Hansard

Thank you for remembering my name, Presiding Officer. I was a bit worried for a second. I also thank the First Minister for early sight of her statement today.

Last week, I had the pleasure of visiting the Southside general practice in my constituency of Edinburgh Central. I sat down with the two general practitioner partners and discussed the problems that they are facing. Ever-increasing demands on their time and pressure on funding meant that they had taken the hard decision to hand their practice back for it to be taken over by the local health board. With the building due to be sold next year, they were worried that the practice would be broken up and that the thousands of patients whom it has served for decades would be tossed to the four winds. The doctors fear that they will be some of the first of a large number of GPs who are feeling that they have no option but to do the same. Those women are deeply committed to their job and they are deeply frustrated at a system that is not working for them.

If there is one priority that the Parliament faces as we get back to work today, it is surely to spend 100 per cent of our time on issues like this, on people who want to contribute and want to get on and are looking for the Government to help them, and for the service providers across the land who find that their jobs are getting harder, the support is getting less, and the centre cannot hold.

It is time for a Government and Parliament that deal with the real and present problems that we face: the challenges that are faced by doctors in general practice, a profession that cannot find staff because one in four training posts is lying vacant; the challenges that are faced by an education system that is still failing to give our poorest communities a real ladder of opportunity; or the immediate problems that we see in our economy, which can too easily feed through to fewer jobs and reduced quality of life for many.

It is up to us to act. There is a bulging in-tray for the Government to address that requires all of its attention right now. I will set out today what I believe are the right priorities for Scotland and how we will act in opposition to the SNP Government during the coming year.

First, I read in last weekend’s press that the economy was to be the First Minister’s priority. She is right to make it so, even if the evidence of her Government suggests otherwise. Growth in Scotland is already faltering. The oil price crash has hit us hard. Added to that, we know that there will be an impact on the economy because of the EU referendum. We do not know the scale of that but, as the Prime Minister said at the weekend, we should prepare for difficult times ahead.

I do not try to downplay the significance of the referendum decision for one moment, and I know that many people in Scotland remain worried about the future. However, I do not subscribe to the view that we are helpless to act in the face of Brexit, nor do I think that breaking up a union that is worth four times more to Scotland than the EU will help matters very much. What I propose are practical steps that we can take in this Parliament to help us to ride out the uncertainty and emerge stronger.

In areas where there is common ground, we want to work constructively with the Scottish Government to improve legislation. In the First Minister’s statement, that includes a new manufacturing institute, investment in research and development and the decommissioning plan. Members on the Conservative benches also want to reform air passenger duty, but we believe in a more tailored approach than a blanket 50 per cent reduction could ever achieve. We will also need to work out what impact that reduction would have on the climate change targets, which have been emphasised in the Government’s new climate change bill that was announced today.

However, the First Minister’s team will not be surprised to learn that we do not see a huge amount of scope over the coming year for SNP-Conservative consensus on the economic path forward. Overall, on the economy, I am left disappointed by the SNP’s failure to listen. For example, only yesterday, 13 of Scotland’s leading trade bodies wrote to the Scottish Government over its decision to charge firms higher rates here than those that are charged in England. They pointed out that one in eight commercial premises in Scotland is paying more simply for the privilege of being based north of the border. There was a time when the SNP saw the unfairness of that. The former finance secretary declared that

“putting Scottish business at a competitive disadvantage ... is a danger that must be avoided.”

Now, the cash grab of the large business supplement means that thousands of firms have that danger brought to their door.

It does not require another of the SNP’s commissions or talking shops to see the problem. The SNP is quite simply sending out a message that this is a place that does not support employers but punishes them. That is a mistake that the SNP is making with families, too.

As the First Minister rightly stated, for the first time, this Parliament will set new income tax bands and rates for the coming year—a reform that I heartily welcome. However, pushing income tax rates above levels in the rest of the UK will not help Scottish growth; it will hinder it. The priority should be to grow the number of taxpayers in Scotland, not to squeeze ever more money from an ever-smaller number.

The economic priority, in short, should be to send out a different message to that which the SNP cleaves to—not a message that piles further uncertainty on top of uncertainty and charges people more in the meantime, but one that unambiguously states that Scotland is going for growth.

Here I confess to a little more frustration with the Scottish Government’s efforts. Elsewhere in the UK, politicians who—like the First Minister and like me—did not support the decision to leave the EU are putting aside their own disappointment at the result in an effort to try to make a crack of it. By contrast, our own Scottish Government’s response was to release a risible fag-packet calculation of costs, purely to try to hide the facts surrounding Scotland’s own deficit. Elsewhere in the UK, the message goes out that we are open for business; here in Scotland, the message is that we will make you pay. Surely it is time for a bit more foresight. Surely it is time for an ambitious and positive economic policy that sells Scotland as the place that we all know it to be—the best place to live and work anywhere in the United Kingdom.

I said two weeks ago that I wanted a new type of Scottish Government and what I meant was this: I want a Government that no longer asks, “How will this boost independence?” but one that asks, “How are we growing the country?” In the past few weeks, we have suggested a few ways to do just that: a greater footprint for Scottish Development International so that it can sell Scottish goods more effectively abroad; an acceleration in the broadband programme for our rural areas so that everyone can get access to superfast broadband, not just those who live in the central belt; and real support for innovation in cutting edge renewables.

In our manifesto, we also outlined plans to create a network of regeneration zones to attract businesses into some of the most deprived areas in our towns and cities. We proposed the creation of a dedicated enterprise agency for the south of Scotland to mirror the remit and work of Highlands and Islands Enterprise. We welcome the fact that the Scottish Government has seen fit to back some of those ideas, but we will continue to push for more.

As regards the Scottish growth scheme, we on this side of the chamber will always work to champion Scottish business and growth but we will seek further detail and input on the mechanics of the scheme before the Government can be assured of our support.

We want to see the Scottish Government putting its own money to work in a way that benefits all. For example, the Scottish Government’s capital budget is set to rise by 14 per cent over the coming spending period. Our priority is to see that extra money being put into a major new investment in home efficiency, far beyond the scope of that which was outlined today. That will reduce our rates of fuel poverty, cut bills for families, improve the health of our nation and create thousands of new jobs, thereby ensuring that the money that we pay into Government helps to support our wider economic future. Now that the Scottish Government has accepted the principle, we will push it into greater ambition with the delivery.

At the same time, we urge the Scottish Government to simplify planning and regulation to help to support a genuinely ambitious house building programme for homes of all types—that means social and affordable homes, but it means private homes, too. House building and house improvement have to be at the top of the agenda, but helping people to buy their property must be part of that mix. The land and buildings transaction tax continues to stifle sections of the housing market and must be reformed, while the roll-out of the additional dwelling supplement has been a total boorach, with people facing vague and conflicting information from solicitors, estate agents and even Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs on rules for payment.

All those measures are important, but the single biggest economic lever that the SNP could pull right now to help this country grow would be to remove the threat of a second referendum. That is what is holding us back and stifling investment in our firms. Taking away that lead weight on our country’s prospects is one thing that the First Minister could do today. She might have hidden that in a throwaway line at the end of her speech, but the bill sits on page 7 of the programme for government, as a direct threat to our nation’s economic growth.

I turn to other areas that the First Minister mentioned. There was a time—a golden age—when she said that education was her top priority and, for about six days, people actually believed her. There is now a clear parliamentary majority here to give more power and control to school leaders, so we will use our position as the main Opposition party to ensure that reforms are fast tracked and are genuine. Reform should not be used as a way of replacing one form of remote control with an even more centralised version. Local school leaders should have real controls that make a genuine difference. We also need new ways of attracting the best and brightest into teaching and into our schools—I have previously made the case in the chamber for a Teach First scheme.

Reforming Scottish education has been our priority for years, so it is good to see the Scottish Government catching up. However, as we reform, it is important that we measure the progress that we make. I repeat my call for the Government to re-enter Scotland into all the main international education comparison tests. If a commitment to improvement is real, the Government has nothing to fear from it being measured.

We agree that more priority should be given to improving childcare services across Scotland and we want more of that money to be directed to children at the earliest stages of life. However, the Scottish Government needs to examine the way that childcare is delivered. As we learned recently from the parents group fair funding for our kids, in many cases, parents cannot take up the childcare that they are entitled to because there are not funded places when they need it. As we have consistently said, it is vital that the Scottish Government recognises the need to organise childcare around parents’ needs, not the needs of the bodies that provide the funding.

At the other end of the scale, it is surely time that the Scottish Government repaired some of the damage that it has inflicted on our college sector over the past nine years. We have had to stand here and watch a fall of 152,000 college places while at the same time employers tell us that the lack of skills in the workplace is now their most pressing problem. Headline-grabbing spending pledges may look swanky etched in stone, but surely it is time for the Scottish Government to put aside self-congratulation and get on with helping those who need it, because this Government has gutted our colleges.

The education secretary will not have his troubles to seek in delivering on many of his Government’s commitments, but let me suggest that he does one thing to make his life easier, which is to clear the Government’s disastrous named person scheme from his desk and start afresh, this time with something that is not unlawful.

We welcome the fact that a new social security bill is to be published and that a new department is to be created to take on the vital task of delivering new welfare powers. Among those new powers, the Parliament will be able to create new benefits in devolved areas and top up UK-wide benefits, including universal credit, tax credits and child benefit. I hope that that will start a new phase in the Scottish Government’s approach to welfare—one that involves spending less time complaining about UK Government policy and more time spelling out what it intends to do with the powers that it now has.

We should include a dedicated employment programme for disabled people and a clear ambition to halve the disability employment gap. Only today, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has given us a timely reminder of the need for a long-term plan to tackle the scourge of poverty. More than anything, we need to use the powers of the Parliament to act early. We spend millions on the consequences of family breakdown, addiction, unemployment and more. We must focus on ways to prevent that breakdown instead.

In our health service, too, we need a similar approach of trying to deal with the social problems that we face rather than just paying for the consequences. Doctors leaders spoke out just days ago, saying that they are flat on their faces because of the pressures that the NHS is facing through a combination of increased demand, increased expectation and funding pressures. As we spelled out in our manifesto, we support extra funding for health budgets across Scotland, but better thinking is required too. Therefore, as we outlined last week, more of the funding pot must now go to general practice. A target of at least 10 per cent by 2020 is the right one. It is not only GPs who support such a shift, but accident and emergency doctors and paramedics, who know that it will take pressure off their services. Shifting resources to primary care, combined with our proposed network of recovery centres, could significantly improve accident and emergency waiting times.

On policing, I welcome the domestic abuse bill that the First Minister outlined and promise positive engagement from my party on it. However, I express real, serious and genuine concern about the railway policing bill. Police Scotland is under immense stress and pressure to operate as effectively as all members would wish it to, and British Transport Police officers have raised objections and concerns regarding their specialist role being absorbed into the centralised force. We back the British Transport Police and ask the Government to think again.

There is plenty on which Scotland needs to focus, but I am frustrated that, rather than the Scottish Government being prepared to do that, its energies are too often diverted into an endless political campaign. The First Minister’s statement today summed that up: it contained plenty of legislation but it was all just served as a warm-up to the attempt to nudge the independence caravan another few inches down the road.

Instead of a coherent vision setting out a long-term direction of travel, the Government simply trots out a shopping list of legislation that fails to hang together. Our vision is for a Government that helps people to get by and get on, that makes economic growth its priority so that we can fund our public services and that believes our best interests are served by respecting the decision to stay within the United Kingdom so that we can get on with our lives and move on. It is hard to spot that unifying vision in today’s programme for government. Instead, the Government seems more focused on clearing up past mistakes than setting a course for the country’s future. The conclusion that many people will draw is that the SNP cupboard is bare except for the only idea that the party has ever had: to split up the UK.

At the end of her speech, the First Minster sought to create a dividing line between our two parties. There is plenty on which we disagree, but the real dividing line in this country is between the SNP, which is desperate to drag us back to a second independence referendum, and the rest of us, who all just want to put it behind us and move on.

As we said in the election campaign, we will provide a strong Opposition to the SNP Government. Today’s programme for government only shows up the need for a strong alternative, which we will provide.