Chamber and committees

I was just thinking back to not too long ago, when the person who is now the leader of Aberdeen City Council, since my departure, visited number 10 to argue for levelling up funds coming to Aberdeen. How can the member take a stance that it is not right when we have the Labour leader of Aberdeen City Council going to number 10 and asking for the funds?

What needs to be addressed is the amount of planning applications that are drawn back to the Scottish Government, overturning local democracy. The SNP wants to centralise power at every opportunity.

Furthermore, the UK Government has protected the funding of the Scottish Government through the generous Barnett formula. The Scottish Government does not afford such protection to its local authorities, with local authorities getting an ever-dwindling share of the Scottish Government budget, as COSLA highlighted just this week. The UK Government’s record on decentralising power and protecting local funding is far stronger than that of the SNP.

I am pleased that Aberdeen will receive £300,000 to fund street performances and culture festivals through the community renewal fund. That will be a huge boost to our city centre, which will place artists at the heart of our recovery from the pandemic and create employment and training opportunities in Aberdeen’s creative industries. I highlight the hard work of the chief executive of Aberdeen Performing Arts, Jane Spiers, in ensuring that that funding will come to Aberdeen.

Aberdeen city centre is swiftly becoming a cultural heartland through the forward-thinking council, with Conservatives in the administration. We welcome and thank the UK Government for its commitment to the north-east and its investment in our culture, our heritage, our industries and our businesses. There is no talk of removing investment, no discussion about closing vital industries and no question of overlooking the north-east in favour of our central belt colleagues. Perhaps the minister would like to explain why, this week, Glasgow City Council received more than £440,000 in funding for libraries, yet Aberdeen City Council received only £16,000.

The Scottish Government is no friend of the arts in the north-east. Indeed, the new Aberdeen art gallery was funded by the local council, with £1.5 million coming from the UK Government, but not a single penny coming from the Scottish Government.

It is clear that the levelling up agenda will bring funding and prosperity to the north-east, and vital resources to projects that are doing fantastic work up and down our country. That must be encouraged and supported. Many SNP council leaders have welcomed the fund and are applying for resource. Surely that tells us everything about the level of resource that is coming to local councils from the UK Government.

Let us compare that to how the SNP-Green coalition is treating the north-east. Just this week, the First Minister turned her back on 100,000 oil and gas jobs. In addition, the SNP has turned its back on its commitment to dual the A96, and the free ports that the north-east desperately needs have been thrown into doubt by the SNP’s grievance politics.

It would be great if, as a Parliament, we could simply welcome the UK Government’s funding into Scotland, thank the UK Government for its investment and move forward with delivering the projects without the grievance politics from the Scottish Government.

To ask the Scottish Government how it is supporting the rural economy in the north-east. (S6O-00389)

Non-delivery of the reaching 100 per cent—R100—broadband programme in the north-east and rural Scotland is seriously hindering businesses, communities and the delivery of national health service care while increasing rural inequalities. It recently emerged in The Press and Journal that the roll-out has slipped again to the end of the 2026-27 financial year. How will the Scottish Government compensate our rural communities for the six-year broadband delay that it has caused?

I remind members of my entry in the register of members’ interests, which shows that I am still a councillor at Aberdeen City Council.

The levelling up initiative from the UK Government is devolution in its purest sense. It is empowering our communities, delivering local projects and funding our local authorities to build back better after Covid-19. Levelling up will see countless projects up and down the UK receive the funding that they need to level up. The city of Aberdeen will receive £20 million to create a new marketplace and revitalise the city centre. Along with all the other projects, it will boost skills, employment and enterprise; encourage tourism; support our performing arts; invest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics learning; and help us to progress towards a net zero future. That can only be a good thing for the people of Aberdeen, the north-east and the whole of Scotland.

The project in Aberdeen is fully in line with the city council’s local outcome improvement plan, which meets the needs of our communities, including in relation to job creation, and makes the SNP motion completely laughable. Instead of welcoming the funding, like many SNP-run councils, and celebrating the increased devolution of resource, the devolved SNP-Green Government seems to be interested only in manufacturing endless grievance—it is a disgrace.

Hundreds of good causes will receive funding under a new system that is faster, more efficient and less bureaucratic. The matter is simple—good causes will receive good funding in good time. Members from the SNP claim that that process disrespects devolution and is an act of centralisation. The fact of the matter is that it enhances devolution from the UK government and puts it right at the heart of our communities. The SNP would do well to remember that we have two Governments in Scotland: the UK Government and the devolved Government in Edinburgh.

Frankly, it is laughable to hear the SNP accuse the UK Government of too much centralisation. The UK Government has a strong record on decentralising power and funding. It created 25 directly-elected mayors and 30 police and crime commissioners, giving more power to local communities.

In sharp contrast, what have we seen here in Scotland? Local police forces have been abolished and centralised into the generic Police Scotland. Local police control rooms have been abolished and centralised away from the local communities that they serve. Even Aberdeen, Scotland’s third largest city, was not spared those harsh cuts, with the closure of our police control room in 2017.

Absolutely—it did a remarkable job of policing of COP26 but it benefited from the support of UK police forces in Glasgow and right across Scotland.

We have also seen a huge increase in ring-fenced funding to councils, so the SNP Government, not the locally elected decision makers, decides where local money is spent.

Planning matters have been overturned by central Government, which is a complete slap in the face for the local councillors who are there to serve their local communities.

I wonder whether the member was critical of the EU when it gave funds directly to local authorities. Was that an attack on this establishment?

On Tuesday, the First Minister turned her back on 100,000 oil and gas workers, many of whom are in the north-east. Yesterday, the Scottish National Party turned its back on its commitment to fully dual the A96. Can the First Minister explain to the people of the north-east why she has turned her back on them?

It seems strange that we are debating the celebration of the anniversary of an institution that by all accounts is yet unproven, because we do not know whether it will play a key part in investing in Scotland’s future or if it will be a drain on public finances.

A number of things are unclear in relation to the Scottish National Investment Bank, the first of which is the set-up and administration costs. The Government seems to have spent £18.5 million up to the end of 2020-21, but, with the head count rising rapidly to 32 and set to rise further, we need to be careful that we do not create a bloated agency and that we instead maintain a lean efficient investment bank that delivers for the people of Scotland.

A concern that I and many others in the debate have is the duplication of investment and work that other Scottish Government agencies do. Expensive duplication cannot be a good use of resources for the Scottish taxpayer. For example, the M Squared Lasers deal that was mentioned earlier involved the provision of development capital that has been provided for years through Scottish Enterprise. In addition, £40 million was given to a fund that will be used by Places for People to invest in the provision of affordable housing. However, the Scottish Government also provided £40 million of loan support when it was launched in 2018, so both awards have involved Scottish Government funding being used to support things that the Scottish Government was already supporting. If the bank is going to do more, there will be an impact on agencies such as Scottish Enterprise.

I read the Scottish National Investment Bank’s annual report with interest and noted that the bank seemed to make a profit on the value of its investments in 2020-21, which was mentioned by Paul McLennan. That is all unrealised fair value gains, but, with those investments having no quoted price anywhere, it will take time to see whether those profits come to fruition. That is key, because we have to be cautious when it comes to estimating the value of the new bank’s investments, and ensure that we are prudent and realistic in relation to reporting on profits, which brings me to my next point, on regulation.

The Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee heard in September that the bank remains unregulated. I welcomed the assurance from the chair of the bank at the net zero committee that that issue is being looked at, but perhaps that should be a higher priority for the bank and the Scottish Government in order to ensure that the people of Scotland have confidence in the bank’s operating practices.

I welcome the ethical investment policy of the bank and support the policy to transition to net zero. During the net zero committee’s evidence session, the chief executive of the bank mentioned the Net Zero Technology Centre in Aberdeen, its expertise and the positive impact that it will have for future energy development. I hope that the bank will work closely with the centre and tap into the excellent projects that it is nurturing. Providing the capital that it requires will benefit the renewable energy sector and protect the jobs of thousands of workers in the north-east.

One thing that I have learned as a council leader over the past four years is that government at all levels cannot do everything and fund everything. We need to attract private finance, and I am not clear how the Scottish National Investment Bank will do that. I know that the cabinet secretary has touched on that, and I hope that we will hear, in her summing up, what the plan is and what progress there has been on bringing in the private sector finance that is required.

I hope that, in 10 years’ time, we can look back at the Scottish National Investment Bank and see realised profits, new technologies being helped and developed here in Scotland, and our net zero ambitions being realised by the investments that we are making. I hope that we can look back and see real jobs created by its investments. That will be the true time for celebration.

At the Finance and Public Administration Committee on 31 August, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and the Economy gave the following commitment:

“The A9 is still going to be dualled, and the A96 is referred to in the co-operation agreement in terms of the priorities for the next few years.”—[Official Report, Finance and Public Administration Committee, 31 August 2021; c 40-41.]

However, in the chamber yesterday, the Minister for Public Finance, Planning and Community Wealth, Tom Arthur, when questioned by Fergus Ewing and Jamie Halcro Johnston, could not give any such commitment. Will the A96 be fully dualled by the 2030 commitment date—yes or no, Deputy First Minister?