Meeting of the Parliament 09 October 2024
I thank the Scottish Green Party for lodging the motion. It is absolutely right that the fiscal levers that are currently available to the Scottish Government are inadequate. We have all felt the impacts of the high inflation, austerity and economic turmoil of the previous UK Government, and our public services and communities have borne the brunt.
We have done our best to mitigate those impacts, but we are doing so without the full set of fiscal powers that other countries have. My amendment adds to the Scottish Greens’ motion and calls on the UK Government to scrap the fiscal rules of the previous Government. We want new fiscal rules that enable greater investment to support public services on the transition to net zero.
Last week, I met the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and raised the need for investment in public services and infrastructure in the UK budget. I pointed out the Treasury’s finding that departmental budgets had not been reset to account for inflation, which means that they are £15 billion lower this year in real terms than 2021 spending plans. If we had our share of that, I would not have needed to make the spending reductions that I announced last month.
I want to work with the UK Government to address the challenges and, of course, to put our public finances on a more sustainable footing. The Chancellor of the Exchequer’s commitment to multiyear budgets will help, but it is not sufficient: we need a wider range of fiscal tools to manage our budget.