Chamber and committees

I had not actually finished my speech. I wound up because the Presiding Officer asked me to. I would have gone on to explain why Israel is so important to me. I have family there. I am a Christian woman who has been married to a Jewish man for 33 years. I hear talk in this chamber all the time about integration and multiculturalism, as if it were so easy. I wanted to explain that it is not.

I approach this debate with some amusement. Reform is likely to see very little in the budget that will fill us with enthusiasm, so what follows just amounts to a wish list on my part.

Last year’s UK budget confirmed that the public finances are under strain, and the benchmarks on growth that it provided have not been hit in the past year. I point out that our European neighbours are suffering slightly more than us in terms of GDP, although our productivity rates are lower. Crucially, low growth seems to land more significantly on UK households, and there are a few reasons for that. The wholesale price of power in the UK is heavily tied to expensive European gas prices, and green policy costs are loaded directly on to consumer and business bills instead of being funded by taxation.

Gas is being pumped to the UK for domestic use. Reform sees gas as a transitional fuel, just as the Chinese use coal and France is run mainly on electricity from nuclear and hydro power. Experts tell us that, regrettably, the price of gas is not going down any time soon, and that will still be the case even if Jackdaw gets the green light. However, if Jackdaw licences were restricted to gas for domestic use only and were not competing in a European marketplace, the price of gas in the UK would fall. Malcolm Offord talked about that in his speech, and Liam McArthur gave us a moving example of someone in his constituency who has struggled with the price of fuel that they need to get to work. That restriction would have a positive financial impact on homes and businesses, providing much-needed jobs for households.

Our food is harvested and manufactured using fuel and it is moved around the UK predominantly by heavy goods vehicles that use diesel. The cost of all that energy must be loaded on to the cost of goods in our supermarkets, and people’s weekly shopping costs have also been compounded by a plastic packaging tax. With the crisis in diesel supply potentially hitting us down the line, that will inevitably influence inflation. The cabinet secretary has confirmed that it will likely hit 3.75 per cent on current targets alone.

The housing crisis places a squeeze on people, creating high rents and making it more difficult for those who are starting out to get on the housing ladder. Regrettably, middle-income families who are working the hardest are being squeezed the most. The average age of young people buying a home is now 34, and they are the lucky ones. The rent controls that the SNP has introduced have had an adverse effect on the supply of affordable rented accommodation. Social landlords have left the market or have reduced the available supply but increased rents.

I think that it was Daniel Johnson who said that, in respect of the fiscal position, the Scottish Government is out of its depth or has lost its way. I hope that that is correct—I do not want to put words into his mouth. He also highlighted that we have not seen the medium-term financial strategy yet.

Nights out on the town are becoming a rarity for some people, so I would like VAT on hospitality to be reduced. When it is cheaper to dine out in Paris than in Glasgow, we know that something is wrong. We have the highest VAT rates in Europe.

The chancellor has several levers to pull when he delivers his budget. While continuing the benefits of lower VAT, he could review the windfall tax on energy companies, as Craig Hoy mentioned, and remove the green levy from household and business bills. Looking to the future, we need better joined-up transport infrastructure to help with our freight options.

The personal allowance, which the UK Government controls, has been frozen for several years, creating fiscal drag. As I said yesterday, we want the chancellor to look to increase the allowance to £15,000. The Deputy First Minister says that she wants to simplify tax rates, so perhaps we can be hopeful there.

We want to get our young people off benefits and into work. We want to keep our young people in this country by enabling them to take starter jobs and keep most of their earnings as a state incentive to work. Even Labour politicians are on record as saying that our young people are getting a poor deal at the moment. We accept that such a move would significantly help middle-income households, but those are the very people whose shoulders seem to be getting narrower all the time. They are working harder but, unfortunately, they are seeing little reward.

I would like the UK Government to look again at inheritance tax, particularly in relation to family businesses. You cannot cut off someone’s income lifeline at the age of 50, when they have worked hard to consolidate a family business and forsaken other personal opportunities. To suddenly have that torn out from under them is unfair and punitive within the timescales that have been laid out.

I agree with Mr Sweeney that all options need to be looked at. In such a scenario, all options should be on the table.

Capital gains tax is another mechanism that many people on the left would like to be increased to a similar level to income tax. Indeed, Louise Haigh and Wes Streeting have been quoted as saying so, and have talked about policies such as reviewing the pension triple lock, which has been mooted across parties as a potential future funder of social care for the elderly. The triple lock was a bargaining chip from the Tory-Lib Dem coalition pact in 2010, but it will be difficult to preserve in the future in its current form unless overall economic conditions substantially improve. Currently, the triple lock is unaffordable because there is no economic growth.

Pensioners are easy targets. If the bill for welfare costs was sorted and reduced instead of increased, the triple lock might become affordable, to the benefit of financially vulnerable pensioners. We would wish to uphold it. To get the best affordable deal for them, all parties need to look closely at international comparators. Before anyone cries “far right”, I note that Australia has been successfully operating a means-tested policy for years. That is common sense from a left-wing Government.

Under Keir Starmer, the UK Government has started killing quangos, and we are pleased that Scotland will follow suit, as we heard from the First Minister in his programme for government. We need to be focused on internal Government waste, too, and on the UK Treasury’s “Managing Public Money” policy. We should do that in a manner similar to our own scrutiny of the Scottish public finance manual, which covers controversial gifts and delegated ministerial powers.

Politicians across parties are saying that the bill for welfare needs to be cut, and that must start to be addressed in the budget. We need to tighten up on PIP and ensure that money is being targeted where it is most needed. Reform would not have extended the two-child benefit cap; the way that it uprates universal credit within its capped amount is a crucial reason for that. Some families who are not working now have more income per month from benefits than those who go out to work have. That is not equitable in a society that cares so much about equality. The benefits system must represent a finely balanced act for all.

Defence is another crucial area that is in need of money. In Scotland, our security is at risk—we all remember the Glasgow airport attack. We must increase defence spending as soon as possible, so I have a suggestion for the Prime Minister: he should divert what he is spending on plans to re-enter the big federal state of the EU, starting with the £570 million that it is costing to kick-start the Erasmus programme. Students do not have to go abroad now to meet their international counterparts, as they already have many of them here in UK universities. He should give that money to John Healey so that he can plan a modern-day defence force that is fit for the countless challenges that we face. After all, that was the reason that John Healey gave for resigning from Keir Starmer’s Cabinet, if any of us believed that at the time.

I have a name for that new defence strategy: operation survival. I borrowed it from Benjamin Netanyahu. Members might not like his politics, but Israelis like the way in which he runs his economy and manages his complex democratic coalition. It funds their defence and their technological supremacy, which we can all learn from. Israel’s GDP is predicted to be 3.5 per cent per capita this year, and trade between Israel and the UK benefits both economies.

The UK can learn much from Israel’s multilayered defence system, with its technological innovation pipelines and close integration between specialised and conventional forces. There is also much that we can appreciate in Israel’s crucial iron dome. Parliamentary papers on defence have noted that the UK has gaps in its domestic missile defence, prompting calls for us to have a similar domestic shield against advanced drone and missile threats. We need it now. That spending should be non-negotiable, and we should be working with the Israeli Government to achieve it. I did not speak in the sanctions debate—

I will save those closing remarks for another time.

Let me start with where I agree with the Scottish Conservatives. The £4.77 billion funding gap is real, not an accident. Audit Scotland has told this Government plainly that it is the product of policy choices and rising workforce costs. It is a spending problem dressed up as a revenue problem.

However, that is where we part company. The Conservative motion looks at a Government that has given Scotland six income tax bands, a 42p higher rate that starts at £43,663 and a 50 per cent marginal rate for nurses and police sergeants and it asks the Government to promise not to make things worse. That is not ambition; it is capitulation.

The pledge that the motion asks be reaffirmed still lets frozen thresholds pull more Scots into higher bands every year. It is a promise not to raise the rate while the drag does the work of a tax rise through the back door. Let me be clear, before anyone on the Government benches tries it, that Reform opposes any rise in any rate of income tax. Our amendment would remove that line not to weaken the pledge but because it is not enough. We are not asking the Government to stand still; we are asking it to move. Our amendment calls for a new 0 per cent band above the personal allowance, so that the first slice of what Scots earn stays in their pockets.

No—not this afternoon, thank you.

However, we are aware that ever-changing tax brackets are not good for our economy. They do not help businesses to plan and cause an undue administrative burden for those who are processing tax. We ask that, when the mansion tax and private jet departure tax come into force, on 1 April 2028, the Government give something back and introduce the nil rate up to a £15,000 threshold. That would cost around £1.1 billion. However, as we are told by the Scottish Government that public service reform will save billions, the Government can afford it—if it is being honest, of course.

No, thank you.

Today, the SNP’s great gift to those people—the 19 per cent starter rate—is worth, at most, about £40 a year. That is the prize for living under the most progressive tax system in the UK. The first £1 that someone earns above the allowance does not belong to the state; it belongs to the person who got up in the dark and earned it. Government should have to justify every claim that it makes on that £1, but, in Scotland, it has stopped trying.

The Conservatives will say that that proposal was in their manifesto. It was, but it was for inflation-based rises to the current band, and they left that out of their motion today.

To those who say that we cannot afford it, I again point to the First Minister’s programme for government, under which 14 health boards are to be cut to two, 32 councils are to be replaced by regional and community authorities, and quangos are to be merged. None of that was in the SNP’s manifesto, and the First Minister promises to do all of it without reducing the number of people on the payroll. If the same people do the same jobs at the same cost under a new letterhead, that is not reform; it is rearranging the pillars that are propping up an oversized state. We will hold the Scottish Government to its savings promises.

The Scottish Government also promises economic growth and a broadening of the tax base, so it must be confident of its revenue-raising powers.

Reform supports real reform, with fewer layers, fewer managers and fewer quangos, technology instead of paperwork, and a smaller public payroll. That is what pays for a tax cut.

The people of Glasgow do not want a Parliament that argues about how fast their taxes should rise—

—they want one that, for once, asks how and when taxes will fall.

I move amendment S7M-01377.1, to leave out from “reaffirm” to end and insert:

“introduce a new 0% rate of income tax to increase the amount that taxpayers in Scotland can earn before having to pay income tax.”