Meeting of the Parliament

Meeting date: Thursday, February 9, 2023

Official Report 1064KB pdf

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United Kingdom Income Inequality

I ask those leaving the gallery and, indeed, those members leaving the chamber, to do so as quickly and as quietly as possible.

The next item of business is a members’ business debate on motion S6M-07249, in the name of Emma Roddick, on United Kingdom income inequality. The debate will be concluded without any question being put, and I invite those members who wish to participate in the debate to press their request-to-speak buttons.

Motion debated,

That the Parliament notes with alarm a recent Financial Times analysis, which shows the scale of income inequality in the UK relative to other countries in Europe; records its concern over the implications for people across Scotland, including rural and island constituents in the Highlands and Islands, amid what it considers an unprecedented cost of living crisis; recognises that, according to the analysis, the average Slovenian household is set to be better off than its British counterpart by 2024, and that the richest will get richer; believes that this analysis has reinforced the findings of the Scottish Government’s Building a New Scotland papers, which, it considers, demonstrate how independent European countries comparable to Scotland are wealthier and fairer than the UK, and considers that it is important to learn from comparator countries and create a fairer Scotland, combining economic dynamism with social solidarity.

I am grateful to those who supported my motion so that it could be debated, giving us the opportunity to discuss the Financial Times analysis, which covers such an important issue that is not given enough attention.

In the hustle and bustle of everyday politics and the headlines, we often forget to step back and look at the big picture. I hope that folk will do that—putting aside Covid, Brexit and strikes just for a moment—to look at the UK as a whole and how it is functioning. We are living in a country whose Governments have long made public policy designed to help the rich get richer and to promote endless private economic growth at the expense of looking after its citizens.

We are living in an extremely unequal society, where the richest can enjoy a good life and the worst-off are in dire poverty, more likely to experience serious health issues and have significant support needs. It is perhaps harder to see because those in the public eye—celebrities, high earners and members of Parliament with fortunate backgrounds—can seem to represent the UK in more than just television interviews, but they do not.

The Financial Times analysis last year described the UK more accurately as a poor society

“with some very rich people”

in it.

Another accurate description can be found in Dick Gaughan’s lyrics:

“They make the laws
To serve them well”

and to

“feed the rich
While poor men starve”.

That is the hard truth: half of the people in this country account for 9 per cent of the wealth, and Conservative Governments do their best to ensure that that gap keeps getting bigger. That is normal to us, but it is not normal. The same Financial Times analysis found that the poorest Irish household has a standard of living that is almost 63 per cent higher than the poorest in the UK. Other younger nations such as Slovenia are also likely to have a higher average standard of living than us from next year.

The message that I want to get out there is that there are better ways forward than the way that we are used to, that there are alternative economic ideologies to Conservatism and that we can redistribute wealth so that nobody has to experience extreme poverty. There are examples of alternatives across Europe, and a clear alternative is presented in the Scottish Government’s “Building a New Scotland” papers. We could be more like European neighbours such as Sweden, Ireland, Finland and Denmark, which use their full powers to achieve a fairer society as well as economic success.

Being taken out of the European Union against the wishes of the Scottish electorate has led my Highlands and Islands region to lose out on funding that we previously relied on for projects that improved the economy of rural and island communities as well as the lives of the people living in them. The replacement funding that we have seen so far has fallen far short of what we used to get and far short of what Whitehall promised.

We are taught a big lie—that the huge gap between the richest and the poorest in our society is a necessary side effect of having a healthy economy. First, I would argue that that is not a worthwhile sacrifice in the first place, but, secondly, it is not even true. Conservative, capitalist policies have resulted in an unequal society and in the UK being the only country in the G7 forecast to have negative growth—and worse than that of Russia, which has been facing international sanctions for almost a year.

I have always found that people will try to put off those of us who did not grow up learning about stocks and shares and did not study philosophy, politics and economics at Oxbridge from debating financial policy, using buzzwords and talking about the businesses that they have run and their investment funds—using frames of reference that are so far removed from what most of us will ever experience that it seems as though there is no room in the debate for those on the left, but there is.

Even if someone believes that a more socialist approach to public spending would crash the economy, I have to ask at this point: what have they got to lose? Conservative and neo-liberal capitalist economics have just crashed the economy, so let us give something else a try.

Successive Tory UK Governments have historically fixed—or more accurately, covered up—cash-flow issues, which they like to pretend do not exist under Conservatism, by selling off public services. The problem with that is that, once Royal Mail has been sold off, it cannot be sold off again. All that that has done is gift future Governments the issue of having to deal with private interests running roughshod over workers’ rights, with ministers no longer able to force changes to pay and conditions and having nobody but their own institution to blame. People deserve a Government that will do better than that, which will acknowledge issues and tackle them, rather than pretend that they are not happening.

Most people, whether they are personally managing or not, do not want to live in a country where kids grow up hungry and in poverty when there is no need for it. Most people want public services to be run in the interests of the public, not private shareholders. Most are happy to pay their share to make sure that they do not live in that kind of country, which is what we have to remember when we make decisions on taxes, just as the Scottish Government has done this year by asking people who are on the highest income to pay 1p more on their top rate of tax.

Taxes are not like giving to charity. Living in a civilised society where opportunity is available to everyone is not—or certainly should not be—a charity case. I do not want to go out and ask rich folk to consider giving money to the cause of people not being left destitute because they need to access what should be a public service that is free at the point of need. That is why taxes are not optional; they are the price of living in a country that provides people with security and public services. Personally, I am happy to pay a lot more in tax than someone who is earning what I used to earn three years ago for the sake of the Scottish Government being able to pay money to kids who are growing up in poverty.

The Scottish Government is doing more than any other Administration in the UK to help the people who need it most and to reduce inequality by introducing measures such as the Scottish child payment, which is unique in the four nations, and working on proposals for a minimum income guarantee.

Imagine what more we could do with the powers of independence. We have everything that it takes to become a successful, fair, internationalist nation— apart from not being tied to a Westminster that has brought us Brexit, cost of living crises and austerity. The UK’s economy is not strong and stable; it does not have broad shoulders—it is failing the people of Scotland. The Opposition will continue to criticise us for highlighting those facts, but people need to know—they deserve to know—why the promises of prosperity and opportunity never appear, and they need to know how much fairer other countries that are doing what the Scottish National Party wants to do are. If other countries in Europe can tackle inequality through independence in Europe, why not Scotland?

13:01  

I thank Emma Roddick for securing the debate. I found a lot of what she said to be quite interesting. The cost of living crisis that she has referred to is something that we all have to live with, and no one should be under any illusions that the crisis has been driven mainly by Russia’s illegal invasion into Ukraine. It has driven up the prices of electricity; it has driven up the cost of power; and it has driven up the costs of fertiliser and the production costs of all the basic foods that we require.

Emma Roddick rose—

I will give way to the member when I am a little further on.

I accept that there is more to do, which is why I believe that we need to drive down inflation to half of its current rate, grow the economy, reduce national debt and build our public services, which is something that we should all be concentrating on.

I appreciate the member’s point about electricity costing more. However, should it not be the case that, if people are having to pay so much for electricity that they have no money left or that they are pushed into debt, it is the job of the UK Government to step in and use its powers to regulate the market?

The problem is that the UK Government regulating the UK market does not resolve the energy problems or the cost of energy, as energy is driven by a world market. We can help, and I will tell you some of the ways that the UK Government is doing that.

I was interested in the article that Emma Roddick quoted from. I underlined the final paragraph, which says:

“Our leaders are, of course, right to target economic growth”.

That is what we should be doing: growing the economy. We know that doing that will help everyone to have a better standard of living.

Jim Fairlie (Perthshire South and Kinross-shire) (SNP) rose—

I will take the member’s intervention in a moment.

To my mind, that would not come about with independence, where we would be building walls that would cut off 60 per cent of our market.

The member has suggested that we need to build a new Scotland. In the papers that made the case for independence, if they were going to be anything other than fantasy economics, I wanted to see a discussion about who would pay for pensions, what the currency would be and what the border barriers would be. We did not have that. Indeed, we know that we are not even doing some of the things that we said that we would do in those papers, such as handling benefits payments. We have asked the UK Government to continue to manage that, because the Scottish Government could not.

One of the things that we are not clear about is the cost of independence. In 2014, it was put down as £200 million, yet we are probably talking about billions and billions of pounds, because we know that £200 million does not go far—it does not even build two ferries.

You mention all the things that you think are causing problems for the UK economy. Tory Prime Minister John Major told the Westminster Parliament that the UK’s exit from the European Union was a colossal mistake”, yet your party never—

Please speak through the chair, Mr Fairlie.

Sorry; okay. Your party never accepts that, so what would you say about the damage that Brexit has caused?

Please speak through the chair, Mr Fairlie.

Presiding Officer, I say, through the chair, that the decision about Brexit was taken in a referendum. That decision was made by a majority vote and we should therefore respect the result. It is not something that I campaigned for, but it is not something that the Scottish Government really campaigned against: it actually spent more money campaigning in Orkney than it did on campaigning against Brexit. That is a fact.

Let us look at some of the things that we could do better. I think that I am running out of time, Presiding Officer, as I have taken some interventions.

I can give you a bit of time to compensate you for that.

Thank you very much, Presiding Officer.

What concentrates the minds of people in the Highlands, as far as I can see, is an issue that we discussed this morning: when the A9 will be dualled. At the rate that the Government is going, Calum’s Road on Raasay will turn out to be a better investment than the A9 and it will have been built quicker—just one man built one and a half miles of road in 10 years.

The A96 still has not been built. We are all desperate for the national treatment centre, because 3,200 people in the Highlands alone are waiting for treatment and they have been told that they might have a seven-year wait. We are waiting for ferries, which are six years late. We are waiting for HMP Highland, which is six years late, and we are waiting for broadband that we were promised in 2021.

Those are the issues that concentrate the minds of people in the Highlands. Those are the issues that we should be talking about, not the points that Emma Roddick makes, which are all based on her belief that independence is the only solution. It is not. There are problems that we must deal with. Let us get on with dealing with them.

13:06  

I thank Emma Roddick for bringing the debate to the chamber, and I welcome her contribution. The idea that stood out in it and that has motivated me for my entire life is that we live in a poor society with some very rich people in it.

The wealth divide across the UK, including in Scotland, is absolutely shocking.

Emma Roddick is right to highlight the scale of income inequality in the UK relative to that in other countries in Europe. That has undoubtedly been exacerbated by the Tory-made cost of living crisis, which has made the poor poorer while multimillionaires record eye-watering profits. We cannot get away from that. There are eye-watering profits to be made and there is money in the system. We hear about that every day, and it is something that we must challenge. Wealth can and should be redistributed, and there are acknowledged fair, just and green ways to do that.

I agree with the member’s comments. Earlier today, I attended an event with the Wellbeing Economy Alliance, at which there was some discussion of the gap between the richest and poorest in Scotland and of the opportunity for Scotland to nurture purposeful businesses that make a positive difference to our wellbeing, among other things, rather than putting profits in the pockets of shareholders. Does the member agree that that is a good thing for Scotland and that we should embrace it?

I can give you the time back, Ms Mochan.

The member may know that I attended the same event, which gave us some excellent food for thought about how we might move the economy forward and how we might encourage people and communities to be part of what we might describe as business, but which, through community wealth building, lets them be in charge of their own areas. Members will know that I am extremely positive about those ideas. The example was given of North Ayrshire Council leader Joe Cullinane. He has taken steps that I view as bold, but, in his view, he is just being fair about how we should run the economy for communities.

Where Emma Roddick and I disagree is that, in my view, leaving the UK is not the way to reduce income inequality. I suggest that delivering a Labour Government at Westminster—which would repeal anti-trade-union legislation, invest in services and communities and offer fairer jobs to people—would be a better way to achieve solidarity in how we run communities in the UK. Those jobs would be well-paid jobs in which workers, unlike under the current Scottish and UK Governments, would be treated with the respect that they deserve.

Indeed, before the cost of living crisis, the cost of living in more rural communities was already substantially higher than it was in their urban counterparts, yet the Scottish Government has continued to do little for those communities. Yesterday, Emma Roddick and Fergus Ewing highlighted that the Highlands have been deprived of transport links that they were promised in relation to connectivity around the A9.

Will the member give way on that point?

The member is just about to conclude.

In my view, the Scottish Government has not shown the necessary determination. We have had delays in land reform, poor industrial relations with teachers and a lack of movement on regressive forms of taxation such as the council tax. We know that 20 families in Scotland own as much wealth as 30 per cent of the rest of the population, and that is unacceptable.

I do not believe that the Scottish Government has shown enough will. It has done things around the edges, and that is what we talk about in this Parliament. However, I hope that I can get some solidarity around the work that we need to do, to make sure that the Scottish Parliament does everything that it can. Emma Roddick and other members know that my point is that, if we believe that that gap is unjust, the Scottish Parliament must do everything that it can to fight for a better economic structure out there in the wider UK and world.

13:12  

I thank Emma Roddick for bringing forward this important debate this afternoon.

“Where would you rather live? A society where the rich are extraordinarily rich and the poor are very poor, or one where the rich are merely very well off but even those on the lowest incomes also enjoy a decent standard of living?”

That is the opening line from a Financial Times report, entitled “Britain and the US are poor societies with some very rich people”. Research has consistently shown that, although most people express a desire for some distance between top and bottom, they would rather live in a considerably more equal society than they do at present.

Edward Mountain talked about issues in the here and now. He made some valid points and talked about the invasion of Ukraine, but the debate is about the structural long-term decline of the UK financial model.

Let us look at the position in which the UK finds itself. As Emma Roddick mentioned, on present trends, the average Slovenian household will be better off than its British counterpart by 2024 and the average Polish family will move ahead before the end of the decade. The analysis also found the standard of living of the poorest Irish households was almost 63 per cent higher than that of the poorest in the UK.

In most developed countries, such as neighbouring north-western European states, the distribution of income is relatively equal, with the top 10 per cent earning about three times as much as the bottom 10 per cent. However, as in the US, income distribution in the UK is much less equal, with the top 10 per cent earning almost five times as much as the people at the bottom. That is about long-term structural design, which does not happen overnight and is caused by UK Government policy choices. That is the cost of the union, which fails Scotland.

On Wednesday, we heard Scottish Tories criticise the Scottish Government on social security. While the Scottish Government was introducing the groundbreaking Scottish child payment, the Tories were cutting universal credit. Not one Tory MSP spoke against that—they all sat in silence.

I hope that Paul McLennan understands that we agree on a lot of points. I wonder whether he would accept that, sometimes, some of the back benchers in this Parliament have to stand up to the Government if we really want to get the full benefit of the things that we can do in the Scottish Parliament.

That is a valid point. Some of the most important work that we do in this Parliament is in committees. We all raise important issues at that point, and SNP members will continue to do so.

Let us look at the position of our European neighbours. For Norway, the picture is consistently rosy. The top 10 per cent rank second for living standards among the top deciles in all countries. The median Norwegian household ranks second among all national averages. All the way down at the other end, people in Norway’s poorest 5 per cent are the most prosperous bottom 5 per cent in the world. Norway is a good place for someone to live regardless of whether they are rich or poor.

Relative to those of its European peers, the UK’s economic model is increasingly outmoded. Despite our wealth, too many households continue to live in poverty because of UK structural inequalities. Healthy life expectancy is too low in the most deprived areas of our country. Tackling the underlying causes of inequality in our society and providing economic opportunity will be vital if we are to improve people’s life chances.

The clear fact is that Scotland’s policy options remain constrained by the current devolution settlement and the embedded features of the prevailing UK market model. That is where Carol Mochan’s views and mine diverge. To a significant extent, the policy decisions of successive UK Governments have determined where we can take our own economic development. Brexit has exacerbated the UK’s long-standing structural problems. Jim Fairlie spoke about that in the context of Mr Major’s thoughts on the situation.

Countries of Scotland’s size have consistently outperformed the UK across a range of economic measures. They have the ability to thrive in our globalised economy because they are agile and can move towards and direct policy choices that are better suited to their own circumstances. Scotland is well positioned to learn from the experience of other nations and use the powers that would accrue through independence to improve economic, social and environmental outcomes significantly. We have strong business sectors in food and drink, financial services, energy and low carbon.

We also have world-class universities. Scotland has more universities per million people in the top 200 when compared with the figures for the rest of the UK, and it ranks third globally, behind Switzerland and the Netherlands.

Having full control over our tax and benefits would help to accelerate progress towards the ambitious targets that have been set by the Scottish Government for reducing child poverty.

The inequality gap across the UK will grow; it is structurally built into its financial model. However, there is another way. We do not to have to accept the UK Government’s mediocrity.

13:16  

I am grateful to Emma Roddick for securing the debate. At a time when we see global energy corporations recording obscene profits, we must discuss the inequalities that are ravaging our communities.

The picture of income distribution in Scotland is shaped like an hourglass. Most people earn the minimum wage, or thereabouts, but a small number of people earn fabulously high incomes. Most income is at the bottom and the top of the distribution, with a middle that is narrow—or narrower than it should be. The motion points to the reality that the average British household will soon be caught by Slovenian households when comparing how well off they are. However, the situation is actually worse than that: in 2021, the lowest earning bracket of British households was 20 per cent weaker than that of the equivalent household in Slovenia.

Let us think about where wealth comes from. It has two main sources: natural resources that we should all share, and the labour of workers who add value to such resources. Natural resources such as oil and gas should have benefited us all while we exploited them, so now we must share the fruits of the renewable revolution. It must make us all richer—not just those who are rich enough to own energy companies. Wealth, including income from labour, must be shared as equally as possible so that we can share the endowments that we received from nature with everyone.

As has already been mentioned, John Burn-Murdoch, writing in the Financial Times, has called the UK a poor country

“with some very rich people”.

The insight of Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson has made it clear that having unequal societies makes things worse for everyone. Over the past 10 years, we have seen how the interests of the super-rich have warped our politics. We had austerity, which cut vital spending on services. The bond purchases that were associated with quantitative easing increased the wealth of asset holders who, of course, were already in the wealthiest decile. We are now seeing the disastrous impact of 12 years of austerity and underinvestment in public services. However, the UK Government is okay with that, because its wealthy backers have got richer.

Not only did we have austerity; we had a Brexit that owed much to the desire of the wealthy to prevent the UK from being part of Europe-wide measures to reclaim wealth stemming from the labour of workers and the extraction of resources for the common good. Such tax avoidance costs us all dear. Brexit has compounded all the failings of the British economy from the past 15 years. We still have low productivity, skewed wealth distribution and labour shortages.

All that is set against vast evidence from Pickett and Wilkinson that the simplest way to improve the lives of everyone in our country would be to equalise the distribution of wealth and income. Societies that prioritise more equal distribution perform better on all indicators from health and crime to education. We all want to improve the national health service and schools and to make our society safer, but inequality means that we are pushing that stone up an ever-steeper hill.

We know that wealth in the UK is undertaxed. By taxing wealth less, we end up taxing work more, and that is bad for everyone. It is a disincentive to work, and a key driver of inequality. The United Kingdom Government, which controls most of the powers to tax wealth, must act. We need to make the case that equality will be at the heart of an independent Scotland.

We have to find a way to introduce a pay ratio. In 2022, FTSE 100 executive pay increased by 23 per cent, at a time when we were told that most ordinary workers would need to take a real-terms pay cut. We need to taper pay increases so that those on lower incomes catch up with the high earners. We also need genuine action on income in kind.

We need to tax wealth effectively by tackling asset bubbles, radically reforming our local tax system and so much more. Some things should be done now, by the UK Government, to help us deal with the cost of living crisis that we face today. However, most of all, we need to recognise that inequality is not necessary, it is not healthy and it is at the root of many of our society’s problems. Every step that we take to reduce inequality makes our job in creating a better society much easier.

The final speaker in the open debate is Christine Grahame.

13:21  

I am a spontaneous speaker in the debate—I did not intend to speak, but Edward Mountain really got to me. I accept that Putin’s war and Covid have contributed to the cost of living crisis, but why did Edward Mountain sidestep Liz Truss’s disastrous economic policies? What about Brexit, which 62 per cent of Scotland sensibly voted against? There is no doubt that that percentage would be higher now. Practically every economist tells us that Brexit has exacerbated the current situation, including Mark Carney, the former governor of the Bank of England and hardly a Scottish nationalist.

I say to Carol Mochan that I am a socialist, too, but I have lived through too many Labour Governments, starting with Harold Wilson’s—that is how far I go back. Then there was James Callaghan and the winter of discontent, Tony Blair and an illegal war that cost lives and millions of pounds, and then Gordon Brown and the banks’ collapse. With each of those Governments, I could see no distinction between them and the Conservatives, because the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. Then I saw the light, and I decided that Scotland could make a better fist of it itself.

I wonder whether Christine Grahame might mention some of the other things that Labour Governments have done. It is only fair to acknowledge that, in terms of the way in which we treat workers, the fact that we have good terms and conditions is because of what Labour Governments have done. It would only be fair for her to acknowledge that the SNP does not do everything that it commits to.

The big difference is that we do not have macroeconomic powers. We have a handout in the form of Barnett consequentials from the United Kingdom Government, and that limits us. However, we mitigate, and we should be mitigating, policies that we do not agree with. While we bring in the Scottish child payment—[Interruption.] Does Mr Mountain want to make an intervention?

If the member will take an intervention—

I am delighted to.

It is always nice to acknowledge that you have made mistakes. Do you want to address the ferries and the costs of that? Do you want to address the A9—

Speak through the chair.

Sorry.

Would the member like to address the issue with the ferries? Would she like to address the issues with the A9 and the A96? I would love to hear about her Government’s failures.

Some of that did not relate to what I was saying about not having macroeconomic powers, but I will let Mr Mountain bleat on about those issues again.

I say to Carol Mochan that there was more mobility for my generation, after the war, than there is now. On that I agree with her. I started out in a prefab, and then we moved on to a council house. I was the oldest of five children; we were very working class. I became the first girl to stay at my school beyond the age of 15—we were supposed to leave school at 15 and get married early. After that, I was the first to go to university, and so on.

I do not see that mobility in those areas any more. We now have silos where people are trapped by the economic system and warped taxation system that we have. The people who are suffering now from inflation are ordinary people, whether we call them the middle or working class. They are bearing the burden, not the millionaires who can put their money offshore and keep it safe somewhere and who can afford to heat their houses and still eat in posh places.

The only growth industry that I see just now as a result of UK Government policy is food banks. Even some Tory politicians have the temerity to attend and celebrate the opening of a food bank. It is disgraceful. We should not have food banks in Scotland.

13:25  

I thank Emma Roddick for bringing this important debate to the chamber, and I thank members for their contributions.

As Emma Roddick eloquently highlighted, although we all recognise that we have immediate and pressing priorities—particularly as we face the cost crisis—it is important to lift our heads up and consider the larger picture. I believe that sincerely for a number of reasons, not just because it is a responsibility but because, ultimately, many of the social ills that we must confront are driven by, and reflections of, our underlying economic system.

That point was highlighted eloquently by Paul McLennan in his speech. He was absolutely correct to focus on structure because, when I consider the economic model that we have, I am struck—I had this reflection while listening to members’ contributions—that there is almost an analogy between it and the nature of devolution. We have an economic model that leads to significant negative externalities, to use the jargon, and social and environmental consequences, and those issues must then be addressed through redistribution and mitigation. However, we want an economic system that pre-distributes and brings parity between economic, social and environmental factors—a genuine wellbeing economy—just as we want a constitutional arrangement in which the Scottish Parliament does not have to take the role of mitigating and addressing to the best of its ability the consequences of actions and policy decisions that are taken at Westminster.

It is important to reflect on that point. I am conscious that, sometimes, opponents of independence or constitutional change characterise debates and arguments about the constitution as arcane, recondite, esoteric and not grounded in reality or practical relevance to the people of Scotland. People with longer memories—those who have read their history and people who were there, such as Christine Grahame—will remember a time when that was the charge and criticism levelled at proponents of establishing the Parliament. They said that it was not relevant to the priorities of the people of Scotland and that to debate it was not to focus on the day-to-day, bread and butter issues.

Let us consider the reality. Compared to 2017, the poorest 10 per cent of households in Scotland will see their incomes increase by £580—4.6 per cent—per year compared to the rest of the UK, while the richest 10 per cent will see their incomes fall by just over £2,500. Among the poorest 30 per cent, reforms in Scotland to the income tax and benefit systems are set to raise the incomes of households with children by about £2,000 per year on average. That is the reality of what devolution has been able to do. It has brought about material improvement to the economic circumstances of the individuals whom we are charged with serving and honoured to serve.

My view is that we can go beyond that. Emma Roddick highlighted that point, and we have sought to articulate it through the “Building a New Scotland” series of papers. It is not that independence in and of itself offers a panacea, magic bullet or overnight fix, but it equips us with the tools to fundamentally change how our economy operates in a way that is pragmatic, focused, realistic and done in partnership with public, private and third sector interests and communities.

We are taking action on that where we can. Last week, I launched the Government’s consultation on community wealth building. I welcome members’ references to that, because that is a means to rewire how our local and regional economies operate. I commend the work on that that has taken place under multiple administrations in North Ayrshire and the way in which the community wealth building model has been incorporated within the wider Ayrshire region. I also recognise the excellent work that is going on across the five pilot areas, which the Scottish Government has been supporting. I encourage all members to engage with the community wealth building consultation process.

The reality is that, in this Parliament, we do not currently have the powers to do everything that I would like to do to advance community wealth building, but that should not be a barrier or an impediment to our ambition. We should be bold, and I encourage members to engage—if they have ideas about how we can take community wealth building forward, they can get in touch with me. A community wealth building approach has the means to effect real, lasting reform at the local level, which can aggregate and accumulate to change things at the national level, and it is a practical means of delivering on our aspirations for a wellbeing economy.

We need a situation in which we can make that change permanent and lasting, as long as there is consent for it in Scotland. One of the enduring frustrations that I have experienced as a citizen, an MSP and a minister concerns the reality that political positions on which there is consensus in Scotland cannot be achieved and effected because of the current constitutional arrangements.

Carol Mochan is correct to highlight that Labour Governments—from Attlee to Wilson, and, indeed, from 1997 onwards—have delivered progressive policies that have been of benefit to people at UK level. However, we can look at the legacy that Labour would seek to adduce in favour of the argument for a future Labour Government, in relation to investment in the NHS and tackling child poverty, and we can think of what has taken place in the past 13 years since the coming to power of, first, a Conservative and Liberal Government and, then, a majority Conservative Government—a Government for which there has been no democratic consent in Scotland.

I recognise that Scotland is part of the United Kingdom, but it is also an ancient nation and a recognised polity. The reality is that, in Scotland, there has not been majority support for the Conservatives in my lifetime. The last time that the Conservatives won a majority of seats in Scotland at a UK general election was in 1955. The last time that they came close to that was in 1959, and that was with a Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, who at one point considered joining the Labour Party—a man who was a one-nation Conservative of a very different variety.

That raises an interesting point about the word “Conservative”. There is much within the Conservative tradition about a pragmatic and considered process of reform, and seeking to preserve the best of what has come before us and bequeath it to the next generation, with which many would agree. However, since 1979, we have had not a Conservative party in the tradition of Macmillan or even Churchill—who was also a Liberal, of course—but a party of the radical right, engrossed by transatlantic neoliberal politics that focus solely on the maximisation of profit and to hell with the consequences, be they social or environmental.

There might not be a consensus in the UK Parliament or in UK politics to address these issues. We might find ourselves in a situation in which the Labour Party, in seeking office in the United Kingdom, constantly finds itself having to triangulate in the hope of attracting Tory voters. We do not have that problem in Scotland. We have majority support for progressive, social democratic politics—we have that broad consensus. With independence, we can move on from having to mitigate to delivering the better future and the wellbeing economy that we all want to see.

That concludes the debate. I encourage some members to spend their lunchtime refreshing their understanding of speaking through the chair, but, for now, I suspend the meeting.

13:33 Meeting suspended.  

14:30 On resuming—