. I was interested to hear the cabinet secretary tell Daniel Johnson that she would come on to that in her remarks. I may have fallen asleep, but I did not hear her come on to that at all. This has all been coupled with downward growth estimates, as Liz Smith rightly said when she quoted Our Scottish Future.
Project after project has been mishandled and there are not enough workers to build even a handful of offshore wind turbine jackets at Burntisland Fabrications. Where are the 2,000 jobs that were promised to Lochaber by the SNP Government and Sanjeev Gupta in return for taxpayer backing worth hundreds of millions of pounds? Why will communities spend years more without the broadband connections that they need to do business and get on with their lives? The Government might not like it, but its fiscal incompetence is plain for all to see.
Not long ago, the word “ferry” would have conjured up images of relaxed day trips to some of Scotland’s beautiful islands, and island businesses expanding beyond their shores. Now, it is synonymous with cancellations, botched deals, missing documents and horrendous overspend. Those lifeline ferries were promised to our island communities so that people could visit family, go to work or attend hospital appointments on the mainland. They are years late and more than £150 million over budget. Tourist businesses, cafes and more must all be wondering what they pay their taxes for, when the absence of sailings costs them hundreds of pounds each day in lost earnings.
The same could be said for all those going to restaurants, bars and theatres, and shift workers and commuters, who are all staring at train timetables in disbelief. The Scottish Greens must be the only green party in the entire world to go into government, nationalise the rail sector and put a red pen through a third of the rail timetable. It has been reported that that is costing the Government and the Scottish economy £80 million each week. The Scottish Government had two years to prepare for its running of ScotRail, but it did precisely nothing to anticipate or avoid the dispute. Every day that this SNP-Green Government fails to provide core connections—whether they are ferries, broadband or trains—can be measured in lost revenue to our economy.