Chamber and committees

I am sorry, but I have only one minute left.

The egregious law breaking of Boris Johnson really matters, because it not only displays a disregard for our society but almost permeates into the economy. As long as Boris Johnson and, indeed, most of the Tories care not about money laundering and other forms of financial crime—the cost of which is counted in the hundreds of billions of pounds annually, according to the UK’s National Crime Agency—and as long as they care not about the distortions created in markets and the wider economy or about the people they are supposed to serve, the state capture that has taken place in the UK will continue in both our society and our economic system.

However, the most objectionable aspect of the Tory motion is the undercurrent of trying to force a feeling of helplessness and dependency in Scotland. The Tories seek to damage the Scottish people’s belief in themselves and to feed the myth that it is better to allow people such as Boris Johnson to be in charge than for us to be accountable for creating our own future. Of course, that explains the Tories’ fear of allowing the Scottish people to decide their future, but they will fail to prevent us from doing that. Scotland will be the wealthiest country ever to achieve political independence, and that will put the people of Scotland in charge of our future.

I am delighted to have taken that intervention, because I will go on to reflect much more carefully on economic growth, gross domestic product and so on.

As well as a lack of morality, I notice the absence from the Tory motion of any mention of Scotland’s assets. We know about the Tories’ track record of exploiting Scotland’s resources such as those in the North Sea. Of course, Norway invested in its future and created a fund for long-term investment while successive UK Governments squandered the riches. At that point, there was no empathy with the needs or, indeed, the rights of the Scottish people, so long as the Tories’ friends in the City of London were doing all right, thank you.

Today, Scotland has the prospect of an even larger and longer-lasting asset, with the wind and seas driving a revolution in sustainable energy production. Earlier today in the chamber, I commented that Scotland’s anticipated energy production capacity far exceeds even our own 2030 target.

We need to put the needs of people and society at the heart of our economics. I ask the people of Scotland to focus on the right outcomes. Who do we trust? Is it a Government elected by Scotland for Scotland, or Boris Johnson?

The Tory motion talks of concerns about the growth estimates being revised downwards, but it fails to acknowledge the failure of UK Government policies that contributes to that.

To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on whether its target of generating 50 per cent of energy use from renewables by 2030 is sufficiently ambitious in light of new opportunities arising for Scotland. (S6O-01194)

The current capacity of renewables is just over 12GW, and there are plans for a further 15GW. In addition, the ScotWind leasing round is expected to deliver 25GW. That will represent a more than fourfold increase in Scottish renewable energy production and will meet all Scotland’s current energy demands. That will be far in excess of the 2030 target. Does the cabinet secretary agree that that represents a huge opportunity for Scotland? Will he ensure that every chance is taken to help everyone in Scotland to understand that that is a bounty that will serve us and all our futures, in perpetuity?

If the past few days have taught us anything, it is that the price of dependence on the failing UK state and leaders such as Boris Johnson makes the need for Scottish independence all the more urgent.

Economics cannot be understood without a deep appreciation of society. That idea was fundamental to the work of Adam Smith. To understand The Wealth of Nations, it is best to read his earlier work The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Smith knew only too well the importance of justice, of effective administration of the law, of ethics, of human behaviour and of empathy for others—all issues that the Tory Government at Westminster shows little regard for.

Thank you for giving such a clear illustration. I think that you are making the point that nobody would choose to start from where we are, as it is an inefficient way to manage the finances.

That leads me on to another issue that I found interesting when I read the spending review document. We are talking about people’s understanding of what is actually going on. I was attracted by the economies of scale that you are looking at getting through, for example, shared services, which to me is an absolutely obvious example of where we could derive value. You mentioned other areas to look at, such as grant management, procurement and the 129 or so public bodies.

That brings me to the point about the public’s understanding. I appreciate that it will be useful to have a conversation with councils about whether we might be able to do this, but I foresee difficulties in that people will not necessarily want a shared service, because they will see that as a loss of control. I agree with your approach of having a conversation, but what further challenges do you foresee? In principle, the approach is useful and good but, given the discussion that we have just had, I foresee that it will immediately throw up comments such as, “Oh, you want to get rid of this?”, even though we are all aware of the huge fiscal constraints.

Do you have any more thoughts on how you will approach that and the timescales involved? My experience is that, even if you get agreement, it always takes longer than you think, it is always more expensive than you think, and the return on investment is never quite what you think, either.

I was going to raise similar questions and ask how confident you are—accepting what Professor Breedon said about everyone else making the same prediction—that inflation will peak at 8.7 per cent in the last quarter of this year. When you read more detail about some of the uncertainties that you point out on the supply side—which we have much less understanding about—realistically, how confident are you? We know that the prediction will probably be wrong, which I fully accept because all these things can be wrong, and Andrew Bailey recently conceded that the fiscal levers that he has to exert control over CPI inflation are fairly limited. It is always uncertain, but how uncertain is it? If I asked you to place a wager of, say, £500 of your own money, how much of that money would you risk? Perhaps that is a better way of putting it.

It is there. Okay.

Good morning. I am sure that, for people who are watching the committee—I always say that, and everyone laughs and says, “No one ever watches this committee”—the discussion about whether or not there is a black hole is an important, pivotal point, because it is actually predicated on debt. You make the important point that whether or not there is a black hole comes down to actuals, not forecasts. Perhaps the media have tended to use that in a very florid way.

Dr Verne Atrill discovered that

“there is a precise point, a mathematical singularity, which we can measure as the Ratio of GDP/Total Debt, at which an economy stops expanding and begins to contract instead.”

On that point, I simply note that the UK Government is hugely in debt.

That leads me to the fiscal framework, and I want to get some reflections from you. We know that any Government, including the UK Government, will have frequent errors across a wide range of forecasts. The UK Government—unlike the Scottish Government—does not suffer any penalty as such for the forecast that, for example, it will have to repay £817 million in 2024-25. Of course, the UK Government does not then have to repay that in a single year’s cycle; it can repay it over several years and—to go back to my earlier point—it can borrow.

I, too, applaud the fact that the resource spending review has been done; it is a worthwhile exercise. However, it really brings into sharp focus the issues with the fiscal framework, utterly and fundamentally, with regard to what you are being expected to do within limitations that other normal Governments would not have. Therefore, perhaps the discussion is really about that. I would like some further reflections from you on that issue before I move on.

Okay. I will collect £500 from all four of you at the end of the session.

I am not clear about how and where you baked the impact of Brexit into all your forecasts. I assume that you have reflected all the way through your forecasts the hangover from the pandemic and the supply issues that we have talked about, which have reverberated around the world, but I was slightly surprised that there was no mention of Brexit in your report, given that we now know that the impacts are only starting to be felt. I appreciate that it is complex to pin Brexit on one thing, because it is a very fragmented picture, but I was surprised that there was no mention of it. How and where have you baked it into all the numbers?