Scotland’s Future
The next item of business is a debate on motion S4M-04340, in the name of Johann Lamont, on Scotland’s future. I remind members that the debate is heavily oversubscribed. Your time limits will be extremely strict. I hope that we can accommodate all members who want to speak.
14:40
Presiding Officer, I note what you say about the debate being oversubscribed. It is our aspiration that this be a serious debate for the whole of Scotland. The noises from the Scottish National Party benches to my right suggest that those members have no intention of having a serious debate about these matters.
Life in opposition could be very easy: sit back; do not say anything controversial; criticise the Government’s weaknesses; and hope that, come the election in a few years’ time, people will think that we can do a better job. However, a few weeks ago, I met a group of carers and, for me, it was the final straw with regard to things that have been worrying me for many months.
The carers were home helps—kind and compassionate people who support our elderly in their homes, providing meals and helping them to wash and to do other day-to-day tasks that most of us take for granted. While talking to them, I learned of the concept of task and go. I heard about carers who have to fit in four visits in an hour. I heard about carers who are instructed not to talk to their clients, because they simply do not have the time.
We know that there are elderly people in our communities who see a different face every time they are due a visit. We remember all too well the powerful testimony of the widow of the late Ken Maitland, who had the indignity of having more than 106 carers through his door in a year. We know that there are elderly people who opt out of the care support because it is no longer working for them. Is this really the kind of care that we want for our grandparents, our mothers and fathers, and—when the time comes—ourselves?
I decided that enough was enough. Every week, we are told by the SNP Government how wonderful life is in Scotland and that any overhanging problems can be swept away with one magic solution. The presentation that we hear from the First Minister every Thursday bears no resemblance to what I am hearing in my community and across Scotland every other week.
We are not playing the game anymore. We cannot tell these women that everything is going to be fine. We cannot finesse something that is not delivering for people. We will refuse to have respect for a Scottish Government that claims to care but refuses to acknowledge those women and their concerns—a Government that refuses to acknowledge what is going on in the real world.
The Scottish Government does not like to be confronted with reality. In March, the First Minister accused my colleague Jackie Baillie of telling scare stories about the shortage of blankets in Scottish hospitals. It took a visit to Parliament by 92-year-old Helen Macbeth and Jack Barr, a grandfather, to tell him about their experiences before he was prepared to admit that old people were going without blankets at night.
Does the member accept that the real people in my constituency, which is one of the neediest in the country, are very positive about no tuition fees, free prescriptions and the freeze in council tax?
I would hazard a guess that some of the women I met in Glasgow come from Mr Mason’s constituency. It is no comfort to them to tell them that things are fantastic when they know, every day of their lives, that that is not the case. They asked me, “How can this go on? How is it allowed that we create these kinds of circumstances in our communities?” The member might want to hide from it, but he should listen to people across our communities who are telling us something different.
The First Minister told his party conference last year that
“the rocks will melt with the sun”
before he allows tuition fees for Scottish students. He did not say, “unless you are a part-time student or a graduate.” He did not say that the rocks would melt with the sun before he cut the bursaries of Scotland’s poorest students by nearly £900. He did not say that the rocks would melt with the sun before he let the number of people going to college drop by 18,000. He said none of those things; he let Michael Russell go ahead and make all of those things happen in what is probably the single biggest betrayal of Scotland’s young people.
It cannot be finessed, wished away or spun, and it cannot be explained with the selective use of statistics; that is what is happening in the real world and the SNP Government refuses to acknowledge it.
On that point, I wonder whether Ms Lamont would like to tell us how she would reply to NUS Scotland, which said in an e-mail to us all this morning that it is
“deeply concerned by any suggestions of a return to tuition fees for Scotland’s students,”
and that it is
“clear that Scotland as a country and a society values the principle that access to education should be based on the ability to learn not the wealth to pay.”
I would ask the NUS: is it right that students who cannot get a place in a further education college are to pay the price of Mike Russell’s policies? We do no students a service and we do them a grave disservice by implying that one set of students is more important than another.
Mike Russell is the man who penned that great work “Grasping the Thistle”, in which he tells us of his plans to privatise the national health service and informs us that Scotland’s real problem with the union is that we get too much money out of it—he says that it is literally killing us with kindness. We do not agree with Mike Russell on many things but, for those members who were not watching the Labour Party conference this week and going on Twitter, let me read this passage from Mr Russell:
“Put bluntly universality now drags down both the quality of service to those most in need, and the ability of government to provide such services. However, our political parties do not have the courage to address the issue for fear of losing votes.”
I thank the member for raising my sales again. I am more than prepared to say today that my experience of the recession and of the loss of 25,000 university places south of the border makes me believe that I was wrong. [Interruption.]
Order.
That is the generous contribution to the debate that I will make. Will Ms Lamont now admit that she is wrong to victimise Scotland’s young people?
I think that the real difference is that Mr Russell opposed Alex Salmond when he wrote the book but now relies on his patronage. It is illogical to say that we would spend less on the poor in a time of recession than in a time of plenty—it makes no sense whatsoever. [Interruption.]
Order.
Unlike Mike Russell, I am not against universality. I just want to know how we are going to pay for it. We know that such concerns exist at the heart of the Government, but those who have them are too cynical to voice them.
I will quote another one of the SNP Government’s front bench, our Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing, Alex Neil, who said:
“It would be inappropriate to use scarce resources to provide free central heating systems for some of our retired bankers, for example, who receive substantial pensions.” —[Official Report, 14 May 2009; c 17481.]
That is a perfectly reasonable proposition, but it is at odds with the view of the Deputy First Minister, who claims that she does not believe in means testing, even though she was the cabinet secretary in charge at the time of Alex Neil’s statement.
If Nicola Sturgeon is serious about universality, I look forward to her reversing the means testing for the education maintenance allowance, which cuts off at £20,000; I look forward to her extending universality to dental treatment; I look forward to her ending hotel charges in care homes; I look forward to her withdrawing the bill that increases means testing for legal aid; and I look forward to finding out where she is going to find the money to pay for it all.
We have a Deputy First Minister who decries anyone who challenges her definition of universality and we have a First Minister who has never met a tax that he does not want to cut. We know that those things are not consistent—they are incompatible—and yet this dishonest Government continues the myth that in an independent Scotland we could have Scandinavian welfare while cutting tax to a level that would make Mitt Romney blush.
Alex Neil is right about one thing—that we have scarce resources, with £3.3 billion still to be removed from the Scottish budget. I agree with the SNP that the Tory Government is cutting too far and fast, but the reality is that those cuts will have to be addressed.
Last week, Nicola Sturgeon invented a Labour cuts commission, but what precisely did she imagine that John Swinney asked Crawford Beveridge and Campbell Christie to do? He asked, “What do we do in tough times?” and Beveridge said that we should ask not whether something is desirable but whether it is affordable and whether, in tough times, we expect those with the broadest backs to carry the heaviest burden.
Of course, Nicola Sturgeon is in complete denial, but the reality is that people out there are facing the consequences of SNP cuts every day. [Interruption.] SNP members might think that it is funny, but to care workers, mothers who are worried about the quality of their children’s education or young people who cannot access college, it is not funny or imagined—it is the real world. How will the SNP protect people and on whom will it put the burden?
Last year, the Christie commission report, which was commissioned by John Swinney, warned that
“Contentious issues such as the continuation of universal entitlements must be considered openly and transparently, rather than in the current polarised terms.”
I urge the SNP to listen to the man who responded to its request and set up that commission. It seems that, in Scottish politics, it is just not possible to consider those issues openly and honestly. The debate has been closed down because it suits some people to keep it polarised.
Johann Lamont has said:
“Scotland cannot be the only something for nothing country in the world”.
To which people in Scotland was she referring?
The fact is that the people whom I described who are living with the consequence of SNP cuts are paying the price for the SNP’s pretence that everything is dead straightforward. Everybody pays a price but, in tough times, it ought not to be the weak and the vulnerable—it should be those of us with the broader backs.
I believe that my approach is in the national interest. The easy option for me as leader of the Opposition would have been to sit back, put my fingers in my ears and pretend that we can afford to pay for everything for evermore. However, I care too much about Scotland to do that and I care too much about public services to let them bleed to death. The debate that I called for is not one about universality versus means testing; it is about what we can and cannot afford. It is about affordability and sustainability and how we protect the most vulnerable in these tough times.
What the SNP has to say about universality will be of little comfort to young people from poor backgrounds who cannot get a place at college, older people who are faced with declining standards of care, and people who lose their jobs.
Will the member give way?
The member is in her last 30 seconds.
The reality is that the SNP does not have a basic understanding of fairness. In my remaining time, I can give only one example. Is it fair that a mother has to pay £5 a day for breakfast club and £11 a day for after-school club just so that she can get to work?
We want and need an open and honest debate. As long as the SNP closes down the debate, makes a false argument about the challenges and remains in denial about the cuts that it is implementing, the people who pay the price will be those across Scotland who do not have the power of sitting at the table with Alex Salmond and having his ear. The poor people in our communities and working families are concerned. They have the right to have their voices heard and the Government has an obligation to respond to them.
I move,
That the Parliament notes that cuts are currently taking place at both national and local level and having an impact on people’s daily lives; recognises that it is those most in need that are often acutely affected by these cuts; notes that the Centre for Public Policy for Regions has calculated that over three quarters of the real-terms decline in resource spend has still to come; recognises that, at the same time, demographic and social pressures are increasing; agrees with the Commission on the Future Delivery of Public Services that “Contentious issues such as the continuation of universal entitlements must be considered openly and transparently, rather than in the current polarised terms”, and calls on all members to consider how to fully fund and sustain high quality public services in Scotland that best support the needs of Scots now and in the future.
14:54
It is always good to start on a consensual note, so let me kick off with something on which I agree with Johann Lamont. We have big questions to ask and answer about the future of Scotland and the kind of country that we want to be, so I do not criticise her for asking the questions. Unlike her friends on the Tory benches, however, I take issue with the conclusion that she has reached.
That conclusion has its roots in Labour’s deeply misguided belief that this Parliament should be responsible for divvying up the national cake but that it should have no power to influence the overall size of that cake. That conclusion puts at risk many of the hard-won social policy victories of this Parliament, such as free personal care for the elderly, and the council tax freeze that only five months ago was backed by Labour when it promised to continue with that approach for the next five years.
Nick Clegg has apologised for breaking his promises in Government; Labour must be the first party on record to manage to break its promises from opposition. That would be funny were it not so tragic. It beggars belief that a Labour leader would reach the conclusion that the best response to Tory cuts is to take away benefits and opportunities from pensioners, the sick, families who are already struggling to make ends meet, and working-class kids who aspire to a university education.
First, does the cabinet secretary think that Campbell Christie was a Tory? Secondly, the responsibility of Government, regardless of the size of the cake, is to ensure that the cake is distributed fairly. By any test, her decisions and those of her Government have not led to a fair distribution. It is not good enough to say that we do not have the powers; the Government still has the responsibility. The cake is the size it is and the Government needs to answer why it has not distributed it fairly.
I will come on to the choices that we should be able to make, but let us first remind ourselves about how Johann Lamont described policies designed to take pressure off household budgets, to give our elderly people dignity and peace of mind, and to ensure that education is not the preserve of the wealthy but open to all who have the ability to learn. She called all those policies part of a “something for nothing” culture. What an insult to those who work hard, pay their taxes, save what they can and simply expect that their Government give them something back in return.
Is it dignified to lie in a hospital bed without a blanket?
Labour is arguing that we should remove free personal care from our elderly. I take no lessons in dignity from anybody on the Labour side of the chamber.
Here is the lie. Labour tries to say that it is all about making the well-off pay more—people such as Johann Lamont and me—but let me tell Labour the truth and say who Johann Lamont has really put in the frame and who she has chosen to make this debate about. She has made the debate about the pensioner in my constituency who has worked all her life and who told me recently that, before concessionary travel, she rarely saw her elderly sister who lives in Inverness but that she can now do so whenever she wants; the woman with a serious, life-limiting chronic condition earning not much more than £16,000 a year who told me that she often had to choose which of her medicines to take because she could not afford to buy them all; the dementia sufferer, whose free personal care may make the difference between her having to sell her family home and not; and the young person from a working-class family who dreams of going to university but who knows that if she has to pay tuition fees she will not be able to do so.
Johann Lamont likes to make things personal, so let me tell her that that last anecdote is about me—I was that working-class kid going to university. We are the beneficiaries of free education; we have no right to pull up the ladder of opportunity and deprive today’s young people of what we took for granted. Those are the people that Johann Lamont has chosen to make the debate about. No wonder that voices in her party are calling her approach chaotic and shambolic.
Let us put it to the test. Hands up those on the Labour benches who think that we should take away the bus pass. Hands up those who think that we should reintroduce tuition fees or take away free personal care. Hands up those who think that we should restore prescription charges. [Interruption.]
Neil Findlay (Lothian) (Lab) rose—
The cabinet secretary used two examples—elderly people and the services that they rely on, and a young person going to university. What is her answer to the elderly person who faces an unfair system of social care charging? What is her answer to the student applying to college this year, under the SNP Government, and not when she was a student applying for university?
It is that this Parliament should have power to grow the economy and to increase revenues and should not be forced to choose between one student and another. [Interruption.]
Order. We cannot hear the cabinet secretary.
Those on the Tory benches would have been quick to put their hands up to my questions, because all the people that I talk about are people that Labour thinks should bear the brunt of Tory cuts—the people that Labour would subject to the indignities of means testing for their bus pass or their personal care.
We think differently. We will protect the council tax freeze, free education, bus passes, personal care for our elderly and the principle of healthcare free at the point of need. We will do it within a balanced budget—a budget that has been cut year on year by the Tory Government that Labour is so keen to team up with—and we will strive to boost growth, to protect jobs and household budgets, and to make Scotland a fairer place to live.
Neil Findlay rose—
I think that it was a mistake right enough, but I think that I am the only one here old enough to have a bus pass.
Members: No.
The cabinet secretary gave the example of her constituent’s elderly sister in Inverness. My sister will kill me for saying that she is elderly but, although I believe utterly in the principle of universality, I would not mind having a certain number of passes per year that I could use to go and see my sister. The cabinet secretary was asking for ideas. She could tinker with the bus pass without giving up the principle.
Stewart Stevenson might take issue with the member’s claim to be the only person in the Parliament who qualifies for a bus pass.
We hear lots of examples cited of millionaires who qualify for bus passes. Most of them will not use their bus passes, and we do not pay for people who do not use their bus passes. People like my constituent rely on the bus pass—those are the people whom Labour wants to penalise. [Interruption.]
Order.
The point is that we have made choices and they are choices that we will stand by and choices that we were elected on.
However, those choices are not the biggest difference between Labour and the SNP. The biggest difference is that, while Labour is happy to accept a future for Scotland that has us simply deciding how we pass on Tory cuts, we are not. The real tragedy of Johann Lamont’s speech is that she has allowed herself to be imprisoned in a Tory straitjacket. We think differently. We want all of this country’s resources to be available to this Parliament so that we can seek to chart a different course and shape a different future.
I have said it before and I will say it again: independence is not a magic pill. It will not take away the difficult financial climate or the difficult decisions that we face but it will open up different choices.
Neil Findlay rose—
The cabinet secretary is in her last minute.
In Johann Lamont’s world, the only choices are whether to punish the pensioner or the student and whether to pass the cuts to the sick or the family struggling with council tax. With independence, we will have the ability to make different choices: the choice to get our economy growing faster so that revenues increase and the choice to shape a welfare system that reduces welfare costs by lifting people out of poverty. We will also have the choice—the real choice—not to spend hundreds of millions of pounds on Trident nuclear weapons but to invest instead in the things that really matter.
That is the real debate. It is a debate about who will determine the choices that define our politics and who will shape our future as a country: a right-wing Tory Government or this Parliament and the people whose lives are affected by the decisions that we take. I know that it was not Johann Lamont’s intention, but I have no doubt that her interventions last week will lead many more people to the latter option and to the conclusion that our destiny should be in our own hands—the conclusion that Scotland will be better off independent.
I move amendment S4M-04340.4, to leave out from “that cuts” to end and insert:
“the clear choice now facing the people of Scotland between managing a declining budget determined by the priorities of a UK Government or choosing a better way in which a Scottish Parliament, elected by the people of Scotland, has access to Scotland’s resources in order to ensure a fairer, wealthier and stronger society; recognises the health, societal and economic benefits of the universal provision provided under devolution and rejects the idea that this offers “something for nothing”; welcomes the actions taken by the Scottish Government since 2007 to ensure the sustainability of spending in Scotland, including the focus on preventative spending, reform of public services and the empowerment of communities as set out in the Independent Budget Review and the report of the Commission on the Future Delivery of Public Services, and agrees that, in order to ensure that Scotland reaches its full potential, can tackle poverty, protect key public services such as the NHS and deliver a socially just and economically vibrant society, it is necessary for the Scottish Parliament to have the full powers of an independent parliament.”
15:05
The Deputy First Minister began her speech on a note of consensus, so I will begin mine on a note of consensus. I agree entirely with Nicola Sturgeon when she says that independence is not a magic pill—it is nothing of the sort.
Will Mr Brown take an intervention?
Normally, I would not take an intervention so early in my speech but, as Mr Findlay has been desperate to intervene on every speaker, I will take one.
Is the magic pill that the member talks about the same one that is being given to prisoners in jail for their conjugal rights?
I have no comment to make on that—I am genuinely stumped.
Let us be serious. If we are honest, the debate on universal services is not one that any member wants to have. People like universal services. Inaction on those services feels like the path of least resistance and, in the short term, it most certainly is. It is not a debate that we want to have, but it is a debate that we need to have. I agree with what Johann Lamont had to say on that point. We must take some decisions now, and we must look into the issue extremely carefully.
Why? First, universal services cost substantial sums of money. In a report last year, Audit Scotland said that the combined cost of free personal care, eye tests and travel was around £870 million a year and rising. That is not to say that the Conservative Party or any party in the Parliament wants to get rid of any of those services as the Deputy First Minister suggested—I make that absolutely clear—but it means that we should look at how they operate, including the age limit and other criteria that make people eligible for them. Holding that view does not mean automatically that we want to get rid of them.
Those services cost a lot of money. At the same time, we face a tough environment for public finances, with demographic change coming in behind it. Between 2008 and 2033, the number of people aged 60 or over will rise by 50 per cent, and the number of people aged 75 or over is set to almost double. If we are honest, we know that doing nothing is not an option. It is not good enough just to make a stump speech about independence. It is important to look carefully, critically and analytically at the issues.
Today, the Scottish Government has given the impression that it is not open to any discussion on any universal service. Let us look at bus travel, on which the Deputy First Minister gave the impression that there is no chance of anything changing under the SNP. A couple of years ago—in 2009—in its own review of the Scotland-wide free bus travel scheme, the Scottish Government concluded:
“there may be a case in the future for examining the value for money of concessionary travel for those passengers over the age of 60 in full time employment”.
One of the final recommendations in that report was
“That further work should be undertaken specifically to examine the long-term sustainability of the Scheme.”
In 2009, the Scottish Government accepted that the system could be reviewed and that the age criteria could be changed over time, but in 2011, just before the Scottish Parliament elections, it was suddenly against the idea and felt that such changes would be a terrible crime. Ever since, the Government has made it sound as though anyone who questions concessionary travel automatically wants to remove it. What a lot of rot, given the Government’s own words a mere three years ago.
The reason why it is so important to examine our universal services is that they are primarily demand driven. With the very best of intentions, we have created demand-driven engines in our budget. Professor David Bell said:
“the big thing about universal services is that they are open-ended commitments. I think that they should be revisited every five years to see whether they remain affordable.”—[Official Report, Finance Committee, 25 January 2012; c 578.]
It is also important to look at the afford-to-pay principle. We heard some discussion of that and we heard some examples of people who benefited from the concessionary travel scheme—Nicola Sturgeon gave an excellent and perfectly fair example. However, we also hear examples of people who can and are perfectly willing to pay but who do not pay because they have free bus passes. We could trade examples, but let us look at what the former Auditor General for Scotland had to say. He is someone who did not just assume that millionaires did not go on the bus although they have bus passes. He said:
“the cost of providing free transport to people who are over 60 and still in employment is £34 million or so.”—[Official Report, Finance Committee, 25 January 2012; c 587.]
Will the member take an intervention?
I am afraid that the member is finishing.
I have only 12 seconds left, Mr McDonald. I apologise, but I cannot take your intervention.
My amendment is likely to be defeated, because Mr Swinney’s will pass. However, we have asked that, as a first step, the Scottish Government agrees to publish in a few months’ time 10 years’ worth of projected data for universal services so that we can all analyse the figures to the best of our ability and have an open, honest and transparent debate on the issue.
I move amendment S4M-04340.3, to leave out from first “cuts” to end and insert:
“demographic and social pressures are increasing; agrees with the Commission on the Future Delivery of Public Services that “Contentious issues such as the continuation of universal entitlements must be considered openly and transparently, rather than in the current polarised terms”; calls on all members to consider how to fully fund and sustain high quality public services in Scotland that best support the needs of Scots now and in the future, and calls on the Scottish Government to publish, by the end of 2012, the most accurate possible forecasts for spending on universal services in Scotland for each of the next 10 years.”
We now move to open debate. I remind members that time is very tight. I cannot compensate for interventions, so it is the member’s choice whether to take them.
15:11
When I first saw that the title of the Opposition debate was “Scotland’s Future”, I thought that we would be debating the fact that six months after Scottish Labour’s leader announced her intention to appoint a “let’s try again to kill independence stone dead” commission, she had finally confirmed its members and timetable. However, this debate is about a different Labour commission—the “let’s kill the principles of the Labour Party in Scotland stone dead” commission, or, as Johann Lamont called it earlier, the cuts commission.
The motion invites us to agree with Campbell Christie that we require open and transparent consideration, rather than consideration on the current polarised terms. Yesterday on BBC Radio, Johann Lamont called for “a mature debate”. However, last week, Johann Lamont made it clear that for her, the debate is over. In the language of The Daily Mail, she targeted Scotland’s elderly, her sick, and her young people to carry the can for the economic crisis that was precipitated by Labour and worsened by the Tories. The welfare state—trumpeted by the better together campaign as the “glue of the Union”—was dismissed by Johann Lamont as the “something for nothing culture”. She tells us that we misunderstand. She simply wants a debate and claims not to know in what direction Labour’s policy is heading. Unfortunately for her, we don't need to rely on Johann Lamont to see where Labour is going.
Watching Labour’s conference, I saw Margaret Curran, Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland at Westminster, rush ahead of Johann Lamont, leader of Scottish Labour, to greet Ed Miliband. That action revealed Labour’s true pecking order. It reminded me that, as long ago as January, Margaret Curran gave much the same speech as Johann Lamont gave last week. So, Margaret Curran at Westminster signals policy changes on devolved matters before Johann Lamont gets there.
That was of course reinforced by Liam Byrne—he of the note that said “there’s no money left”. Ironically, Mr Byrne is now Labour’s welfare spokesman. At the Labour conference, he said:
“There has always been a balance in the welfare state between universal benefits and targeted benefits and I’m afraid as part of Ed’s zero-based review that balance has got to be looked at”.
So, what was trumpeted as being the leader of Scottish Labour laying out her stall in a grand speech was actually just a badly executed part of a London-led campaign aimed at the 2015 United Kingdom election. The more Johann Lamont struggles to align her actions to Labour’s UK campaign, the clearer it becomes that the term “Scottish Labour” is just an electoral fig leaf. London calls the shots and is more interested in Scotland’s voting strength than it is in allowing Scots to have the power to make decisions that affect their children, their families, their community and their country.
Scottish Labour even called in its fourth emergency service—Douglas Alexander—to try to rescue that speech. He invoked Aneurin Bevan, who said:
“The language of priorities is the religion of socialism”.
The priorities of the people of Scotland, socialist or otherwise, are different from those of United Kingdom Labour. The people of Scotland showed that clearly when they voted in May last year for the SNP—a party that espouses social democratic values and laid out an honest manifesto.
Of course Labour’s 2011 manifesto included a pledge that there would be
“no upfront or back-end tuition fees for Scottish university students.”
Scottish Labour has welcomed the abolition of prescription charges, and as we heard from the Deputy First Minister, Labour’s council candidates pledged council tax freezes and falsely accused the SNP of trying to do away with concessionary bus travel. Yet Labour members wonder why no one takes them seriously when they say that they want an honest and mature debate.
Yes, choices have to be made. The SNP Government has made hard choices and has competently and efficiently delivered balanced budgets.
The much-loved and much-missed Campbell Christie explained that a supportive and inclusive society is about much more than money. He said:
“People say we can’t afford things now but in 1948 we couldn’t afford the NHS and the pension schemes but we did it”.
It is about the common good. It is not about people wanting something for nothing.
That is not to pretend that there is no crisis—of course there is a crisis. So much for the union dividend. However, if we are to deal properly with the crisis, make choices, decide priorities and maintain the values that Scotland holds dear, we need power over all aspects of tax and welfare.
Whatever the outcome of the 2015 election, Labour cannot or will not deliver. The better-together parties want to maintain the status quo—Westminster business as usual—extracting maximum benefit from Scotland for the UK Treasury.
If we follow Labour’s line, the price will be wholesale withdrawal of benefits from low-paid Scots and a bloated bureaucracy to enforce means testing. Who would have thought, after all the years of the working people’s struggle, that the best that the Labour Party could offer would be an end to universal benefits and one-nation conservatism?
The only way to get the powers that this Parliament needs and to sustain Scotland’s values is by voting a resounding yes to a Scotland with the full powers of independence. I support John Swinney’s amendment.
15:17
It is a shame when a debate as significant and serious as this one is reduced to sloganising about independence. Whether or not Scotland votes to separate from the rest of the United Kingdom, we will still have to confront the problem that is in front of us and we will still have to face up to hard realities. That will not change, whatever Scotland decides.
The SNP is attempting to present itself as favouring universalism while all the other parties are against it, so let us get this clear from the start: the SNP is not in favour of universalism. The SNP has not advocated universal housing benefit or council tax benefit. It did not argue for universal free central heating systems. It does not support universalism in the context of NHS dental treatment, NHS optical vouchers, travel costs to hospitals, free school meals or legal aid. This debate is not about one party supporting universalism and the others opposing it.
The debate should be about what we regard as our country’s priorities and how we use our resources to tackle those priorities. Is it a priority to do something for the sick, the disabled and the disadvantaged? Is it right to skew resources in favour of people who are least able to look after themselves? Or do we think that the easiest thing to do is to give all members of the Scottish Parliament more money, through a council tax freeze, through free prescriptions and in other ways?
Given what the member has just said, what about the position of Glasgow City Council, which promised a five-year council tax freeze in May?
It is in exactly the same position as my own council in Renfrewshire, which said the same thing in the local government election campaign. The reality is that if those councils do not freeze the council tax for five years they will be financially penalised by this SNP Government. They faced a very hard choice: were they willing to make the elderly, the poor, the sick and the disabled pay even more as a result? They decided, pragmatically and correctly, that they could not do so.
Will the member give way?
No.
What is the reality of what is happening in our councils across the country? I can speak only from my experience in Renfrewshire; in fact, Renfrewshire Council’s ex-leader, Derek Mackay, is in the chamber this afternoon. In 2010, under this SNP Government, that council faced £75 million of cuts targeted over three years—and the situation has worsened. It produced what it termed a difficult choices consultation and decided that in order to do all these things that are so good for everyone in the chamber it would have to cut £300,000 from home care services, £175,000 from care homes for older people and £743,000 from the social work budget.
As for the question whether we believe in universalism, do we believe in it for those who have to rely on community alarms and who had to pay more money for that service? Do we believe in universalism for the older people who go to and get meals at day centres? We asked them to pay more every day for those facilities. Do we believe in universalism for those who need extra care and get housing meals? We put up their charges by £7 a week. Do we believe in universalism for disabled people or those with learning disabilities who need transport to day centres? In Renfrewshire, when Derek Mackay was council leader, we decided to charge them £2.50 a day so that people like me could get their council tax freeze. Is that fair? Is that humane? Where is the universalism there?
Mr Henry referred to the consultations that councils have carried out—in this case, Renfrewshire’s. Is he aware that when the choices were outlined and communities asked whether they supported the council tax freeze—no matter whether it was SNP policy—the public in Renfrewshire, even in light of all the information, still chose to have it?
Mr Henry, you have 30 seconds.
This will be the same Derek Mackay who voted to give free school meals to the school that his child attended while cutting all the other services. He can afford it. This debate—[Interruption.]
Order!
This debate should be about priorities for the least well-off. The SNP has shown that it has no care or compassion for those people.
15:23
Of utmost importance to me and I am sure everyone in the chamber is Scotland’s future, whether as a normal independent nation, which I obviously favour; as a country with the limited powers that we currently have; or as a country with more powers, as promised by the Prime Minister earlier this year. Time will tell and the people of Scotland will decide.
I grew up at a time when the economic heart—[Interruption.]
Order! I cannot hear the member.
When I was growing up, Inverclyde’s economic heart was being systematically dismantled by a Tory UK Government. In that time, Inverclyde, the area where I still live, has survived. Nevertheless, there have been some positives. For example, Ferguson Shipbuilders in Port Glasgow, through Scottish Government investment, is building the world’s first two hybrid ferries and creating jobs, and Stepper Technology in Greenock has doubled its workforce over the past year. Nevertheless, more needs to be done.
There have been huge challenges and there still are, but Inverclyde—the area where I grew up and still live—can have a successful future. As well as addressing employment issues, we need to ensure that we protect everyone who lives there.
That is where the Parliament has worked, not only for Inverclyde but for Scotland. It has introduced a number of initiatives that have had a positive impact on all our constituents: free personal care for the elderly, free eye tests, the concessionary travel scheme, free dental check-ups, free prescriptions and the council tax freeze.
I note that the West Dunbartonshire Council leader, Martin Rooney, only today warmly welcomed the council tax freeze in the Lennox Herald. He said:
“we have no plans to raise council tax over the next five years. I accept the right of my leader of the Labour Party to make these comments”—
the comments from last week—
“but we’ve made plans”.
I agree with him on that point.
Will Stuart McMillan accept that it is perfectly reasonable for local councils to make their own decisions about setting local taxes? Indeed, is that not the right way to go in future?
I agree that local authorities should make their own decisions, but I also—[Interruption.] I also agree that the council tax freeze has been hugely beneficial throughout Scotland, including West Dunbartonshire.
I also appreciate that Scotland and other parts of these islands face financial challenges due to the huge debt burden left by UK Labour and the failing austerity measures introduced by the Tory-Lib Dem coalition—a cuts agenda that goes too far and too fast.
We all know that the former chancellor—and now the leader of the anti-independence campaign—Alistair Darling said that Labour’s cuts would be deeper and tougher than Thatcher’s. He said that before he was booted out of office in 2010. I know how Margaret Thatcher’s cuts affected Inverclyde and I assure members that I do not want to go back to that.
Johann Lamont’s speech last week and the verbal gymnastics that happened in its aftermath only highlight to SNP members what Scotland’s continuing in the union would look like. Like Mr Miliband and Disraeli, I, too, can use the phrase “one nation”. With one nation, they will slash more services. In one nation, we will pay more council tax. We should vote for one nation if we want free personal care to be scrapped, if we want to pay tuition fees and if we want to pay for prescriptions. The list could go on, and I am happy to provide some more helpful slogans to the anti-independence campaign.
Will Stuart McMillan give way?
I have already taken one intervention.
According to Professor Arthur Midwinter, who advises Labour on its cuts commission, all universal provision is on the table. If we are to have an open and honest debate with everything on the table, will Labour confirm or deny whether any of the following will be on the hit list? Will free eye tests and dental check-ups be on it? Are there to be fewer apprenticeships when, week in, week out, Labour members continually call for more apprenticeships?
We have already heard about Glasgow. In its campaign in Glasgow in May this year, Labour’s manifesto highlighted the fact that Glasgow City Council was the first council to introduce the council tax freeze—a manifesto policy on which Johann Lamont obviously campaigned. As I said a few moments ago, Martin Rooney of West Dunbartonshire Council obviously agrees with that policy.
Labour in Glasgow also pledged to provide an affordable warmth dividend of £100 to all people aged over 80 every winter. Will that now be a goner? It also stated that it would continue to
“provide free swimming for the under 18s and over 60s, free golf for the under 18s and free bowling and tennis for all”,
and said:
“Labour will extend free golf on Council courses to the over 60s.”
Labour’s contribution to the debate is clear and obvious. It is that we should pay more council tax, pay for prescriptions if we are ill and pay for eye tests and dental check-ups. It is that senior citizens should pay for travel and their personal care. However, if we play golf, swim, bowl or play tennis, we can do it for free.
The praise that has been lavished on Johann Lamont by her Tory friends in Scotland and Wales may be nice for her to hear, but it is galling for Scotland’s senior citizens, who remember Margaret Thatcher. Who would have thought that Johann Lamont would become Scotland’s Margaret Thatcher?
I wonder how Stuart McMillan feels about his leader saying that the people of Scotland did not have a problem with Thatcher’s economic policies.
I am sorry, but I say again to Johann Lamont: who would have thought that she would become Scotland’s Margaret Thatcher?
People to whom I have spoken have been shocked by Labour’s conversion to Tory policies, but all members know that they are joined at the hip in the better together campaign. They should change the title of the campaign from better together to poorer together. At least some honesty would then come from the unionist parties in the debate.
Let us support Scotland and back John Swinney’s amendment.
15:30
We have faced many challenges in this Parliament, but we did so secure in the knowledge of year-on-year budget uplifts and the trend of increasing resources. We all know that times have changed. The economic forecast remains bleak; unemployment is rising and it remains persistently above the level in the rest of the UK in percentage terms; there are 30,000 fewer public sector workers and our public services are under enormous strain. This is not about talking Scotland down; it is about recognising the reality of the situation that we face in our communities across Scotland.
Over the next few years, our budget is likely to fall by £5.5 billion. We have so far managed to save about 25 per cent of what is required, so it does not take a genius to work out that three quarters of the cuts are still to come.
Meanwhile, out in the real world families are squaring up to that challenge to their household budgets. They are looking at what they need rather than what they want and are considering what is essential rather than what is desirable. It is time that this Government did the same. We need an honest debate that is explicit about the choices that we make. We should not let things happen by default.
At the heart of the debate is social justice, which is the issue that brought many of us into politics and motivates many of us across the chamber to this day. That does not diminish because we have a debate about universal versus targeted provision. It is false for the SNP to propose that one is somehow against the other, because the issue is much more complex than that.
Most mature countries have a mix of universal and targeted social policies. The truth is that many will have systems of targeting within a universal framework, with extra benefits afforded to low income groups.
Will the member give way?
Will the member take an intervention?
I will give way to Margo MacDonald.
I thank the member for giving way—I know that she is under time pressure.
I think that at least two of us on this side of the chamber agree with her absolutely in principle. We have to accept that we are making the best of a bad job. She said that we have been promised that the situation will continue for about 20 years. Does she now see why people want to vote yes in the referendum?
The problem that I have with that premise is that this Government argues that somehow things will be better if people vote for independence. However, people are suffering now and the Government is not dealing with that.
When members consider that the NHS largely functions as a universal benefit—it is free at the point of need and everyone receives a service—they must also consider that parts of it are not universal. To name but a few such examples: NHS dental treatment is means tested, optical vouchers for people to get their glasses are means tested and travel to hospitals is means tested.
I will touch on free prescriptions. The cost of making prescriptions free was £57 million last year and the cost is projected to rise to £61 million next year. That is enough to pay the salaries of 2,000 nurses. That is the choice.
As a nation we spend £1.18 billion on prescriptions—that is a lot of money.
Will the member give way?
No.
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde is projecting a £30 million increase in its prescribing budget this year. It also plans to cut the number of clinical staff by an extra £15 million—that is 500 nurses.
What is the choice? Hands up those on the SNP benches who want 2,500 fewer nurses and midwives—taking their numbers to a seven-year low. No one has raised a hand. Is that the exchange for free prescriptions? We have a choice to make.
Hands up those on the SNP benches who believe that providing an advantage for people such as bankers is right when food banks are appearing in our towns and cities. That is the choice that we face.
For the final time, hands up those on the SNP benches who are content to ignore the anecdotal evidence from general practitioners that people are presenting for cold remedies or indigestion tablets that they would previously have bought over the counter, and to continue to provide free prescriptions rather than investing in patient care. That is the choice, and I see no hands going up.
Last week, Nicola Sturgeon talked about a “dividing line”. Today’s performance shows that she clearly does not realise that the time for soundbite policies and retail politics is over. We need to reflect on the reality of our financial circumstances and to decide what is important now, not at some point in the distant future.
In coming to a close, I will talk about social care. Local government is shouldering the burden. It has been passed 83 per cent of the Scottish Government’s budget cuts, yet those in local government are the very people whom we expect to deliver on the increasing demand for social care. For the first time, people are paying for essential services such as home helps, community alarms and aids and equipment for the disabled. Some costs have risen by 50 per cent in the past three years.
There is a postcode lottery of care. We have different charges, different eligibility criteria and a system of rationing that sees 15-minute care visits as ticking the box. That is not social justice; that is the consequence of the choices that the SNP Government has made.
We all say that we believe in social justice, but we need the courage to deliver it. In times of scarcity, it is essential to target our resources at people who face the biggest challenge.
Presiding Officer, I will leave you with a quick quote.
You must finish.
The quote is:
“The current and future challenges we face could, if not properly responded to, threaten the fabric of social cohesion in Scotland.”
Those are the words of Campbell Christie.
You must finish.
The Government cares about division, derision and denial. That is its motto and the people of Scotland deserve better.
Speeches must be of six minutes; otherwise, the Presiding Officers will need to use the nuclear option of cutting off microphones or will have to drop people from the debate.
15:36
I very much welcome the debate. Given the reaction to Johann Lamont’s speech last week, not least in her party—I watched closely the reaction to her speech today and I cannot say that her back benchers universally welcomed it—I would have thought that the subject was best avoided. However, who am I to look a gift horse in the mouth? I am happy to speak in the debate.
Jackie Baillie is absolutely right—people are suffering now, and we recognise that. It is interesting to hear the Labour Party and Jackie Baillie say that people cannot wait until the referendum in 2014 because they are suffering now. Given that, why will the commission that Labour has established to come up with all these solutions to help people who are suffering now not report until 2015, which is one year after the referendum?
The next meeting of our economy group will take place next Monday. When will Mr Swinney start acting on what Campbell Christie and Crawford Beveridge said?
I am sure that we all wait with bated breath for the findings of Labour’s economy committee and look forward to hearing what it says.
I was surprised by Johann Lamont’s announcement last week, which seemed to be predicated on the idea of Scotland having a something-for-nothing culture. I reject such divisive terminology, which it is unfortunate to inject into public debate. More than that, I do not accept that there is a something-for-nothing culture; let us remember that people pay taxes into the system.
Why can Johann Lamont not explain what she means by the something-for-nothing culture? On “Good Morning Scotland” yesterday, she was asked four times to explain what she meant by that, but not once could she explain it. I am happy to give way if she can tell me what she means by “something for nothing”.
I will tell the member what I mean—I mean us getting free prescriptions, the price of which is paid by somebody who cannot get the care that they need in our community, and I mean the women who spoke to me last week. Nobody gets anything for nothing—somebody somewhere bears the cost. I am happy to pay through taxation, but the reality is that, under the SNP’s budgets, what is happening—
I look forward to—
Order.
The SNP’s policies—
—Johann Lamont supporting independence in 2014, so that the Parliament has powers over taxation and we can instigate a proper system of progressive taxation.
Order. Mr Hepburn, you took the intervention.
Should I let her chunter on?
Alex Salmond said that he would cut corporation taxes in an independent Scotland. How would that improve the public purse?
I did not hear the end of Johann Lamont’s intervention, but I was not particularly interested in hearing it anyway.
I am surprised not only by the Labour Party’s terminology but by its change in position.
Linda Fabiani rightly mentioned a number of pronouncements by Labour figures at the Labour Party conference. Yesterday, Ed Miliband referred to the Tory-Liberal Government as an
“incompetent, hopeless, out of touch, U-turning, pledge-breaking, make it up as you go along, back of the envelope, miserable shower”.
He is absolutely correct to refer to the Tories and the Liberals in that way. However, I suggest that he should look closer to home, at the Scottish Labour Party and Johann Lamont.
Let us look at the 2011 Labour Party manifesto. Labour pledged that it would not instigate tuition fees and that it would not reintroduce charges for prescriptions in Scotland. It said that it would sustain the concessionary travel scheme and it talked about retaining the commitment to free personal care. Now, we have a cuts commission where nothing is off the table. So, when Ed Miliband refers to an
“incompetent, hopeless, out of touch, U-turning, pledge-breaking, make it up as you go along, back of the envelope, miserable shower”,
he could be talking about Johann Lamont and Scottish Labour.
Johann Lamont has suggested that the volte-face is predicated on injecting honesty into the debate. Given that the commitments to which I have just referred were made in Labour’s election manifesto last year, is it not safe to say that Labour presented a dishonest prospectus before last year’s election?
In terms of the issues before this Parliament, can Mr Hepburn explain how his party will deal with families living in overcrowded accommodation in my constituency? What budget choices will he make to address that concern on the ground now?
More homes are being built by this Government than were ever built by the Labour Government—that is how we are dealing with that.
I will talk about why what the Scottish Government is doing is important. It has been interesting to hear the council tax freeze criticised on the basis that the wealthiest are benefiting the most. Frankly, that is not the case. The figures for this year show the average impact of the council tax freeze by income decile: the percentage of net household income saved by the council tax freeze among the bottom 10 per cent is 0.8 per cent whereas among the top 10 per cent it is 0.3 per cent. The poorest in society are benefiting most from the council tax freeze.
I finish on an important point about free prescriptions. I want Johann Lamont to explain to the 600,000 people earning under £16,000 who benefit from free prescriptions why they should not do so. I would not want to have to tell the 7,000 people in my constituency and the nearly 9,000 people in her constituency who are in that position why they should not benefit in that way.
It is not 9,000.
She should know that it is 600,000 people because it was from an answer to a question lodged by Johann Lamont that we established that there are 600,000 people earning £16,000 or less who are benefiting from free prescriptions.
I look forward to an honest debate continuing.
15:43
It is interesting that Jamie Hepburn started his sometimes reasonable speech by saying that he welcomed the debate. No one would have thought that last week, given the hysterical reaction from the SNP benches. It was hysterical to the point of trying to shut down the debate, which is interesting because it was two reports that the SNP Government commissioned—the reports of the independent budget review and the Christie commission—that asked for a non-polarised debate and transparency, as Gavin Brown suggested, on the cost of universal benefits. The independent budget review also said that the universal benefits were commendable but may simply no longer be affordable and called for a debate. I am pleased that Jamie Hepburn now thinks that there should be a debate because I, too, think that there should be one.
That does not mean that we are against universal benefits. The Liberal Democrats and our colleagues in the Labour Party, when we were in government together, delivered many universal benefits including free dental and eye checks, free personal care, free tuition—I whisper that one—and free bus passes. We delivered many universal benefits together—it was not the SNP that delivered those, although one would not think that now. We delivered those things together, and we are not against universal benefits in principle. The issue is not universalism but what wider benefit we get from the investment, which must be evidence based.
For instance, we face big challenges on health—as one of the sickest nations in Europe, we need to tackle that—and on life chances and social mobility. We also face huge challenges on climate change and, with our ageing population, on demographics. Those are the principles that we should be addressing and the big goals that we should be trying to deal with.
On free eye checks, for example, there was a report by the Association of Optometrists—one might say that they would say this anyway, but the report includes some excellent figures—suggesting that the cost of poor-sightedness is around £2 billion a year. Free eye checks cost around £30 million, but the return is in the order of £400 million because there are an extra 300,000 eye tests a year. That is a good thing to have. That is the wider benefit of preventive health; the principle there is about preventive health rather than universalism as the policy helps us to deal with a greater goal.
On life chances, the tax thresholds that we are changing at Westminster are taking a whole load of people who are on lower incomes scales out of tax altogether. That is a good thing. It is a social good to try to improve social mobility.
On nursery education for two-year-olds, we are failing miserably here in Scotland. In England, 40 per cent of two-year-olds receive nursery education support whereas in Scotland only 1 per cent do. In England, the most disadvantaged receive support, whereas only 1 per cent do so up here. I want us to do more, and I welcome Nicola Sturgeon’s remarks on that last week.
Look also at the pupil premium that we are introducing down south, which is based on free school meal entitlement. A whole load of people from disadvantaged backgrounds are getting extra support, which improves their life chances.
On climate change, the insulation programme applies irrespective of income. We have a big challenge on the climate, so that is where the investment should go. It is not just about universalism. In some ways, the debate, although welcome, is actually not about universalism versus not—that is what Jackie Baillie was referring to—but about what other goals we are trying to achieve.
On free personal care—
I am interested in what Willie Rennie is saying. Campbell Christie’s report talked about trying to alter the silo mentality, so does the member agree with me that to pick out random statistics, as members of the Labour group do in these debates, is to do down what they themselves are saying? We should be looking at the whole cost to society and the net cost, rather than picking random figures out of the air.
I was trying to make an elevated contribution to this debate, but I struggle with interventions like that. I think that all parties are prone to using selective statistics, so we need to be careful when we accuse others of doing that.
I agree that we should talk about universality as opposed to targeting if we are talking about principles, but if there is an urgency, we must look to see how we can cut our coat according to our cloth. There should not be any disagreements in the chamber over that, but having to choose between elderly people in care and children who need looked after is an odious choice. That is one of the reasons why I will look at getting universality as soon as possible. Incidentally, I will also look at putting a charge on some services that can be recouped through income tax.
Mr Rennie, you have 40 seconds.
The member makes a good contribution. I will try to make the rest of my elevated contribution within 40 seconds.
The big problem that I have is with the council tax freeze. I cannot understand how the universalism in that has been dressed up as equity. “The Government Economic Strategy” mentions sustainability, cohesion and solidarity, which are great principles, but I am not sure how the council tax freeze fits with those. How can Fred Goodwin being given a discount of £3,000 be of benefit to the wider community? I have a big issue with that and I think that we need a debate about that.
Universalism itself is not the principle; the big issue is what benefit we get from the investment that we make.
15:49
It is possibly the lowest form of politics to bring another member’s family into a debate and use it as an argument.
Hugh Henry rose—
No, Mr Henry, you will sit down and you will listen.
To bring Derek Mackay’s family into the debate and use it as an argument against him is one of the most despicable things that a politician could do.
It is about choice—
Order.
Mr Henry is right that it is about choice, and I want to speak about someone whom I have the right to speak about in relation to choice. I am a member of Aberdeen City Council, which faces tough budget choices. Frankly, I think that the pernicious lie that removing the council tax freeze would have allowed us to simply wish away those tough choices demeans the debate. Those tough choices would have remained. We faced tough choices around our additional support needs and learning disability budgets and we took the decision to make reductions in those knowing that we needed to reshape the services. I have an autistic son, so do not dare tell me that the members of this party do not understand how to make tough choices when family members enter into the frame, Mr Henry.
Allow me to quote from Campbell Christie, because the Labour Party has made it clear that it wants to talk about the Christie commission. In an interview with Holyrood magazine, he said:
“People say we can’t afford things now but in 1948 we couldn’t afford the NHS and the pension schemes but we did it ... The politicians of that era were determined that the supportive community environment should be underpinned by state provision, even in the most difficult of economic situations.”
Those of us on the Government benches have chosen our priorities. We set them out to the people in 2011. In many instances, the Labour Party backed us on those priorities either in votes in the chamber or in the priorities in its manifesto. Indeed, a recent visit to the Labour website showed a list of things such as free prescriptions, free personal care and the council tax freeze as policies that the Labour Party was seeking to advance.
We hear Labour Party politicians quoting Nye Bevan to us, forgetting that Nye Bevan resigned from the Government over the introduction of prescription charges, so free prescriptions are entirely in keeping with the spirit of Nye Bevan and what he wished to espouse.
I mentioned tough choices in Aberdeen. One would think that if the Labour Party was staying true to the mantra that Johann Lamont espoused, the Labour Party in Aberdeen would have joined in the debate and outlined tough choices. Did it at any stage move an alternative budget from opposition? No. Did it at any stage engage in the discussion around the choices that the council had to make? No. Instead, it carped and moaned from the sidelines, because when the going gets tough, the Labour Party gets going.
Will the member give way?
As he is one of the main culprits, I give Mr Baker the opportunity to atone for his sins.
I am happy that we did not proceed with plans for more than £100 million of borrowing for a scheme in the city centre to concrete over Union Terrace gardens. We know that when that is the kind of tough choice that we need to make, we will invest in services and not cut care services in the way that the SNP did when it led the council.
That is an interesting comment from Mr Baker, because one of the reasons why we had to make those tough choices was the Labour Party’s profligacy when it was the administration. The call comes out from Labour members that they want to have a debate. We need to know Labour’s position before we can have a debate. It is not good enough to simply stand up and say that we must have a debate. [Interruption.]
Order, please.
Johann Lamont began her speech by saying that she did not want to just sit back and criticise the Government. She then spent 14 minutes criticising the Government. We want to know what the Labour Party’s position is on these issues. It is not enough to simply stand up and say that we need to discuss whether we can afford to do these things or whether it is right to afford to do these things. This party has laid out its position and said that it believes not only that it can afford to do these things but that it is right to do these things and that it is to the benefit of the Scottish people to do these things. The Labour Party cannot simply stand up and say, “We need to have a debate, but you’ll have to wait until 2015 to know what our position in the debate is going to be, because that is when our commission will report back.”
Over the past year, we have heard calls from the Labour Party for an extra £37.8 million for colleges, £100 million for housing, around £0.75 billion to re-regulate buses, £25 million for fuel poverty, £22.1 million for an air route development fund, £10 million for kinship carers, £65.19 million for NHS nurses, £20 million back into the Crown Office, £136.6 million for job creation, £319 million back into the NHS budget, £24,500 to charities, £4.6 million to the video game industry—
Will the member give way?
The member is in his last minute.
To continue, £1 million for the inquiry into the PIP implants, £1 million for a public inquiry into the legionnaire’s disease outbreak, £2.4 million to reinstate cuts to drug misuse budgets and £2 million to reinstate the cut to the Scottish Court Service. That is a grand total of £1.5 billion in spending calls in the past year alone from Labour Party members.
From Jackie Baillie.
As my colleague Mr Hepburn says, a large number of those calls came from Jackie Baillie.
Even if we were to take the Labour Party’s position on universality to the extreme and cancel all the universal benefits, it would not pay for those spending requirements. Where, exactly, is the tough-choice agenda there?
15:55
Presiding Officer,
“many people ... have accepted the principle that it is right that those who can afford to pay towards the cost ... should do so ... That must be right when public finances are under such pressure. The expansion of contributions will allow us to target ... assistance at those who need it most”.—[Official Report, Justice Committee, 18 September 2012; c 1717.]
Those are not the words of Michael Russell in 2006 but the words of Kenny MacAskill to the Justice Committee, only two weeks ago, referring specifically to the Scottish Government’s plans to introduce means testing of criminal legal aid.
Until now, Governments of all parties have backed universal access to legal aid in criminal cases, regardless of the resources that are available to the accused. Now the SNP plans to save £10 million, in real terms, from the legal aid budget over the next two years, and it is using the Scottish Civil Justice Council and Criminal Legal Assistance Bill to end that universal entitlement.
Is the member aware that the Labour members on the Justice Committee agreed that in principle, and that it was included in the report yesterday?
Absolutely. We completely support the principle behind that.
Let us remember that the proposal is not a means test only for those who are guilty of crimes; accused persons have been offered no way to recover their legal costs after the event, even if they are acquitted. Nor is it a means test that is targeted only at those who are well off. Limits on legal aid kick in at a disposable income level of only £68 a week, and there is to be no help at all for those with a disposable weekly income of more than £222.
As Mr Finnie has said, we agree that it is hard to justify universal access to criminal legal aid in such financially tough times. I suspect that we will oppose some aspects of the Government’s plans, but we will support the principle that those who can afford to make a contribution should be required to do so. That principle could equally be applied to other universal benefits too.
There are plenty of good things that could be done with the resources that have been saved by cuts in legal aid. Scotland’s courts face a cut in real terms from the SNP Government of nearly £11 million over the next two years. Proposals to close a series of local courts are currently out for consultation. Staff numbers in the Procurator Fiscal Service have fallen by 8 per cent in a single year.
Last week, we debated the reforms to Scotland's criminal justice system that were proposed by Lord Carloway. He proposed that corroboration should no longer be required for a case to proceed in the criminal courts. The evidence from the Crown Office is that many more cases would come before the courts each year as a result. The Lord Advocate says that a change in the law would also allow hundreds of rape cases that have not been proceeded with due to a lack of corroboration to be looked at again. Many more new cases will be brought to court each year, as well as a backlog of cold cases.
If millions of pounds are to be saved in criminal legal aid and the Scottish Government wants to pursue radical changes in the legal system, it could choose to direct extra resources into Scotland’s courts and fiscal services. However, that is not what the SNP proposes to do. It will make savings from means testing one formerly universal benefit, but it wants to take that money out of the justice system to fund all the other universal benefits that it lacks the political courage to review.
The same situation applies in relation to headline targets. When the SNP promised to deliver 1,000 extra police officers, it forgot to say that all those officers and more would end up doing jobs that were previously done by civilian staff. Almost 1,000 civilian jobs have already gone in the past couple of years, according to the Government’s figures, but that is only a small part of the devastating cuts to Scotland’s police service that Kenny MacAskill has in store. Scotland’s new chief constable, Stephen House, let the cat out of the bag last week when he confirmed that “many, many hundreds” more jobs are set to go.
At the weekend, we learned about the detail of the Government’s secret plans. Some £11.2 million is to be spent on dumping 550 civilian staff even before the new police force comes into being and another £74.3 million is to be spent on dumping thousands more in the three years after that. However, the Cabinet Secretary for Justice will still not take responsibility for the thousands of jobs of loyal public servants that he intends to axe.
Will the member take an intervention?
No, thank you.
A Scottish Government spokesman told the Sunday Herald this weekend that
“it will be for the new chief constable and the Scottish Police Authority to determine the balance between police officers and police staff in the new service.”
No doubt he will soon be telling us that large-scale privatisation in the police service is also
“an operational matter for the chief constable.”
I do not imagine that Stephen House believes any of that, and David O’Connor of the Association of Scottish Police Superintendents is clearly none too impressed either. They both know that
“the balance between police officers and police staff”
has already been determined by Kenny MacAskill, because the SNP will insist on keeping its headline figure of 17,230 warrant-holding police officers, even though hundreds and soon thousands of those officers will be turned into back-room bobbies doing civilian jobs.
Just as the SNP will not face the conflict between law reform and courtroom closures, so it hides from the damage that it is doing to Scotland’s police service. It is not just about how many police officers we have; it is about what they do when they get to work. Most people in the service know that, and ministers must surely know it too. It is only when the SNP faces up to those issues honestly that it can make a real contribution to the debate on the future of Scotland’s police.
16:01
I am pleased to have been called to speak in this fairly lively debate on Scotland’s future. Of course, all the work that we do in the Parliament, as we scrutinise legislation and deal with other matters that are brought before us, is to consider in the various sectors of economic life that we have a say over the kind of Scotland that we wish to see in the future. To try to condense how I see Scotland’s future into a six-minute speech is therefore not without its challenges, so I will focus my remarks on certain issues only.
I stress at the outset that for Scotland to prosper we cannot continue to operate with one hand tied behind our back. That is simply an illogical position for any nation to be in. In order to transform our country and to see real social justice here, we need the powers that are necessary for doing the job—that is, we need the powers of an independent country.
Will the member take an intervention?
I want to make progress.
It is only with those powers that we can gain control over all our resources and make use of them in accordance with our country’s priorities.
Will the member take an intervention?
I want to make progress.
It is only with the powers of independence that we can rid ourselves of the obscenity of spending billions and billions of pounds on weapons of mass destruction on the Clyde, which of course Labour seems to be keen to do.
Normally, the choice is posited as Trident or schools and hospitals. Is it not the case that the SNP’s policy is that if Trident is cancelled, all the money goes into defence spending?
Jackie Baillie may not want to hear the answer that I will give, which is that, as an independent country, we could choose not to spend billions and billions of pounds on the obscenity of nuclear weapons and could, for example, spend that money on tackling child poverty and on securing a first-class education service and health service in our country. Those are the kind of choices that the people of Scotland wish to make and which I believe they will make in 2014, even if at that stage we have still not heard from the Labour leader as to whether she supports the renewal of Trident.
As an independent nation, we could make our country the prosperous country that it should be, given the vast natural resources that we have at our disposal. What could be more important than the health and wellbeing of our people and the education of future generations? It saddens me therefore to see the Labour Party moving away from the idea of universal good in society, which stems from the centuries-old tradition in Scotland of the common weal, which is particularly important at this time of economic difficulty for so many of our fellow citizens. Indeed, in times of such difficulty, surely it is even more important that the common bonds of society and humanity that link all of us are reflected in the economic choices that we make. That is why the social wage that the SNP Government secured delivers some protection to households across Scotland in the face of the massive Tory cuts to public spending.
Does the member think that it is part of the common weal to deny people with learning disabilities the opportunity to learn to live independently by attending college, which was a cornerstone of the quiet revolution that emptied our long-stay hospitals and gave people dignity and the ability to achieve their potential? The member’s Government is cutting those places in further education right now.
I have two things to say to the Labour leader in Scotland, who still has not taken the opportunity to clarify whether she supports the replacement of Trident. First, Labour in Scotland prefers Tory rule over welfare to home rule. Secondly, we in the SNP do not need to take any lessons from Labour, the party that abolished the 10p tax rate, on how to improve the lives of our citizens.
The degree of economic protection that the social wage affords inspires the hope, which all of us in society need, that a better day is coming. We need that hope so that we can work together as a nation, with the common weal in mind, to make progress towards a better and more just society. How on earth would reintroducing a tax on the sick help our country to move forwards? As we have heard, until the SNP Government abolished prescription charges, about 600,000 people in Scotland with an income of less than £16,000 were charged for prescriptions when they became ill. How on earth does the Labour Party think that punishing those people by reintroducing prescription charges will improve their lives? How dare the Labour Party say that those citizens are getting something for nothing.
To take Labour’s new opposition to universality to its logical conclusion, where would the line be drawn? Will we be charged for going to see the doctor or for having operations or stays in hospital? What is the cost of the proposed means testing system? It has to be remembered that the Labour Party has form on the issue because, in the Westminster Parliament, it voted for foundation hospitals, which have paved the way for the privatisation of the health service south of the border.
The way forward for Scotland is to take charge of our affairs and to secure the normal powers of an independent country to transform our country and see real social justice. Roll on the 2014 yes vote in the referendum.
16:07
I welcome the debate because—apart from the genuine interest in the Labour Party’s policy repositioning—it is, as Hugh Henry alluded to, about the services that the state should and should not be in charge of. Therefore, the debate is very much about the extent of the burden that we expect our taxpayers to bear. As Willie Rennie rightly said, Labour has paid heed to the central themes of the Christie and Beveridge reports plus the utterances of the many people in the business and civic communities across Scotland who have warned that the current universal benefits payments are simply not sustainable unless there is an increase in overall tax receipts in Scotland or significant reductions in other areas of public spending. All that comes at a time when there are concerns about the bloated size of the public sector in Scotland.
So let me say why, in the context of discussing universal benefits, there is a specific debate to be had about higher education, and why we decided some time ago that there should in Scotland be a graduate contribution to increase our universities’ income. First, we studied at length the evidence that was provided to us by senior figures such as Andrew Cubie, Stewart Sutherland and Gavin McCrone, and by groups such as the Confederation of British Industry, Universities Scotland and Scotland’s Colleges—individuals and groups that have spent much of their working lives examining the effects of policy decisions on our higher and further education sectors.
To pick up on the point about the effect of policy changes, why is it that application rates to English universities have plummeted by 8.6 per cent, while in Scotland, where tuition is free, application rates have remained steady?
That is not true of people from less well-off backgrounds.
We examined higher education structures in other countries, with two specific things in mind. First, the maintenance and enhancement of the academic excellence of our Scottish institutions and secondly, our ensuring that they remain world-class institutions when set against the highly competitive global community and the premise that has been part of every Government strategy—Westminster or Scottish Governments—that it is a good thing to have more people at university.
We argued then, and continue to argue, that public funding of our universities is not sustainable in the longer run if we are to achieve both those aims without also damaging other key public spending priorities. That is why, like the experts that I have mentioned, we think that there should be the means to secure additional income for our universities, particularly in the light of the overwhelming evidence—some of which was given to the Education and Culture Committee in the past two weeks—that a sizeable funding gap exists between north and south of the border. That gap will get bigger, especially if we see a trend where there are more Scotland-domiciled students, and European Union students are coming to Scotland at a faster rate than students from the rest of the UK or the international community, and additional income is required because that burden falls on the taxpayer.
There are other considerations. University education provides both public and private benefits, which is why a balance should be maintained in funding. Twenty per cent of our population remains functionally illiterate or innumerate; we therefore made the judgment that that group deserves greater priority within education spending. A graduate contribution has, in other countries, a history of providing more bursary support.
Will the member give way?
I will not at the moment, thank you.
There is also the need to ensure that Scottish universities continue to punch well above their weight when it comes to research funding and the development of knowledge exchange. Members should make no mistake about the competitive edge that accrues and the extent of the finance that we need to do just that—a point that was made clearly at recent meetings of the cross-party group on colleges and universities.
There is also an inherent discrimination in the Scottish Government’s higher education funding policy: discrimination between those who pay fees and those who do not, for the exact same course. That makes a mockery of the SNP's claim that university entrance is based only on the ability to learn and not on the ability to pay. There is also the on-going anomaly for EU students who, by virtue of EU law, come here free of charge. The Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning may have partially solved the Irish anomaly, but he cannot solve the EU anomaly because, by law, that cannot be done, so when he makes that claim, he is grasping thin air, rather than the thistle.
The SNP blandly argues that none of that matters, and that it is all about numbers, but at what price to our colleges, to the competitiveness of our world class institutions, to their staff, their research funding and their ability to stay ahead of the game for decades into the future? That is why we made the choice to support a graduate contribution.
Gavin Brown eloquently set out why we have major differences with Labour and why Johann Lamont need not get too worried about becoming the Tory poster girl just yet, but there is one thing on which we certainly agree with Labour—we need an honest debate. We will advance that debate.
16:13
There have been times in my political life when I did not know whether to laugh or cry. Last week’s announcement by new new Labour was one of those moments. Whoever would have imagined that new Labour could out-Tory the Tories? Even Margaret Thatcher had more sense than to say that
“Scotland cannot be the only ‘something for nothing’ country in the world”
Sadly, that was not the case for the new Labour Party.
Let me tell Labour a few things. Whatever we decide to do with our money is for us to decide, particularly because the money that we are talking about is ours—not just some of it, but all of it. In fact, what we get to spend is less than what we contribute—Scotland subsidises others by paying in more than we receive—and the way that Labour articulated its “something for nothing” announcement smacks of the “subsidised Scotland” fear strategy that has persisted from the Labour Party and its fellow unionist parties for years.
Will the member give way?
I will not give way at the moment.
All that is designed to undermine the self-confidence and self-belief of the people of Scotland.
Then there are the specifics of what Labour promotes. For instance, identification of those who qualify for free prescriptions will result in the introduction of means testing—the wrecker of self-respect and self-confidence. I wonder whether any of the people who are responsible for the proposal have ever been on the receiving end of means testing. I will tell members about it first hand, having been forced to take handouts at school.
As a young child, the humiliation that I experienced, and the jibes and bullying that went with it, were utterly soul destroying—so much so that often I preferred to go hungry rather than be hit with the stigma surrounding handouts. Of course, Labour suggests that the reason for the proposal is a shortage of cash and says that some people who are well off enough to pay benefit from free prescriptions, but is happy to put those who are genuinely in need through the misery of means testing. Its reasoning does not stand up to scrutiny; its proposal would cost more in bureaucracy than it costs to provide free prescriptions for all our people.
Let us look more closely at the impact that charging for prescriptions would have on the general population. When I was taking evidence during the previous session of Parliament for my member’s bill, the Palliative Care (Scotland) Bill, I visited hospitals, hospices, care homes and many other institutions, and talked to doctors, nurses, patients, family members and friends. I sought views about the desirability of such a bill for people who are at the end of their lives.
On one occasion, I spoke to a gentleman who described his personal journey and how life could have been made a bit easier for him and his family. He explained that he had been very unwell and off work. After a while, his condition improved enough for him to return to work. As he was earning money, he now had to pay for his prescriptions which—if my memory serves me well—consisted of five items. He informed me that he could afford only three or four items. His doctor had said that he needed to take the full prescription in order to advance his recovery, but because he could not afford it, he effectively made himself sicker. We do not know whether he would have lived longer had he been able to take the full prescription.
If that gentleman had had access to free prescriptions, how much would it have cost the taxpayer in real terms? I suspect that the cost would have been a lot less because, instead, he had to go through sessions of acute care, which is—as we all know—far more expensive and more stressful for patients and their families. I am sure that all members of Parliament have had constituents who have been in similar situations. We should honour our commitment to ensuring that our people live and die with dignity. Free prescriptions for all, regardless of income, lives up to that commitment.
In the manner in which they follow their leader—I do not mean Johann Lamont, but their real leader Ed Miliband, who is abandoning those who are least able to defend themselves in order to play to the south-east of England—Labour members should hang their heads in shame for that betrayal and should know that the rightward shift of the Labour Party is not yet complete. London institutions and policy makers are calling for public sector wages to be capped in the regions in order to subsidise further those in the south-east. Tory MPs are clamouring to outflank the Labour Party and are making the divided United Kingdom even more divided than it is now.
What that means is that those who live in the leafy suburbs of London, who are in secure jobs that have been created by the Government, in an area that is already oversubsidised, will benefit more, while the rest suffer. Once they retire, many of them will cash in their subsidy bonuses and head for the poorer regions, where they will outbid the local inhabitants for housing.
I support the Government’s amendment.
16:19
I have always thought that the Deputy First Minister is a superb debater and today she spoke with her usual forcefulness and style, but her speech—as were those of her colleagues—was constructed from building blocks of fantasy: fantasy about Labour’s position on these matters; fantasy about the world of limitless resources that she would rather have than the world of declining resources that we live in; and fantasy about Scandinavian welfare with Romney-type tax cuts, which is her prospectus for an independent Scotland.
The first mistake about Labour that she made was to say that we broke our promise on the council tax. We made it absolutely clear in the run-up to the election 18 months ago that we supported the council tax freeze for two years. As far as I know, this is the second year of the parliamentary session, so let us hear no more such accusations.
The second mistake about Labour that she made—one that was also made by all the other SNP speakers—was to say that we are against universal provision. Of course we are not. We created the welfare state, but the welfare state has always been a combination of universal and targeted provision, and the principle of universality has always been applied on a case-by-case basis.
Mr Chisholm might not wish to hear this, but I have had a great deal of respect for him as a politician ever since he resigned from Tony Blair’s Government over a cut to benefits for single parents. Should those same single parents be forced to go through the ignominy of means testing for some of the benefits that this Government is providing to them for free?
If Mark McDonald had thought before he made that intervention, he would have realised that single parents benefited very greatly from the measures that the Labour Government introduced in a targeted way through tax credits and childcare tax credits.
I think that, in their heart of hearts, Scottish Government ministers also believe in a mixture of universal and targeted provision. I heard rather a good speech from Derek Mackay at the early years conference on Monday. I wrote down some of the phrases that he uttered during that speech, because I thought that they were striking: “sometimes universal”; “sometimes targeted”; “just evidence that”. I wrote them down because we will adopt precisely such an approach in our review. Alex Neil came to exactly the same conclusion a couple years ago in relation to the central heating programme, when he changed the universal provision that we introduced and made it targeted, and I do not criticise him for doing so.
For the avoidance of doubt, we will consider, openly and transparently, contentious issues such as the continuation of universal entitlement, as Campbell Christie urged us to do, and in doing so we will avoid the polarised terms that he warned against, and which we have heard in spades from the SNP this afternoon. The SNP is in denial about the real world of political choices and is failing to recognise that every specific decision has an opportunity cost. That is a central rule of politics, especially at a time when budgets are going in one direction and demographics in the opposite.
None of the universal entitlements that are being discussed today was a linchpin of the post-war welfare state in the way that the NHS is—which is not to say that they are not desirable or that I do not have a particular personal commitment to some of them, such as free personal care. That will not surprise people, given that I chaired the care development group and introduced the legislation. However, I fully accept that all that must be reviewed. As we look around Scotland today, many other desirable objectives are before us.
I am very grateful to Malcolm Chisholm for giving way. He said clearly that he supports universalism when the evidence shows that it is beneficial, but not on the basis of how much money is in the budget, so will the Labour review look not just at shifting away from universalism, but at shifting towards progressive revenue raising?
The answer to that last bit is obviously yes, but it is still a flight from the real world to say that we cannot take account of the overall budget that we have. To do so is to engage in more fantasy politics. We might wish that we had more resources, and the SNP might tell us—although we do not believe it—that it would have limitless resources in an independent Scotland, but at the moment we must deal with the resources that we have.
As I was saying before Patrick Harvie’s intervention, there are many other desirable objectives that I am sure many members of the Parliament share, such as the new ambitions that we have on the early-years agenda, which has grown in providence over the past few years; I welcome that.
Other desirable objectives include the abolition of child poverty, ending homelessness, introducing the living wage, and providing services to the most disadvantaged in our communities and giving them the opportunities that others have but which they do not. Politics is about making hard choices between competing desirable objectives in the light of the available resources. That is the real situation that we confront. It is not the case that some of the entitlements that we are discussing today are undesirable—for goodness’ sake, we introduced most of them when we were in Government. Of course they are desirable, but everything is relative.
We have heard from members on the Labour benches, led by Johann Lamont, of all the problems that we have in our disadvantaged communities and more generally. It is a matter of weighing up the competing desirable objectives and deciding which are most desirable for us within the current financial situation. We have taken that ground-breaking step: it is time that others moved on and took the same step.
16:26
We in the SNP believe that access to education should not be based on the ability to pay, and we believe that healthcare should be free at the point of need. We believe in protecting hard-pressed family budgets in a time of recession, and we believe that older people should be treated with dignity and respect and be able to enjoy an independent old age. Sadly, Labour no longer appears to believe the same. Murdo Fraser summed it up last week, when he said that it was
“Good to see Johann warming to Tory ideas.”
In two years, Scots will not only have the choice to vote in a referendum to re-establish Scotland as an independent nation, but will face a stark choice regarding the kind of society that they wish to see. I am therefore pleased that we have had a chance to explore that today and am grateful to the Labour Party for lodging its motion—even if I find it ironic that its members wish to debate the long-term future of our nation when those political chameleons seem to be incapable of maintaining a policy position on anything for more than a few short months.
The comments that were made by Johann Lamont, which I presume bounced her party—certainly, the Scottish Trades Union Congress knew nothing about it—were nothing short of remarkable. They show a Labour Party that is long bereft of any policies or ideas. I understand that this summer its members went round to the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations to ask whether it had any.
Will the member take an intervention?
I will let Mr Gray in at some point.
The only policy that Labour had at the last election was to steal popular SNP policies—it had opposed them, then it pinched them at the election, and then it discarded them. The Labour Party is now taking a huge leap to the right by seeking to remove popular, effective, idealistic and fair universal benefits from the people of Scotland during the harshest economic recession in living memory. It beggars belief, to be frank.
Labour and the Conservatives seem to have ruled out economic growth as a potential route out of the mire that we are currently in, which shows that they are utterly bereft of policies. Cut, cut, cut is all they have to offer. It appears that 13 years of Blair and Brown followed by a recent bed-in with the Tories has transformed an increasingly opportunistic and posturing Labour Party beyond recognition.
Our record of delivering equality, opportunity, independent living, dignity and respect to the people of Scotland speaks for itself. We are proud to defend our record on the provision of universal benefits.
Will the member give way?
It will not be long until I let in members—although not Mr Findlay, after his embarrassing contribution earlier.
Instead of seeking to protect benefits such as the free bus pass, free higher education, free personal care for the elderly, free prescriptions and the council tax freeze, Johann Lamont and her party want to limit access or scrap them altogether. How many of the 1.24 million people who have free bus passes will lose them? The Labour Party says that we have to look at reality—of course we have to look at reality. However, it is funny that reality did not seem to come into the equation when we discussed budgets last year when—as my colleague Mark McDonald pointed out—every single Labour front bencher called for money for every single portfolio. We knew that Alistair Darling said that cuts under Labour would have to be “deeper and tougher” than they were under Margaret Thatcher. Only this week, Ed Balls, a kind of crown prince in waiting, said on behalf of Johann’s master, Ed Miliband, that Labour would have to be “ruthless” with cuts.
Will the member give way?
I will take an intervention from Mr Gray in a second or two, because he was first to try to intervene. I am just over halfway through my speech.
The apparent confusion of Labour knows no bounds. Yesterday, Ed Miliband simply rehashed the 1995 Tony Blair speech on one nation—it was plagiarised, as members will see if they read today’s Independent.
I will take an intervention from Mr Gray, who was up after 30 seconds.
The moment for the intervention that I intended to make has passed, but I am prompted to ask whether, given that the SNP Government has cut 30,000 public sector workers out of the workforce in Scotland and its cuts are deeper than George Osborne’s, the SNP Government is the most ruthless cutter on these islands.
That is preposterous. The workforce has not shrunk by 30,000 and jobs have gone through wastage, not through compulsory redundancies—unlike the situation in some Labour councils.
Councillor Gordon Matheson bragged that Labour-controlled Glasgow City Council was the first to introduce a council tax freeze. He featured a five-year council tax freeze as his number 1 priority. However, Johann Lamont says that that is not affordable. Hugh Henry said, “Oh, but the SNP would force us to do it.” I am sorry, Mr Henry, but the Scottish Government’s remit extends only to 2016, whereas Gordon Matheson’s runs until 2017. Either Labour thinks that we will win again in 2016 in an independent Scottish Parliament or it is being cynical, as it has been in recent months.
Labour MSPs stood on a manifesto that told us that concessionary bus passes and police numbers would be protected.
Will the member give way?
The member is in his final minute.
The majority of Labour MSPs, and the party nationally, signed a pledge against that. I am talking about people like Jenny Marra, Iain Gray and Johann Lamont. That is a betrayal of Labour’s manifesto commitments.
Will the member give way?
You have already been told that I am in my final minute, Michael, so sit down.
It is ironic that—as John Mason will remember—Labour, as part of its usual “Do anything to get elected, including frightening old people” by-election misinformation campaign four years ago in Glasgow East, claimed that the SNP would abolish pensioners’ bus passes. Now we hear from Labour that “nothing is off the table”. Labour no longer seems to understand what it stands for.
Johann Lamont has been praised, mainly by the Daily Record and the Daily Mail, for being brave in making her announcement, but there is no bravery in refusing to tell people which benefits would be removed and who would suffer if Labour took office, and there is no bravery in picking on the weakest people in our society. I support the amendment in the cabinet secretary’s name.
I call Patrick Harvie. I am sad to say that he can have only two minutes.
16:32
I agree with the central premise that the Labour Party is putting forward, which is that it is not possible to show a commitment to a series of universal benefits and to high-quality public services while showing an instinct to cut every tax—in short, as Johann Lamont put it, a commitment to Scandinavian levels of public service and United States levels of tax.
Of course I agree with that. I used exactly that phrase before the local government elections this year and before the Holyrood election last year. I know better than most members do how hard it is to win people’s votes when we are being honest about that before an election, instead of saying it after an election.
I welcome the call for an open and honest debate, which has been echoed by many Labour members. But then what? After calling for a debate, politicians have to say where they stand in the debate. It took until Malcolm Chisholm’s speech towards the end of the debate for a Labour member even to acknowledge that revenue raising needs to play a role in the debate.
I agree with Annabelle Ewing about cancelling Trident, but I have listened to so many excellent, barnstorming lefty speeches about cancelling Trident that I have heard the money being spent a thousand times. It will not pay for everything. If Annabelle Ewing meant what she said, she must vote against Angus Robertson’s resolution on a commitment to spend £2.5 billion in Scotland—that is, 2 per cent of our gross domestic product—on the military.
We talk about universal benefits and free services, but none of that is free. It is a question of what we choose to pay for collectively. We choose to pay for things collectively because we are better off collectively if we do so. However, such services must be paid for on that collective basis. If this is a real debate, I call on both sides of it to agree that the one thing that we must do in this parliamentary session is to free the hand of local government to raise the revenue that it needs in progressive ways, as soon as possible.
I am sad to be able to give Stewart Stevenson only two minutes, too.
16:34
Malcolm Chisholm, at least, will be pleased if my speech is made of straw. However, it will be made entirely of Labour’s straw.
I have with me a number of Labour leaflets. One central Labour leaflet says, “Freeze council tax”; it does not say, “Freeze council tax for two years”, just “Freeze council tax”. A leaflet from Iain Gray talks about freezing council tax for two years. One Richard Simpson leaflet says,
“Keep free bus passes for the over 60s”
while another says,
“Scottish Labour will not introduce tuition fees to pay for higher education.”
A leaflet from Cathy Peattie mentions a
“Council tax freeze to help household bills”
but says nothing about two years, and another of her leaflets says:
“Labour delivered Scotland-wide ... travel for older people and introduced a young persons concessionary travel scheme. Buses are a lifeline for many.”
A central Labour leaflet mentions “no university tuition fees”; an Allan Wilson leaflet says, “Freeze council tax”; a Colin Davidson leaflet says, “Freeze council tax”; and a Willie Scobie leaflet says, “Freeze council tax”.
Members: Who?
He was one of Labour’s candidates. I am glad to be able to enlighten Labour on such a wide range of subjects.
However, Labour still has some decent caring people. Carwyn Jones said,
“We’re not going to change the policy on free prescriptions. We can afford it”,
and pointed out,
“If we say that people have to start paying for their medicine where does it end?”
I want to finish with Omar Khayyam.
“Each Morn a thousand Roses bring, you say:
Yes, but where leaves the Rose of Yesterday?
And this first Summer month that brings the Rose
Shall take Miliband and Lamont away.”
16:36
I wonder whether Stewart Stevenson, in his collection of election leaflets, has any of the SNP leaflets promising to cut class sizes to 18 in primaries 1 to 3, pay off the debts of every graduate in Scotland and replace student loans with student grants. What happened to those leaflets?
I have two astonishing revelations, the first of which is that I agree with most of what Patrick Harvie said. An even more astonishing revelation came earlier in the debate when we heard something that none of us thought we would ever hear in the chamber—Michael Russell saying he was wrong. The manager of Bargain Books will be rubbing his hands at the prospect of the few remaining dusty copies of “Grasping the Thistle” flying off the shelves, such is the resurgent interest that has been created by Johann Lamont. I am sure that Mr Russell is looking forward to the royalties.
Will the member give way?
I hope that Mr Findlay’s intervention will be better than his earlier one.
I, too, have been boosting the circulation of Mr Russell’s book. Last week, I purchased it with my own money from an online retailer. It was the best 16p I have ever spent.
I advise Mr Findlay to be more careful with his money in future.
I welcome the debate. Labour might be late to the table in highlighting these concerns, but its new focus is timely and welcome. I should also say that in much of this debate SNP members’ speeches have been based on a false premise. This is not about the principle of universality versus means testing. As Hugh Henry fairly pointed out, the SNP is entirely happy to support means testing in a whole range of areas and has not proposed any changes in that respect.
SNP members beginning with Nicola Sturgeon and ending with Kenny Gibson said time and time again that the NHS should provide everything for free, but even they must know that that is patent nonsense. As has been pointed out, NHS patients contribute to the cost of their dental treatment and under the SNP are subject to a means test. With regard to optical care, eye tests are free but patients who need glasses or contact lenses have to pay for them and, again under the SNP, are subject to a means test. It is a similar story with hearing aids, which are also subject to a means test under the SNP. The list goes on.
Over the past 11 years, I have heard not one SNP member say that all those services should be provided free of charge. As a result, it is rank hypocrisy and opportunism for SNP members to come along today and try to claim that they are the champions of free universal health provision.
There are no absolutes in the debate. There is no straight choice between universalism and targeted support. There is simply a spectrum, as Jackie Baillie, Willie Rennie, Malcolm Chisholm and other members pointed out. Where we place ourselves on that spectrum depends as much on financial and economic pressures as it does on great points of principle.
The SNP should abandon its conceit and accept that it has set up a false debate. After all, back in 2010, its own independent budget review report—written by none other than the First Minister’s handpicked chief economic adviser, Crawford Beveridge—raised serious questions about the affordability of certain universal benefits. It concluded:
“The Panel believes that the continuing provision of a range of universal services on the same basis as at present is unlikely to be affordable in the face of the projected financial challenges. Alternative approaches should, therefore, be considered as a matter of urgency.”
Back in 2010—two years ago—the SNP’s chief economic adviser was saying:
“Alternative approaches should … be considered as a matter of urgency”,
and it is to the SNP’s shame that it has done nothing to address those serious questions in the meantime and, instead, continues to bang on about budget cuts.
The chief economic adviser to the SNP is not alone in saying that. An Age Scotland report written by Professor Charlie Jeffery questioned whether it was right that all people over 60, including wealthy ones, would get concessionary bus travel when it meant that other people would have to pay more for demand-responsive transport. It also asked:
“If it is legitimate to target policies in some areas, like fuel poverty, onto the most disadvantaged, why is it not in other areas?”
On university funding, the Scottish Chambers of Commerce proposed a graduate contribution, as did the SNP’s favourite think tank Reform Scotland. Audit Scotland questioned the long-term affordability of a range of policies, including free prescriptions, free eye tests and concessionary travel. Even the British Medical Association Scotland called for an honest and open debate about what we can or cannot afford in the NHS.
A cloud of witnesses testifies to the fact that there is a serious problem, and that problem will exist whatever constitutional arrangement exists in Scotland post 2014.
There is a consequence to the choices that the SNP makes, because providing benefits to all whether they are in need of them or not simply means that there is less money to spend elsewhere. To maintain university funding, colleges’ budgets have been slashed when more and more young people need to access training courses. The housing budget has been slashed when it could be helping the construction sector.
Will Murdo Fraser give way?
I think that I am in my last minute.
There is rationing in the NHS—for example, in access to in vitro fertilisation treatment or the supply of orthodontic treatment to children—as a consequence of giving free prescriptions to all. There are resources that could be better spent.
The debate is important and needs to be properly informed. Gavin Brown said that we need to have the information about the challenges that are ahead. We need the information to inform the debate, and I am delighted to support his amendment.
16:42
Willie Rennie made an interesting speech. He said that he was trying to make an elevated contribution to the debate, and he succeeded in part in doing so. He focused on a point with which I very much agree, which is that the purpose of budgeting public expenditure is to determine what impact the expenditure makes and what outcomes it achieves.
That is where Murdo Fraser is completely and utterly wrong in what he just said about the housing budget. The point that I have laboured in the budget debates in the Parliament is that, for less money, this Administration has been able to build more houses. I would have thought that the Conservatives would have taken that seriously. Is it not a welcome achievement in the Administration’s use of public money at a time of enormous public spending pressure to deliver better outcomes by constructing more homes for the people of our country? That is what we are doing in taking forward the country’s public spending priorities.
If the cabinet secretary can make the money go further, why does he restrict the number of homes that he builds?
I am afraid that I do not completely follow that point. I am trying to say to Gavin Brown that, by using a smaller amount of money, we are able to achieve—
Build more homes.
It takes me to point out to Mr Brown that there is a finite sum of money because of the cuts from the Conservative Government in London.
Murdo Fraser is also wrong to say that we have done nothing to address the issues. I completely and utterly disagree with the Labour Party’s statement that nothing has been done to address the difficult public spending issues that we face.
The Labour Party has come to the debate many years too late and long after the issues emerged. Every year we have a debate in this Parliament about the budget. I am immersed in that debate now and I have been immersed in every debate since 2007. Throughout the period of my stewardship of the public finances, I have engaged with other parties about how we should shape the Scottish Government’s priorities to try to ensure that we deliver on the outcomes that Mr Rennie talked about.
On occasions I have been able to come to agreements with the Conservatives, the Liberals, the Greens and my dear friend in the back row, Margo MacDonald. However, only once have I managed to come to an agreement with the Labour Party on the contents of the budget, and that happened only because the Labour Party voted against my budget one week and for the same budget a week later. The only circumstances in which I could get agreement with the Labour Party was when it was in a state of total shambolic chaos—exactly the state that it has been in since a week ago yesterday.
If I look at the issues that I was wrestling with about the budget and my agreement with the Labour Party—
I remember that budget debate. I think that it was the Scottish Government that was in a state of complete and utter shambles at that point. I have trouble remembering further back these days, so perhaps Mr Swinney will remind me of how many budget amendment suggestions he made during eight years in opposition. I think that the answer is one.
I am not sure that Iain Gray speaks from a position of strength about budget management on behalf of the Opposition.
Mr Gray was involved in many of the discussions between 2007 and 2011. Let me remind him that not once, in that whole period or since, has the Labour Party asked me to give more money to local government. The Labour Party’s clarion call in this debate is that local government has somehow taken the brunt of the Government’s financial decisions, but on no occasion has the Labour Party exercised the influence that it could have. When the SNP was in a minority and the Labour Party could have exercised enormous control over my decisions, it never darkened my door to ask for more money for local government.
John Swinney could perhaps address what we are discussing in the debate. In 2010, he said that the Beveridge report would be a critical platform to build consensus within the Parliament and across Scotland about how we deal with the pressures on our finances. When I raised those issues, the Deputy First Minister impugned my motives and said, “nothing will change.”
When will John Swinney build consensus by having a serious debate about what Beveridge and Christie said?
I do not think that Johann Lamont is in any position to talk about anybody impugning anybody’s motives when she is sitting behind Hugh Henry, given his contribution to the debate this afternoon.
The issue is that Derek Mackay voted to give only a few schools free school meals in early primary and he as a parent benefited financially. He voted not to give universal entitlement, but he voted to make disabled adults pay for their transport to day centres.
We have a point of order, Mr Henry. Will you resume your seat?
On a point of order, Presiding Officer. Under rule 7.3 of the standing orders, could it possibly be that Mr Henry is still refusing to conduct himself
“in a courteous and respectful manner”
towards the chamber?
I remind all members that they should be conducting themselves in a courteous and respectful manner.
Mr Mackay was following an agreement between the Government and local authorities in Scotland to support areas of the country that were experiencing the problems of deprivation. I do not see why Hugh Henry has got such an issue with supporting young people who experience deprivation. That makes a mockery of the rubbish that he has been talking all afternoon.
Johann Lamont asked me when I will start to build consensus in Parliament on the issues. I started that debate in 2010 with the Christie commission, which made a number of recommendations on public sector efficiency, which I accepted; on public sector pay, which I accepted; on the capital programme, which I accepted; and on reforming the public sector, which I accepted. The Christie commission reinforced that work, which encouraged us to focus more on prevention, to which I allocated £500 million, and to increase co-operation and integration in the public services, which is why adult health and social care integration is in our policy programme.
The Labour Party has huge questions to answer about what it will bring to the debate, because it has not told us what it believes. As I have just told Parliament, we as a Government have taken forward a host of reforms as part of our response to the Christie commission.
Jackie Baillie said that we must always be mindful of the long-term sustainability of budgets, because budgets do not always increase. That is wise advice. I wish that the Labour Party had thought about that before it bankrupted this country with private finance initiative contracts that are a burden on the budget that I control.
16:51
The debate has been an excellent start. Johann Lamont has called time on the SNP’s fantasy economics. As an Opposition, our job is to tell it like it is and to bring up the issues that our constituents raise with us day after day. I was out meeting constituents across the road in Dumbiedykes on Friday, and the debate there was more sophisticated than our debate today, because people know that there are tough choices to make.
Our job is to analyse and look at the pressures on the budget and to come up with solutions. The 30,000 people who have lost their jobs since 2008 will not be comforted by the knowledge that Kenny Gibson thinks that they are wastage. What a scandalous comment that was. Last year alone, 14,500 council jobs went.
On a point of order, Presiding Officer. That was a deliberate misrepresentation. I said that jobs had gone because of wastage. People retire and leave—Sarah Boyack knows that fine well.
Mr Gibson, that is not a point of order. Please resume your seat.
I am sure that a reading of the Official Report will back up the comments that I just made.
Last week, officers in North Lanarkshire and Glasgow highlighted the possibility of another 2,500 jobs being lost. That will not kick-start our economy or help us to come out of recession. Labour local authority leaders have made it clear that they are making the toughest decisions for a generation.
Will the member give way?
No, thank you.
The problem is that we have had five years of an unfunded council tax freeze. We need only look at Professor Bell’s comments to the Finance Committee last week to see that we need to take the situation seriously.
Will the member give way?
A direct impact is being felt in relation to local government’s ability to use its resources to help people to get through the recession from which we are suffering. Local government services face a double whammy—less support from the SNP Government but even greater reliance on it for resources.
That is why our devolution commission will look not just at powers for the Scottish Parliament but at powers for local government, which needs to be treated with respect and to have the opportunity to provide the services for which the public have voted. We did not devolve powers from the British state just to have an increasingly centralised Scottish state.
Will the member give way?
The member is not taking an intervention, Mr Stewart.
I do not know whether colleagues have read John Swinney’s letter to local government, which tells us everything that we need to know about the relationship between the SNP and local government and about the partnership that is meant to be in place. The letter says, “We expect you to sign up to the council tax freeze—if you don’t, your finances will be clobbered. We expect you to stick to the precise letter on teacher numbers and probationers—and, by the way, don’t bother replying unless you refuse our terms.” That is written in the letter, which I have highlighted for Mr Swinney.
From Sarah Boyack’s objection to the Government trying to sustain the number of teacher places in our schools, I take it that the Labour Party now wants to reduce teacher numbers in Scotland’s schools. Is that the point that the Labour Party has reached?
My objections are, first, that teacher numbers have fallen and, secondly, that the cabinet secretary is passing the buck to local authorities for all the difficult decisions that are coming in the budget.
People know what is happening. They know that their care services are being squeezed. Staff are making 15-minute visits—many are being paid the absolute minimum—and those who are least able to object are suffering. People can see what is happening to their relatives and they want better. Jackie Baillie was absolutely right to raise those issues.
The Government’s amendment completely gives the game away. Everything has to be seen through the prism of the referendum and how to win votes for it. The SNP is desperate not to have this debate about the reality that people face today. We need to help people through the recession, but the SNP Government has put local authorities in a financial straitjacket and has wasted precious taxpayers’ money—because there is a cost to the underfunded council tax freeze.
Will Ms Boyack give way?
No, thank you.
Only 20 per cent of local government’s funding is now raised locally, and 80 per cent of last year’s budget cuts were made to local government services. If SNP members do not believe that that is a problem, they need only listen to SNP councils. Perth and Kinross Council is considering closing 10 kids clubs; Clackmannanshire Council plans a £200,000 cut in adult care; Argyll and Bute Council is privatising home care services—
Will the member take an intervention?
No, let these points be heard in the chamber. Nobody has really talked about the detail of what is happening in our local authorities.
“Efficiencies and reduced staffing numbers can only be achieved by being more focused about what we do and how we do it ... There is simply no prospect of this level of funding gap being met without service provision being affected.”
Those are the words of an SNP council.
If all that Sarah Boyack says is true, why did Labour promise, five months ago in Glasgow, that its number 1 priority was to continue the council tax freeze for another five years?
It is in the cabinet secretary’s letter that if Glasgow City Council puts one penny on its council tax it will lose £70 million. The council knows the cabinet secretary’s policy until the next election.
What is the alternative from the SNP? I have not heard one back bencher mention the SNP’s hated local income tax, which is meant to be its alternative to the financial straitjacket that local government has been put in. There is a con there as well: the last time that we heard about it, it was going to be 3p in the pound more, but it actually needed to be 6p more.
By the end of this session of Parliament, the underfunding of the council tax freeze will have put thousands of people on the dole, but it does not need to be like that—that is the point of this debate. We must consider what the choices are in a mature and rational way.
Will the member give way?
No, thank you.
It is difficult to do that in this chamber, but the debate has started. SNP members should know that the debate is now taking place in kitchens and businesses across the country. People are asking to look at the detail of the SNP’s policies. Rather than getting better police services throughout the country, we will see a colossal waste of money because the SNP was not prepared to listen to us on local funding for local police services. We have been suggesting alternatives.
Today, however, a local job creation scheme has been delivered: the First Minister has appointed his 13th spin doctor. Again, that tells us everything that we need to know about the Government.
Last week, we had the scandal of the pension deal for the new fire chief, who has been taken on again but with a bigger salary. That is not fair and it is not good economics, never mind the fact that the first announcement that our new national police chief had to make was about losing 3,000 jobs from among the back-room civilians who keep our communities safe. None of that is fair and none of it is good economics. Excuse us if we do our job by pointing out the obvious, but the SNP Government has been getting the big decisions on public finance wrong.
There are young people who are desperate to get skills and there are employers who are desperate to employ young people with skills so that our economy can grow. The SNP told us that no FE courses would be scrapped. However, that is SNP fantasy. Courses have not been stopped, but they are not running this year, so people cannot get on them. That is a cruel sleight of hand for young people who are desperate to get a start in life.
Last year’s SNP budget cuts are hitting FE colleges hard. They are hitting the young people who desperately need those skills. The Government is pulling up the ladder on those young people. This is about skills, qualifications and making sure that our economy and our country have a future.
Today, the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations has blown the whistle on housing. There is absolutely no chance of the SNP Government meeting its social rented housing targets. That comes after a year in which 12,000 construction workers have lost their jobs. It does not have to be this way.
Many of us in the chamber agree that the Tory Government is cutting too fast and too deep, but instead of protecting people, the SNP Government is making things worse. As Ken Macintosh said two weeks ago, the SNP’s proposed budget is not a budget for jobs. That is why Johann Lamont has called for the issues to be properly discussed. We need to call time on fantasy politics.
You need to start winding up, Ms Boyack.
On the cost of transport, bus fares are up and services are being cut, yet, astonishingly, this Government has knocked back £350 million from Network Rail to improve our rail infrastructure. You could not make it up—and this is in a time of recession.
We need to face the reality. The Christie commission talks about demographic changes heading our way, but the SNP is too busy nation building to look at what is happening to our nation now. Members should not take my word for it; they should listen to SNP councils and to the late Margaret Ewing. The last time that the Tories were in power, she said:
“we must concentrate help on the groups on whom most concern about risks has focused—the elderly, the sick, the disabled and the very young. No one can disagree with that”.—[Official Report, House of Commons, 28 October 1993; Vol 230, c 1042.]
That was true in 1993 and it is true today.