The Official Report is a written record of public meetings of the Parliament and committees.
All Official Reports of meetings in the Debating Chamber of the Scottish Parliament.
All Official Reports of public meetings of committees.
Displaying 633 contributions
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Meeting date: 5 February 2025
Liz Smith
Annabelle Ewing was quite right to raise that issue, because it is extremely important.
Does the minister agree that the provision of out-of-hours services in St Andrews, which has been under considerable pressure, also deserves Government attention to ensure that its widespread use is continued?
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Meeting date: 5 February 2025
Liz Smith
I add my thanks to Mark Ruskell for securing this extremely important debate.
Like Mr Ruskell and several other members in the chamber, I attended the recent rally in Perth city centre. My inbox has been full of emails from constituents expressing, in vivid terms, how upset they are about potential library closures. That is why I raised the issue at First Minister’s question time on 12 December. I was grateful that John Swinney recognised the role of libraries, but I hope that the Scottish Government recognises just how strongly local people feel about the issue.
My constituents, many of whom are in the public gallery, are facing local library closures in Comrie, Auchterarder, Alyth, Scone and Birnam. All have made the point that, in a budget year that could see quite substantial council tax rises, they want their services to reflect those payments. If we are asking constituents to pay more, they do not want to have fewer services. That is a valid point that many of them have made.
The demonstration in Perth had somewhere between 200 and 250 attendees. That is credit to the campaigners in the Save Our Rural Libraries group, who have done such an excellent job in raising the profile of the issue and garnering the widespread support of MSPs and local councillors. It was obvious to all who were in the crowd that day that—to come back to Christine Grahame’s point—the love of libraries transcends generations. Both young and older people who were there spoke, and many others who had been doing their shopping in the city centre joined in as the demonstration was taking place.
That diversity has been reflected in the correspondence that members have received from people who—rightly, in my opinion—have been venting their frustration. Part of that frustration came about because they felt that there had not been a proper consultation process. By some accounts, some fairly frequent library users had been unaware of that so-called consultation process, which was deeply regrettable.
Earlier in the debate, we heard why library facilities are so important to our local communities. There is substantial evidence that they generate meaningful economic, educational and social value. They are critical to tackling inequalities by providing wide-ranging learning resources to people who could otherwise not afford them.
However, we all know that libraries go far beyond just simple access to books and intellectual stimulation; they are social hubs and are important for local networking. That is even more the case in rural areas and, as Mark Ruskell rightly said, it has been so true following the Covid pandemic. We all owe a debt of gratitude for the facilities that libraries provide to our campaigners.
I am happy to support the motion in the name of Mark Ruskell.
17:43Meeting of the Parliament
Meeting date: 4 February 2025
Liz Smith
How does Mr Brown react to the Scottish Fiscal Commission’s comment that we do not have anything like the tax base that we need or, indeed, the amount of revenue coming in to pay for all his projected free services?
Meeting of the Parliament
Meeting date: 4 February 2025
Liz Smith
The Parliament will be very well aware of the Finance and Public Administration Committee’s concern about several key issues over the course of the budget process.
There is no discernible improvement in widening the tax base—something that I rightly hear the Deputy First Minister referring to quite regularly. The persistently higher tax rates levied on medium and higher earners are not delivering the extent of the tax revenues that are needed to pay for the projected increases in public expenditure. A further concern is that public sector reform is too slow, and there is a lack of convincing evidence in that regard.
Perhaps the biggest concern for the Finance and Public Administration Committee, as it is for the Scottish Fiscal Commission and Audit Scotland, is the lack of long-term planning for fiscal sustainability and, just as important, a complete lack of clarity from the Scottish Government when it comes to the committee’s repeated requests as to how ministers will create that financial sustainability in the future.
I want to put this in the context of social security. We know that the Scottish Parliament information centre has said that
“Scottish Government decisions on social security have cumulatively added significant cost pressures to its budget.”
We know, too, that the Scottish Fiscal Commission has calculated that social security payments in 2025-26 will cost £1.334 billion more than they would have done had we remained at UK levels, and that the figure will rise to £1.463 billion in 2029-30—and that is not accounting for inflation. That is why the convener of the Finance and Public Administration Committee, in his speech last week, repeated the committee’s question to the Scottish Government on how it will
“assess the long-term affordability and sustainability of its social security policies and their impact on other areas of spend”.
In response to the committee, the Scottish Government said that it will
“continue to take a responsible and capable approach to Scotland’s finances as new budget pressures emerge ... monitoring all areas of expenditure during the year, prioritising ... and maximising efficiencies.”
It is little wonder that the committee—unanimously, I may say—did not consider that to be an adequate response, because, quite frankly, it tells us nothing, except perhaps that the Scottish Government really does not know where the money is coming from to pay for the very high social security budget, which has ballooned out of control in recent months.
Michelle Thomson is not in the chamber just now, but I was interested in the debate that we had about the social contract. That social contract could be very important, but there is no point in having a social contract with the people of Scotland if we cannot fund all the payments that we want to make. We are certainly in no position at the moment to be able to do that, which I think the cabinet secretary knows well as she debates the issue.
It is all well and good to promise the earth when it comes to free benefits and mitigations, but the Scottish Government is simply not able to fund all that, given the current expenditure forecast. It keeps telling us that there will be significant savings to come from public service reform, digitisation and better workforce planning, but, as the Finance and Public Administration Committee said, it is very hard to see the evidence of that, and it is clearly not going to happen in time for this budget.
I come to the Scottish Conservative policy on benefits. Are we committed to the welfare state? We absolutely are, in order to provide a helping hand to those who are most in need. Did we vote for the Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018? Yes, we did, because we believed that the new devolved benefits would be better administered in Scotland, even if many of the principles underpinning the system are much the same as those underpinning that of the Department for Work and Pensions.
Meeting of the Parliament
Meeting date: 4 February 2025
Liz Smith
Let me just finish this point.
Did we vote for the Scottish child payment in 2021? Yes, we did, because we agreed with the sentiments of the Scottish Government on addressing child poverty. I believe that recent evidence shows that that was the correct decision.
Meeting of the Parliament
Meeting date: 4 February 2025
Liz Smith
Will the member give way?
Meeting of the Parliament
Meeting date: 4 February 2025
Liz Smith
What matters is what the evidence is saying. When it comes to welfare benefits, we are clear that payments should be made where the evidence shows that the benefit is decent, which is the case when it comes to the child payment. However, there are lots of other areas in which that is not the case. For example, many more people in Scotland are now staying on the welfare benefits case load, which is not happening down south. In addition, over the course of just one year, the budget for the child disability payment will increase by 37 per cent, but, as far as I can see, we have not yet had any explanation as to why that is.
There is a balance to be achieved, and it is important that, when we look at the welfare side of things, we make a calculation that is based on where the evidence shows that the benefits are helpful and not where it shows that they have quite clearly put us on a trajectory whereby we simply cannot afford them.
I will finish on this point. When it comes to the welfare spend, it is absolutely essential that we do not go on with the current system, because we simply cannot afford it. There is a spiralling set of benefits in this country, yet the Scottish Government does not have the money to pay for them. To me, that is simple arithmetic—it is simple economics—and that is where the Scottish Government should listen a lot to what the Finance and Public Administration Committee is saying.
15:59Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Meeting date: 30 January 2025
Liz Smith
I, too, thank the convener of the Finance and Public Administration Committee, and my colleagues on the committee, because I think that we have had a fairly level-headed focus on the task in hand. Budgets are always important, for obvious reasons, but the 2025-26 budget is particularly important because of the questions about fiscal sustainability for the future and all the uncertainties that that brings. Our budget consideration is set in the context of our facing some very worrying global trends, which are affecting world supply chains.
Ross Greer rightly said that, next week, we will all have our political hats on for the debate on the Budget (Scotland) (No 4) Bill, but what is important today is that we consider the scrutiny issues and the other significant issues that the committee has raised in relation to the budget.
At the end of his speech, Ross Greer said that he felt that the format for today’s debate is not the right format. I concur, and I think that several colleagues around the chamber do, too. The Parliament needs to have a finance bill—that is certainly an idea that the Finance and Public Administration Committee would like to consider—as that would enable much more effective scrutiny to be conducted across the board in Parliament, on a consistent basis. If we had a finance bill, that would make it much easier for members to come to conclusions.
For me, there are three main issues. Michelle Thomson spoke about the need to widen the tax base—she is right about that. We must have the ability to raise sufficient revenue to ensure that we can do many of the things that we would like to do in Scotland, while improving productivity and economic growth.
The second most important issue is that of public sector reform. I think that the Government is trying its best to go down that road, but the committee is saying to it that, at the moment, it is more of a concept, as the Government is not able, in practical terms, to prove to us that it is actually happening. I refer the Minister for Public Finance, who I think will be summing up the debate for the Government, to the paragraph in the committee’s report in which we ask for regular, six-monthly updates on the up-front costs of, and the cumulative benefits from, such reform. That is key, because, at the moment, the evidence on public sector reform is simply not there.
The most important issue that emerges from our report is the fact that there is a lack of longer-term planning for fiscal sustainability. That is the committee’s greatest concern. Our concern is all the greater, given that this is not the first time that we have had to make that point to the Scottish Government. For all the time that I have been on the Finance and Public Administration Committee, we have been saying the same thing.
In that context, the convener rightly made the point that, given the expansion in health and social care budgets and social security budgets, we will have to do something about that, because, at the moment, the increases in those budgets are significantly higher than we can afford. The politics of that aside, from the committee’s point of view, that is an issue of fiscal sustainability.
Obviously, budget choices are political choices, and those will be made next week, but the Finance and Public Administration Committee is demonstrating that there are some underlying principles on which we must base our scrutiny of financial decisions within this Parliament for that to be effective. The committee is pretty unanimous on that. Indeed, having all the parties that are represented on the committee to be consistently unanimous on that point tells us something. The Government should consider the issue because, in my opinion, the committee is absolutely right to take that approach to scrutiny.
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Meeting date: 30 January 2025
Liz Smith
Will the minister give way?
Meeting of the Parliament [Draft]
Meeting date: 30 January 2025
Liz Smith
Does the minister agree with the committee’s recommendation of six-monthly updates on costs and on the savings that can be made? Our key point is that we are looking for evidence.