Official Report 425KB pdf
As members will be aware, the Presiding Officer is required under standing orders to decide whether or not, in her view, any provision of a bill relates to a protected subject matter—that is, whether it modifies the electoral system and franchise for Scottish parliamentary elections. In the Presiding Officer’s view, no provision of the Budget (Scotland) (No 5) Bill relates to a protected subject matter; therefore, the bill does not require a supermajority to be passed at stage 3.
The next item of business is a debate on motion S6M-20860, in the name of Shona Robison, on the Budget (Scotland) (No 5) Bill at stage 3. I invite members who wish to speak in the debate to press their request-to-speak buttons, and I call the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government to open the debate.
15:59
I am pleased to open the stage 3 debate on the Budget (Scotland) (No 5) Bill. Before turning to the substance of the debate, I want to thank those whose work has brought us to this point: the Finance and Public Administration Committee and all the parliamentary committees that have applied rigorous scrutiny to the budget; the Scottish Fiscal Commission, which provides the independent forecasts that underpin our decisions; and the officials across the Scottish Government whose dedication ensures that a publication of such a scale can be delivered. I am also grateful to the First Minister and Cabinet colleagues for their support throughout, and to those Opposition members who have engaged constructively throughout the process.
Turning to the substance of the debate, I want to begin where all meaningful public work must begin—with the people whose lives are shaped by what happens in this chamber. Every decision that we take shapes the lives of people across Scotland—their daily experiences, the services that they rely on and the opportunities that they hope for.
As Parliament is aware, the fiscal and economic context remains highly challenging. Even in the past three years alone—the period for which I have served as Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government—we have faced sustained inflation, higher interest rates, pressure on household incomes and increasing costs for public services. Despite that, we have focused on practical action to support people, to strengthen our economy and to build resilience.
We can see the results of that approach in Scotland’s economic performance. For 10 consecutive years, Scotland has been the leading place in the United Kingdom, outside London, for inward investment, and independent assessments have confirmed that the Scottish Government has a high investment grade credit rating.
Our income tax policy for 2026–27 will continue to protect the majority of taxpayers while supporting the investment that is needed in our public services and the social contract. We are maintaining our commitment to shield those on lower incomes: more than half of taxpayers are expected to pay less in Scotland than they would elsewhere in the UK.
This year, 66,000 additional Scots will be dragged into the Scottish National Party’s higher tax regime. Are they high earners?
Around three quarters—74 per cent—of taxpayers are expected to be unaffected by our maintaining the higher rate threshold at the same level. The resources that are raised as a result of our taxation policy go into public services. That would be put at risk by the £1 billion of unfunded, unaffordable tax cuts that the Tories want to inflict on Scotland.
The social contract is very important, and we have continued to protect the core elements of it that the people of Scotland rely on every day—the foundations that help to support wellbeing, opportunity and connection across Scotland. We have kept prescriptions free; we have maintained free tuition; we have continued to expand free school meals; we have protected free bus travel for under-22s and over-60s; and we have provided free baby boxes to give every child the best start in life. Those commitments help to make daily life a little steadier and a little fairer, and they reflect the values that we share as a nation.
Many members take pride in Scotland’s progress on child poverty, and I share that pride. During my time as Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, and in the years since, we have continued to see real improvements as we work towards the 2030 child poverty targets that were unanimously endorsed by this Parliament. In 2026–27, the Scottish child payment will rise with inflation, supporting the families of around 330,000 children. From 2027–28, we will increase the payment for families with a baby under one to £40 per week.
The impacts of targeted benefits spending are borne out by the evidence that we see. Relative child poverty is at its lowest level since 2014-15, and absolute child poverty at its lowest annual rate in 30 years. In 2023-24, both were nine percentage points lower than the UK average. As a result, 90,000 fewer children in Scotland are in poverty than would otherwise be the case. That investment in our children is investment that is worth making.
However, progress is not measured only in statistics. Across Scotland, local partnerships are making a real difference. The Dundee fairer futures partnership is one example of that. It brings key services together in trusted community spaces and takes a targeted approach to supporting the families who need it most. I saw that at first hand during a visit that I made some time ago to the Brooksbank Centre in Linlathen, in my constituency, where the partnership model has delivered more than £2 million in employment and income maximisation support. Since then, the approach has been expanded into Douglas and Stobswell, and families consistently highlight how convenient and accessible it is. As one parent said,
“they’re able to do it all in one place … it’s great that it’s on my doorstep.”
The budget strengthens that wider support. This summer, all primary school pupils will have access to free swimming lessons as part of our wider summer of sport, and, by August 2027, every primary and special school will have a breakfast club.
The budget backs Scotland’s economy, with targeted investment in skills, infrastructure and business growth. For housing, it delivers a record-breaking settlement of £926 million for affordable housing supply—the strongest support for affordable housing in decades. On non-domestic rates, reliefs are forecast to provide more than £870 million of support in 2026-27, including the small business bonus scheme and retail, hospitality and leisure reliefs, which will give certainty during a period of cost pressure. Transitional relief will continue to support those who face the largest increases following revaluation.
That approach sits within a wider economic package. We are investing more than £31 million to drive innovation, enterprise and entrepreneurship, sustaining £326 million for our enterprise agencies and committing more than £215 million to city and regional growth deals, alongside support for regional partnerships and community wealth building.
On climate, the budget recognises the significant and serious impacts of the climate emergency and the cost of inaction. The budget delivers practical action through more than £5 billion of climate-positive investment in 2026-27. That includes £316 million for sustainable travel and low-carbon transport and £47.5 million to support a just transition in the industrial sector, including £15.6 million of capital for the Grangemouth industrial cluster strategy. We are restoring Scotland’s natural environment by maintaining the nature restoration fund at last year’s level, with £26 million to halt biodiversity loss and ensure that Scotland becomes nature positive by 2030.
For two years, the Nairn bypass has been ready to go into the procurement stage for its completion. However, it will not go into procurement until 2029. Given that the capital budget is the highest ever—£7,600 million—can the cabinet secretary understand that people in Nairn and the Highlands in general feel that they are the forgotten tribe in Scotland?
That is far from the case. The Cabinet Secretary for Transport has kept the Parliament updated about all those important projects, and our commitment to them remains as solid as ever.
Fergus Ewing is right to highlight the capital budget, but, of course, it has decreased over the course of this session of Parliament because of the cuts to the capital budget by the United Kingdom Government. Therefore, we must ensure that that capital is invested in all the priorities, including the affordable housing supply programme, in which there is a £900 million investment, which I would have thought Fergus Ewing would welcome.
Public services are essential to Scotland’s wellbeing, and the budget supports their continued improvement and reform. The budget provides a record £22.5 billion for our national health service, supporting improvements in waiting times and general practitioner access, and expanding high street walk-in centres. I was pleased to see that Lochee was part of the First Minister’s announcement yesterday. The development there will provide real benefit to people across Dundee as part of a £36 million roll-out offering same-day, no-appointment GP care.
Will the cabinet secretary give way?
Of course—I am sure that Mr Marra will welcome that investment.
The cabinet secretary says that people from across Dundee can access the centre, but is it not the case that only patients who are already registered with the Lochee practice will be able to do so?
Walk-in centres will provide additional capacity for a range of people across all the locations in which they operate. It is strange that Michael Marra cannot bring himself to welcome that investment in an area that he is supposed to care about.
For local government, we are delivering £15.7 billion, including the additional £20 million of funding that was announced at stage 1, which can be used towards funding the real living wage for the adult and child care sectors.
For colleges, we are providing a 10 per cent uplift—a £70 million increase—in resource and capital funding, alongside investment to help adult learners to gain new skills and qualifications. Transformation will be central to ensuring that the sector remains sustainable.
We thank the Deputy First Minister for her commitment on colleges, which is welcomed by the sector, but that sector is looking for a long-term plan, to make sure of its continuation in future years. I know that we cannot tell what the next Parliament will do, but is it her intention that that commitment will be part of a much longer-term plan?
Yes. I think that I have made that clear, but I am happy to put that on the record again.
We remain steadfast in our commitment to preventing and eradicating violence against women and girls, which is why we have provided a 5 per cent uplift to the delivering equally safe fund. That is nearly £1.1 million extra per year.
We continue to improve public transport. Last year, Scotland became the only part of the UK to remove peak rail fares—the biggest reform in decades. This year, we will freeze ScotRail fares for 2026-27 and remove peak fares on northern isles ferry services for islanders, encouraging greater use of sustainable transport.
Throughout the budget process, I have worked to build consensus across the Parliament, engaging constructively with members who have been willing to do likewise. That collaboration has helped to deliver improvements in neurodevelopmental assessment and care for children and young people, further investment in our hospice sector to support pay parity via the agenda for change, support for communities that are affected by the Mossmorran closure, and funding for changing places toilets. I can confirm that we will also continue to provide around £1 million of funding for the Aberlour children’s charity in 2026-27, offering on-going support for the important community-based intensive perinatal support service. I am grateful to all who engaged in good faith, and I welcome the confirmation from the Scottish Liberal Democrats and Jeremy Balfour that they will support the budget.
Even among those parties that have indicated that they will not support the budget, there are members who have argued strongly for specific measures that we have delivered. It would be unusual for members to secure outcomes that they have actively championed but then choose not to support the legislation and the funding that make those possible.
In 1999, when I was first elected, this Parliament had very limited fiscal powers. Since then, there has been further devolution, and Scotland now has a substantial share of its own revenue, which delivers key elements of our social security system. However, significant constraints remain, and many critical levers continue to sit with Westminster. As both the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Scottish Fiscal Commission have recently highlighted, funding growth is set to slow significantly in the years ahead, and Scotland remains heavily dependent on UK Government decisions. That is a challenge for this Parliament as a whole, not just for one party.
Through the 2023 fiscal framework review, I was able to agree some welcome improvements with the UK Treasury. That represented meaningful progress; however, I have always been clear that it cannot be the end of the journey. Given that a further review is beginning, the next Parliament will have the opportunity and the responsibility to argue for a more ambitious and flexible settlement. Of course, the simple truth is that only with the full fiscal powers of independence will we be able to realise our true potential as a nation.
It has been an honour and a privilege to serve in the Parliament for more than 27 years, including in various Government roles since 2007. I have held a number of ministerial roles over the years, but the finance brief has been the most rewarding by far, because that is where the tools sit to enable delivery, drive change and support real transformation across Government and society as a whole. I wish my successor in the role well, and I urge them to be bold and ambitious as they take forward the vital task of transforming our public services.
With that, I am proud to move,
That the Parliament agrees that the Budget (Scotland) (No. 5) Bill be passed.
Thank you, cabinet secretary. I call Craig Hoy to open on behalf of the Scottish Conservatives, for up to nine minutes.
16:14
I wish the cabinet secretary well as she prepares to leave the Parliament. I hope that she will not be leaving her successor a note to say that there is no money left. Perhaps she could leave a note that suggests that her successor does not follow suit by raising taxes on ordinary hard-working Scots. [Interruption.] Mr Swinney is already getting wound up.
Tonight, the Conservative Party will be the only party whose MSPs vote against what is a bad SNP budget. We are the only party with the backbone and the conviction to tell the Scottish ministers to go back to the drawing board and draw up a budget that will give a fair deal to Scottish taxpayers, Scottish public services and businesses such as Scotland’s struggling pubs.
Set against the on-going cost of living crisis, the budget will add to many people’s biggest bill—their tax bill. It also increases tax on businesses, with no action to stop the looming and catastrophic business rates revaluation. The Scottish Conservatives have set out an alternative to the failed left-wing approach that is now shared by all those across the other benches at Holyrood. We would lower bills for hard-working Scottish families and businesses and, in turn, grow the Scottish economy. We would end the doom loop of ever-higher taxes that pay for the SNP’s ever-ballooning benefits bill.
However, that is not the approach taken by the cabinet secretary or John Swinney’s Government. Let us use the final budget debate in the current session of Parliament to look in some detail at some of the central failures in the budget. The minister thought that she was being clever when she unveiled the centrepiece of John Swinney’s pre-election budget—a £32-a-year income tax cut. That was a fiscal stunt that was derided by analysts and commentators as the lowest tax cut in history—a pound-shop policy from a pound-shop Government.
Behind the smoke and mirrors lies a far harsher reality for many Scottish households. By freezing upper-rate thresholds, the Government continues to push more average and middle-income earners into higher rates of tax. By the end of the decade, the SNP Government’s tax regime will look like the modern-day equivalent of state-sponsored highway robbery, but at least Dick Turpin had the sense to wear a mask.
Shona Robison says that she likes facts, so let me give her some real tax facts, not the phony SNP spin that she relies on. In 2016-17, only 12 per cent of workers in Scotland were paying the higher rate of tax or above. By the end of the current decade, that will have risen to a staggering 40 per cent. This year alone, 66,000 Scots have been dragged into the higher rate tax band under the SNP. Before the minister repeats her tired old trope about those with the broadest shoulders, let us ask ourselves who those people really are. They include nurses, teachers, car mechanics, council administrators, heavy goods vehicle drivers and social workers. They are all now classed as high earners in the SNP’s Scotland.
Given the issues with tax during the period that Craig Hoy is speaking about, is it a good time for him to apologise for the fact that the Conservative Government, which he supported, trebled the national debt to nearly £3 trillion and brought in the highest tax burden since the second world war? Only the actions of the Scottish Government have reduced that burden in Scotland.
As the SNP’s depute leader, Mr Brown must have been so busy looking at the party’s accounts that he missed Covid and the war in Ukraine, which led to a significant increase in everybody’s energy bills.
It is not only me who is pointing out the folly of the SNP Government’s budget. The Fraser of Allander Institute’s Mairi Spowage says that the shift in the tax base amounts to
“a fundamental change in our understanding of who counts as a higher rate taxpayer and what proportion of the income distribution should be paying higher rates of tax.”—[Official Report, Finance and Public Administration Committee, 20 January 2026; c 46.]
During the coming year, the total additional burden of the SNP’s tax regime will be nearly £1.8 billion, but only £969 million will accrue to the Scottish budget. That is the true cost of the SNP’s on-going failure to grow the Scottish economy.
Based on tax outcomes alone, we will not be voting for the budget, but there are many other reasons not to vote for it. The projections for benefits spending are eye-watering and are creating a cycle of dependency that can no longer be credibly described as an investment in Scotland’s future. Not only is it undesirable to adopt the soft-touch approach that the SNP takes to the adult disability payment and to disincentivising work through the Scottish child payment—the Scottish Government’s data reveals that one in 10 recipients have changed the way that they interact through the workforce because of it—but it is also fundamentally unsustainable, as a number of independent reports have flagged again this week.
Professor David Heald, who is one of the Scottish Government’s tax advisers, has warned of
“an erosion of the rest of the Scottish budget”—[Official Report, Finance and Public Administration Committee, 20 January 2026; c 54.]
as a result of the mounting benefits bill, which already accounts for £1 in every £7 that is spent by the SNP Government and which will rise to £10 billion by the end of the decade. As a result of the SNP’s ballooning benefits bill, there is less in the budget for rural affairs and the enterprise agencies, and in future years there will be less for Scotland’s local authorities and health boards. Ministers must be honest that spending more on benefits means tax rises or severe cuts to core services—or, ultimately, a toxic combination of both.
For the record, I note that we would cut tax and cut the benefits bill, and our plans are costed and deliverable, unlike many of the measures in the budget that we are debating today. Our approach would create a virtuous circle, giving people and businesses more of their own money to spend and invest as they choose. Tackling welfare will give more people the chance to work, breaking the culture of dependency that has been cynically fostered by this SNP Government.
I turn to other areas of the budget. On college spending—
Will the member take an intervention?
I do not have time.
Give way!
First Minister, please.
On college spending, Shona Robison claims to have delivered a major boost to the sector, which is already facing significant cash pressures, but she is misleading Parliament once again. She claims that there is a £70 million uplift, but she knows that funding for the Dunfermline learning campus has been set aside and that the real increase is only £40 million. [Interruption.] At the same time, the cabinet secretary cannot escape another fact—that the sector endured a 20 per cent real-terms funding cut at the hands of the SNP Government over the five years to 2025-26. [Interruption.]
Members!
The First Minister rose—
I will give way to Mr Swinney, but will he comment on the fact that Audit Scotland declared that the situation that colleges faced under the SNP as a result of those cuts was stark?
I point out to Mr Hoy that he is falling into the usual trick of the Conservatives, which is to come here and demand tax cuts that would reduce public expenditure and then demand more public expenditure for one particular sector. That just illustrates the total economic illiteracy of the Conservative Party.
Given that independent analysts have said that this budget is in a parallel universe—[Interruption.]
Please answer the question.
I will happily give way—
Mr Hoy, please resume your seat. I will not have all these goings-on across the benches. We will listen to the speaker who is on his feet with some courtesy.
No wonder Mr Swinney wants to shout his opponents down. He knows that we are backed by independent analysts who are saying that this is a bad budget for Scotland.
Shona Robison has robbed Scotland’s colleges blind for the past half-decade, but she now claims to be riding to their rescue and expects them to be grateful when she returns some of the cash that the SNP has stolen in recent years.
The Government is being equally economical with the facts on health spending. The IFS warns that the overall health and social care budget for day-to-day spending is set to increase by just 0.2 per cent in real terms in the coming year. However, after planned transfers to councils for social care wage increases, funding for other health and social care services is set to fall by 0.6 per cent in real terms.
Ultimately, the Scottish Government says that it can take the budget to the country, but I believe that people will see through the smoke and mirrors. The harsh reality is that the budget will pass because of the spineless complacency of other parties in this place. Even now, it is not too late for them to see sense, to take their heads out of the sand and to side with the Scottish Conservatives in supporting decisive action to tackle the SNP’s bloated benefits bill, to cut tax and to properly fund productive public services. However, they will not do so because, on the fundamental challenges that Scotland faces, it is increasingly clear that Labour, the Lib Dems and now Reform are in opposition to this SNP Government in name only. On 7 May, that fact will not be lost on ordinary, hard-working Scots, who will have to pick up the bill for yet another bad SNP budget.
It would be helpful if we did not have the running commentary from members on the front benches as people are speaking.
16:24
Given that the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government rightly ended her speech in valedictory terms, it is right that I also compliment her on a quarter century of service to our country and to our city of Dundee. I think that anyone would recognise the considerable personal sacrifices that are involved in the service by a politician of such tenure. She has my sincere best wishes for whatever comes next for her. [Applause.]
I anticipate that the clapping will end with the nice stuff. The good parts of this budget show a knackered SNP Government that is desperately trying to fix a few of its own mistakes. In that regard, it is back to form. The Government is trying to turn a corner on itself and the harm that is has wrought on Scotland’s public services and finances. However, let us be clear that the budget contains none of the transformative change that Scotland needs after two decades of the SNP.
It has been obvious to anyone with even a passing interest in the matter that the budget was always going to be agreed to. The SNP’s pretend brinkmanship has been exposed for what it always was, which is the same old SNP spin. Scottish Labour will not stand in the way of police officers, nurses and local services continuing to be funded at the start of the new financial year in just five weeks’ time. However, we know that this budget of half measures will not last the year. Independent experts from the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Fraser of Allander Institute have said so. The former said that areas of the budget are “increasingly detached from reality”.
This budget is more of the same financial chaos from the SNP. There were three consecutive years of emergency budgets in this parliamentary session alone, and another emergency budget is now a racing certainty for whoever forms the next Government in May. There was a spending review, but within days of its publication, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government told the Finance and Public Administration Committee that she did not expect it to last. There is no grip on the finances and no grasp of the peril into which the SNP is plunging Scotland.
Let us consider local government, which is at the sharp end of the SNP’s cuts. In a move straight out of John Swinney’s playbook of the past two decades, it has been mercilessly hammered yet again by this SNP Government. Year after year, the SNP in Edinburgh knifes local government and leaves local councillors to take the flak for the savage cuts that they are forced to mete out on communities. As we speak, councils are meeting to set their budgets for the coming year. Yet again, they are being forced into making eye-watering council tax rises, all because the SNP Government in Edinburgh refuses to give councils their fair share. Many councils now find themselves struggling to deliver even the most basic statutory services.
Is it Mr Marra’s argument that we are giving too much to the national health service? Should that funding be switched to local government?
Local government needs a sustainable budget that can be taken over the long term. As Mr Mason knows well, the spending review will lead to £500 million in cuts over the spending review period. Even the SNP’s councillors—including Ricky Bell, the resources spokesperson for the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities—are biting back.
The SNP has never been a party to ignore the chance to have financial sleight of hand. In this budget, it has tried to get away with claiming that it is uplifting the real living wage for social care workers while neglecting to say that money has been allocated only for the discretionary element and not for the statutory amount, leaving overstretched local authorities to pick up the pieces.
Will Michael Marra give way on that point?
I am afraid that I do not have time.
The U-turn on that play was as welcome as it was inevitable, but it begs the question as to why SNP special advisers thought that they could get away with it in the first place.
However, it gets worse. The spending review told us that, if the SNP gets back into Government in May, it will slash local government budgets by nearly £500 million. It is hard to fathom where councils will be able to make such swingeing cuts. To allow councils to balance their books, perhaps the cabinet secretary can suggest how many teachers will need to lose their jobs, how many swimming pools and libraries will need to close and how many vulnerable people will not get the care that they need as a result of her plans. What the SNP has willingly done to local government is symptomatic of its approach to government, which is to always find someone else to blame.
On non-domestic rates, data that was published yesterday by the Scottish Fiscal Commission shows that the additional measures that the cabinet secretary announced to bring reliefs for licensed hospitality and music venues up to 40 per cent will cost £9 million. In a budget of £60 billion, that is a drop in the ocean. Since July 2024, the Scottish Government has received an additional £10.3 billion from the UK Labour Government. The SNP always had the funds to deliver 40 per cent relief, so why on earth did it not do so in the first place? It was willing to let vital hospitality businesses across Scotland go to the wall rather than giving them the reliefs that they needed to survive.
There is also still no answer from the SNP on the looming challenge of revaluation, which will cause the rateable values of many businesses to double or even triple.
Will the member take an intervention?
Yes, sir.
I thought that the member did not have time.
Does Mr Marra agree that the Scottish Government is so muddle‑headed in its thinking, particularly in failing to account for businesses closing as a result of high tax burdens, that it may end up receiving even less money than it would have received if it had granted the postponement that we all argued for?
I agree with that.
I apologise to the cabinet secretary—I had more time than I thought.
On that basis, Scottish Labour supports an immediate pause of the revaluation. We believe that a fundamental overhaul of the non-domestic rates system is required in order to better support our businesses, which are the life-blood of our high streets and communities.
The SNP’s mishandling of non-domestic rates sums up its approach of half measures and gimmicks rather than hard work to face up to the difficult decisions that Scotland faces. It is invested in the status quo and managed decline in defending a record of failure. It will never take the bold action that is needed to fix what it has broken in our country, and it is long past time for change.
16:31
I thank the cabinet secretary not just for the constructive relations that we have had over the past couple of years in her current portfolio but, as Michael Marra said, for serving Scotland in public office for a quarter of a century. Throughout the period that we have worked together, I have always found the cabinet secretary to be someone willing to listen, even on those issues where I have been at my most challenging. I have found that, where there have been opportunities for co-operation, we have been able to make that work to the benefit of the people of Scotland—some of which I will be proud to talk about in this debate.
I talked at stage 1 about some of the priorities with which the Greens went into the budget negotiations. I do not want to repeat all that now—perhaps I will return to a bit of it later, if there is time—because I want to focus in the final budget debate of this session of Parliament on the overall state of our public finances. We all acknowledge that Scotland’s public finances are no longer sustainable. The question is why, and what do we do about that?
On the why, we need to reflect on the reality of 15 years of Conservative austerity. The Labour Party has not entirely ended that, but I acknowledge that there has been a difference since it won the UK Parliament election in 2024. However, decisions such as increasing employer national insurance contributions give us the feeling that, for every two steps forward, we have to take a step back.
It is not just that. Demand for social care has been growing. Yes, our social security system is placing financial pressure on our public finances, but that is a result of choices that we should be proud of. We should be proud to own the decisions that we have made on social security in this Parliament. Yes, there has been a financial implication—I will come to that in a minute—but the most important outcome of the system is that Scotland is the only part of the United Kingdom where child poverty is falling. This is the only part of the UK where we are materially transforming the lives of some of our most vulnerable families. That is a result of the decisions that we have made.
Furthermore, Scotland is also the only part of the UK where you can get free university tuition, where young people can travel on the bus for free and where we have free personal care. Those are choices that we should be rightly proud of.
Will Mr Greer comment on what appears to me to be the arrant hypocrisy of Conservative Party members, who voted for legislation on the establishment of Social Security Scotland and its underpinning by the values of dignity, fairness and respect, but then spend all their time in this chamber attacking social security expenditure and some of the most vulnerable in our society?
The First Minister has highlighted the descent of the Conservative Party over the past decade. Just a few years ago, it had moved a bit closer to everyone else’s position in recognising the need to do right by the most vulnerable families in our community. However, now, the mask has slipped and the nasty party is back. The spectre of Reform robbing it of two thirds of its vote has sent it right back to the worst of George Osborne’s economics and these attacks on the most vulnerable.
The Conservatives say that tough choices need to be made—that is how they phrase it. However, every tough choice that they suggest is not tough for them and, by and large, it is not tough for the people who vote for them. The people whom it is tough for are the most vulnerable families in our society—the people whom they want to rob of what is often literally life-saving support.
Craig Hoy did not like this when I brought it up in the previous budget debate, but studies in The BMJ and The Lancet have shown between 150,000 and 350,000 excess deaths across the UK as a direct result of the austerity that the previous Conservative UK Government unleashed.
Will Ross Greer take an intervention?
I would be delighted to hear from Mr Hoy on whether he is somehow rejecting peer-reviewed studies in The BMJ and The Lancet, and, if so, on the basis of which qualifications.
Briefly, Mr Hoy.
I point Mr Greer to an SNP Government study that says that one in 10 recipients of the Scottish child payment is changing the way that they interface with the labour market, turning down additional hours or rejecting a pay increase. Would it not be better if those people took the additional hours or the pay increase and freed up the money to use for other people who might be living in poverty?
Mr Hoy helpfully highlights another area of Conservative hypocrisy. On the one hand, the Conservatives say that people who are in receipt of social security benefits should be more focused on work or take on more work and, on the other hand, the Conservatives have objected to every rise in the minimum wage for years. The reason why people in the social security system are having to make difficult choices about whether to take on more work is because the UK is such a low-wage economy as a result of choices that the previous Conservative Government made. [Interruption.] The Conservatives need to own that decision.
I would not expect the parents of children who are struggling to make an active choice to put their family in a worse financial situation because the only employment opportunities that are available to them provide such low wages, in part as a result of deliberate decisions that the Conservative Party has taken. If the Conservatives believe that work is the route out of poverty, they should support efforts to ensure that no employer is allowed to pay poverty wages. The reality is that two thirds of children in this country who are in poverty are in working households. That is the problem that we need to solve.
I would have more respect for the Conservatives’ position on the social security system—although I certainly would not agree with it—if it was combined with a serious effort to eradicate poverty pay in this country. However, they are quite happy with poverty pay in this country, so I will not be taking any lessons from them on the social security system. The Conservatives are pushing all of us to make what they describe as tough choices. Those are not tough choices for them or, by and large, their supporters, but they say that there is simply no option other than to make huge cuts to the services that we provide to the most vulnerable people in our society. [Interruption.]
Just a few weeks ago, a Scottish Government publication pointed out that the top 2 per cent of people in this country have more wealth than half the population combined. If we are talking about tough choices, we need to think about who they are tough for. Who do we expect to shoulder the burden of getting our finances back on a sustainable footing? This is one of the richest countries in the history of the world. I, for one, and certainly the Greens will be rejecting the Conservatives’ attempt to create a doom loop that says that the only thing that we can do to make our finances sustainable is to punish the most vulnerable in our society. [Interruption.]
We should all be proud of the decisions that this Parliament has taken collectively over the past decade to lift children out of poverty and transform their lives. We now must accept that, to make that sustainable, we need to get serious about wealth redistribution in this country.
I give another gentle reminder that reaction to what is said is one thing, but I do not need a running commentary on what is being said in real time.
16:38
We all know that politics can be pretty unforgiving, and I imagine that those who have the benefit of having a Government ministerial office will know that more than most of us. I wish the cabinet secretary the very best when she leaves Parliament. Equally, as we have seen a little today, politics can sometimes be needlessly theatrical, but, at the end of the day, politics is a serious business and sometimes we just have to roll up our sleeves and get the business done.
I know from speeches today and two weeks ago that some colleagues might not reach the same conclusions about the budget as I will, and I respect them for laying out their reasons—some of them passionate, some ideological and others quite misguided. However, I hope that, in turn, they will genuinely respect the 300 million reasons why I might take a different view on the budget this evening.
At our party spring conference in Edinburgh this weekend past, I was really grateful and humbled to meet people who came along from many charities and third sector organisations. [Interruption.]
I see Mr Hoy chuckling away—they came to his party conference as well.
I was grateful to meet and spend some time with them. They were from organisations such as Marie Curie, which helps people who live with cancer; the National Autistic Society, which supports young people who have it tough in life; and Hospice UK, which is fighting for our carers. They are real people in the real world—people who live with the annual budget cycles that we have to contend with—and most of them never know what is in store for them, year on year, financially.
It is because of those real-world conversations that I have had in the past two weeks that I feel entirely vindicated in having sat down to negotiate with the Government. I was right to do so. I have had many issues with the SNP Government over the years. I have spent half of my political life criticising it on issues such as the ferries fiasco, access to local healthcare and the early prisoner release policy. I absolutely do not share its vision on independence, but I will make no apologies, because I will never pass up the opportunity to sit down with the Government of the day, of whichever party, to fight for the things that matter to me.
Our small businesses face uncertainty, particularly around business rates. Our social care sector is in deep crisis. Our hospices are living hand to mouth year after year and, as other members have mentioned, so are our colleges; for example, the West College Scotland campus in Greenock has closed its doors due to its crumbling buildings. None of that can be fixed in the confines of an annual budget cycle, but that does not mean that we should not try.
I am not blind to the fact that Scotland’s long-term fiscal outlook is pretty grim—most independent analysts tell us that. Whichever party takes the reins of the Government in May will have very difficult choices to make. The Scottish Government could have a fiscal deficit of up to £5 billion by the end of this decade—as the Auditor General for Scotland tells us, as the Scottish Fiscal Commission tells us and as the Fraser of Allander Institute tells us. Those are people and organisations that I value and whose opinions I respect.
My view has always been that we cannot meet the fiscal shortfall solely through higher taxation, because the extra taxes that are raised in Scotland do not always fully translate into extra real-terms cash for public services. I asked Audit Scotland, which wrote a paper on the subject, for its opinion. Members on the Labour front bench and members such as Liz Smith and Murdo Fraser often rightly make those points in the chamber. Equally, the Accounts Commission points to a £1 billion black hole in local government finances. I do not deny any of those issues, but none of them can be fixed in the confines of a single-year budget. My view is that creating more better-paid jobs—it really is as simple as that—is the only way that we can climb our way out of the fiscal black hole.
I do not believe, and I never have, that slash-and-burn politics will fix our finances. To those members who say that we should cut the welfare bill, for example, I simply ask: whose benefits do you want to cut?
Will Jamie Greene give way?
I will, in a second.
Which members of my family who currently get the adult disability payment will no longer get it once those benefits have been cut? Which refugees in Glasgow do you want to make homeless? Who will you send home to face torture or death because they are gay? Which children in towns such as mine—Greenock—do you want to push back into poverty?
Government is about choices, sometimes difficult ones, and I have disagreed with many of this Government’s choices over the years. However, if we have the opportunity or leverage to push the Government further, we should use it. I took that opportunity and I am not ashamed of it, because, ultimately, it does not matter how much we crow from the sidelines; what matters in politics is getting stuff done.
I spoke to UKHospitality—I know that there is deep unhappiness about what has happened with revaluations—which put out a statement after the draft budget. The chief executive said that the budget deal to secure extra business rates relief was
“a good example of how the Scottish Parliament can make a positive difference to businesses, when political parties work together.”
I agree with that, because we do not work together enough in the Parliament.
When I leave the Parliament at the end of March and go back to the real world, I will meet our college leaders, young entrepreneurs, pub owners, hospice workers and staff at Aberlour. I know that they need more help, but I also know that I will have done everything that I can to squeeze every penny out of this Government within the limitations that being in Opposition affords me. Why would I not do so?
Yes, being in Opposition means sometimes getting angry with the Government, but it also means taking any opportunity that you have to get stuff done. I took mine, and I hope that other members respect my motives for doing so. Some might even come to regret that they did not do the same.
We come to the open debate. We are already behind schedule, so I will keep members firmly to their speaking time allocation.
16:44
I am pleased to speak today not as the convener of the Finance and Public Administration Committee. Nevertheless, this is the last time that a number of my committee colleagues—John Mason, Michelle Thomson and Liz Smith—as well as the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government, and possibly I and others, depending on the election results, will speak in such a debate, so I must admit to feeling more than a modicum of sadness.
But to business. As we all know, this year’s draft Scottish budget was much delayed due to the dithering of the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, who not only announced her budget weeks later than she did in 2024 but did so only after weeks of leaks to the media about what it might contain. The nudges, hints and winks, as well as a full-blown press conference, meant that the Scottish Government faced numerous potential funding scenarios. Therefore, I pay tribute to the hard work of the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government, the Minister for Public Finance and their officials in preparing a budget that the majority of MSPs will support today.
Things looked quite different before Christmas. The SNP does not have a majority, so ministers braced themselves for expensive and hard-to-meet demands from the Scottish Greens and Liberal Democrats. However, sometimes, help can come from the most unexpected quarter. Step forward hero of the hour, one Michael Marra, who had the decency to let us know, even before the draft budget was published, with its content unseen, that Labour would decisively abstain, ensuring that the budget would pass. I know that SNP members are keen to congratulate our man in Dundee for his tacit support.
Of course, at a stroke, Green and Lib Dem MSPs lost their bargaining power with the Scottish ministers. However, to their credit and Ms Robison’s, they continued to engage, and both parties were able to secure concessions from the Scottish Government, as did independent MSP Jeremy Balfour.
It could have been so different for Labour, but, due to an apparent communication glitch, poor Michael Marra was left forlornly waiting for a call that never came, although my understanding is that he was to contact the cabinet secretary, not the other way round. We will never know.
The reality is that, at UK level, we have what The Economist called only last week a “zombie” Labour Government, which is failing to govern in the interests of anyone outside the Starmer clique and is terrified of its back benchers. In only 18 months, the UK Government has performed 15 major U-turns on subjects ranging from winter fuel payments and the removal of the two-child cap—support for which led to the suspension of seven Labour MPs—to the daft BritCard and the campaign by women against state pension inequality, on which there was a triple U-turn. Growth across the UK is too meagre to deliver the services that people need and want.
UK Labour’s paralysis is mirrored in its branch office in Scotland, which is terrified to upset any vested interests as it battles to hold on to third place in the polls. That is the logic behind its seemingly bizarre decision to abstain on the budget.
As for the Tories, if the SNP had invented the light bulb, they would have denounced it as a dangerous anti-candle device, such is their mindless opposition, which was, again, signalled before the draft budget was even published. Once more, we expect to see their back benchers call for additional money to be spent here, there and everywhere, with no effort made whatsoever to detail how they would fund their demands or where the money for the £1 billion in tax cuts they seek would come from. Why is it £1 billion every year? Have the Tories not heard of inflation? The fact that the figure is such a round number shows that it has been plucked lazily from thin air.
As for the fiscally illiterate and desperate plan to hand back the underspend without any explanation of how the back-of-a-fag-packet idea will be delivered, I note that, even though the policy was announced only last week, Mr Hoy somehow failed to mention it in his nine-minute speech. With the latest opinion poll predicting that there will be only seven Tory MSPs after May’s election, the Tories’ strategy, such as it is, is entirely self-defeating.
[Made a request to intervene.]
Oh, Mr Hoy is going to enlighten us.
Does Mr Gibson believe that the Scottish benefits bill is sustainable?
The Scottish benefits bill is sustainable as long as the Scottish Government continues to balance its budget, which it will do for as long as my party remains in office.
What does the budget deliver for the people of Scotland? It delivers Scotland’s priorities—that is what. It provides record real-terms investment in housing, the NHS, transport, culture and social justice. It provides a 10 per cent increase in college funding. For policing, resource funding is up by 4 per cent and capital funding is up by 23 per cent. There is 13.2 per cent more funding for the concessionary fares scheme, and there is more than 34.3 per cent more funding for ferries and piers. That augurs well for Ardrossan harbour’s redevelopment, once its purchase has been secured.
On tackling child poverty, not only is the Scottish child payment—which has no equivalent elsewhere in the UK—increasing to £28.20 per week for the parents of each eligible child and £40 per week for eligible babies, but breakfast clubs will be delivered to all primary school children.
Employability support worth £90 million will help people back into work, and estimated revenues from non-domestic rates will be 6 per cent lower in real terms than they were before the pandemic, with £870 million provided in reliefs. Unfortunately, Mr Ewing is not in the chamber.
What of local authorities? The Scottish Fiscal Commission confirmed a modest real-terms increase. I am sure that members would like to see it boosted further; I certainly would. However, the cabinet secretary confirmed earlier this afternoon that Labour made no specific requests for additional local government funding, nor did it say from where any additional money would be found. Indeed, Labour should apologise to local authorities across Scotland for the billions of pounds of debt that has been foisted on them through the imposition of public-private partnership payments. In North Ayrshire alone, those amount to £17.127 million in 2026-27, as part of the astronomical £455 million of repayments towards four schools that were built 20 years ago for a capital cost of £83 million. That is before I talk about the £6.8 million in employer national insurance contributions that were imposed on the council by UK Labour.
You need to conclude.
Together with PPP payments, that equates to a third of all moneys raised this year in North Ayrshire in council tax. The resource uplift in the budget is barely 1 per cent.
Hard choices had to be made—and having the courage to make such choices separates those who support the budget from those who sit on their hands or who provide knee-jerk opposition. I urge all members to support the budget.
16:51
I wish the cabinet secretary all the best in the future and, although I will not miss Mr Gibson’s SNP statements in the chamber, I will most certainly miss his convenership of the Finance and Public Administration Committee, in which he has been outstanding, and for which he is well recognised right around the chamber. It is through that convenership that Mr Gibson has regularly challenged us to debate effectively in the committee. It is on that basis, in my last contribution to a budget debate, that I will proceed in considering some of the issues that we have to address in the chamber, with specific reference to the budget that is before us.
Notwithstanding all the complexities that exist in the timing of different fiscal events, I do not personally feel that there is sufficient time for enough detailed parliamentary scrutiny of budgets or, therefore, for efficient scrutiny. I note the recent decision of the parliamentary authorities to announce that, for all new and returning MSPs, there will be special training on budgets. I welcome that. However, the very fact that that is having to happen speaks volumes about where the problem lies.
I will make the following three points. First—and this definitely applies to this budget—there is not sufficient detail about Scottish Government policy priorities in relation to how well they deliver their outcomes. I am not talking about the four grand aims of this Government, which are promoting economic growth, tackling child poverty, addressing climate change and delivering high-quality and sustainable public services, but rather the specific policies that underpin each of those. Where is the accompanying Scottish Government evidence that is supposed to persuade us that the policy choices that it is making in this budget are those that will deliver the best outcomes, given the limited resources that are available? As a consequence of that, and especially given the tight fiscal constraints, which policies have had to be deprioritised, and why?
Those are points that have frustrated the Finance and Public Administration Committee for quite some time. For example, the Scottish Government has been challenged so often to argue why its more generous approach to public spending on welfare yields better overall results all round for Scotland’s economy.
Will Liz Smth take an intervention?
I will in a minute.
The Government comes up all the time with the fact that it is an investment, but it never tells us what the return on that investment is, nor does it tell us where the money is coming from. Perhaps Mr McKee, who told us that there was going to be an extra £1 billion, which has changed to £1.5 billion, will tell me something new.
What I will tell the member is that the support that we put in to help people with in-work benefits is perhaps one of the reasons why Scotland’s unemployment rate of 3.8 per cent is significantly below the UK rate of 5.2 per cent.
Mr McKee knows full well that the economic inactivity rate is a serious issue. It has come up in just about every meeting that I can remember of the Finance and Public Administration Committee. In giving evidence to the committee, the First Minister once said that it was Scotland’s most difficult economic challenge—I think that I am right on that, and I can look back at the Official Report. That is because we have to get people back into work so that productivity can increase and we get a better return on the tax base.
My second point is that there is a concern among many analysts, including the Auditor General, that there is no credible long-term plan to address the significant challenges arising from the bloated welfare budget and the increasing demands on health and social care. The Scottish Government always appears to be in favour of short-term fixes rather than addressing the long-term problem.
My third point is about the tension between central and local government. They always seem to be at each other’s throats because of the huge pressure on front-line services, the delivery of which does not have the relevant money behind it.
During the stage 1 debate, I cited examples of the inconsistencies within the Scottish Government’s policy priorities for economic growth. Like so many others, I do not understand why certain policies were selected as a priority when economic data shows that they are undermining the overall approach. What am I talking about? As the briefing on the recent spending review makes clear, in the graph that is headed “Real terms changes in portfolio spending”, which covers 2025-26 to 2028-29, education and skills, finance and local government, and the economy are all facing real-term downturns in spending over the next four years. That hardly demonstrates a Scottish Government that is committed to growth in the economy.
I will finish on an absolutely instrumental point, which I made in the stage 1 debate and in the committee debate: we have to ensure much better scrutiny of the budget. I—and my colleagues on the Finance and Public Administration Committee—believe that it is time that the Scottish Parliament had a finance bill process. I hope that the next Government—whatever colour it might be—will agree to that. If we do not have that, decisions will continue to be made without the necessary evidence to back them up.
I give colleagues fair warning that I will cut off microphones at six minutes—you have been warned.
16:56
The budget is about delivering for the people of Scotland. That is what we have all been sent here to do. The budget will address their priorities of bringing down NHS waiting lists, supporting families, reducing child poverty and growing the economy. Quite remarkably, the budget will do all that while delivering lower taxes for ordinary folk, with 55 per cent of Scots paying less tax in the next financial year in Scotland than they would pay if they lived elsewhere in the rest of the UK under Labour.
Since last year, the NHS has turned a corner, with the longest waits down for a number of months in a row and hip and knee operations at a record level. However, now is the time to work harder. The budget does not just increase NHS funding in line with inflation—it delivers an inflation-busting real-terms uplift of 1.8 per cent, There is over £17.6 billion for NHS boards, and that is only the funding for hospitals. The budget also delivers another £2.4 billion for primary care, including £531 million to recruit more GPs. On top of that, there is a further £36 million for new walk-in GP services, including one in Aberdeen, which will open in May and is being applauded by my constituents.
It does not stop there. The budget delivers the support that families struggling with the cost of living need. The SNP will not follow the UK example and force people on the minimum wage to pay more tax. Rather, the budget delivers an increase in both the basic rate and intermediate rate income tax bands. That means better public services and lower taxes under the SNP.
It goes on. The budget includes the baby box, which ensures that every Scottish baby, regardless of background, has the very best start in life. The 1,140 hours of free, high-quality early learning and childcare is worth around £6,000 to families. There is £14.4 million for healthy snacks for every child in day care, and an additional £15 million for breakfast clubs. On top of that, the budget provides for 250,000 free school meals each and every day, including for all pupils from primary 1 to primary 5, with a further 9 million meals for eligible families during school holidays, because some families require that extra support. That is why we are increasing the Scottish child payment to £28.20 per week, as well as providing a further £50 million for whole-family support.
It does not stop there. Prescriptions remain free under the SNP; they are £10 each in England. Eye tests remain free under the SNP; they are £35 in England. University tuition remains free under the SNP; it is £10,000 a year of debt in England. However, not all young people will go to university. That is why the budget will increase funding for Scotland’s colleges by 10 per cent, in addition to supporting 25,000 modern apprenticeships and 5,000 foundation apprenticeships.
All of that requires a growing economy, and the budget delivers for business and the economy. The budget will save £870 million by reducing rates, taking 100,000 small businesses out of rates altogether with the small business bonus scheme. There is also the provision of 15 per cent relief for retail, hospitality and leisure premises. To grow the economy, the SNP Government is providing £326 million for the enterprise agencies, £200 million for the Scottish National Investment Bank, £45 million to drive innovation and enterprise, £2.5 million for young entrepreneurs and a £90 million boost for skills development. In addition, the Government is providing £47 million to strengthen local economies and £215 million for regional improvement. It is investing a total of £7.6 billion in capital projects across Scotland. It is because of such support that the Scottish economy grew faster last year than that of the rest of the UK.
I am particularly pleased to see the £5.53 million investment in the investing in communities fund, which has been a real benefit to places right across Scotland, and in particular to my Aberdeen constituents, through support for Community Food Initiatives North East, Aberdeen Foyer and the Station House Media Unit. I thank the cabinet secretary for that resource.
17:03
I start by joining others in wishing Shona Robison well on her retirement from the Parliament, and indeed on whatever she does next.
I hear every week from front-line NHS staff, who go above and beyond in the most pressing of circumstances. They deserve our thanks, and they certainly deserve every penny of their pay increase. Indeed, the bulk of the uplift in health is for pay. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has noted that, when pay is excluded, funding for NHS Scotland is actually down by 0.6 per cent in real terms. In other words, it is NHS services that will be impacted and, ultimately, patients will be the ones who will suffer.
On top of that, the health portfolio has been set an efficiency target to achieve of £1.1 billion. The overall target across Government is £1.6 billion, so two thirds—by far the lion’s share—must come from health. It has to be said that that is a hugely ambitious saving to make—it is significantly in excess of what health boards have historically achieved. The Scottish Government has given them a mountain to climb. Undoubtedly, it will lead to cuts in some areas, deteriorating conditions and more pressure on staff. As David Phillips of the IFS—who we were fond of quoting the last time we had a debate on this budget—said:
“funding allocations for health in 2026-27 look increasingly detached from reality.”
That sums up the SNP’s approach: fantasy economics, divorced from everyday life
Let me tell members about the reality of health in Scotland. Only last week, the statistics for healthy life expectancy came out, and what a damning indictment of the SNP’s record they were. Healthy life expectancy is falling. Despite all the advances in science and medicine, healthy life expectancy has been going down since 2014 and is now only 59.4 years for women and 59.1 years for men. Put simply, people are living longer in England. That is the legacy of almost 20 years of an SNP Government. It was enough time to be able to transform Scotland and make it better for the next generation, but the opportunity has been squandered due to incompetence and waste. Instead of prevention, the Government funds crisis—so it is no wonder that the nation is not getting healthier.
Will Jackie Baillie take an intervention on that point?
No—let me make this point.
Nowhere is that more evident than in resourcing for primary care and GPs. That used to be 11 per cent of the health budget; now, it is 7 per cent. Although the SNP announced the introduction of walk-in clinics, GP surgeries are facing closure.
This week, I heard from a GP in Perthshire whose practice lease expires in May. The SNP promised that health boards would take over practice leases, but that practice has heard nothing from NHS Tayside and it may have to close. The GP told me that that has caused them significant uncertainty and stress, and that it effectively binds their hands in relation to running an effective medical practice, with no future guarantee that the practice will be able to remain open. That is how the Scottish Government treats our GPs.
In my remaining time, I will concentrate my remarks on social care. We could all tell countless stories about good social care: the quality and compassion of the staff, the social care provider that goes the extra mile and the care home that truly is a home from home. When it is driven by values and delivering care with dignity and respect, the contribution of social care to the fabric of our society cannot be overestimated.
No one will disagree with what I just said but, when it comes to resourcing social care, the Government is not funding demand. Instead, we have sticking plaster solutions—but even the sticking plaster is no longer working. At the start of February, more than 10,000 people were waiting on a social care assessment or a care-at-home package. That number is a quarter higher than it was this time last year, and it is going up. At the last count, in November 2025, more than 2,000 people were experiencing delayed discharge, and that number is going up, too. I remember the cabinet secretary telling us that delayed discharge would be ended—that was 11 years ago.
Meanwhile, the health and social care partnerships that deliver social care in our communities are slashing services. Transport for people with learning disabilities to their local day centre is gone. Transport for older people in rural areas to hospital appointments is gone. In Dundee—the cabinet secretary’s back yard—mental health services for older people are under review and are going. Across Scotland, social care faces a £562 million funding gap in this financial year alone, and there is nothing in the budget for social care services for the coming year.
Last time we debated this budget, I told members about delayed discharge at the Vale of Leven hospital, from which many of my elderly constituents from Helensburgh are unable to get home because of a lack of social care in Argyll and Bute. I said that someone with a care package had to die for the package to be reallocated. However, that is no longer true: now, when someone dies, the care package is cancelled and taken as a saving. This budget does nothing to fix that.
After 20 years of the SNP being in charge, it feels as though the country is going backwards and we have lost compassion and care. SNP members should hang their heads in shame.
17:09
I think that this is a budget to be welcomed and one that delivers for people in this country. I commend Shona Robison for delivering, in her last budget, a very fine one indeed.
As far as the position that others have taken is concerned, I had—naively, perhaps—hoped that we might see a degree of reconsideration between stage 1 and stage 3 on the part of those who have turned their faces against the budget. Alas, that has not been the case. I commend those who have contributed positively to the budget process and who have achieved a positive outcome in the form of some of their priorities being reflected in the budget.
I remind all members that that opportunity was available to each and every one of them. Frankly, to remove yourself from the park and not even play part of the game is a dereliction of responsibility. However, given the meagre turnout of Conservative and Labour members, it seems that they are not even willing to be here to take part in the process. They are not willing to be here, at work, to take part in the process of deliberating on Scotland’s budget. Maybe they are just getting ready for, and getting used to, the number of members that they will have after the election, which will amount to a meagre level of representation.
I want to make a few points about the budget, some of which I set out in the stage 1 debate. I make no apologies for reiterating them, because they relate to measures that are particularly welcome. First, I will look at those that will help with some of the cost of living challenges that people are facing.
The doing away with peak rail fares had already been announced, but the funding in the budget also provides for a freeze in rail fares for the coming year. I represent an area where a considerable number of people—thousands of people—have to commute to work each and every day. The freezing of rail fares will make a real difference to them. I also continue to welcome the absence of prescription charges and the maintenance of free eye examinations, which Kevin Stewart mentioned.
That comes against the backdrop of a press release that the UK Government put out on 21 November, in which Wes Streeting celebrated the fact that it had kept prescription charges under a tenner, as if that was something to be proud of. We know that there is medicine avoidance happening in the rest of the UK, whereas here in Scotland there is no taxation on medication.
I also welcome the maintenance of no university tuition fees. The Labour Government has just announced that, south of the border, tuition fees will go up to £9,500 from the next academic year. I could not have contemplated going to university if that had been what I had had to pay. I am proud that we have a system in which no tuition fees have to be paid.
In addition, I welcome the new universal breakfast club provision for primary school children and children with additional support needs, which will benefit some 25,000 children in North Lanarkshire.
Another issue that I want to focus on is the increase in the Scottish child payment to £28.20 per week, with some families receiving a premium payment of £40. The First Minister set for his Government the challenge of trying to eradicate child poverty. We know that child poverty is going in the right direction in this country, and we should be proud of that. I regret that some members in the Parliament want to undo that approach. We have heard about the Scottish Conservatives’ plans to cut back entitlement to the Scottish child payment. I see that Mr Hoy is nodding. He thinks that that is something to be proud of, even though we know that the Scottish child payment is making a positive contribution to bringing down the levels of child poverty in Scotland.
I found much to agree with in Ross Greer’s remarks about the context in which we talk about entitlement to social security. Just today, Social Security Scotland published research that shows that, although 91 per cent of people who responded to the survey agreed that anyone could find themselves in circumstances in which they need financial support, there is significant concern about the stigmatisation associated with the claiming of social security benefits. Seventy-five per cent of respondents said that they believed that a contributory factor was the type of rhetoric that they hear from politicians and the media. I know which politicians they are talking about—they are over there on the Conservative benches. I am proud of the record that we have on social security.
I mentioned university. Picking up on my colleague Kevin Stewart’s point, I very much support the significant additional investment in colleges. It is right for us to be proud of the 10 per cent uplift in college funding. I see at first hand the excellence in college delivery. I see that Mr Kerr is shaking his head at the point that I am making about excellence in college delivery in Scotland. I would have thought that he would agree that there is excellence in college delivery in Scotland. [Interruption.] No, he is still saying that there is not excellence in college delivery in Scotland. I say that there is excellence in delivery in colleges in Scotland, including in New College Lanarkshire, which is in my constituency. The extra funding is welcome.
There is much more that I could say about the budget, but I do not have much time. I want to focus on one area that I particularly welcome, which is the additional support for general practice. We know that GP services are under pressure. The additional £531 million over three years for general practice to recruit more GPs and improve access is something that we should all welcome, as is the £36 million for new walk-in GP services. Those are already being rolled out, and I am keen to see them rolled out to my constituency—I have picked that up with NHS Lanarkshire and the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care.
Those are just some of the reasons why I believe that we should support the budget today. This is a budget to be welcomed, and it is a budget that should be supported today.
17:15
Well, that was phony rhetoric from Jamie Hepburn. Of course we recognise the excellence of the college sector, but we also believe colleges when they tell us that there has been a 20 per cent real-terms cut in their budgets in the lifetime of this Parliament. That is what we, as Conservatives, reject.
This issue is all about priorities. The SNP might not like to hear this, but I am afraid that government is about choices. Let us look at what we have because of this budget. What do we remain with? High tax, low growth, rising spending, shrinking ambition—that is certainly the case from the SNP when it comes to Scotland—and absolutely no willingness to confront the structural weaknesses in our public finances. The country, and especially its finances, are in a mess of this Government’s making.
Does the member accept that, in comparison with other European countries, this is a low-tax country?
I am comparing our country with the rest of the United Kingdom, of which we are the highest-taxed part. That creates an economic disadvantage for Scotland as a place in which to live, work, build a business and employ people. Those are real issues in the real economy that the party of Government ignores.
Let us talk about the benefits bill, which is spiralling. Public services are under strain and the economy is stagnating but, instead of tackling those core challenges, ministers boast about increasing welfare spending. The Conservatives believe that the way to help people out of poverty is by providing them with the means to work. We believe in employment. By the way, the Government’s position also used to be that the way to reduce child poverty and all forms of poverty is to help people into good jobs. It remains the Conservative Party’s position.
There are alarm bells and red warning lights—
Will the member give way?
I will, but please be brief.
Why, if the Conservatives’ priority is to get people into good work as the means to alleviate poverty and get children out of poverty, did child poverty increase under the previous Conservative Government?
We can have a big debate about what has happened in the past. If that is what the member wants to talk about, that is fine, but I want to talk about the budget and the state of our country. I want to talk about the inequality of opportunity in our country. Equality of opportunity is the bedrock of the Conservative Party’s position in respect of economic growth and the opportunities that it will create for all the people of Scotland.
The red warning lights are very real, and the warnings are not coming only from us. Jamie Hepburn might wish to listen to this, because it is not the Conservative Party speaking about this; it is the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Maybe he does not respect the Institute for Fiscal Studies, but I certainly do. It warns of a
“significant slowdown in funding growth”
and cautions that repeated reliance on carried-forward funding is a problem. The Fraser of Allander Institute reaches the same conclusion. It says that Scotland will continue to run an underlying deficit and that the current approach
“cannot be relied on indefinitely.”
Those are the words that I think that my colleague Craig Hoy referred to earlier.
While I am talking about my colleagues, and given that everyone is giving congratulatory nods in different directions, it would be completely remiss of me not to mention Liz Smith, whose speech in this debate was a masterpiece. She forensically handled the detail of the budget bill, as she has done on all the occasions that she has spoken on the public finances in the Parliament. She will be badly missed when she leaves the Parliament. None of us knows who will be in the next session of Parliament—that is a fair point—but some people who we know are leaving will be sadly missed.
What is the Government’s response to the situation that I have set out? The budget does not represent reform, renewal or a serious plan for growth. It is a continuation of the model that prioritises ever-rising spending, ever-rising taxation and an ever-expanding state without a credible plan for how it will all be paid for in the medium term.
Welfare spending continues to rise sharply. We all accept the duty that we have to support those who are in genuine need. However, when commitments grow faster than the tax base that funds them and long-term liabilities are locked in without structural reform, that is not compassion secured but a bill deferred—and deferred bills always come due. That is what the independent economists are pointing out to the SNP Government.
As I have mentioned, our country is the highest-taxed part of the United Kingdom. Businesses operate in an environment of increased complexity and uncertainty. Investment decisions are made with one eye on the tax differential and another on regulatory risk. This is a Government that likes to meddle. That is not how to build the most competitive economy in these islands.
Growth is not an optional extra but the foundation of everything else. Without growth, there is no sustainable funding for public services; without productivity, there is no rising prosperity; without enterprise, there is nothing to redistribute—yet the Government continues to assume that wealth can be shared before it is created, taxation can be pushed higher without behavioural consequence and structural deficits can be managed indefinitely through short-term adjustments.
Will Stephen Kerr give way?
I would love to take that intervention, but I think that I have only 30 seconds left. Echoing the words of Liz Smith and Craig Hoy, I say that independent voices are warning us that one-off fixes will not correct the permanent pressures that are built into what is a reckless budget. The Fraser of Allander institute has warned that underlying deficits
“cannot be relied on indefinitely.”
Those are not ideological critiques but economic realities, and Scotland deserves better than drift.
17:21
I find myself in the unusual position of agreeing with Stephen Kerr. I associate myself with his praise for Liz Smith, with whom I have worked in committee roles in the Parliament and whose contribution will be greatly missed.
I also find myself being a bit reflective—I do not know whether Ross Greer’s remarks have led to that. I remember meeting a young Shona Robison in the early 1980s, in Babbity Bowster in Glasgow, with a group of young nationalists who were sitting there, plotting revolution and talking about social justice. Shona Robison, Nicola Sturgeon and Roseanna Cunningham went on to be some of the most senior politicians in our country. It is testament to that passion that Shona leaves the Parliament in the knowledge that her work here, and her budgets, have lifted children out of poverty. I thank her for that.
A lot has been said during the debate, and other members have already mentioned much of what I wanted to say about the budget. However, some of their contributions have had an impact on me, such as when Ross Greer spoke about why child poverty matters. It is a matter of medical record that growing up in poverty causes chronic stress and brain damage to young children; it affects their learning and their health for the rest of their lives. That is why it is important that we focus on those issues in Scotland at the moment.
Jamie Greene said that being in opposition placed limitations on members’ ability to provide input to the budget process. However, we never seem to get around to what the limitations of the union mean for that process in Scotland. Everyone on the Conservative benches was happy to use exaggerated terms about our social contract when it came to discussing support for people who receive ADP and for those who are in work, but we must remember that having an equal society benefits everyone. If we look to our European neighbours, we can see that those with more equal societies are healthier and happier than we in this country are.
The Conservatives will always say that the problem is our benefits bill, but we never talk about the other factors in Scotland that affect our chances—for example, the multinationals that operate here, such as Amazon, Starbucks and Rockstar North, which receive grants towards their work but do not pay any tax into the Scottish or UK economies.
There is also the issue of VIP lanes for contracts negotiated during the Covid pandemic, which were another waste of money and were absolutely to the detriment of Scotland’s economy.
We never talk about the other issues at Westminster. We hear all about the refurbishment of the decrepit building there that could cost up to £39.2 billion to fix—it is crumbling, full of rats, mice and moths and not fit for purpose. That is just one more reason for moving forward with independence both for the sake of our economy and to achieve a better, more socially just Scotland.
I represent Motherwell and Wishaw, which have suffered greatly from Westminster policies such as the closure of Ravenscraig and other actions that have left pockets of deprivation in my constituency. I see at first hand the pressures on people, including those who are working to support themselves. They are not people on big budgets. Neither are our charities able to claim tax credits like other major organisations in our country do, including big businesses on our high streets and in all our communities. Such charities generally employ people who work day in, day out, at the very limit of sustainable employment, to try to improve the welfare of people in my constituency.
In this country, our view of what is valuable, what work is and where our money goes is completely skewed, and it is always big business that benefits. Franklin D Roosevelt said that
“no business which depends for existence on paying less than fair wages to its workers has any right to continue”.
We need to consider how we can make our tax system fairer and identify all the issues affecting it.
I again thank the cabinet secretary for reducing child poverty in our country. I thank her for the Government’s huge investment in our people, through education, health services, young people and measures such as the baby box. Those are investments in Scottish people and in how we want our society to be. I am disappointed that the Conservatives will always see a handout on any occasion when we on the SNP benches give people a hand up.
17:27
It is evident that this lacklustre Scottish National Party budget is miles off the mark on improving the lives of hard-working Scots. Members should mark my words: each bit of spin produced, each fact manipulated and each cover-up made does not go unnoticed by Joe Public. In 10 weeks’ time, the Scottish people will call out this tired, weary and sick SNP Government.
This budget is one made by an SNP Government that has neglected public infrastructure. We have crumbling roads that are full of potholes, bridges that have been closed for years, schools that are not fit for purpose and a chronic housing shortage. Local councils have no choice but to cut vital public services that we all need. The SNP is pinching the councils’ dinner money and telling them that a bad boy from Westminster did it.
The crumbs from the table that my Lib Dem colleagues have negotiated will probably never see the light of day, but I cannot fault them for trying. The Government will be saying, “Yes!”, because the Lib Dems took the bait.
Time and again, the SNP has shown itself to be incapable of basic arithmetic, so, regardless of what happens at the election in May, there will be a new budget in the autumn, when chronic underfunding of local councils, which deliver the vast majority of services for people, will continue.
If the SNP Government’s plan is that people will not notice council tax rates going up by 5, 6 or even 9 per cent, it is surely mistaken. People are not stupid. They know that the mismanagement and waste coming from this dysfunctional Government mean that councils are having to increase tax on family homes. People know that fiddling around with the 19 and 20 per cent tax bands does not amount to anything. A few of them might save 9 pence a day in tax, but that is set against the hundreds of pounds going on top of their council tax.
What do Scotland’s people get out of the piece of fiction that is the budget? Certainly not an improved NHS. They get token gestures including providing walk-in GP surgeries, which means that patients now need to travel further to get a service poorer than the one that they relied on 10 years ago. Meanwhile, stories of 12, 18 and 24-hour waits for ambulances fill my inbox and, once people are able to get in an ambulance—
Will the member give way?
Not just now; I have a big speech to do. Once someone is in an ambulance, it can take hours for them to get to hospital. They can then face a nine-hour wait in the car park because accident and emergency cannot admit them. Ambulances sit and wait. It is a vicious cycle. Some of my constituents have taken taxis to A and E because they know that it will be faster than waiting for an ambulance.
The Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care knows this because I have sent him details of numerous cases. Every time a constituent reaches out to me with an even more unbelievable complaint, the cabinet secretary gives me the same old reply, telling me that everything is all right out there, that it is a garden of roses and that nothing is wrong with our hospitals. Perhaps he could tell that to my constituent who had to be resuscitated after a seven-hour wait for an ambulance. That is the latest in a long line of such stories. No doubt, every member in this place has heard similar stories. I told the First Minister about a shortage of co-codamol; the next day, NHS Lanarkshire told its GPs not to discuss the matter with its patients.
I will be joining Scottish Labour members in abstaining on the budget in order that police officers, teachers, nurses and other vital public service workers can get paid in a few weeks’ time.
The member mentioned a real difficulty in the supply of certain drugs. A lot of that is down to Brexit and down to the UK Government and reserved policy. Will he join me in calling on the UK Government—
Briefly, Mr Stewart.
—to sort this out once and for all?
I was making a point about incoherence in the SNP Government’s approach. I will join my Scottish Labour colleagues in abstaining on the budget in order that police officers, teachers, nurses and other vital public service workers get their wages. However, that does not mean that we agree with it—far from it, as it is letting Scotland down, as per usual.
The SNP Government’s budget will not improve things. People are being systematically ground down into accepting poor service, as though the Scottish Government is doing us a favour. However, on Thursday 7 May, the Scottish people will have a chance to vote for hope, improvement and better lives. We need to get rid of this diabolical, deceitful SNP Government. We, the people of Scotland, have a big decision to make—either to be burdened with Mr Swinney and his motley crew or to vote for a better, brighter future with Scottish Labour.
17:33
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak. I will use my time to talk about the importance of funding social care like it matters—not just because it matters for the many people who use it but because it matters for all of us.
Almost all of the population will use or experience social care. That might be directly, it might be because someone close to us needs support, it might be because we work in care or it might be because we provide unpaid care. It is essential infrastructure for the delivery of a Scotland where opportunity is available to all. Funding it well is not only the right thing to do—it is the economically sensible thing to do, too.
Social care unlocks freedoms. It is what makes ordinary things possible. I am one of the many people who rely on social care to live, study, work and build a life. Social care freed me, and that is why I want to use the opportunity, in what will be the last budget debate in this place that I will speak in, to talk about its importance.
Social care changed my life, and it did so because of the hard work of the incredible women who support me with the things that many people never need to think about. They support me in getting up, getting dressed, managing pain, cooking, cleaning, fixing my wheelchair, getting out and getting on with my day. Like the almost 200,000 people who work in care in Scotland, they work their socks off. Because they do that, I can work my socks off, too. On the record, I say to them and the care workforce across Scotland: thank you.
Because of social care, disabled people can take their place in society and contribute. That matters. Social care is an investment in people, society and our economy. Because the workforce is predominantly made up of women, social care is an investment in the women who are employed as carers. It is also an investment in the ability of women to take up work elsewhere, because unpaid caring responsibilities will be properly supported.
All of us in the Parliament know that social care is stretched. People are fighting for the care that they need and workers are still too often waiting for the pay and conditions that they deserve. I acknowledge the change in the budget to meet the real living wage, which the Coalition of Care and Support Providers in Scotland has talked about. However, that will only take us back to the status quo, because the level of funding is far short of what is needed to stabilise and guarantee the long-term sustainability of the sector.
When funding is tight, the consequences are not abstract. People miss appointments because there is no one to support them to get there, people lose out on social time and community life and people go without the personal support that they need to stay well and independent. As we all know, that leads to lower participation rates, lower employment levels and poorer health.
It is not only the lack of care that holds people back; charges for care also do so. Facing significant funding pressures, councils charge disabled people for the care that they need, and those charges are increasing. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation put it perfectly last year when it said:
“Despite aiming to develop a system that is fair, current charges are inconsistent, mask unmet need and cause significant financial hardship to disabled people. There are things that could be done to make the system fairer, but ultimately these charges need to end.”
It is simply not right that a service that is designed to support equality can deepen financial inequality. Care is not an optional extra, and nor is it a luxury; it is essential. Care enables people to get up in the morning, to work and to live an ordinary life, and people should not be penalised for needing it. I again call for non-residential care charges to be scrapped.
I say to future legislators in the Parliament that, when they next set budgets, they should remember that social care must be considered not as a cost but as an essential investment for all of us, and it must be prioritised and funded as such.
17:37
Budgets provide an opportunity for the Parliament to scrutinise questions such as whether we are spending public money wisely or funding failure. I will use the few minutes that I have been allocated to talk about public trust and how—or whether—we are getting value for money.
Trust depends on taxpayers seeing effective use of public money and measurable value for their money. There is a question about how ministers can properly assess effectiveness when substantial funding for equality and tackling male violence against women is channelled at arm’s length through bodies such as Inspiring Scotland.
Recently, five Government-funded charities—Engender, LGBT Youth Scotland, the Equality Network and Scottish Trans, LEAP Sports Scotland and Zero Tolerance—have been lobbying hard to create confusion in the aftermath of the For Women Scotland Ltd v the Scottish ministers case, on which the Scottish Government lost yet more public money after being challenged by For Women Scotland.
Clare Adamson wanted us to talk about money that has been squandered, so I hope that she is listening. The For Women Scotland case cost £780,000. There was also the failed Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill and the court case to challenge the use of a section 35 order, which cost £370,000. In total, that comes to £1.2 million that has been wilfully wasted by the Government against public opinion.
Further, we have organisations that are now steeped in controversy, such as LGBT Youth Scotland, that have received significant public funding. That organisation has received more than £13.4 million over the past 10 years, and yet, year on year, we are told that the inequality that it claims to tackle is worsening. Are we continuing to fund failure? What independent evaluation has been undertaken to assess whether such funded interventions are delivering on expected outcomes, or whether those organisations are, in fact, part of the problem rather than the solution?
I will now touch on male violence against women and girls. The cabinet secretary has said that equally safe will receive more money in the budget. The equally safe strategy that underpins the delivering equally safe funding model states that prostitution is violence against women. At a time when Scotland is facing escalating sexual crimes and escalating domestic abuse, the crisis of male violence against women continues. The Government is finding ways and looking for excuses not to act, either by not acting itself or by not supporting members’ bills on those issues. I presented a case showing that, using the Christie commission-type of evaluation, my bill would have saved the country money over time.
Why are some funded organisations notably silent on tackling demand and criminalising perpetrators exploiting women in prostitution? Why are critical front-line services such as Glasgow and Clyde Rape Crisis struggling to survive while demand is increasing, but other lobby groups seem to be thriving financially while failing to deliver any meaningful improvement for those they claim to serve? There is no point in spending more money if it is not being spent well.
I am very concerned about how public money is being allocated. If adherence to following the law is not a core funding condition, it must become one. We cannot afford further wasted public funds and reputational damage from embarrassing revelations such as those that we witnessed in the employment tribunal involving Sandie Peggie and NHS Fife. The costs of that are on-going and were about £400,000 as at December 2025.
The public are not stupid. We have to earn their trust by focusing on their priorities, not on ideological indulgences, and by delivering measurable and accountable outcomes for the people of Scotland. We are not doing that, and the examples that I have given are just a tiny snapshot. I have not even had time to cover the Government’s callous and kamikaze on-going fight to use public money to keep violent males in the female prison estate. My considered view is that we are continuing to fund failure, and we should urgently address that.
We move to winding-up speeches.
17:42
In opening the debate, the cabinet secretary encouraged her successor in the finance portfolio to be bold. I absolutely agree with that. There is one particular area in which it is essential that they are bold. She has given me the opportunity to talk about my favourite hobby-horse in the finance debate: reform of the council tax.
The Greens have often been focused on local government in our budget negotiations, but there is a fundamental problem in haggling every year over a couple of hundred million pounds at the edge of a multibillion-pound system that is fundamentally broken. Many of us—certainly those of us who believe in Scotland’s independence—aspire for us to be more like our mainland European neighbours, and particularly our Nordic neighbours. However, when it comes to how we finance local government, Scotland has an incredibly British style of centralised governance.
Local government funding in Scotland is overwhelmingly dependent on the block grant from the Scottish Government—about 80 per cent of it comes from that—as opposed to the mainstream of European local governance municipalities, which raise a majority of their own funding. Local government in Scotland simply does not have the power to make those decisions. It is not really local—it is far too big—and it can barely do any governing. We have 32 regional service delivery bodies.
We have reached the end of another session of Parliament with no progress made on the replacement of the council tax. The system was out of date before this Parliament was even established, yet we have got to the end of its sixth session and we have not fixed it yet.
The poorest households in this country are paying about five times more as a share of their income in council tax than the wealthiest. That should embarrass all of us. This Parliament is responsible for that, not councils.
Yes, with any change to that system, there would be winners and losers, but there are winners and losers in the system that we have now—it is a broken system. The winners are the wealthiest, and the losers are the people who are struggling the most, in terms of how much they have to pay and their reliance on underfunded council services.
It is frustrating that, in this session of Parliament, we had the opportunity to at least agree on a revaluation. Most of us recognise that the system needs to be scrapped and replaced but, at the very least, it should be based on accurate data and, unfortunately, only the Greens and Lib Dems voted for a revaluation exercise to take place. Those who rejected that need to take responsibility for the fact that the majority of households in this country are paying the wrong rate of council tax.
We would not put up with that with income tax or most of our other taxes. Most of those who are paying the wrong rate are poorer households paying more than they should, and it is generally wealthier households that pay less. The system is fundamentally broken. Regardless of our ideological positions on tax, I believe that we all recognise the fundamental deficiencies in a system that is based on 1991 property valuations. No one can defend a system in which most people are paying the wrong rate, yet we have got to the end of the sixth session of Parliament and have not yet fixed that. That is immensely frustrating.
That said, I do not want to end on a negative, so I will talk about some of the limited progress that we have made on council tax, for which the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government as well as the Cabinet Secretary for Housing deserve some credit. The changes that we have made to council tax for second homes and holiday homes have not only raised hundreds of millions of pounds for local services; in the first year alone of doubling council tax for second and holiday homes, there were 2,500 fewer properties of that type in Scotland. Those properties did not disappear; they went back on to the market and were bought by people who chose to live in them, thereby helping us to tackle the housing crisis.
Does Ross Greer agree with me on how strange it is that the Tories always go on about funding for local government and yet oppose the very mechanisms that he is talking about for local government to raise additional funds on second and empty homes? Does he think that that is a bit strange and contradictory?
The cabinet secretary is absolutely right. As well as the contradiction in the fact that the Tories demand more money for local government while refusing to give councils the power to raise that money, there is the Tories’ regular refrain that this is a centralising Scottish Government and that we should instead empower local government when, time after time in this session and the sessions before it, the Conservatives have consistently opposed our collective efforts to give local government more power over its finances and other matters.
Along with reform of the council tax, the changes that we made at the same time to housing revenue accounts have resulted in the City of Edinburgh Council alone being able to commit more than £1.5 billion of additional funding over the next decade to the construction of more council housing. None of us will put reform of housing revenue accounts or ministerial direction powers on our leaflets for the coming election, but that is the stuff that really matters. People will have roofs over their heads as a result of the changes that we have delivered. However, there is still much to do.
We have a choice. To go back to what I said in my opening speech, as we go into the coming election, there is an attempt to make it feel as if Scottish austerity is inevitable because of the state of our public finances. I agree that there needs to be a change to put them on a sustainable footing, but this is one of the wealthiest countries in the history of the world.
As we go into the election, I urge colleagues, not just in the final moments of this debate but in the next session of Parliament—whoever is here—to be bold. There are far too many issues on which we have kicked the can as far down the road as we can. The most critical issue is how we fund local government. That is about how we fund those who deliver our schools, social care, libraries and roads and pavement maintenance, all of which are absolutely critical to the day-to-day lives of our constituents.
Much as the local government settlement this year is just about acceptable, we know that local services have reached a tipping point and that we cannot keep kicking the can down the road. There needs to be fundamental change to local government finances at the start of the next session of Parliament.
17:49
It has been a feisty debate at times, but, throughout it, there has been no recognition whatever from members on the SNP benches—the back benches or the front benches—of the need for a change of direction. Members would expect me to say that there is such a need, but, when the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Fraser of Allander Institute are saying that the spectre of an inevitable emergency budget is on the horizon, that should be of concern to members on the Government benches. Those are authoritative and independent bodies that SNP ministers have often quoted over the years, so they should be concerned.
Perhaps that has just become the norm and to be expected. We had three years of consecutive emergency budgets, and all the chaos that ensued, under this Government. Last year, we had a budget that was held behind closed doors. The reality is that chaotic decision making by the Government, which means that civil servants spend the whole year fighting to hold on to the budget that they were allocated at the start of it, creates real problems in how Government works and in how money is allocated. Across Government departments, basic budgets are restricted in-year and things are promised but subsequently not delivered.
Then there are the long-term trends. My colleague Jackie Baillie rightly pointed out that GP services have been downgraded from the 11 per cent that they previously commanded in the health budget to 7 per cent. GPs are furious at what we have now: an SNP electioneering gimmick about supposed walk-in centres. There is no clarity on how those will operate. Today, reports have come in from across the country about the lack of clarity on the centres. When the cabinet secretary stood up at the start of the debate, he was unable to fairly represent what is happening with the service in Dundee. He said that the service would be open to people across the city, but that is simply not the case—it is restricted to existing patients registered at the health centre to which the service will be allocated.
That comes against a backdrop of a 25 per cent cut in the number of GP surgeries in Dundee under this SNP Government. The number of registered patients in the remaining surgeries has increased by more than 40 per cent. That is the context in which a new queuing system for one surgery in Dundee has been introduced. The reality is that, instead of going forward by introducing an app on which people can book an appointment, we are going back to the 1950s and asking people to queue up for an appointment instead. It is absolutely the case that that is not progress but a move backwards.
In his opening and closing speeches, Ross Greer talked about the UK context and the amount of money that has been provided to the Scottish Government—he called it “austerity”. Mr Greer should know that an additional £10.3 billion of funding for the Scottish Government’s budget clearly does not represent austerity. An additional £5.2 billion was provided in this budget year alone, which reflects a highly redistributive approach.
Will the member give way?
I will take the member’s intervention in a moment.
I get that there are people in the chamber who do not agree that we should have a redistributive budget, but that is what is in place. Analysis by the Office for Budget Responsibility clearly shows that additional taxation has been introduced to produce the additional resources that the Scottish Government has benefited from.
Michael Marra earlier said that he respects independent authoritative agencies that comment on budgets. The OBR has said that Labour’s budget this year lays the groundwork for future years of austerity. Does the member agree with that?
I recall Paul Johnston of the Institute for Fiscal Studies talking about the Labour budget and saying clearly that under no interpretation could it be considered austerity. It is absolutely clear that the uplift in the amount of money that has come to the Scottish Government—we are talking about the allocation for today’s budget—has been considerable. Goodness only knows where we would be without it.
Mr Greer said that he opposed the rise in employer national insurance contributions. I understand that the rise presents challenges for businesses across Scotland, but the money has to come from somewhere. Where does he suggest that it should come from?
The Labour Government faced two options when it came to employer national insurance contributions and it chose the option that increased the contribution of workers on lower wages. Why did it maintain the 2 per cent cap on ENICs for those who are on salaries above £50,000? Of the two options, the Government chose the regressive, not the progressive, way to raise more money from ENICs.
Lots of fine-tuning choices can be made. Mr Greer might be right that there are more progressive ways to apply parts of different taxes, and we continue to have those arguments. However, the idea that you just do not make such choices and therefore have less money for public services has been the SNP front bench’s approach—it asked for an additional £90 billion for spending but opposed £45 billion of revenue raisers. Frankly, that is incomprehensible and ludicrous.
The reality is that the SNP will never take the bold choices that are needed to change this country for the better. Time and again, it puts party before country—receiving tip-offs about court cases, circling the wagons to protect its own, blurring the lines between Government and party, colluding and covering up, and offering grieving families cash and trips to Disneyland rather than honesty and accountability.
Smear, smear, smear.
That is absolutely the case, and the First Minister should be ashamed of it.
Let us hear one another.
The SNP does all of that because it is defending a record of failure: hundreds of thousands of Scots on NHS waiting lists, more than 10,000 children in temporary accommodation, ferries that do not sail, roads that do not get dualled, an education system that is going backwards and a justice system that is past breaking point. It is well past time for change.
17:55
As others have done, I will start by saying a few words in tribute to Shona Robison, given that this will be her final budget debate. I wish her well in the future. I know that, in her job, she has put up my taxes, but I do not bear a grudge. I assure her that, in my role as a trustee of the Scottish parliamentary pension scheme, I will work very hard to secure her financial future.
Before I get into some of the issues that have been raised in the debate, I will provide a bit of context to the budget and say why the performance of Scotland’s economy is essential.
As we know, the budget has three component parts: the Westminster block grant, the money that is raised from devolved taxes and the block grant adjustment. The third part—the block grant adjustment—is crucial because, ultimately, that is what decides the overall size of the Scottish budget. Under the fiscal framework, which was agreed by the First Minister and recently renegotiated and signed off by the Government, the block grant adjustment depends on the relative performance of Scottish devolved taxes compared with what happens elsewhere in the UK. Scottish Conservatives make no apology for talking about Scotland’s economic performance, because that is crucial to determining the block grant adjustment and, therefore, how much public money there is to spend.
A growing Scottish economy not only delivers greater wealth and more secure, well-paid jobs but leads to better public finances. If there are more working taxpayers, more taxes are paid. If there are more economically inactive people, less money is raised in taxes and more support must be provided through the benefits system. What really matters in relation to the block grant adjustment is not how Scotland performs on a stand-alone basis, but how we perform relative to the rest of the United Kingdom.
Will Murdo Fraser give way?
Will Murdo Fraser take an intervention?
I have a choice. I will give way to Mr McKee.
Murdo Fraser makes a fair point about Scotland’s economic performance relative to that of the rest of the UK. What does he have to say about the fact that Scotland’s economy is now consistently growing more quickly than that in the rest of the UK?
It might be performing marginally better than the dismal performance of the UK economy under Labour, but what really matters to the Scottish budget is comparative tax receipts. In that regard, we must consider what the Scottish Fiscal Commission refers to as the “economic performance gap”—or, rather, the devolved tax gap—and consider how Scotland’s performance compares to that of the UK as a whole. The figures show—not according to me, but according to the independent Fiscal Commission—that there is a staggering gap of £1 billion. So, £1 billion is being lost to the Scottish Government because our earnings growth is not as high as that in the rest of the UK.
Will Murdo Fraser give way?
I cannot give way at the moment. I do not have time.
In simple terms, that means that we are not attracting enough new people, particularly high earners, to come to Scotland to address that gap. The Scottish Government will say that Scotland’s population is increasing, as are the number of people of working age. That might be true, but what matters to the Scottish budget is not the absolute numbers but the numbers relative to those for the UK as a whole. Relatively speaking, the population of the UK as a whole is growing more quickly than the population of Scotland. As a consequence, there is a negative impact on the Scottish budget. Therefore, we make no apology for saying that we need to focus on economic growth and, in particular, attract more higher earners to Scotland. Ross Greer’s recipe, which is to tax the rich more, would have the opposite impact and would diminish the Scottish budget, because we need more higher earners here.
Will Murdo Fraser give way?
I will give way to Mr Greer, given that I mentioned him.
For the past 10 years, Murdo Fraser has claimed that every tax rise that we have already delivered on high earners would result in some kind of colossal exodus. However, over the past 10 years, the number of people on higher salaries in Scotland has grown and tax revenues have grown. Does he reflect at all on the fact that there is no evidence of the catastrophic impact that he claimed there would be?
Ross Greer has not listened to a word that I have said. Compared to the rest of the UK, we are not growing the number of taxpayers—in particular, the number of higher earners—quickly enough. That is why the Scottish Fiscal Commission is saying that we are £1 billion behind where we should be. If we could grow the economy faster and attract more people, we would fill that £1 billion gap. That would give us more money to spend on all the pet projects that Mr Greer has. Imagine if we could grow faster than the rest of the UK—we would have not £1 billion but more than £1 billion. We are challenged over the argument for making tax cuts to grow the economy, but that is why we should. If we grow the economy, we widen the tax base and we increase the tax take by the Scottish Government.
In previous debates, I have raised the need for action to support struggling businesses. The announcements that we have heard in the budget to help businesses that are struggling, particularly with the current non-domestic rates revaluation, are welcome as far as they go. However, they simply do not go far enough. Businesses in hospitality are currently closing at the rate of one per week, and that will continue to be the case unless this Government thinks again. If the Northern Irish Executive can announce—as it did just two weeks ago, in response to pleas from the business community there—that it can halt the revaluation process, Scottish ministers can do the same. Even at this late hour, I would encourage them to do that before we see more job losses.
Without a growing, dynamic economy, and without thriving businesses, we will not have the jobs and the revenues to fund the public services that we need. As Jackie Baillie said, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, we are already seeing in this budget what will be a real-terms cut to health services. That is not something that the SNP wants to talk about, but that is the reality. Stephen Kerr was right to say that the benefits bill is spiralling out of control. Local services are being slashed, council taxes are soaring and the income tax gap between Scotland and the rest of the UK is widening.
That is the SNP’s legacy, and that is why we must reject this budget.
18:02
As a Government, the decisions that we have taken in this budget have been driven by our commitment to improve the lives of the people of Scotland today and into the future. That commitment reflects our values and, ultimately, shapes our priorities as a Government. Those priorities—eradicating child poverty, growing the economy, tackling the climate emergency and improving public services—underpin the budget.
The budget was drafted with an eye on the upcoming tackling child poverty delivery plan, which will deliver further progress towards achieving our child poverty targets. It commits an additional £49 million to the tackling child poverty fund, taking the total to £61.5 million. It provides an extra £50 million to the whole family support package to support parents into sustainable employment and to help them to grow the economy. It begins the necessary work to introduce a new Scottish child payment premium, which is estimated to benefit the families of around 12,000 children. As the cabinet secretary highlighted in her opening remarks, that investment is vital to our progress, but I ask members not to lose sight of the human stories behind it. We should all keep in mind the individuals whom we are supporting through this budget and the lives that we are all committing to making better through the decisions that we take in this chamber.
We are pleased that the budget includes measures that will materially impact the day-to-day lives of families, giving every child in Scotland the chance to take part in a free sporting opportunity this summer, investing more in activity clubs and, from August next year, ensuring that all primary school pupils can access a free breakfast to start the school day.
We know that the long-term prosperity of our country is reliant on our economic success. That is why the budget bolsters our support for businesses, people and place, with a package of non-domestic rates relief that is estimated to be worth more than £870 million in 2026-27 alone, and ensuring the lowest basic property rate since 2018-19. We are providing more than £325 million of funding for the enterprise agencies in order to continue to improve business and community resilience, as well as creating and protecting jobs.
We also know that investing in the people of Scotland and their future will support economic growth, which is why this budget invests a combined increase of £70 million in Scotland’s colleges and a further £8 million to support adult learners.
The Government also recognises that our future can be protected only by taking seriously the climate emergency that we face. That is why the budget invests more than £5 billion of climate-positive spend in 2026-27, including £31.7 million of investment to make progress in Scotland’s transition to a circular economy. We are also taking forward measures that encourage a switch to sustainable modes of transport, including a freeze of ScotRail fares in 2026-27. We remain committed to delivering on the priorities of the climate change plan in a fiscally sustainable way. The budget supports that ambition.
The budget also delivers support for the public services that the people of Scotland rely on. It will provide record funding to local government of £15.7 billion, including the additional £20 million of funding that was announced at stage 1, which can be used towards funding the real living wage in the adult and child care sectors. It invests more to improve our transport services by providing more than £4.4 billion of capital investment to 2029-30 to enhance our rail network and fleet, and more than £1 billion of capital to deliver ferry service improvements. It also supports new approaches to public services by providing £36 million to begin the roll-out of the new high street GP walk-in centres, which will provide additional same-day access for communities.
In her opening remarks, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government underlined the importance of collaboration in a process such as this, and I whole-heartedly agree. Our pre-budget and post-budget engagement with members across the chamber has been motivated by a commitment to consensus and co-operation. As a result, the Liberal Democrats and Jeremy Balfour have confirmed their support for the bill. I thank those members and others who have engaged in the process. Their thoughtful contributions have helped this Government to develop a stronger budget for the people of Scotland.
Beyond those specific asks, there are measures in the budget that other members in the chamber hold dear. The Schools (Residential Outdoor Education) (Scotland) Bill became an act on 11 February, and work is under way to make progress on its implementation. The 2026-27 budget will support outdoor learning policy development and implementation. We welcomed Liz Smith’s constructive approach to improving the affordability and deliverability of the bill, and I fail to see how she could vote against a budget that contains that measure.
Does the minister recognise that that commitment, which the Parliament has now made by passing the bill, was an SNP manifesto commitment in 2021?
It still needs to be funded, and we still need to pass the budget. Liz Smith has to decide whether or not she wants to support that measure.
We are providing an additional £40 million of investment in sport and physical activity to support opportunities for people across Scotland to be more active. I am sure that colleagues such as Brian Whittle will welcome that and vote accordingly.
We are committing £926 million to continue progress towards the affordable housing supply programme target of delivering 110,000 affordable houses by 2032. Given Miles Briggs’s recent representations on that in the Parliament, he should surely support our capital spend being focused on that area by voting for the budget.
There were interesting contributions this afternoon. Jamie Hepburn, Kevin Stewart, Ross Greer and others reminded us of the choices that we have made in Scotland and the long list of types of support that the citizens of Scotland get that is unavailable elsewhere in the UK. Jamie Greene recognised the seriousness of the work that we do and the implications of the decisions that we make in the real world. Serious politicians get on and get things done. I am sure that Kenny Gibson will be back in the Scottish Parliament, but if not, I have no doubt that a career in comedy beckons. As for Agent Marra, the first rule of negotiations is that if you do not ask, you do not get. Perhaps the Parliament will deliver training on negotiation skills alongside training on the budget process, which I am sure that Mr Marra will benefit from.
As for the Tory contributions, we heard the same old, same old: tax cuts on the one hand and more spending on the other—complete economic illiteracy from the party of Liz Truss. We heard that from Craig Hoy, Stephen Kerr and Murdo Fraser. We heard some of it from Liz Smith, but, to be fair to her, she tries to present a coherent argument that goes beyond soundbites, and we have to pay tribute to her for the work that she has done on the Finance and Public Administration Committee over many years. I think that we all agree that she will be missed in the chamber—even if she has not yet realised that Scotland’s economy is now growing faster than that in the rest of the UK and that more taxpayers are moving from the rest of the UK to Scotland than are moving in the other direction as a result of the Government’s policies.
We all recognise the fiscal challenges facing our public services, now and into the future. Through prudent fiscal management, the Government continues to fund the priorities of the people of Scotland while balancing our budget and delivering within the resources available.
[Made a request to intervene.]
Will I get any time back, Presiding Officer?
Yes.
One of the greatest challenges for this and future budgets in Scotland is public sector pay. Two years ago, the Government set a 9 per cent envelope for public sector pay. Going into this year, it has already spent 8 per cent of that 9 per cent. What is the message to public sector unions? The IFS says that controlling public sector labour costs is likely to be challenging. How will the Government rise to that challenge?
The Government will continue to do what it always does: it will fund the priorities of the people of Scotland, including by ensuring that our public sector workers are paid properly while balancing our budget by increasing tax and other revenues to support our growing economy.
We recognise the need for continued public service reform to ensure that resources are focused where they make the biggest difference and positively impact on outcomes. The Government will continue our work to shift spend to areas of prevention, to deliver efficiencies, to join up and further integrate services and to transform the service delivery landscape, taking forward work in our public service reform strategy. In short, the Government will be bold.
Despite the challenging fiscal context, we are proud that we have protected the social contract and have gone further in delivering our priorities. We are proud to have taken forward a process that pursues consensus over division, and we are proud to bring forward a budget that will ultimately improve the lives of individuals in Scotland.
We look forward—if I may be permitted to say this—to continuing to bring forward budgets that deliver on the priorities of the people of Scotland in future years.
That concludes the debate on the Budget (Scotland) (No 5) Bill at stage 3.
Previous
Protecting Children from HarmNext
Urgent Questions