Meeting of the Parliament 24 September 2024
I confirmed that in our written answer to Alex Cole-Hamilton, which shows that we have utilised only around £96 million of ScotWind revenues for 2023-24. The point about the £460 million is that I have said that it would have to be set against a path to balance. The thing that will change and reduce that, which I am very keen happens, is if the UK pay review body awards are funded in full. The more that they are funded, the less ScotWind revenue I will need to use. There is an absolute direct correlation there, so we wait to hear what the Chancellor of the Exchequer has to say.
I want to make one final point, Presiding Officer, if that is okay. The new UK Government has said that it will respect devolution. In June it was splashed on the front page of The Daily Record that a £150 million war chest would be handed to the Scotland Office to spend in devolved areas, along with lines from the new Secretary of State for Scotland, Ian Murray. What is stranger still is that at the weekend, Ian Murray gave an interview in which he said that a journalist had made up the £150 million figure. Then yesterday, he gave further clarification that despite his slur, the journalist had not made it up and instead what he meant was that he did not have the money yet.
At this stage, my best guess to explain Ian Murray’s behaviour is that he does not think that he is actually getting £150 million from the Treasury, or perhaps he is demanding that there should be no more bypassing of this Parliament through the UK Government spending money in devolved areas—something we would welcome.
It is really important that Labour’s clear manifesto commitment to end the practice of bypassing devolved nations is delivered and delivered in full.
I want to work with the chancellor to ensure that the UK budget delivers for Scotland. It does not need to be another budget of austerity and underinvestment. Instead, it can be a budget that renews public infrastructure, helps to tackle child poverty and supports keeping and attracting jobs, with fiscal rules that value public services. Those are the choices that I encourage the chancellor to make. I urge all members to support the motion.
I move,
That the Parliament recognises the importance of the UK Budget on 30 October 2024 to Scotland’s budget; supports the call from prominent economists, including Professor Mariana Mazzucato, Professor Anton Muscatelli, Lord Gus O’Donnell and Professor Simon Wren-Lewis, for the UK Government to use the forthcoming UK Budget to halt “the under-investment that has resulted in a vicious circle of stagnation and decline, whereby low investment leads to both a weaker economy and greater social and environmental problems”; calls on the Chancellor of the Exchequer to replace the current austerity fiscal rules that the UK Government is operating under, in order to allow for greater investment to renew and enhance public infrastructure and deliver projects that support the transition to net zero; believes that the UK Government should reverse its cut to the Winter Fuel Payment, as this cut will impact many of the most vulnerable older people in society, and urges the UK Government to use its first Budget to remove the two-child limit on benefits and deliver greater investment to tackle child poverty, and deliver a sizeable increase in investment in the NHS and schools, which would deliver consequentials for application in these vital public services in Scotland.
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