Spending Allocations 2000-01
The next item of business is a statement by Mr Jack McConnell on spending allocations for 2000-01. The minister will take questions at the end of his statement, so there should be no interventions.
Last week, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced major increases in spending for health, education and other vital services. Today we allocate the resources, which will be added to our Scottish budget as a result.
In 2000-01, the increase will be in the order of £288 million. I want to be clear: this is extra money that comes to Scotland without constraints. We are a devolved Parliament and we reserve the right to have different spending priorities. The extra resources are an increase in our total budget. The Executive, and ultimately the Parliament, will decide where they should be applied. Our priorities may be shared elsewhere in the UK, but they are our priorities. They include turning round Scotland's appalling health record, ensuring that every school in Scotland is excellent or improving—or both—investing bit by bit in Scotland's transport, and ensuring safer communities by tackling crime.
Those aims guide our spending plans. I can confirm today that additional resources will be allocated to those priority areas. Broadly, we will direct £87 million to education, nearly £9 million to justice and nearly £16 million to transport. The priorities of this coalition—health, education, transport, justice and enterprise—will all benefit from the new money, because those are the priorities of the Scottish people.
In one area, health, we will be even more precise. I am delighted to announce today that we will increase the health budget by £173 million in the financial year 2000-01. That is a massive injection of resources for the national health service in Scotland, on top of the increases in health agreed in the Budget (Scotland) Bill. That means a 7.3 per cent real-terms increase next year and major real-terms increases each following year to 2003-04. The increase per head for people in Scotland will be the same as for people elsewhere—£34 for every man, woman and child.
However, there is more investment to come. The chancellor announced additional spending for the national health service, from which Scotland will also benefit. In the three years 2001-02, 2002-03 and 2003-04, the increases in the health programme will be £268 million, £687 million and £1.14 billion. That is a grand total over four years of £2.268 billion—almost £450 per person in Scotland. It is a four-year programme of investment and reform in the national health service.
The new resources will provide an enormous boost for public services across the country. We have a duty to ensure that we employ them to maximum effect. Ministers are determined to maximise the added value to Scotland, prioritising demands, concentrating on outputs rather than on inputs and looking at what the extra money will buy rather than at how much we are getting. Above all, we want to find Scottish solutions to Scottish problems.
The spending strategy group, which I announced in January, comprising the Minister for Rural Affairs, the Minister for Parliament and myself, will ensure that the new money is used strategically to target priorities and to secure additional value. Money will not be unduly compartmentalised. With flexibility, we will consider and deal holistically with the big problems that straddle departmental, ministerial and accounting boundaries. We will direct the money to where it will best be used. We have time and we will take time to get that right, making the extra resources really work for Scotland.
The Cabinet will meet again after Easter to decide how to invest those additional sums. Ministers will outline in due course the real improvements to services that will be targeted in each priority area.
Susan Deacon has announced that the resources from tobacco duty will be used to promote public health, and she will target the remaining health resources equally effectively, not necessarily through concentrating on traditional health targets, but through working together to improve the health of our nation. We will not waste resources on partial interventions; we will attempt to get to the heart of problems, using resources efficiently and, most of all, imaginatively.
This is a massive investment in Scotland's services: £288 million next year and £2.4 billion in total up to 2003-04. We will use that as a total over those years, planning and investing across years as well as within years. That is joined-up budgeting for a joined-up set of priorities.
Public spending in Scotland will be at its highest ever, surpassing in real terms all previous peaks and then growing well beyond that. I want every pound to make a difference to the life chances of ordinary Scots. I want every pound to deliver maximum added value to Scotland, with public services measurably improved for all citizens.
The resources can and must be a down payment on a better, fairer Scotland for all. We must use them creatively for real improvements in daily life and for social justice for all. They provide millions of pounds more for the national health service, which will give all our citizens the opportunity to live healthier lives; millions of pounds more for schools, to give all our children the opportunities they deserve; millions of pounds more for our public transport systems, to improve transport links in our cities, towns and rural areas; and millions of pounds more for tackling crime, to make our streets safe and to remove the fear of crime. This is a down payment now for better hospitals, better schools, better transport and safer streets; it will be a windfall tomorrow for ordinary people the length and breadth of Scotland.
The minister will now take questions on the issues raised in his statement. I intend to allow around 20 minutes for questions, after which we will proceed with the next item of business. It would therefore be helpful if those members who wish to ask questions would press their request-to-speak buttons.
I thank the Minister for Finance for giving us foresight of his statement and congratulate him on his announcement, which repeats what John Reid announced this time last week.
Can the minister describe how he can make a £173 million increase into a 7.3 per cent increase? I am sure that he will explain that feat of arithmetic in the health department report. Will he confirm that the increase—this year, next year, the year after and the year after that—will be continuously less in total than the percentage increase in the health budget in the rest of the UK?
Will the minister confirm that the increase for transport is less than 6 per cent of the increase announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer for the UK, and that the increase for crime is barely more than 3 per cent of the UK total, despite our population share being much larger than that?
Will the minister tell us whether he thinks that the £173 million, which equates to 66p a week for every Scot, will tackle the crisis in health spending? Does he agree that we cannot tackle that without the opportunity to invest real resources in public services, rather than waiting for a hand-me-down budget that, in any event, is continuously increasing more slowly than in the rest of the UK?
One of the great advantages of giving members a speech in advance is that it provides them with the opportunity to read it. I hope that, in future, Mr Wilson will take that opportunity. I specifically said that the money was on top of the increases in health agreed in the Budget (Scotland) Bill. The Parliament agreed to pass a budget bill that has already increased the health budget in Scotland by more than was ever promised by either of the two main Opposition parties.
Today's increase takes the increase for next year to 7.3 per cent, which represents the same amount of money per head as would apply elsewhere in the United Kingdom. That is something of which we should be proud. It is a substantial increase.
This week, I noticed a slight divergence of opinion on this subject among leading figures in the SNP. While Mr Wilson was complaining in Scotland this week, Mr Salmond was in London, defending the funding formula, which he described as good for Scotland and something that he wanted to continue.
There may be a difference of opinion among SNP members, but there should be no difference of opinion in this chamber today. This is the best ever investment in the health service in Scotland. It will radically transform Scotland's health record and health service. It is something that this chamber should welcome, as I do.
I thank the minister for providing us with an advance copy of his statement.
Although I welcome the additional resources for Scotland, which we recognise as coming out of the increased taxation that Gordon Brown has collected in the past three years, will the minister assure the Parliament that the money will not merely be used to plug gaps in inefficiencies in our public services or as a sticking plaster to cover up Labour's inadequacy in government, particularly in health delivery? Will the minister further assure us that the resources will be used to provide new services and initiatives in Scotland's public sector and infrastructure?
Will the minister tell us how the money will be labelled to ensure that the committees of the Parliament can scrutinise the actual use to which the money is put and appraise the outcomes and not, as he said, the outputs?
There will be considerable discussion of the Executive budgets in the committees of the Parliament in the three months to come. The specific changes that result from today's announcements and subsequent announcements will be included in the supplementary estimates that will be agreed by the committees in the usual way between now and the summer. I give the Parliament a guarantee that that will happen.
The issue of the adequacy or inadequacy of the increase might be of interest to Mr Davidson. It is strange that he says that there are gaps that should be plugged and then asks for a guarantee that the money will be used to provide new services and initiatives. I can guarantee that there will be new improvements in the health service, in justice and in education. The improvements will appear to be more dramatic than they otherwise would because of the record of the Government that was replaced in 1997. There will be an increase of more than 50 per cent in health spending in Scotland over seven years.
I realise that Opposition parties need to criticise, probe and question the Executive but, every now and again, it would be nice if something as dramatically good for Scotland as this extra money could be welcomed by members on all sides of the chamber, rather than simply by those across the centre.
He wants a job.
I see that I have fans already.
On behalf of the Scottish Liberal Democrat party, I welcome the Executive's announcement. I am sure that the massive increase in health and education spending will be welcomed by all those who are involved in the day-to-day delivery of those key services. The additional funding will reverse years of neglect under previous Administrations.
I ask the minister to clarify how the £30 million that has been announced for education will be paid. Will he also confirm that the per capita health spend in Scotland is some £964, which is 18 per cent above the UK average, and that the extra £173 million will mean that we will still have a per capita spend that is 18 per cent above the rest of the UK? That spend represents £150 extra per head. For Kay Ullrich to claim that health spending in Scotland falls short of health spending south of the border is disingenuous, if not a deliberate attempt to mislead.
Many misleading comments have been made during the past week, with spokespeople from the other parties saying different things in different parts of the country.
I can confirm that health spending in Scotland will remain substantially higher than it is south of the border per head of the population. That is a good thing for Scotland. It recognises our special circumstances and gives us the opportunity to turn round our health record.
I draw members' attention to the middle part of my statement. It is important that we make it clear that, by joining up the service delivery mechanisms, we can get more for the money in Scotland than might otherwise be the case. We need to raise our horizons. We will quote the figures, justify the budgets and rebut the paltry arguments of those who seek to dismiss what we are doing. At the same time, the Executive and the Parliament have a duty to consider ways in which we can deliver more for the money and secure the maximum added value to which I referred in my statement. I hope that we can do so.
I was pleased to hear the minister talking about raising horizons. He will know that his colleague the Minister for Children and Education is fond of league tables. Is he aware that Scotland is near the bottom of the European league table of education spending per pupil, lying below Denmark, Austria, France, Germany and a host of other countries?
According to current Executive figures, spending per primary school pupil in Scotland is £1,900 this year. The European average is £2,500 a year, which is £600 more. In Denmark, one of our closest European neighbours, £3,600 a year is spent on every primary school pupil. Is the minister satisfied with Scotland's place at the bottom of the European league table? If not, what will he do to ensure that our young people receive the same start in life as their European counterparts? The spending that he has announced today will not achieve that.
I said clearly in my statement that it is important that we invest those extra millions in Scotland's schools, to give children opportunities and to ensure that all our schools are either excellent or improving—or both. That is an important priority for Scotland, just as it is a priority elsewhere in the UK, which is why the Scottish education service has received such a substantial increase in investment this year, and why this coalition Executive—which Nicola Sturgeon occasionally likes to criticise—has made such a priority of additional money for education over the past 12 months.
No matter what interpretation is put on figures for specific services, there is no easy comparison between different European countries. It is easy to play around with statistics. The reality is that we need to turn round the massive under-investment in Scottish education of the past 20 years. We are doing that. We have not achieved it yet, and we certainly will not achieve it if we divert money away from education to pay for Kenny MacAskill's promises on transport, Kenny Gibson's promises on local government or any of the other promises that the SNP has made over the past six months. Education is our priority, and we continue to spend more on education, year on year, than anybody could have expected before last year's election. That should be welcomed.
The minister asked everyone to applaud increases in expenditure. Every member of this Parliament would applaud increases in expenditure. However, does the minister accept that, after three years of sticking to rigid Tory spending plans, the extra expenditure that has been announced in no way returns us to the level of investment that is required in either our health or our education? Will he confirm that what has been announced today is extra expenditure on health and education at a cost particularly to local government services, which will continue to be squeezed under this Executive?
No, that is not the case. In due course, the facts will prove Tommy Sheridan wrong. Moreover, it is misleading to say that, although there is an increase in expenditure, it will not return us to some golden age when things were so much better. This is the highest level of public investment in Scotland's services that there has ever been, and it will increase over the next three to four years. That is an important fact on which to focus. This expenditure is not about returning to the past, but about looking to a future that is substantially better than the past. I hope that, some day, Tommy Sheridan will recognise that.
I can go further than George Lyon by saying that I very much welcome the minister's statement and any increase in public expenditure. The minister said that the money would be spent strategically and that every pound that was spent would make a difference. In considering how to spend the extra £16 million for transport, will he remember the A80, which runs through my constituency? Over the weekend, he found himself held up in a traffic jam on that road, so he will understand the difficulties that are faced by the people of my constituency and those who use that road to travel through west-central Scotland. When he sits down to decide how to spend this money, will he consider improving traffic management on that strategic road?
Cathie Craigie may get the prize for the most opportunistic intervention of the year. I will certainly pass on her comments to the Minister for Transport and the Environment, who I am sure will be delighted to hear them.
It is important to recognise that Scotland's roads and public transport require significant investment—all of us in the chamber are aware of that. The budget delivers that investment without increasing fuel duty above the rate of inflation. That is an important move, which should be welcomed; it will lead to long-overdue improvements in Scotland's rural and urban areas. Mr Sheridan may have alluded to this point in his question, but the fact that significant investment is required is a direct result of the huge under-investment in transport infrastructure in Scotland during the 1990s by the Government of the time. The situation is being turned around, bit by bit, and this money will help to make a difference.
Does the minister accept that his Government's record on the health service has been one of failure? Only yesterday, we heard that waiting lists have increased yet again, by 2,300, that the number of available beds in the NHS has decreased by almost 5,000 since new Labour came to power and that spending on bureaucracy has increased by £8 million during Labour's tenure. Can he explain how those and other failures will be addressed by a smaller increase in health spending in Scotland in comparison with elsewhere in the UK?
This may sound unlikely, but I prefer not to be too partisan in my response. I wish to state for the record that there is a frankly shocking degree of dishonesty in this chamber when we discuss health spending.
During the Scottish elections last year, the SNP did not promise £173 million—it promised £82.9 million, which it would produce by raising taxes. The £173 million from the budget statement comes without an increase in income tax. For 2002-03, the SNP promised £89.45 million, which was described at the time by Mr Wilson, Mrs Ullrich and their colleagues as the biggest investment ever in Scotland's public services—an investment of which they could be proud. That £89.45 million is slightly dwarfed by the £687 million that I promised in my statement. That sum is dismissed by Opposition parties, including the nationalists, but the facts speak for themselves: £80 million a year from the SNP pales into insignificance beside the £173 million, £268 million, £687 million and £1,140 million from the coalition Administration.
Will the £26 million from tobacco duty be allocated to smoking cessation measures? Will the minister guarantee to maintain the differential in health spending, which was recognised by successive Labour and Conservative Governments, in order to meet Scotland's needs?
The allocation of the £26 million was dealt with in a statement that was given last week. Work will continue on that allocation and the Minister for Health and Community Care will make appropriate statements as decisions are made. It would be wrong to rush that process by making a further announcement only a week later.
I stress that the increase per head that we receive in Scotland for transport, justice, health and education is exactly the same as the increases that have been allocated elsewhere in the United Kingdom. That is in line with the funding policy that was agreed before devolution and that was supported in the referendum by my colleagues, the Liberal Democrats, and by the Labour party. I understand that it was not supported by the Conservatives and that it was not questioned at the time by nationalist members of the Westminster Parliament. The funding policy will stand the test of time for Scotland.
Only this week, the self-styled leader of the Opposition in this Parliament was in London, where he defended that funding policy and demanded that it remain in place. It is a pity that his front-bench colleagues do not do the same thing in this Parliament week after week.
Like Cathie Craigie, I could take this opportunity to ask the transport minister to fund the A8000 in my constituency, but I shall pass quickly on from that to ask a question with a health dimension.
Will the minister give an assurance that he will use this golden opportunity to tackle two areas in which we can make great inroads in health across the board? I am thinking particularly of funding for community care and for fuel poverty, a subject that Robin Harper raised this morning. Those are two areas in which the kind of approach that the minister described is badly needed and in which pooled budgets and a new joint approach to training and working together would bear fruit. In the past, we may have talked a good game on those policy areas, but we have not put in the money that was needed. I welcome the minister's announcement and hope that he will put money into those two areas.
Much as I enjoy the debate over figures, this Parliament has a duty to look beyond sterile discussions on how much was spent when and by whom or on how much is spent per head in Carlisle or in Cumbernauld. Over the next few months, we must consider how we can maximise the ability of this money to transform services in Scotland across the piece. When we add the money into departmental budgets for transport, justice, health and education, we will also examine local government budgets to ensure that all priority areas get maximum added value to improve services such as support for elderly people, funding to tackle drug dealing and to provide drug rehabilitation and prevention services, and initiatives to tackle homelessness.
Departmental barriers will not get in the way of achieving those improvements in services. Whatever the total that is allocated to the departments, what is important is what that money is spent on. I guarantee that we shall work endlessly to ensure that the improvements occur.
Following the minister's reply to Margaret Smith's question, and in the context of this morning's debate, will any of the money be spent on the warm deal?
As I came into the chamber and heard Robin Harper summing up in the previous debate, my heart sank because I thought that he would ask me that question when I made my statement on the budget policy. We have deliberately not outlined the specific initiatives that will be supported from the four departmental budgets that have been highlighted. Each of those areas, including any proposals for additional spending on specific areas, will be considered over the next four weeks. Departmental ministers will make appropriate announcements in due course about the projects, initiatives and improvements in services that will be developed as a result.
Because of the brevity of that question and answer, I can get one more question in. I call Kenny Gibson. I hope that you will be brief.
I shall try to be brief. The minister talked about transformation, but I do not see anything to transform local government. According to the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, £298 million has just been cut from local government for the forthcoming year, resulting in council tax rises and in jobs and services being slashed, so why has he ignored local government in his statement?
As I pointed out in a previous debate, council tax rises would have been much higher if SNP budgets in different councils across Scotland had been agreed. I think that the right balance has been struck between council tax rises and increases in expenditure. Councillors are to be congratulated on the way in which they have handled the situation.
I hesitate to make this point, but I shall make it none the less. It is important to listen to what is being said. The money will be added to the departmental budgets and used across those departments' initiatives to ensure the maximum added value. That will involve local government. Local authorities deliver the majority of directly provided services in Scotland outwith the health service. They carry out a significant job, for which the Executive provides the majority of the funding. As I said last week at COSLA's annual conference, we need to review the longer-term mechanisms for providing local authority funding over the next few months but, in the short term, local authorities will be involved in the distribution of much of this expenditure and in service delivery. Local authorities have responsibility for delivering education, which is our agreed shared top priority.