Meeting of the Parliament 09 October 2024
I am grateful for that intervention, because it takes me to a point that I am about to touch on. Before I get to it, I want to round off the shared responsibility point. All parties in the Parliament have voted for budgets at some point in the past 25 years and all parties have suggested areas of spending that we have seen as priorities. We therefore need to see getting devolved finances back on a sustainable footing as a shared responsibility.
I respect the honesty of those who come here and say that they would simply cut their way to balance. It would be immensely destructive and I would oppose it, but there is an honesty to that, when there is no honesty to what we have seen over recent years. Members come here to demand huge amounts of additional spending but suggest no tax rises or cuts in other areas.
On Daniel Johnson’s point, I do not think that it is an either/or between growing and strengthening our tax base and increasing taxes to raise revenue right now. I point to the approach that has been taken in the United States, which recognises that a Government needs to spend more to invest in and strengthen the economy. The Inflation Reduction Act there has been a far more effective way to recover from the global economic turmoil of the past few years than the approach that most European Governments have taken.
The Scottish Greens have already proposed a range of revenue-raising and savings options. For example, although we support tax support for small businesses, a quarter of a billion pounds every year is spent on the small business bonus scheme, from which the Government’s own evaluation could find no evidence of positive economic outcomes. Some of that money—although it is a small amount—goes to the shooting estates that the wealthy elite owns and some of it goes to businesses that are anything but small. Reform in that area would present a savings option.
The grants that are given to arms companies are another small but obvious example. A year into Israel’s genocide in Gaza, it is appalling that the Scottish Government’s enterprise agencies are still giving public money to those companies.
On the supermarket levy that I mentioned, at the moment our public services are under significant strain as a result of the harm that is done by alcohol and tobacco, but the supermarkets that make such a substantial profit from them are not being taxed proportionately. The private jet tax that the Greens have been pushing over recent weeks—albeit that we would need to see movement from the UK Government on subsidy control—is another example.
We would also, as I mentioned, cut motorway expansion. Our motion makes the point about policy coherence. It is not right—it is not effective—to spend money on increasing and cutting emissions at the same time. We should move the money that is currently spent on projects that increase emissions into those that would actually cut them. Another example of that would be the fact that the Government gives money to both arms dealers and the emergency appeals that charities have to launch to deal with the consequences of countries such as Yemen being bombed to rubble.
We agree with the Scottish Government’s amendment. The UK Conservative fiscal rules have failed and we would like the new Labour Government to abandon them—in particular, in relation to capital and the ability to invest in the public infrastructure that is required for a strong economy.
On the Conservative amendment, I am glad to see Murdo Fraser here. I was hoping that his colleagues were checking that he was okay when I saw his amendment yesterday—I was expecting him to come in wearing a sandwich board and shouting, “Doom is nigh!” It is such an extreme amendment that I was worried that Fergus Ewing had helped him to write it. [Laughter.]
The Labour amendment, on the other hand, could have been written by the Conservative Party just a few months ago, when it was in charge of the UK Government. There is a challenge for Labour here. Where is the vision? Where is the change on offer?
What is key to the Greens’ motion is empowerment of local government through the budget—the more local government raises, the less we must haggle annually here over the general revenue grant.
The visitor and workplace parking levies are examples of legislative change that came about as a result of previous budget agreements.