Meeting of the Parliament 19 June 2024
The Deputy First Minister needs to look at the wider picture, because, since 2014, the Scottish economy has grown, on average, at half the rate at which the UK economy has grown. We have a lot of catching up to do, even compared with the sluggish growth that we have seen in the UK economy, which, in line with all other Western economies, has been hit by headwinds including the fallout from the financial crash, the fallout from Covid and, of course, the impact on the cost of living of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. All economies have faced those pressures. Given that wider view, the Deputy First Minister should not be too optimistic about the performance of the Scottish economy.
On the subject of dismantling barriers, Fergus Ewing made an important intervention on planning, which is a very good example of a barrier that needs to be dismantled. I met the Deputy First Minister’s predecessor as the cabinet secretary with responsibility for the economy, Neil Gray, when he took up his post, and we had a conversation in which he asked me what one thing he could do to help to improve the performance of the economy. I said, in line with what Mr Ewing said, that he should sort out planning.
The issue is not particularly planning law or the planning rules; it is the administration of planning and the fact that everything takes too long. That is perhaps because we do not have enough planners—we are not training enough and we are not recruiting enough. That major barrier to progressing economic growth must be addressed.