Scottish Government’s Programme
The next item of business is a statement by Alex Salmond on the Scottish Government’s programme. The First Minister’s statement will be followed by a full debate, therefore there should be no interventions or interruptions. This is a half-hour statement.
13:04
Since we last met as a Parliament, we have all been saddened by the death of Edwin Morgan, our national makar. We in this chamber will remember in particular his poem for the opening of the Scottish Parliament building, which, as you rightly said in your recent tribute to him, Presiding Officer,
“is as poignant and thought-provoking now as it was six years ago”.
In that poem, he wrote:
“We, the people, ...
We give you our consent to govern, don’t pocket it and ride away.
We give you our deepest dearest wish to govern well, don’t say we have no mandate to be so bold.”
This afternoon, Presiding Officer, I wish to set out how, during this session of the Parliament, the Scottish Government will act to discharge our mandate to govern the people well. Edwin Morgan’s advice would be wise at any time, but it is certainly more true at a time when the people face the worst outlook for public spending since the aftermath of the second world war. Everything that we do in this session of Parliament and every legislative programme for many years to come will be set against that context. This statement will start and end with how we face that issue.
The new United Kingdom Government outlined a budget in June that, if implemented, would slash at the very fabric of public and social provision. Of the forecast cuts that we now face, two thirds were planned by the previous UK Government and a further one third have been added by the current UK Government.
At present, this Parliament lacks the powers to control the level of public spending. Except at the margins, we exist within a fixed budget. The other parties suggest that they have a solution under the Calman proposals. However, far from being a solution, Calman—at least as it stands—would actually make matters worse. This is no academic argument. Had the Calman income tax proposals been introduced for the start of the last spending review, the fall in income tax revenue, because of the recession, would have resulted in a Scottish budget for 2009-10 that was almost £900 million lower than under the existing formula mechanism and there would have been no capacity to borrow to meet revenue deficits. That is before the effects of the coalition’s plans to increase personal allowances, paid for by rising national insurance contributions, which would lower the revenues allocated to Scotland by a further £250 million for every £1,000 increase in allowances. This is an arithmetical point as well as a political one, but the politics requires an answer.
The people, when they voted for this Parliament, voted for a legislature that would be bold and would act to protect their values. They expect us both to act now where we can and to state ambition for the future. Let me first set out to this Parliament and to the people the legislation that we will introduce in order to use our existing powers well before I return to the powers that we need to enable us to move Scotland forward. I have never judged the importance of a legislative programme by the number of bills; however, others in this chamber have tended to do just that. In that respect, I say that we will introduce 10 bills to the Parliament—four more than were introduced in the equivalent period of the previous session.
For the reasons stated, the budget bill will be at the heart of our legislative programme and, indeed, the overall programme for government. We shall submit a budget bill within four weeks of the publication of the comprehensive spending review. I know that there have been calls for some kind of back-of-the-envelope budget sooner, but that is wrong headed and has rather more to do with political positioning than with economic logic. Like it or not—and I do not—our budgets are determined by spending patterns in the Westminster Parliament. Those who think that the coalition Government has a clear sense of where it is going to cut and what it is going to allocate to each area have a touching faith in the governance of Whitehall. From what I can see, everything is still under scrutiny, which may result in yet more surprising decisions. To base our budgets on a guess about how savage George Osborne and David Cameron may be strikes me as foolish—it would be crystal ball budgeting when, in six weeks’ time, we will be able to see the books.
Of course, some people say that we should be able to guess to the nearest £200 million. In fact the possible variance is much greater than that. However, let us say that it is £200 million. That would be the difference between continuing to freeze the council tax and increasing it by a full 10 per cent.
I will take another topical example. As we know, yesterday, police numbers in Scotland reached an historic high and crime rates reached a 32-year low. However, police boards throughout Scotland are engaged in an exercise of working through the implications of future budget cuts. To do that they are using the widely touted forecast of average reductions in spending in a non-protected UK Government department. That is a useful exercise in setting out the stark implications of cuts on such a scale, but it is not the real figure. The real figure is the 17,424 officers who are working on our streets right now.
The real budget will come when we see the books in six weeks, and when the Parliament then decides how it can best protect front-line services. When we have the facts, we can make the decisions, based on our values.
However, if there is no advantage in setting down a budget only to rewrite it in a few weeks, there is every advantage in applying expert, independent analysis to our options, particularly over the medium term. That is why we established the independent budget review under Crawford Beveridge, to consider those options carefully. That was the beginning of a process rather than an end, because, following publication of the report, we are now, as promised to the Parliament, consulting the people and our partners and stakeholders. Although we are not at the end of the process, our priorities are economic recovery, protecting front-line services and developing a low-carbon Scotland, which will mean jobs now and jobs for the future.
The other parties will have the opportunity to outline their priorities and policies in a full-day debate tomorrow, and we look forward to the full detail of those contributions. [Interruption.]
Order. The statement should be made without interruption.
They have plenty to say today, Presiding Officer; let us see how much they have to say tomorrow.
The Scottish Government is committed to a Scotland that is wealthier and fairer. We have kept our aim steady on our overarching purpose to focus Government and public services on creating a more successful country, with opportunities for all in Scotland to flourish, through increasing sustainable economic growth. That will continue to be the hallmark of our programme for government.
For example, in 2010-11, we are providing more than 40,000 training places, including 20,000 modern apprenticeship starts and 5,000 flexible training opportunities, specifically to meet the needs of business and workers. Through Scottish Enterprise and Scottish Development International, we will help Scottish businesses to grow at home and abroad, and build on the success in attracting investment projects involving the planned creation or safeguarding of 16,000 jobs in Scotland, including almost 6,500 new high-value-added jobs. Recent announcements from Hewlett-Packard in Erskine, Barclays in Glasgow and Virgin in Edinburgh are testimony to the success of that work.
We will improve Scotland’s transport links by completing the M80 Stepps to Haggs upgrade and the M74, by finishing the Airdrie to Bathgate rail link and by awarding the principal contract for the Forth replacement crossing.
We will ensure the smooth running of local government elections, so that every vote counts and is counted fairly and accurately, through an electoral administration bill. That will continue the process of improving independent electoral administration following the difficulties that arose during the 2007 joint local government and Scottish parliamentary elections, which were supervised by the Scotland Office.
We will reform the law in relation to property and housing through a long leases bill and a private rented housing bill. The long leases bill will convert ultra-long leases into ownership, matched by tenants paying appropriate compensation to landlords. The private rented housing bill will tackle unscrupulous rogue landlords who operate outwith the law, make life a misery for tenants and neighbours, and tarnish the reputation of the good private landlords in Scotland. The bills continue the reforms that have been made since devolution to create a comprehensive modern framework for Scottish housing and property law.
Other work to make Scotland a fairer country will include publishing our own child poverty strategy, continuing to support the armed forces and veterans community, and engaging actively with the UK Government on its proposals for welfare reform to argue for the development of approaches that protect the poor and better fit with Scottish circumstances.
This summer saw record levels of attainment in school-leaving examinations. During the coming year, we will work towards a Scotland that is still smarter by implementing the curriculum for excellence, introducing regulations to establish a maximum primary 1 class size of 25 and funding the Scottish Qualifications Authority to develop 200 new qualifications, to ensure that young people have the knowledge and skills that they need to compete in the 21st century.
The new public records bill will update existing legislation and create a modern framework to improve accountability and transparency and to strengthen governance. It will also contribute to a Scotland that is safer by implementing a key recommendation of the review of the historical abuse of children, which found, as members will remember, that poor record keeping by public authorities prevented former residents of care from understanding what had happened to them.
Three other bills will also make Scotland safer. The double jeopardy bill will reform the law to allow an acquitted person to be prosecuted again in certain clearly and carefully defined circumstances. That is a highly important change and a change in principle, but its time has come. The forced marriage protection bill will provide civil remedies for those who are at risk of forced marriage and for victims of forced marriage. The reservoir safety bill will enhance the safety of people, property and infrastructure by providing a proportionate, risk-based approach to reservoir safety in Scotland.
We will continue to drive forward the kind of reforms to our justice system that have seen recorded crime fall by 10 per cent since last year—to the lowest level for 32 years—by using the powers in the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010 to tackle serious and organised crime and creating the community payback order. Statistics published only a week ago show that after two years, nearly 60 per cent of those who are sentenced to community service have a clean record, whereas nearly 75 per cent of those who are sentenced to less than six months in prison reoffend.
On health, we start from a position where, thanks to the commitment of staff and improved procedures, 99.8 per cent of patients now wait less than nine weeks for in-patient and day care treatment. As a result, public confidence in our national health service in Scotland is at an all-time high, with a majority believing that standards are stable or rising.
How we protect that position from budgetary pressure will be a defining issue in the debates to come, but we all know that medium-term progress depends on prevention and early intervention to make Scotland better. We will therefore progress the Alcohol etc (Scotland) Bill, the provisions of which include the introduction of minimum unit pricing, which would make Scotland safer by reducing alcohol-related crime, disorder and public nuisance, and the crowds at accident and emergency units each and every weekend. It would also make Scotland healthier over the long term by tackling the appalling legacy of chronic alcohol-related illnesses. We will match that legislative action by helping local alcohol and drug partnerships to deliver substantial improvements in treatment and prevention services.
The health (certification of death) bill will modernise death certification in Scotland by removing current inconsistencies between how cremations and burials are scrutinised and by streamlining procedures.
Finally, in terms of our existing powers, let me outline our plans for a Scotland that is greener itself and contributes to a greener and fairer world.
A generation ago, green issues were a minority concern. Indeed, probably the reason that this Parliament has legislative competence over climate change is that in 1997 no one thought that it was important enough to include it in the list of reserved functions. Times have changed, and the Parliament has used its competence with regard to climate change wisely and courageously. However, we should also be in no doubt that our environment is our economy. Our natural resources will determine our future success.
Perhaps the greatest Secretary of State for Scotland was Tom Johnston, whose towering achievement was to champion the hydro scheme first by getting the Hydro-Electric Development (Scotland) Act 1943 passed and then by implementing that visionary legislation as chairman of the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board from 1946 to 1959. The hydro scheme delivered on the promise to bring the power of the glens to everyone at equal cost, to replace paraffin lamps with electric bulbs and to modernise our nation so that it could compete in the post-war economy. In trapping the power of water behind dams and running it through tunnels and pipes, Scotland created arguably the most successful hydro scheme in the world. It generates renewable energy by capitalising on our greatest natural asset—our water.
Now, there has been a lot of discussion and much debate about Scottish Water. Some people have wanted to privatise our water; others have put forward a mutual solution as best. We will spell out our plans in a Scottish water bill.
The overwhelming majority of the Scottish people want to keep Scottish Water in public hands. I am with the people on this, not as a matter of sentiment but as a matter of logic. Is it really the smart thing to sell such a prize just as the world wakens up to the true value of plentiful and clean water? It would be like selling Saudi Arabia’s oil reserves on the eve of the invention of the combustion engine. That is why treating Scottish Water merely as a utility, to be bought, sold or mutualised, is to miss the point and the opportunity entirely. It manages on our behalf a major resource that is rapidly becoming a commodity of great worth. It is therefore this Government’s intention not to sell or mutualise Scottish Water, but to keep it in public hands.
Let me first state what Scottish Water has already achieved. It has transformed a field of public service long suffering from a lack of funds into a significant success story. Where we had inefficiency and waste, we now have a smoothly functioning company. Its rate of improvement has been beyond anything achieved by private water services and water companies and it now gives us average household charges that are lower than those in England and Wales.
I want to build on that success. Instead of handing over to private ownership those profits and assets, including 80,000 acres of land, we can use them to help us to energise the Scottish economy. Thus, Scottish Water will evolve from a successful utility into a dynamic water agency, deploying its wisdom, knowledge and secure funding to the betterment of our environment and economy. There is no such agency with that potential anywhere in the world.
I am encouraged by Scottish Water’s own desire to play this role. It has identified potential for new economic activity in other business areas of some hundreds of millions of pounds in the medium term. If we give Scottish Water room to grow, we have the makings of a great Scottish company in public ownership. Scotland will become the world’s first hydroeconomy, wisely exploiting our water to help drive our economy.
Much as vested interests resisted the hydro dams, so there will be those who resist a new vision for Scottish Water. However, Scottish Water can help to transform Scotland’s prospects today, just as Tom Johnston did 60 years ago. As it expands its activities, it will generate the additional revenue to become financially neutral to the Government’s books.
Scottish Water is currently the largest consumer of electrical power in Scotland. Instead, we intend to give it the power to become one of the largest generators of renewable electricity in this land. We shall charge Scottish Water with supporting the bid to hold the 2015 world water forum, which would bring up to 30,000 delegates to Glasgow, including heads of state and Government. We shall charge Scottish Water with establishing a Scottish centre of excellence that is modelled on the Stockholm International Water Institute, to foster commercial and humanitarian innovation. We will support Scottish Water’s exemplary record in humanitarian assistance, reinforcing the existing bonds with the charity WaterAid, which is currently bringing emergency relief to the people of Pakistan.
This is not a revolution but an evolution for Scottish Water. We are trusting the management to build on their proven track record with a gradual expansion of functions, and not to dilute their existing success but to seize the growth opportunity in exploiting what is a key commodity for the 21st century and beyond. We will bring forward legislation to enable Scottish Water to play those roles. Further, we expect water charges to continue to remain stable in real terms—the people’s asset will move to become self-financing.
I believe that we can lead the world in the management of a key resource, for the benefit of our environment and our economy and for the benefit of the citizens of the world who desperately need clean water just to survive. We can combine the outstanding qualities of the Scottish character—compassion and innovation—to put ourselves in the vanguard of a new economy. The plan is not short term—it is a legacy for our children and beyond. Let us use our greatest natural asset for their long-term benefit.
We are blessed not just with an abundance of water, but with a wide abundance of natural assets and resources. I believe that they belong, fundamentally, to the people of Scotland. We stand at the threshold of another energy revolution—in renewables—and we must ensure that the mistakes of the past, when the takings of North Sea oil and gas were siphoned off elsewhere, are not repeated. We will therefore consult on legislation for the communities of Scotland to benefit from the exploitation of their natural resources. In Scotland in the past, only Shetland was wise enough to benefit from the oil boom, and it currently sits on an oil fund that is not far off £200 million. Norway created a fund, and it is closer to £300 billion. It will be many years before revenues from offshore renewables reach anything like that scale. However, a start should be made.
The only public body in Scotland that accrues a direct benefit from offshore development is the Crown Estate, and we have worked well with its commissioners. However, its revenues go direct to the Treasury, and that cannot be right. The communities of Scotland—the Scottish people—must secure an endowment from our own natural resources, as well as having a say in how they are developed.
As we mourned Edwin Morgan this summer, we also mourned Jimmy Reid. His passing was felt by many across this land. In his famous address as rector of the University of Glasgow in 1972 he said:
“Government by the people for the people becomes meaningless unless it includes major economic decision making by the people for the people.”
That was true then and it is just as true now. The lesson of Jimmy’s life was not just that ships are important, but that people are important, and that to protect them you have to stand up and fight and, above all, you have to control economic decision making.
I said at the outset of this statement that I would return to the issue of public sector cuts and how we face them, not just in the coming year but for the next generation. That issue will transcend politics in Scotland. Is this Parliament to become a message boy for cuts that are determined elsewhere, or can we gain the economic powers to change our circumstances?
Some people have evinced surprise at our decision not to present a referendum bill to the Parliament. [Interruption.]
Order.
Indeed, so disappointed do they seem that one might gain the impression that they were gagging to vote for it, rather than ganging up to stop it. So we will take our case for greater powers to the people of Scotland.
Now that we face a public sector hurricane, never was the case for independence and financial responsibility more obvious and more true. For make no mistake: devolution as we know it is over. When the money from London—or, rather, delivered via London—is being cut, the game changes totally. The decision now is whether we stick with the status quo—with budgets reducing year on year—or take responsibility and use it to create a new, dynamic Scottish economy. What Scotland truly needs is not a funding formula, whether Barnett or Calman; it needs control of its own resources and the ability to grow revenue rather than just cut expenditure. We need control over both sides of the Scottish balance sheet.
I have never doubted that everyone in the Parliament wants the best for Scotland. We—that is, all of us—have achieved a great deal for Scotland over the past 10 years. Scotland has come a long way. We can act independently of Whitehall and Westminster and set our own agenda. However, that agenda must not mean undoing much of the good work of the first 10 years. If the arithmetic of the Parliament denies the will of the people, we shall take our case to the country.
The first age of devolution is over. The clear choice facing the nation now is the unionist cry of “do nothing” or the nationalist call to do something positive.
A Parliament is about delivering for the people. I began by quoting Eddie Morgan, so let me finish the same way. He wrote of the Parliament:
“What do the people want of the place? ...
A nest of fearties is what they do not want.
A symposium of procrastinators is what they do not want.”
[Laughter.]
Order. That will do.
He wrote:
“A phalanx of forelock-tuggers is what they do not want.
And perhaps above all the droopy mantra of ‘it wizny me’ is what they do not want.”
Members: Oh!
We stand for giving the people a chance to say what they do want. [Interruption.]
Order. We will hear the rest of the statement in silence, please.
We stand for giving the people the chance to endow this Parliament with such powers that there is no question of saying “it wizny me”, because the responsibility lies clearly with the Scottish Government, the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish people.
In that spirit, I present and commend this programme for government to the Parliament and, above all, to the people of Scotland.