Chamber and committees

Will the member take an intervention?

I have been contacted by residents in a development that is affected by cladding here in the capital. For more than five years, residents have been waiting while the developer and the Scottish Government continue discussions but no real progress has been made. Almost £100,000 of public money has been spent on two single building assessments, yet the residents have now been told that the developments are effectively worthless. They are facing a block building insurance cost of around £450,000 a year—more than double what it should be. Will the First Minister come with me to meet those residents so that he can understand the need for progress in order to protect them from those costs, and will he put in place a plan for Scotland to finally get the assessments done and find a long-term solution for those people?

In my time today, I will focus on two key challenges that the budget fails to address and on which the next Parliament will have to act.

The first is the long-term sustainability of our education sector. It is increasingly clear that the challenge to the future sustainability of our university and college sector is one that the Parliament will have to face and that the next Government must address.

On the specific funding that the Government has provided for colleges, the £70 million uplift in the budget might seem positive, but it is misleading. The Education, Children and Young People Committee sought clarification and found that that figure includes the £30 million spent on the Dunfermline learning campus in 2025-26, which means that the uplift is £40 million.

It is telling that, after 19 years of the SNP in government, the Colleges Scotland briefing ahead of the budget was titled “A Budget to Save Scotland’s Colleges”. It talks about saving our college sector. We know that many of those institutions are in financial jeopardy. The budget might save them this year, but it will not do so in future years. Institutions across the country, such as Dundee and Angus College, remain in limbo regarding which investment plans they can take forward. With a significant backlog in maintenance and investment in our college estates, there is no clarification about which investments can be realised, and the sector now risks losing investment opportunities, too.

We need a vision for our education sector. I welcome the cross-party review of university funding involving Universities Scotland and the Government, but the next Parliament will have to decide whether to save some institutions if they are not to go to the wall. The budget certainly does not seem to take account of that.

The second key issue for me, as an Edinburgh and Lothian MSP—I hope that other members who represent that area and will be voting on the budget understand this—is that the budget does nothing to address the underfunding of Lothian. The City of Edinburgh Council remains the lowest-funded council per head of population, and NHS Lothian remains the lowest-funded health board per head of population.

We cannot ignore the fact that we are seeing a significant change in Scotland: a movement of population from west to east. The fact that our constituency boundaries have been redrawn during this parliamentary session demonstrates that, and 84 per cent of Scottish population growth over the next—

I am not able to, sadly—if only we had more time, this would have been a much more enlightening debate.

This is a budget that will get the Government through an election. That is fine, and it is clear that it will pass this evening. It might also lay the ground for Deputy First Ministers Greer and Cole-Hamilton in the next Government. However, this is not a Government for growth or for reforming our public services. The budget will not address the challenges that our country faces, so we will not vote for it at decision time.

16:32

If I get some time back.

Jeremy Balfour knows that I have been lobbying the Government on the issue for the past decade. Sadly, the Government has not implemented the structural changes that we need. If the budget had taken into account population adjustment, I would have welcomed it, but we have not seen anything like that.

Jeremy Balfour highlighted some scraps from the table that he managed to achieve. The budget does nothing to take into account the growth in population and the negative impact that that is having on our public services. He should know as well as any of us who represent this great city do that a growing number of children are living in temporary accommodation and that the majority of that is linked to the crisis with our funding, which the Government is doing nothing to address.

Members across the chamber who represent Lothian need to understand that. The next Parliament needs to look towards—

In my time today, I will focus on two key challenges that the budget fails to address and on which the next Parliament will have to act.

The first is the long-term sustainability of our education sector. It is increasingly clear that the challenge to the future sustainability of our university and college sector is one that the Parliament will have to face and that the next Government must address.

On the specific funding that the Government has provided for colleges, the £70 million uplift in the budget might seem positive, but it is misleading. The Education, Children and Young People Committee sought clarification and found that that figure includes the £30 million spent on the Dunfermline learning campus in 2025-26, which means that the uplift is £40 million.

It is telling that, after 19 years of the SNP in government, the Colleges Scotland briefing ahead of the budget was titled “A Budget to Save Scotland’s Colleges”. It talks about saving our college sector. We know that many of those institutions are in financial jeopardy. The budget might save them this year, but it will not do so in future years. Institutions across the country, such as Dundee and Angus College, remain in limbo regarding which investment plans they can take forward. With a significant backlog in maintenance and investment in our college estates, there is no clarification about which investments can be realised, and the sector now risks losing investment opportunities, too.

We need a vision for our education sector. I welcome the cross-party review of university funding involving Universities Scotland and the Government, but the next Parliament will have to decide whether to save some institutions if they are not to go to the wall. The budget certainly does not seem to take account of that.

The second key issue for me, as an Edinburgh and Lothian MSP—I hope that other members who represent that area and will be voting on the budget understand this—is that the budget does nothing to address the underfunding of Lothian. The City of Edinburgh Council remains the lowest-funded council per head of population, and NHS Lothian remains the lowest-funded health board per head of population.

We cannot ignore the fact that we are seeing a significant change in Scotland: a movement of population from west to east. The fact that our constituency boundaries have been redrawn during this parliamentary session demonstrates that, and 84 per cent of Scottish population growth over the next—

If I get some time back.

Jeremy Balfour knows that I have been lobbying the Government on the issue for the past decade. Sadly, the Government has not implemented the structural changes that we need. If the budget had taken into account population adjustment, I would have welcomed it, but we have not seen anything like that.

Jeremy Balfour highlighted some scraps from the table that he managed to achieve. The budget does nothing to take into account the growth in population and the negative impact that that is having on our public services. He should know as well as any of us who represent this great city do that a growing number of children are living in temporary accommodation and that the majority of that is linked to the crisis with our funding, which the Government is doing nothing to address.

Members across the chamber who represent Lothian need to understand that. The next Parliament needs to look towards—

Will the member take an intervention?