First Minister's Question Time
Cabinet (Meetings)
To ask the First Minister what issues will be discussed at the next meeting of the Scottish Executive's Cabinet. (S2F-2789)
Our thoughts are with Dennis Canavan. I pass on to him the condolences of my family and, I am sure, all members, at what must be a horrendously difficult time for him and his family.
The Cabinet will meet next week to discuss issues of importance to Scotland. I suspect that we might reflect on the second session of the Scottish Parliament and the progress that we have made. We have the highest employment in the United Kingdom and the lowest unemployment since records began in Scotland, and a growing population. We have delivered reductions in crime, improvements in education standards and, of course, the lowest health waiting times on record. Next week, the Cabinet will celebrate the successful second session of the Scottish Parliament.
I echo the First Minister's comments about Dennis Canavan. The thoughts of us all are with him at this difficult time.
I remind the First Minister that part of Labour's legacy is a council tax that has gone up by 60 per cent. A few weeks before the previous election, the First Minister promised to devise "a fairer council tax" system. Now that we are just a few weeks from the next election, can he finally tell us exactly how he will do that?
We will certainly do that. This is a bit like groundhog day, but I explain again that the Liberal Democrats and Labour have an honest difference of policy on the issue, as Ms Sturgeon knows. As a result, we sought an independent review of local government finance. That review, which was published last year and informs our decision making, shows that the Scottish National Party's plans for a poll tax for Scotland, announced last week, would not only add 3p on the income tax rate in Scotland but cut vital services locally and nationally.
We have suspected for months that Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon would make big mistakes just before the election campaign started, but we did not expect a mistake quite as big as that. Scotland will reject the SNP's poll tax and we will ensure that our taxation systems remain fair.
The First Minister's reference to a poll tax is a rather stupid smear, but as he raised the issue, I remind him that when the Tory poll tax was in place he wanted to replace it with a—wait for it—local income tax. He said:
"If we cannot devise a system of local income tax … then there is something wrong with us."
There might be something wrong with the First Minister, but there is nothing wrong with us.
I asked the First Minister about his policy on the council tax. My party will abolish the unfair council tax. Nine out of 10 people will be better off and most pensioners will pay nothing. In other words, there will be a tax cut from the SNP, instead of a tax con trick from Labour. If the First Minister does not agree with us, that is his prerogative, but if we are to have a real debate it is about time he said what he would do instead. I ask again, what is his policy to reform the unfair council tax? For once, will he give a straight answer to a straight question?
The answer is very straight. Labour and the Liberal Democrats—I am sure that the Deputy First Minister agrees—will publish their plans in advance of the election. It is right to do that as a party and outside this chamber. Our policy will not be for a poll tax; it will be for a fair system of property taxation.
If Ms Sturgeon checked her historical facts, she would find that the position in the quotation, from nearly 20 years ago, that she used was superseded, because I listened to the experts on the matter. Every expert on local government taxation—not just in the late 1980s but today—says that a fair property taxation system is right for local government in Scotland, just as it is right elsewhere in the world.
What would be wrong for Scotland—and what would be doubly wrong in view of the Chancellor of the Exchequer's announcement yesterday of a cut in income tax, which encourages people to get into work—would be to increase income tax by 3 per cent. That would be a tax on everybody in Scotland who is in work. It would be a tax on two thirds of small businesses and on pensioners. Ultimately, it would be a tax that would drive hard-working, talented young people out of Scotland to lower-tax parts of the United Kingdom. It is one of the worst policies that even the SNP has ever come up with, and I believe that it will pay for that at the polls.
Can I remind the First Minister that the chancellor's budget announcement yesterday doubled the starting rate of tax for the lowest paid in our society? That is presumably why the Scottish Trades Union Congress said that it would hit the majority of workers. It is hard to believe that that came from a Labour chancellor.
I am happy to talk about SNP policy. I will announce it from the rooftops if that is what the First Minister wants. The SNP will abolish the unfair council tax. The First Minister might not like that, but the question for him—four years after he promised to make the council tax fairer—is what he will do instead. He will not answer that question because he has no plans to change the council tax. Is it not the case that if Mr McConnell gets his way, the people of Scotland will continue to be punished by the unfair, ever rising council tax? Is it not about time he had the guts and the honesty to stand up and say so?
That is of course entirely untrue, and Ms Sturgeon might regret saying it when she sees the plans that we will announce in advance of the election campaign and when she sees how right the detail of those plans will be for Scotland. They are unlike her plans, which would not only raise income tax for every working person in Scotland by 3p in the pound, but ensure that people on the average wage paid about £700 a year more—and not for the current level of public services in Scotland, but for fewer services. That is a cut of more than £1 billion in local and national services. That is what the SNP proposes—and an income tax increase to go with it.
I do not believe that Scotland should be the most highly taxed place in the United Kingdom. We have ensured, in every year since devolution, that council tax increases in Scotland have been lower than those elsewhere in the United Kingdom, and lower than in every one of the last years when the Conservatives were in power. We will ensure that, here in Scotland, people are taxed fairly and that they do not pay more tax than people in the rest of the UK. The SNP will not be allowed to drive talented, hard-working young people out of Scotland, because we will keep them. We will keep growing the Scottish population and we will keep growing the Scottish economy.
Can I remind the First Minister that the SNP's plan to abolish the unfair council tax represents the biggest tax cut for middle Scotland and for pensioners in a generation? If the First Minister has a policy to reform the council tax, why on earth will he not tell us—four years after he first told us that he had one—what it is? Is it not the case that, whether they mean doubling tax for the low paid or sticking with the unfair council tax, Labour's policies hit the poorest hardest and pile on the misery for middle Scotland? Can I remind the First Minister that people want a fair local tax and a lower local tax? That is why more and more of them are backing the SNP and our policy to abolish Labour's council tax.
Ms Sturgeon would have more credibility if she asked questions rather than read out prepared speeches, regardless of what the answers are. Whatever sets of policies the two Executive parties put forward in advance of the election campaign, both of them will be properly costed. Neither of these parties will do what the SNP wants to do, and set a flat-rate poll tax, which all of us campaigned against for years and which the SNP wants to bring back to Scotland. The SNP's plans would drive hard-working, talented young people out of Scotland when our population is growing, when our economic growth has been above the trend rate for nine quarters in a row, when our employment rate is higher than that in the rest of the UK, when unemployment is lower, and when our economy here in Scotland is moving in the right direction again.
The SNP wants to tax everybody who is in work and to make Scotland the most highly taxed part of the UK. At the same time, it wants to cut the vital local services that attract people here. SNP members' policy is wrong and they will pay for it in the opinion polls and in the election on 3 May. When we are back, we will reform local taxation fairly and properly for all.
Prime Minister (Meetings)
To ask the First Minister when he will next meet the Prime Minister and what issues they will discuss. (S2F-2790)
I expect to meet the Prime Minister again next week, when we will discuss several issues on which the devolved Scottish Government and the UK Government can work together to improve the lives of people in Scotland.
I sincerely hope that at the top of the agenda for discussion when the First Minister and the Prime Minister next meet will be how the European convention on human rights has been incorporated into our law.
Stewart Potter is a 43-year-old prisoner who is in jail for assault and robbery—an incident during which he held a knife to a shop assistant's throat. He is aggrieved that when he makes a phone call, the recipient hears a recorded message to warn them that the call comes from a prison. Potter finds that "embarrassing". Should not Potter be embarrassed by how he has wronged society? Is the First Minister embarrassed that, once again, the criminal is coming first and the victim a very poor second?
It would be wrong for me to comment on the case, as the Lord Advocate and her team are considering whether to appeal against the decision. However, I can say that I fully understand why they might consider appealing against the decision that the judge announced earlier this week, given the widespread concerns about it.
I was pleased that the Parliament voted last Thursday to end the unconditional early release of prisoners, which has resulted in some such difficulties over the years. That law was introduced by the Conservatives and the Scottish Parliament has abolished it.
The public are becoming sick and tired of the First Minister refusing to take any responsibility for what is going on in this country. This contemptible farce is happening on his watch. Prisoners—people who have wounded and scarred our society, including some who have killed—now claim that they should be able to vote. Stewart Potter, who held a knife to a woman's throat, complains about his phone calls. It is pathetic.
I pledge that my party, with my Westminster colleagues, will review the integration of European human rights laws, so that victims, and not criminals, come first. Will the First Minister pledge to do the same?
We have debated automatic early release. Miss Goldie has the luxury of opposition to comment on court cases, but I do not, although I wish I did on this occasion. The Lord Advocate and her team are considering an appeal and it is right and proper for them to do so.
In recent years, we have had several debates in the chamber about automatic and unconditional early release.
The question was about the ECHR.
The Conservatives introduced that policy, which they now disown.
What about the ECHR?
We have now, in effect, abolished that policy.
I remind Mr Gallie that the Conservative Government signed us up to the ECHR. The Conservatives cannot say that they do not like the decisions that follow from the ECHR when they signed up to it in the first place.
Because of our policies and because of the measures that the Executive and the Parliament are pursuing—tougher sentences, better regimes, community sentences, actions throughout our society to tackle violence in the community, tougher knife laws and tougher air-gun laws—the violent crime rate in Scotland is reducing. It is lower than it was under the Conservatives and even in the Parliament's early years. That is the right course of action for the Parliament—to have proper measures that make a difference by building up our justice system and our police force resources and through sentencing and deterrence, to ensure that fewer crimes are committed.
Was that not just typical of this First Minister? He is Scotland's very own Pontius Pilate, washing his hands of this perverse system—a system that puts prisoners first. Some of us have a bit more courage. Today, my party unveiled a £1 billion assault on crime and drugs—the biggest programme to tackle the issues ever seen in Scotland.
I ask the First Minister, who is running this country—him or the criminals?
Dear oh dear oh dear. We hear this rhetoric from the Conservatives in the chamber, but it does not reflect in any way their record when they were in government—when crime in Scotland was nearly 25 per cent higher than it is today and increasing, and when there were 1,500 fewer police officers in Scotland than there are today.
Nonsense claims about the number of police officers on the beat have again been published by the Conservatives this morning. They claim, ludicrously, that only 140 or so police officers are on the beat at any one time, but they know that, even at five o'clock in the morning, there are several hundred in one part of Scotland alone. They have the proof of that.
Earlier this week, Conservatives were protesting about current bail conditions and laws, but Margaret Mitchell welcomed the provisions relating to bail and remand during the stage 3 debate on the Criminal Proceedings etc (Reform) (Scotland) Bill. They say one thing in the chamber during question time and something entirely different when voting and when speaking elsewhere. They did something entirely different in the past when they were in government. They have no record or reputation of integrity on this issue. Scotland was a worse country when they were in charge, but it is a better country now.
I will take one back-bench supplementary at this point.
Thank you, Presiding Officer. I would like to ask the First Minister whether he will accept this 885-name petition from Lourdes secondary school pupils Cheryl Paterson and Lauren Bendford. It is about their school-friend Grace Waku, who has lived in Glasgow with her family for six years but was subjected to a dawn raid on Monday and incarcerated in Dungavel removal centre.
In light of this week's statement from the Executive on action that it will take on asylum seeker families who live in Scotland, will the First Minister personally intervene to ensure that Grace and her family can go home to Cardonald?
As I have said before, it would be entirely inappropriate for a Scottish minister to intervene in an individual case. In the consideration of such cases, there are due processes, involving members of Parliament and the Home Secretary, that are part of the political process as well as part of the legal process. That is the right way for such issues to be tackled.
It is also right that we, in our discussions with the Home Office over the past 18 months, have identified a particular issue in Glasgow. In a number of cases—partly because of delays in the system and partly because of appeals—asylum seekers have been in the country so long that their young boys and girls are, in effect, now Scottish in character and culture. Those individual cases have to be considered one by one by the Home Office, to ensure that the needs of the whole family are considered before a final decision is made.
The position of the Scottish National Party would have just a little more credibility here today if it had had the guts, in the document that it produced on Sunday, highlighting a range of issues about which it wanted to cause disagreement and conflict with the UK Government, to include—
Will the First Minister accept the petition?
Of course I will accept the petition.
The SNP should have had the guts to include immigration in its list. In this chamber, the SNP has called over and over again for powers to be devolved to this Parliament and for an independent Scotland, but it does not have the bottle, a few weeks before an election, to mention immigration. It is a disgrace.
Poverty
To ask the First Minister whether tackling poverty among the working poor is a Scottish Executive priority. (S2F-2797)
We are committed to tackling poverty and disadvantage in Scotland, including among the working poor, and we are working with the UK Government to do so. Our investment in child care and training is helping more and more Scots into work, and wages are now rising more quickly in Scotland than elsewhere in the UK.
Everyone wants to tackle poverty and eradicate low wages. Is the First Minister aware of the "Voices of people experiencing poverty in Scotland: Everyone matters?" report, which has been published this week, funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and supported by 20 Scottish charities? There are a number of statistics in that report that relate to real people—they are not just figures, as the First Minister obviously accepts. Two of the most frightening statistics are that 900,000 people in Scotland—18 per cent of the population—live on a low income and that 0.25 million children in Scotland live in poverty, even though someone in their family is working. If the First Minister is re-elected, what new policies will his Executive introduce to eradicate poverty among the working poor?
I am aware of the report and of the important issues it raises. One of the most important ways for us to tackle the issue is to work in partnership with the Department for Work and Pensions, the Treasury and the other UK Government departments on our responsibilities for education, skills, child care, the regeneration of our communities, the creation of employment and in areas such as the provision of school meals.
I hope that coalition partners will allow me to say that I believe that we should target an extension of free school meals on those families who had free school meals taken away from them by the Conservative Government in the late 1980s, when it hypocritically and deceitfully changed the benefits system and, by a sleight of hand, reduced the opportunity for a free school meal for a range of people who were in work but still in poverty. It is important that we target an extension of free school meals on those families, rather than adopt the universal approach that would allow free school meals for those who can afford them.
Does the First Minister accept that the main cause of poverty among the working poor is low wages and that we need to raise them to eradicate such poverty? I should apologise, because I said something earlier that is not true—I said that we all want to tackle poverty and eradicate low wages, but, unfortunately, that is not true. Does the First Minister support the Labour councillors in North Ayrshire Council who have an inward investment policy to try to attract business to North Ayrshire?
What a shock: the council is trying to bring jobs to Ayrshire.
I am coming to Frank McAveety. Under the heading, "Wage Levels", the policy says:
"Average Gross Hourly pay in North Ayrshire is £8.75 compared to £10.17 in Scotland and £11.19 for Great Britain. It is 12% below the UK level of £9.60 per hour."
Does the First Minister support the Labour councillors in North Ayshire, who advertise the area as a low-wage economy and who, in essence, say to employers, "Our workers are exploited. Why don't you come and join in?" Does he support them, or will he condemn them and support the people who want wages to be raised so that people are taken out of poverty?
I accept that Campbell Martin is committed to tackling poverty and I answered his first question positively for that reason, but I do not accept his attempt to misrepresent and demean the hard work of people in North Ayrshire to try to create jobs there.
I grew up in North Ayrshire and I know the economic challenges that it has suffered over the past 30 years. It has a number of communities that need support, proper infrastructure, inward investment and the development of new businesses that will create jobs there in the future that will retain the population and help grow it to ensure that those communities are sustainable. Our investment, not just in the M77 to the south but in the new bypass at the three towns, in improved ferry services, in regeneration in Irvine and elsewhere and in the urban regeneration company, will make a difference in North Ayrshire. If Campbell Martin really wanted to tackle poverty, he would support that investment, not run it down.
Budget
To ask the First Minister what impact the Chancellor of the Exchequer's budget will have on Scotland. (S2F-2794)
The budget is, of course, set against a backdrop of unprecedented economic prosperity in Scotland and the UK. We have a record number of Scots in work, a historically low level of unemployment and, in the UK, the second highest income per capita in the G7.
For Scotland, the budget means good news for children, working families, pensioners, business and the environment. It is a budget for families, fairness and the future. If I was in another place, I would say that I commend it to the house.
I thank the First Minister for his reply.
Yesterday's budget provides the lowest basic rate of income tax in 75 years, which of course will be of benefit to many of my constituents in Kilmarnock and Loudon. Does the First Minister agree that pensioners and hard-working families are better off with a stable economy in the United Kingdom and that a Scottish National Party Government, by increasing tax by 3p in Scotland, would make our pensioners and hard-working families worse off than their counterparts in England and Wales?
I should make clear that my Liberal Democrat coalition partners would take a different approach on this issue. Having made that clear, I am delighted to defend the budget. The reality is that the budget cut corporation tax. Last week, the SNP was calling for that; this week, it is squealing about it. The reality is that the budget cut income tax. Last week, the SNP was proposing to put up income tax; this week, we are bringing it down. The reality is that we are giving people help to get into work and helping families through child benefit, which will make a difference to every family here in Scotland.
All this help and assistance, with stable growth in the UK economy, is painted against an alternative from the Scottish National Party that would see a rise in income tax of 3p in the pound. The SNP's poll tax is only the first instalment of the £5,000 or more that the SNP would cost every hard-working family in Scotland.
Everybody in Scotland knows that the SNP is unfit to govern and run our economy, and would create havoc with jobs and investment in Scotland. I am sure that the SNP will learn the cost of that over the next few weeks.
Does the First Minister realise that, as a result of Gordon Brown's budget yesterday, low-paid workers earning only £7,500 a year will see their income tax bill rise from £232 to £416 a year, which is an increase of 78 per cent, while Gordon Brown, earning more than £130,000 a year, will see his tax bill go down by 5 per cent? Is that what Labour is about: robbing the poor to pay the rich?
The only robbing going on in the chamber at the moment is the robbing of statistics by the SNP and, of course, the deception that it tries to pull on the people of Scotland whenever it talks about such matters. We all know what the SNP stands for—it stands for disinvestment and a backward step for Scotland in relation to economic growth, whereby Scotland could become the highest-taxed part of the United Kingdom.
Over recent weeks, the SNP has come along to the chamber and claimed that it has business support for its policies, but it has not been willing to defend them and explain them properly in the chamber. I have only to quote one of the SNP's supporters, Mr Crawford Beveridge, who was hailed again by the SNP last week at its conference as one of the business figures who speak for the SNP and therefore is an advocate for independence. Just five short months ago he said:
"I advocate the policy that Scotland should raise the money that it spends. I know that could potentially plunge the place into recession".
That shows how the SNP fails on independence. Its ability and willingness to cover up independence over the next six weeks will be exposed by my party and, I am sure, by others. The SNP is not fit to govern Scotland. It is playing fast and loose with the Scottish economy, and the Scottish people will reject it.
Asylum Seekers (Self-harm)
To ask the First Minister how many instances of self-harm involving asylum seekers national health service boards have dealt with in the last four years. (S2F-2796)
The data collected from general practitioner practices and in-patient units on those receiving care following self-harm does not allow for the identification of patients as asylum seekers as they of course have the same right to confidentiality as everyone else.
That is a sad response, as I am sure that asylum seekers would like us to know. The recent case of the Nepalese asylum seeker, who had been here for six years, is only the latest tragic case to demonstrate the callous inhumanity of the United Kingdom immigration system. The much-trailed letter from the Minister for Education and Young People on the deportation of asylum seekers' families frankly changes nothing.
Further to the issue raised by Linda Fabiani, and following yesterday's landmark House of Lords decision in the case of Huang on proportionality and article 8 of the European convention on human rights as it will apply to established families in Scotland, will the First Minister instruct the Lord Advocate to initiate breach of the peace proceedings against officials who use force to attempt to remove established families—that is well within his devolved powers—so as to prevent more misery?
I am stunned that Christine Grahame thinks that my believing that it is important to protect the confidentiality of asylum seekers and to treat them in the same way as we treat other members of the population is a sad response. Hers is a shameful response. I believe that asylum seekers deserve the same protection and confidentiality as everybody else.
Christine Grahame's question exposes the hypocrisy at the heart of the Scottish National Party's policy. She quotes the ECHR, but Mr MacAskill and others have trailed around the country in television studios for the past few months questioning our commitment to the ECHR. The SNP cannot use it and at the same time call for it to be taken away.
Nor can the SNP come to the chamber—it has happened week after week, month after month in the past four years—to call for the devolution of immigration powers and an independent immigration system for Scotland and then not have the bottle to mention it in its policy document, which was published last Sunday, or in advance of the election. The SNP should be ashamed. It has no principles and the people of Scotland will expose it for that.
My apologies go to Lord James Douglas-Hamilton—we did not reach question 6 this week.