Chamber and committees

If that is an obstacle to anybody, we must act to address that, and I commit the Government to doing so. If we look at the long-term trends in population, we see that Scotland’s population challenges have been long standing. However, the act of Brexit—and the hard Brexit inflicted on Scotland against our democratic wishes—has made our challenge even greater, and we know where responsibility for that lies.

If the Scottish child payment did not exist, those families would be significantly worse off. They are in a stronger position because of the investment that the Scottish Government has made. The fact that something was announced in December does not mean that the money is in people’s pockets yet. However, it will be in a few weeks’ time, when people will really need that money. I am glad that the Scottish Government has been able to provide that.

A number of comments have been made about the economy and economic performance. Liz Smith made a number of comments on that point, as did Daniel Johnson, and particularly on the Scottish Fiscal Commission’s report. However, there is a more significant issue than the challenges around productivity, which I think we can resolve with the focus on innovation in the programme for government and through measures such as the tech scalers. For me, the critical issue is probably Scotland’s population.

Twenty years ago, in this Parliament—we were not even in this building at the time—the then Labour First Minister Jack McConnell introduced the fresh talent initiative because he was so concerned about the prospect of a declining working-age population in Scotland. He was absolutely correct then, in 2002. As the leader of the SNP at the time, I enthusiastically supported the measures that he introduced, which were correct and necessary. However, they did not have that much of an effect, because the migration resulting from the expansion of the EU in 2004 resolved the issue. Mr McConnell’s sensible intervention was not necessary, because EU migration solved our working-age population problems. Now, we are learning the hard way about the implications of Brexit, because Brexit has turned off the movement of people coming into this country and our population is projected to decline. That is the responsibility of the folly of Brexit.

Mr McMillan has a point. I heard the usual cheerful, grimacing comments from Mr Lumsden on the Conservative benches. Let me point out to Mr Lumsden that, if he wants some evidence to substantiate the value of our international presence, it might be the fact that Scotland’s position has been reaffirmed as the most successful location in the United Kingdom, outside London, for inward investment projects. It might also be the fact that Scottish goods exports, excluding oil and gas, grew by more than 5 per cent in the two years to the end of March, compared to a fall elsewhere in the United Kingdom. That is perhaps the evidence that Scotland has a voice in the world.

Will Mr Ross give way?

We are taking concrete and practical steps to support families through our own responsibilities now. At the conclusion of the emergency budget review, once I have addressed issues of the cost pressures coming from Ukraine, pay deals or the other issues that I am wrestling with, we will try to do more to support families who are facing difficulty by making further hard choices about the existing financial commitments.

I will give way to Pam Duncan-Glancy.

I will, in a second. Alex Cole-Hamilton attacked and belittled the contribution to that effort by people and the Government in Scotland. That was a regrettable mistake for him to make.

As always, Jackie Baillie has to be watched very closely with regard to her proximity to accuracy in the comments that she makes. She knows full well that, one Friday, the Labour Party and the Conservatives voted by a majority to offer 3.5 per cent when the Government had put enough money on the table to enable 5 per cent to be offered. If Labour had done the latter, we would have been in an easier position to resolve the dispute.

I make that point about the scale of pay deals because public sector pay policy was set in the budget at 2 per cent. Clearly, public sector pay is now much higher than 2 per cent, so—to go back to Liz Smith’s point—I am having to find within the budget significantly more money to fund public sector pay.

Although I hear all the points that have been raised about the issue, at this stage in the financial year, I cannot increase the size of the budget that is available in Scotland. I am prohibited by law from changing the tax rates. I do not have the power to undertake any resource borrowing to pay for pay deals. We have to operate within the confines of the existing arrangements, which is why I will be making a statement to Parliament tomorrow in which I will set out why some resources are going to have to be reallocated to meet the cost of public sector pay. Liz Smith has helpfully given me the platform to explain to Parliament why that is necessary.

There is another piece of work that the Government is undertaking, which is about ensuring that we can maximise the support that is available for people who face the cost of living crisis. In the debate, we heard about energy costs, and there has been pretty broad agreement that that issue falls to the United Kingdom to resolve, because of the reservation of energy and the scale of financial flexibilities that are required.

This Government is acting through the measures that we are taking already and those that have been announced today, such as the addition to the fuel security fund, the expansion of discretionary housing payments and the eligibility changes to the tenant grant fund. All those practical measures are in addition to the sizeable investment that has been made to the Scottish child payment to make sure that families will be able to benefit to the tune of £25 per child per week, from 14 December. That is a huge contribution from this Government to some of the most vulnerable families in our country, and a payment of that type is not available in any other parts of the United Kingdom.

Alex Cole-Hamilton has not redeemed himself with that response. My point is that the Government is working with our local authority partners and with households the length and breadth of the country to welcome Ukrainian refugees. If Alex Cole-Hamilton does not have it in him to welcome that whole process, it says more about him than it does about me.

Liz Smith made the point that I, perhaps more than anybody else, know the scale of the financial challenges that we face. Believe me, since I found myself providing maternity cover over the summer for Kate Forbes, that realisation has become ever more significant for me. The housing of Ukrainian refugees—a larger number than we anticipated—raises a financial cost to our budget, which I have to provide as part of our moral duty as a country, but it has to come out of the block grant.

In addition, ministers have spent a great deal of time over the summer in trying to secure pay deals, which has been difficult. Members of the public and our public sector workforce are very anxious about their financial circumstances and, understandably, they want to increase their pay. The Government has been trying to work with them. We have secured an agreement with the police on their pay; we have secured an agreement with train drivers; and, last week, after intensive efforts, we secured agreement with local authority workers.

I will make a few points about the local authority dispute. Members have criticised ministers for not involving themselves earlier in the process. The Scottish Government provided a recurring £140 million of additional resources to local authorities, to enable a pot of 5 per cent to be offered by them to trade unions. The Government cannot make an offer to trade unions, because we do not employ the local authority workforce, so we provided that £140 million. The decision of a majority of the leaders of local authorities—not SNP leaders—was to offer 3.5 per cent. That was supported by the Labour and Conservative leaders in the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, and it was a provocative and antagonistic act, which made the reconciliation of the issue more difficult.

I thought that Liz Smith was doing really rather well for most of her speech, until the latter part of it, but she touched on a certain concept when she described herself as a veteran of this institution. If she considers herself to be a veteran of this institution, I am not quite sure where that leaves me. When I entered a 10,000m race after my 55th birthday, I had the horrific experience of being described as a “superveteran” under the entry criteria. Being a veteran is bad enough; being a superveteran was a stage too far.

Liz Smith made a plea for a thoughtful and substantive discussion about the issues that we face as a country. It is crystal clear from the tenor of today’s debate and the very different tone around the programme for government document that the Government has produced that we are facing an acute and serious challenge to the quality of life of individuals in our country, which comes on the back of the acute threat to the social and economic wellbeing of our country through the Covid pandemic. If we are to have that quality of debate—which I am all for—perhaps we have to recognise that some of the contributions to the debate do not help, and to be honest about that.

Alex Cole-Hamilton made some comments about the Government’s approach to the housing of Ukrainian refugees. A total of 15,757 refugees have been accommodated and welcomed into Scotland. The Government had committed to welcoming 3,000; five times as many have been welcomed into our country, representing 18 per cent of the United Kingdom’s total sponsorship arrivals.

It is down to the absolute bone-headed stupidity of Brexit, which Mr Lumsden went along with.

Liz Smith encouraged the Scottish Government to engage in constructive dialogue with the UK Government. We have been trying to do that. The First Minister wrote to the Prime Minister many, many weeks ago, asking the Prime Minister to convene a four-nations interministerial meeting to discuss the energy crisis. The Prime Minister refused to have that discussion. We wait to see what Liz Truss does today, because such a meeting is overdue.

I wrote to the chancellor about a month ago, asking for a restatement of budgets to take into account the public sector pay pressure. I have not had a reply.

There has not been a functioning Government in the United Kingdom—[Interruption.] Mr Sarwar does not think that we have been working hard enough, but—believe you me—I am exhausted and it is only the first day back in Parliament. We have been working hard to resolve pay deals and a variety of other issues, but the UK Government has been posted missing for the entirety of the summer period.

I will close on this point. In the debate, much has been said to the effect that the Government should stop talking about independence because of the scale of the cost of living crisis. This is a Parliament of different opinions: we come from different political traditions and we believe different things. My view is that there is no clearer example of why Scotland should be an independent country than the energy crisis. We live in an energy-rich country where we have virtually 100 per cent capacity to generate renewable electricity, but we are locked into a UK market that bases our electricity prices on the wholesale gas price. What an absolute absurdity. Again, a failing market is about to be bailed out by a UK Government, just as the financial services sector was bailed out many years ago.

Looking at the lie of the land just now, there is, to me, a compelling argument that Scotland must have the democratic choice of independence so that our country can decide what is best for the people who choose to live here.