Budget (Scotland) (No 4) Bill: Stage 3
The next item of business is a debate on motion S2M-5551, in the name of Mr Tom McCabe, that Parliament agrees that the Budget (Scotland) (No 4) Bill be passed.
As members know, the debate marks the final stage of this year's budget process. It also marks the last year in our current spending review. We have achieved much in the current spending review period: we see a Scotland where unemployment is down and where there is increased investment in transport and other infrastructure and we see that more people are choosing to study, live and work in Scotland. Significant steps have also been taken towards improving our nation's health. We can take pride in the fact that we successfully implemented the ban on smoking in enclosed public places. There is also evidence that our efforts to improve literacy and numeracy are beginning to pay off and we have made good progress on implementing Scotland's first sustainable development strategy.
Around our budget process, we have transparency and a consultative mechanism. I think that that is the subject of comment and praise in other places. As we have said on many occasions, the process is one that should be continually evolving—certainly, the Executive is committed to working with Parliament and its committees to ensure that the process evolves positively.
It is appropriate to say a word of thanks, not only to the Finance Committee, but to the other committees that feed into the budget process. I thank them for their work and for the way in which they contributed to the outcomes that we are debating today. I also want to say a word of thanks to the various officials who have taken part in what is quite a long process—one that they recognise as being an important part of our parliamentary calendar. We will continue to work with the committees on developing the budget process and—importantly, as we approach a new spending review—on clarifying the ways in which we engage with them to ensure their maximum input to the process.
The budget allows progress towards our partnership goal of creating a better Scotland for everyone. It helps us to encourage economic growth, deliver high quality public services, reinforce the ways in which we plan to build the stronger, safer communities that all of us seek and create the more confident democratic Scotland that was one of the founding aspirations and principles of the Scottish Parliament.
The budget allows the totality of our spending to rise to just over £31 billion in 2007-08, which is an increase of approximately 3.5 per cent. We are committing record levels of funds to local government—over a third of our total budget goes in that direction—which will allow councils to fund improvements in teachers' pay and conditions, increase teacher numbers and improve pupil-to-teacher ratios. It will also allow us to fund the free personal care that has been so well received in Scotland, and to provide record levels of funding for the police and fire services. All of that moves us towards the goal of providing world-class public services.
Can the minister shed any more light on the discussions with local authorities about implementation of free personal care, which he announced in his December statement to Parliament? When are we likely to hear the outcome of those discussions? What progress has been made?
I am pleased to confirm that Scottish Executive officials are liaising closely with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities—discussions are continuing. Officials are identifying the authorities on which they want to focus in terms of sample studies. As we move through the year, I expect to see some outcomes. As members know, that is one of the conditions that we attached to the additional funding that we allocated to local government; indeed, it was one of the things that local government was more than happy to sign up to.
Importantly, this budget allows councils across Scotland to keep council tax increases to a minimum. As members are well aware, the average council tax increase across Scotland last year was the lowest since devolution, but the increases in 2007-08 are set to better that by some considerable way. So far, the average band D increase of 1.9 per cent takes us one step further along the path to the creation of a system of local taxation that is more stable, fairer and more proportionate. Therefore, we believe this to be a budget that is prudent in its approach, but ambitious in its aims—a budget that will improve the quality of life for people throughout Scotland.
I move,
That the Parliament agrees that the Budget (Scotland) (No 4) Bill be passed.
As the minister said, the debate brings the budget process—the last in this parliamentary session—to a conclusion.
There are a number of areas in which the Scottish National Party very much agrees with the Executive about its priorities and how it has allocated its spending. In this budget, there has been a material change in the financial settlement to local authorities. We have made it clear to the minister for some time that we welcome that improvement in the financial climate. We further welcome the fact that additional resources—beyond what were planned by the minister—have been found and have been allocated to local authorities. The fruits of that productive dialogue with local authorities over a period have seen us reach a position in which we have a lower average council tax increase than we had last year.
We warmly welcome those words of appreciation from the Opposition. Will Mr Swinney take this opportunity to dissociate himself completely from any suggestion that additional finance to local government was an election bribe?
It is amazing the frequency with which Mr McCabe refers to "an election bribe". Perhaps he has something on his conscience that he wants to share with us. A problem shared with friends is always a burden taken off the shoulders. If it helps Mr McCabe to talk about it more often, we will be happy to acknowledge that it is a bribe. Everybody is happy with it because everybody's council tax is much lower than it might otherwise have been. I am delighted that even under the harsh settlement from the Scottish Executive, Angus Council—with which I have a close relationship—has delivered a freeze on council tax.
There are areas of the budget that the Scottish National Party can welcome—the material change in local government funding is one of them. However, there are some missing elements. We have waited throughout the budget process for the publication of the Howat review. I had thought that perhaps, in a last gasp, the Finance Minister would publish the Howat review today and answer the questions that I am desperate to have answered, but I will just have to wait a few more weeks. The Howat review would have informed the process in which we are involved, because one of its central purposes was to evaluate the effectiveness of Executive spending on certain key areas of policy. Our debate would have been enhanced had we that assessment to hand. I hope that the preparations for the spending review have in no way been held back by the non-publication of that document.
In addition, the efficient government process rumbles on, but it rumbles on in a fashion that all of us believe needs to be made more robust. Audit Scotland has done a good job in evaluating the work of the Scottish Executive, and I welcome the Executive's achievements on efficient government, but all of us believe that the process could go further. It could be more rigorous, it could be more robust and it could be better evaluated. We can look forward to that in the period ahead.
Some questions remain about the budget. The Finance Committee conducted its usual rigorous consideration of the budget. Among the areas on which the committee concentrated were target setting and priority setting, and the ability to monitor expenditure on cross-cutting themes. Without wishing to pre-judge the comments that my colleague Mark Ballard will make in relation to cross-cutting themes in respect of sustainable development, let me say simply that the budget process lacks the ability rigorously to assess whether the Government's central purposes and objectives are being evaluated and achieved effectively. That is one thing that we must all take from the budget process.
What the SNP takes is that the Government must be much more sharply focused in how it spends money. We must have a much clearer sense of the purpose of public expenditure and what we expect to get out of it, and we must have many more unifying themes for achieving public priorities through public expenditure. If we go down that route, we will have a much stronger process that serves the people of Scotland a great deal more effectively.
Does that mean that the Scottish National Party will become focused on the key priorities for Scotland and stop making promises to spend money on everything that happens to come to the surface every day of the week?
Christine May should know that the SNP is always focused on ensuring that it delivers the best for the people of Scotland. We think that Government in Scotland needs to be aligned with a central objective of measurably improving the quality of life for the people of Scotland. Departments of state must be focused and targeted on that objective—an SNP Administration will pursue that.
One remaining question that arises from the budget concerns the vaunted claims about the great union dividend. I notice from the assessment of identifiable public expenditure that, in 1999-2000, for every £100 of expenditure on education south of the border, Scotland spent £126 and, for every £100 that was spent on health south of the border, Scotland spent £119. However, as a result of the union dividend, that advantage has reduced: we now spend £106 for every £100 spent on education south of the border and £110 for every £100 spent on health south of the border. That simply proves that the union dividend is utterly worthless. I look forward to the people of Scotland exercising their judgment on that on 3 May.
When the people of Scotland express a view on the benefits or otherwise of the union on 3 May, Mr Swinney might take a different view about whether he should have looked forward to it.
In this final budget debate of the parliamentary session, we are debating not only the budget, but the Executive's record. I got the impression that the minister almost spoke more about the Executive's record—which is what people want to examine, not only today but over the weeks and months ahead—than about the budget, but there were some things in what the minister said that should give us pause for thought about the budget process, how we scrutinise it and some of the claims that the Executive makes. I will give some examples.
The minister mentioned that unemployment in Scotland is down, which may well be the case. We could argue about whether that is a result of actions that were taken in the budget, more general economic trends, actions that the Westminster Government has taken or a host of other policies, but it is almost impossible for anyone to claim that unemployment in Scotland is down as a result of the budget that we are considering.
The minister mentioned economic growth. As we have heard, economic growth in Scotland is not performing as well as in the rest of the United Kingdom, but we do not know to what extent the budget contributes to economic growth.
The minister also mentioned that literacy and numeracy rates are improving. We welcome that news if that is the case, but is it all about money? If those rates are improving as a result of the budget, would they improve more if we spent a bit more, or would they worsen if we spent a bit less? I do not think that anyone would argue that they would. We must break the assumption that spending more money automatically leads to better results and that spending less money automatically leads to worse results.
There are some things in the budget with which we agree and others with which we do not agree. However, our fundamental concern about the budget and the Executive's record is that the Executive badly fails to deliver value for money for the taxpayer. As the minister said, spending is heading towards £31 billion, so the question must be whether we have benefited from that extra spending to the extent that we could have benefited. No independent observer would claim that the Executive has delivered as much value for money for the taxpayer as we have a right to expect.
We hear hints that the efficient government programme might in due course deliver more savings, which would be great. If more efficiency savings can be delivered without affecting public services, the Executive will hear no criticism from the Conservatives on that.
However, does the efficiency programme go far enough? Have we thought radically enough about what we can deliver from public spending in Scotland and how we deliver it? We should not kid ourselves: the budget process is not perfect. There is not the necessary degree of scrutiny, particularly around some spending decisions, and different ways of spending money and different outcomes are not sufficiently contested. We kid ourselves if we think that the process is as transparent, open and effective as it can be. We would be happy to support constructive suggestions that the minister might make in that regard.
In Scotland, we must get away from the mindset according to which spending pound after pound will automatically deliver better services. We must put value for money at the heart of the budget process and not leave it as a tag line at the end. The people who vote on 3 May will not be voting on this budget; they will be voting on this Executive's record. I hope that the outcome will be different from the one that Mr Swinney seeks, and I hope that after 3 May we will at last have a Government that takes value for money seriously.
There is an air of déjà vu about the debate. The question whether the current budget process is the best and the most searching might well be asked. However, that is a question for the next session of Parliament.
I am happy to underline the most recent successes for the Liberal Democrats in their role in the coalition. I am sure that only an obdurate Opposition member, who is unwilling to acknowledge the positive nature of this year's expenditure plans, would chisel at details about spending. An impartial onlooker can see positive changes in higher education, in support for transport, especially public transport, and in the environment—indeed, in almost every aspect of Scottish life.
As the minister said, during the budget year, more teachers will work at the chalkface, which underlines the coalition's commitment to a better-educated Scotland. Many major capital transport projects are under way, despite lengthy delays in getting them on the road—or indeed the rail track. In my area, work towards reopening the Stirling-Alloa-Kincardine line is moving ahead. Other projects will help the train to take the strain. It was always the coalition's intention to increase commitment to public transport, and people who pore through the detail of the budget documents will find that Scotland now spends two thirds of its transport budget on support for public transport systems. Some of that spend will go towards schemes to remove heavy goods vehicles from our roads and some will subsidise rural bus routes that would not otherwise be economically viable. The introduction last April of the concessionary fares scheme might be regarded by some people as a burden on the public purse, but the take-up and consequential benefits of the scheme are far-reaching and difficult to quantify. Members who talk to people who partake of the scheme will hear positive comments.
The budget also demonstrates further progress towards greening the economy. There will be more investment in renewable energy and more green jobs, all of which will benefit people in Scotland.
Last week, as the minister said, most councils showed their approval of the local government settlement by setting council tax levels below inflation. I am a serving member of a local authority and I think that it is possible to make further progress in the efficient government programme, in linking services with other public bodies and in procurement. This is a challenging time for local authorities, especially in provision of education and social work services. Social work services in particular face major issues if they are to meet the expectations of society and Government. However, many councils are bringing fresh thinking into their services and their approach to achieving financial targets.
As a Liberal Democrat, I would like the financial rigour that councils are experiencing to be carried through to all other parts of government. As a member of the Finance Committee, I will play my part in considering parts of government, to ensure that we secure the due outcome from taxpayers' cash investment.
As I said, most services have received extra financial support in the short lifetime of the Scottish Parliament. We should look forward to securing positive results from that investment. We must ensure that the public sector in Scotland is as alert to efficiency as the private sector is. As far as the Liberal Democrats are concerned, the budget settlement is good for Scotland and for the people of Scotland. I support the motion.
This debate will be difficult, because there is very little to say. The information that is in front of us is fairly meaningless. For example, we will be voting on giving Scottish ministers just over £1 billion for education to spend on schools, on teachers, on the Gaelic language, on Historic Scotland and on sport. Interestingly, we learn that there will be £100 of accruing resources, alongside that figure of £1,094,349,000. The information does not provide much subject for debate.
Who can argue with giving the Scottish ministers that £1 billion? It is our choice: do we give ministers £1 billion, or do we vote against today's motion and thereby shut down Scotland's schools? We have no choice but to vote for the motion. No amendments to the motion have been lodged for us to consider; indeed, only ministers could have lodged amendments. No one can argue with the motion, so we have to ask: What is the debate for?
I agree with people who say that we have to reconsider the budget process. There is no point in this stage 3, and there will be little content in this debate. However, that is not to say that we do not have an opportunity to bring up key issues that arose during discussions in the Finance Committee. The debate could be valuable if we had the sharp focus that John Swinney talked about and if we were actually discussing the Executive's priorities and what the Executive's cross-cutting themes mean for the billions of pounds on which we will vote, but we do not have such information—the Scottish Executive says that it would be too difficult to collect.
Members of the Finance Committee heard some very unilluminating witness statements from ministers. For example, we were told that the cross-cutting themes are less of a priority than the priorities, but ministers have not been able to explain what happens when a cross-cutting theme is in conflict with a priority, or how the two can be reconciled. How have such matters been reconciled in the budget? If we had that kind of information, this debate might be more substantial.
We might be able to consider the budget's implications for sustainable development. We could consider the implications for sustainable development of spending up to £1 billion on a new road bridge across the Forth, but we cannot do that because all we have to debate are the billions of pounds that are laid out in the bill, together with the hundreds of pounds of retained income. We cannot have a debate, but we need a debate. We need a useful discussion of the budget.
It is worth reflecting on what might happen after the coming Scottish Parliament election. What will happen if there is no workable coalition with a workable majority? What will happen if we move into a period of minority Government in Scotland? Will the present budget process be effective in such circumstances? With a minority Government, it will be necessary to build consensus in Parliament to get stage 1 and stage 3 voted through, so we will need some kind of amendment process. Parties that are not part of the minority Government will have to be able to play a role by making their suggestions about and offering comment on what they would like to be reprioritised. The present system will not be fit for purpose if there is a minority Government: that is the situation that we may face in only a few months.
The budget debate would be very interesting indeed if there were a minority Government and if Tom McCabe were not simply reading out a list of achievements but was instead trying to convince Parliament to support the budget, and if we had some real choices to make—tough choices, but genuine choices. Until we are able to make such choices, debates such as this will be flawed.
We move now to the open debate. Wendy Alexander missed Mr McCabe's speech and most of John Swinney's speech. That is not good. However, she has sent me an explanation and an apology, so I will call her to speak.
Thank you, Presiding Officer. I offer a profuse apology to you and to the minister, and—by way of explanation—I offer a profound thank you to the staff at the information technology helpdesk, who managed to extract some of my speech from my computer after I had failed miserably to do so myself.
I had been under the impression that I was summing up the debate, but I will take the opportunity to speak first in the open debate.
As other members have said, today is the final stage in our consideration of the budget for next year. As others have also noted, the imminence of the election focuses minds on what that budget will deliver for Scotland. It could, on the one hand, be a new or refurbished school every week, shorter hospital waiting times, new health checks, new university and college buildings, new neighbourhood wardens, major infrastructure projects—including projects that are now under construction, such as the M74 extension, trams in Edinburgh and the Glasgow airport rail link—new water investment, new housing and so much more. That is £28 billion of taxpayers' money and £28 billion of services. Either we have a budget that maintains momentum in Scotland, or—this is the important question—we change direction.
I have another important question to ask. Are any of the parties that are currently represented in the chamber seeking to negotiate a new spending system for Scotland next year? During this budget year, we will have a spending review. My question is simple: does any party want a new financing system for Scotland next year?
My attention was drawn to a column in today's edition of The Scotsman by George Kerevan, who, as he admits in the column, is an SNP sympathiser. He writes:
"Scottish business does have a proper interest in examining the likely impact"
of
"any radical transfer of fiscal powers to Holyrood".
I concur with him, but I think that not just every business, but every man, woman and child in the country has that interest.
The question is very simple, and the SNP and, to some extent, the Greens, have had years to contemplate it. Do they want a new financing system next year, or do they want to stick with the spending review, which will be published in October? I genuinely do not know the answer.
I am tempted to wish that Wendy Alexander had managed to recover a different speech from her computer. In thinking ahead to a new financial system, does she feel that the present Executive has spent the union dividend as wisely as it should? Is she confident that the Howat report will not reveal any examples of wasted money?
The relevant point is that the Howat report is going to be published with the spending review. It is absolutely clear that the Executive is in favour of the spending review forming the basis of how every service in Scotland is financed.
Those of us who diligently read our newspapers will have noted that, on Sunday, Alex Salmond was telling us how cosy his relations were going to be with Gordon Brown. The SNP has to do rather better than that. It must tell the rest of us how the country and the Scottish Parliament are going to be financed and how the services on which Scotland relies are going to be supported. That is not for some cosy private chat in Downing Street; the entire point of devolution was that such decisions came back to Scotland.
Let me ask the question again. Does the SNP want the 2007 spending review, or does it want something else? Surely the people of Scotland have a right to know. It is one thing to go into an election with the odd loose promise here or there, or with a few different spending priorities—that is the very stuff of politics. We are talking about something different, however. There are parties here that will not tell us whether or not they want to tear up the system and start again. They are not prepared to tell us whether they want a different system, although they aim to start negotiating for one within three weeks.
Will the member take an intervention?
Happily.
The member is now in the last minute of her speech, I am afraid.
I think that that prevents me from taking an intervention.
We are going to keep on asking the question. On the day after this year's election, will the 2007 spending review stand, or do those other parties want to tear up how the country is financed and start again? We have to wonder at the reasons why they will not tell us whether they intend to argue for the ability to collect taxes in Scotland or how much of the North sea oil they want on 4 May. On 4 May, will they argue for pensions to be devolved to Scotland? How much will they pay in for defence on 4 May?
Could you close, please?
Are we instead going to stick with the current system?
Close, please.
The reason why the parties to which I refer do not give us even a paragraph on the financing of Scotland is that their sums simply do not add up.
I am not quite sure what that rant was about, but I suspect that it has more to do with the election than this budget debate.
Oh, well spotted, sir.
It was not hard, Mrs MacDonald.
Tom McCabe started off full of self-praise, as usual. We hear the annual spin at these budget bill debates because, as Mark Ballard said, the only person who can amend what goes on is the minister, which means that the debates are slightly false.
The minister claimed that he was prudent yet ambitious, and went on to expand on the subject of transparency. I ask the minister: when is that transparency going to come about? What is the big secret? The Finance Committee would love to have such a transparent process. It could get its teeth into it, see outcome figures for every pound spent and examine the choices made, as Andrew Arbuckle said. That would enable us to judge what we got for the money that was spent and how money should be spent in future. However, the minister has not given us that information in time. The committees of the Parliament have a hard time fitting good consideration of the budget around the other work that they must do.
The minister managed to bring up the fact that he is bribing local government—he offered that observation himself, which was magnanimous of him. Nobody argues about the fact that local government needs money to deliver free personal care, which is a policy that everyone in the Parliament supported. It is only a shame that it took so long to come out, and I am interested in where the minister thinks that it will go.
John Swinney, Derek Brownlee and Andrew Arbuckle mentioned the efficient government initiative, which does not go far enough and is not transparent enough. If we are to evaluate Government focus and performance, we need the outcome figures, not just the outturn figures. We need to know what we got—and will get—for the money.
Derek Brownlee talked about value for money. We can examine whether something represented value for money only if we have up-to-date outturn figures. We cannot do it any other way. However, we do not have those figures.
I thought that Mark Ballard's speech was good, as he talked about the process and mentioned cross cutting. Every minister under the sun mentions cross cutting through the year, but nobody can ever identify what it does, where the money comes from, where the money goes and how much it gets. However, Mark Ballard's idea of budget by committee is not the way in which we want to run Scotland's finances.
I hope that, the next time that we have this debate in the Parliament, we get something to debate.
This has been an interesting debate. It was interesting that the minister started off by talking about unemployment going down. I suggest that he should drill down into that issue in some detail and consider low incomes, the fact that the annual survey of hourly earnings ignores people who work less than 18 hours a week, the fact that Scotland is still exporting many of its skilled high earners, the fact that many people are in part-time work or have short-term contracts and the fact that the reason why we have exceeded the Lisbon target for women in the workforce is because many Scottish women are in the workforce because of basic family necessity.
I noted John Swinney's recognition of the improvement in the local government settlement. However, even with that improvement, there is a concern about the stop-go nature of local government finance, with efficiency savings being clawed back and money going out again—all of which happens at short notice and all of it drives the complete antithesis of efficient government. In fact, we are not even seeing that antithesis because we cannot get the Howat review—that grave omission continues; the democratic and accounting deficit is still there.
Derek Brownlee, in spite of his positioning, exposed rather well the weakness of the idea of the union dividend, which is evidenced by our low growth, our population decline, our demographic problems, the fact that we have the lowest life expectancy among Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, our low average incomes and—as we have seen today—the problems with the well-being of Scotland's children. That is not exactly a terrific record.
Although, as John Swinney said, talk of efficient government rumbles on, we did not hear much about it today. However, we need to know more about it. We need to ask about the extent to which it is pulling together the arms of the public sector into a new era of renewal and resurgence and delivering operational and financial efficiencies. To what extent is efficient government becoming a perpetual obsession, subject to arm's-length audit and accounting verification à la Howat?
We have the most unbelievably damaged system. There is no credible aspiration or unifying worthy cause that unites Scotland, no shared national vision, no shared local community visions that feed into that and no widely held belief that the Government is obsessed with the objective of increasing the personal well-being and security of citizens relative to other people. We are falling behind.
Will Jim Mather tell us what is the SNP's vision for Scotland, particularly with regard to our pensioners? We have a clear vision for them. We believe that it is vital to tell them exactly how their pensions will be funded. We have an interest in that as well. Will Jim Mather tell us how the SNP will fund pensions?
We will do so by the straightforward methodology of maximising the number of working-age people who are in work in Scotland and paying taxes. That will allow us to drive forward our pensioners' terms and conditions, in line with the Irish, the Norwegians, the Spanish and those in other countries who are pushing ahead and giving their pensioners much more.
The budget process is a sham and is incomplete. It does not manage growth, and the minister has no target for growth. There is no mechanism to maximise Government revenue and no need to manage inflation or interest rates. There is no need to manage a deficit or surplus. It is a perverse approach that risks a genuine spiral of dependency and decline. In particular, we do not have interconnected Government departments that have a single, national aim.
The member mentioned inflation and interest rates. Does the SNP have any intention of managing those? I thought that, as of 19 January, it intended to keep the pound and the Bank of England. What is its mechanism for managing inflation and interest rates?
We will use the same mechanism that Ireland and Australia use successfully. The difference is that, when we take that currency move as an interim step, we will have tax powers to maximise the efficiency of Scotland and mitigate the inflation-driven approach of the past.
The lack of unifying aims and macro-objectives means that we have arbitrary numeric targets, which Wendy Alexander herself has said are set by departments on the basis of what they can meet. We should have an open-ended commitment to improve the number of economically active people in work and to measure growth in that area. That would improve the health of Scotland, the pensions of Scotland, the tax take of Scotland, the motivation of children in Scotland and the take-up of everything. We need those objectives if we are to release real energy in Scotland.
Instead, we have a Government without the revenue feedback loop or the checks and balances that should run throughout the full gamut of our affairs. We have an uncompetitive, unsustainable version of national economic management. Compared with what others have, it is a laughing stock. If this debate was held in any other legislature—we are spending 45 minutes on stage 3 of the bill—it would be a laughing stock.
We must consider the success of other nations. Since 1945, the number of independent countries has increased from 74 to 193—119 more. Why is that? People have seen the effectiveness and benefit of having a unifying national objective and the power and policies that can move them towards that objective. People do not sit around waiting for things to get better. Governments are built on networks of predisposed peers who work together to help the nation—networks of self-critical, excited people in every department of Government who are trying to improve things. It is as if an Alcoholics Anonymous for Governments is coming out and saying, "This is how we can improve things and move them forward."
The creation of the international financial services centre in Ireland has transformed the country. That is a terrific competitive proposition. Now, Ireland has its national development plan, which is worth €184 billion over five years—or £20 billion a year—to build their country. We should be doing the same.
I was going to start my speech by saying that the debate had an end-of-term feel to it, but after the previous two speeches I could not possibly pursue that argument.
The Minister for Finance and Public Service Reform pointed out that the budget is only a mechanism for delivering improvements to the people of Scotland in all the areas in which the public sector impacts on them. To name but a few, those improvements include extra teachers in our schools, more nurses and doctors, the building of new schools, greater investment in transport and the concessionary travel scheme and central heating scheme for our elderly people. Those are real measures that are making a huge difference to people in Scotland. Those are the things that we will be judged on when it comes to the election in May.
Will the minister give way?
I am conscious that I have to make some progress.
As Mr Swinney noted in his speech, this is the last budget process of the parliamentary session, and I think that it is perhaps time to reflect on the process—one or two members also referred to that. I hope that in the next session the Finance Committee will perhaps examine in some detail how we can improve the process and make it more meaningful. By the time that we reach stage 3, a lot of the points have already been made and, a bit like the film "Groundhog Day", we rehearse some of the same arguments, albeit this time with the added attraction of the forthcoming election.
I am glad that Mr Swinney recognised the change in the financial settlement for local government, which will lead to one of the lowest increases in council tax in Scotland since devolution. He also welcomed our efficient government programme and suggested that we need to go further. I do not think that anyone looking at the likely post-spending-review settlement is in any doubt about the fact that the efficient government programme will need to go further to release important extra revenue for investing in our public services and ensuring that they deliver even greater value in the future.
Mr Brownlee touched on the same theme. The Executive has nothing to be ashamed of in our efficient government programme. It is delivering what we said it would, and it will deliver in the future when we need to free up even more headroom to ensure that our public services deliver for us.
Members will not be surprised that I agree with all the points made by Mr Arbuckle. I could not possibly disagree with his contribution, which I think was well worth noting.
Mr Ballard described the information in the budget documents as "meaningless". If so, I suggest that it is like the Green party manifesto because, as we all know, the Greens are on record as saying that they will not enter a coalition and therefore will not implement anything in their manifesto. In the same way, it is also like the Tories' manifesto.
Of course, Mr Ballard could have brought forward an alternative budget detailing the Greens' plans to nationalise all our public utilities and block the Edinburgh airport rail link. However, he chose not to do that, so I do not think that he can criticise us for presenting our budget and allowing, through the budget process, an open debate on it.
Wendy Alexander was right to have her say and to ask the questions that she asked, but her late arrival perhaps caused her to misjudge slightly the tone and temperature of today's debate. It may have been better if she had been present from the beginning of the debate.
Mr Mather continued in the same tone. In his speech, he railed about unemployment, our falling behind and our having an unsustainable and uncompetitive Scotland. He is the Mr Doom-and-gloom of Scottish politics. I sometimes think that he lives in a parallel universe that is totally detached from the reality that we experience every day. Although he might believe all that he says, even the most critical MSPs would find great difficulty in identifying the parallel universe that Mr Mather describes daily in which the whole of Scotland is, to quote him, a basket case.
The only laughing stock is Mr Mather's position that an independent Scotland would rely on the Bank of England to set its interest rates. He also mentioned five different countries with five different fiscal positions, and he failed again to tell us which one he would adopt in Scotland. Which taxation levels would he advise an independent Scotland to follow for personal taxation and inheritance tax? He really should attempt to answer those questions.
Finally, it is worth stressing again that this budget is important because of the impact that it will have—it will allow us to deliver our plans for 2007-08. Our financial plans are responsible. The enormous sum of money distributed by the Executive belongs to the people of Scotland, and it is our duty to ensure that it is spent efficiently to meet the priorities and needs of the whole population. It is a budget that will deliver excellent public services, support stronger, safer communities and develop a confident, democratic Scotland. I commend it to the Parliament, and I hope that it is supported at 5 o'clock.