Meeting of the Parliament 30 October 2024
This is all great fun and there is a degree of political knockabout in it, but I am not sure that the debate is telling us a great deal that we do not already know. The reality is that growth in Scotland has been stymied by the decisions of both of Scotland’s Governments: the SNP’s failure to articulate a long-term vision has meant botched interventions and an erratic approach to tax and spend, and the Conservatives’ appalling legacy—Brexit and the Liz Truss mini-budget—are being felt by the whole country. People need hope and a fair deal.
We are all digesting today’s news from the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I join others in recognising the history of this moment, that of the first budget delivered by a female chancellor in more than 800 years of that post.
We are glad that Rachel Reeves has listened to the Liberal Democrats’ calls for more investment in the NHS, because we cannot fix the economy unless we fix the health service and the care crisis around it. I am concerned that any additional spending that results from today’s UK budget will not make the impact that we need it to make here if the plan that underpins it—Scotland’s NHS recovery plan—is wholly flawed. We have record delayed discharge, people waiting years for mental health treatment, and dental deserts, with whole council areas where new patients are unable to register with an NHS dentist. That is all interrupting the flow through our NHS, making waits longer and preventing people from getting back to work and getting on in life. Let us look at long Covid: one study in April indicated that its economic impact to Scotland could amount to £120 million every year and 11,000 jobs.
The Scottish Government is running out of friends when it comes to the national care service, too. Front-line workers, unions and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and now every Opposition party stand opposed to it. We absolutely need to fix the care crisis in our country, but that cannot happen while the Scottish Government remains wedded to that doomed act of centralisation, which would represent a gargantuan budget line.
There were big and difficult decisions for the new chancellor to make, but we fear that she has got too many of those decisions wrong. Workers, entrepreneurs and businesses up and down the country will be poring over the budget, too, right now. Raising employers’ national insurance is a tax on recruitment and high streets and will make the health and care crisis potentially worse by hitting small care providers, who have been hit by the pandemic, the spike in prices and input costs, and are now hit by today’s news.
To create a strong and growing economy, we need to back small business, fix the healthcare crisis and invest in the green jobs of the future, as well as fix our broken relationship with Europe. By ruling out a youth mobility scheme or long-term goals, such as rejoining the single market, the UK Government is trying to fix the economy with one hand tied behind its back.
Instead of raising the money that we need by reversing Conservative tax cuts for the big banks or asking social media and tech giants to pay more to clean up their mess with regard to the wreckage of our young people’s mental health, the chancellor has chosen unfair tax hikes that will hurt the hard-working families, small businesses and family farms that are the engine rooms of our economy.
The Scottish Government now has choices to make as it looks ahead to its budget in December. In the past, it has chosen poorly, as embodied by the ferries scandal—hundreds of millions of pounds over budget and still not serving the islanders who have been so badly let down. After years of distraction and waste, it is time to focus on what really matters: putting communities first; fixing the NHS with fast access to treatment, general practitioners, dentists, and world-class mental health services; lifting up Scottish education; delivering a fair deal for Scotland’s carers; and fixing our crumbling infrastructure while growing Scotland’s economy.
These are important days. The lines and the detail contained in Rachel Reeves’s budget, which are now being pored over, will set the weather for the remainder of this session of Parliament and the early days of the next. It is important that this Government makes the right choices with the money that is coming.