Meeting of the Parliament 15 December 2022
This is a bleak day for our country. External factors have certainly played their part, but their effect has been compounded by the Government’s manifest failure on mental health waiting times, educational attainment, ferries and energy generation.
On top of all that, the Government has failed to grow our economy, despite the extensive levers that are available to it. As such, there is a lot of pain in the budget—for mental health services and for a voluntary sector that is on its knees and which will now face another £4 million cut. The local government uplift is barely half of what COSLA asked for simply to keep the lights on.
I presented to the Deputy First Minister options for further savings, so I am disappointed that there still appears to be a £17 million contract for national testing of children who are as young as four and five and that there still appears to be the vast and unnecessary billion-pound bureaucracy that is the ministerial takeover of social care. If the Deputy First Minister cancels those plans, there is still time to turn this round—perhaps that would allow him to offer hope and comfort to the 200,000 sufferers of long Covid, on whom the budget is entirely silent.
The Government had the opportunity to be transformative on the climate emergency and the rising cost of living by instructing—right now, today—an immediate programme of public works to insulate every home in Scotland. The Deputy First Minister even had a photo opportunity. However, it appears from interrogating the figures that he is reannouncing large portions of the energy efficiency budget. How much of this is actually new money?