Chamber and committees

That is a very generous offer, but I will have to decline.

The minister is talking about the SNP investigating itself. How does that improve the confidence of the public in the Government party in this country?

I pay tribute to Amanda Bland for her first contribution in the chamber—I will listen closely to her future contributions as we progress through this session of Parliament.

I am a bleeding-heart liberal. I believe that the matter that we are debating today is a personal tragedy, and I understand the pain that many people feel. I understand that Nicola Sturgeon is hurting deeply with the breakdown of her marriage. I understand that it is a personal tragedy for party members in the SNP who worked really hard to raise a lot of money for a cause that they deeply believe in. I understand all of that. In fact, it is a personal tragedy for Peter Murrell, as well—he is in prison now; we do not know what is going to happen next. It is a personal tragedy for all those people and, in the circumstances, we need to think of those personal tragedies.

However, that is not what today’s debate is about. It is about professional failure—it is professional failure, over a large number of years—and the professional failure of Nicola Sturgeon, as leader of the SNP and the First Minister of the country. As SNP leader, she had fiduciary duties—I know, because I was leader of my party for 10 years and I took those duties incredibly seriously. Irrespective of the personal tragedy, therefore, this is first and foremost a professional issue.

Following all this, we cannot allow the matter to be swept under the carpet. What we are seeing from the SNP is an attempt to dampen it down, make it go away, ignore it and move on. In my advice surgeries over the weekend, this was the first and only thing that people wanted to talk about. This has cut through. People understand that the matter is serious, and they understand that it is incredibly impactful on Scottish politics.

The SNP should take this seriously, because, as well as affecting the body politic, first and foremost, it is affecting the SNP. There have been a number of failings, including the lack of curiosity that we have heard about repeatedly, as well as—this is more central to the operation of Government—the inability to listen. The inability to listen transfers across into how this country is governed. There was an inability to listen to people who protested, who raised the alarm and who raised concerns. We see that concerns were raised well before any police inquiry and that they were raised by people who were senior and respected members of the SNP. However, those people were dismissed and ignored. Frank Ross, who is the former provost of Edinburgh, Allison Graham, Cynthia Guthrie and a former competitor of mine, Douglas Chapman, who was the member of Parliament for Dunfermline and West Fife and who was the party treasurer—all of them resigned. All of them raised the alarm.

We understand that the issue at the beginning was about whether the £600,000 was spent on independence or elsewhere, but all those people at the centre of it wanted to see the books. They were denied the opportunity to do their duties and to carry out their functions. If that is how they were treated by the First Minister of the country, that is surely a matter for the Parliament to inquire about. That is surely our responsibility, because it has massive ramifications.

In recent days, Douglas Chapman has not said—

Yes, I will take an intervention.

Will the cabinet secretary take an intervention?

I welcome Stephen Flynn to his new position. If the chamber is good enough to elect me as convener of the Transport Committee, I will look forward to his coming before that committee. Transport will be a key part of growing the economy, so I look forward to the partnership approach that we will, I am sure, be able to endeavour to take.

One thing that frustrates me about debates on the economy is that each person trades in their own statistics. We should agree that we can all pick stats that favour our argument over another. We can show that the rest of the UK is better than Scotland, or that Scotland is better in the UK, or best in the world or best in the universe; I am not sure which way it is or how that benefits us at all.

What is most important is that we recognise that we need to do better. Karen Adam was right: it is about how people feel that really matters—the people of Buckie want to feel better. The fact that only half of the electorate turned out to vote in the recent election was a clear indication that they did not think that this place was working for them. We need to do better, no matter what the stats say, because the stats are used only to try to prove that we are right politically, not to benefit anybody’s life. We should focus on making an improvement and a change in approach will be required.

First, detail matters. I am increasingly convinced that the glitzier the offer, the less convincing it will be, and the less meaningful in delivering change. The minister was right when he highlighted predictability and certainty. Daniel Johnson alighted on that as well.

Businesses want to know what is expected of them. They do not have time to look through every single press release that the Government issues to find out whether it is about real change, a repeat of a previous statement or spin of a previous announcement that does not mean anything different from what has been agreed before. Let us have a bit of boring predictability, so that businesses know what is expected of them and can get on with what they do best, which is running their businesses, rather than trying to second-guess what the Government is doing.

The second point, about which Daniel Johnson was absolutely right, is that we should not be squeamish about profit. Profit is a good thing. When my dad was in business, profit was invested right back into the business to grow it and provide a better service for the community. Let us not be squeamish about profit and let us recognise that we cannot achieve growth by ourselves. Government is not all-powerful. The private sector is playing an important role in delivering economic growth, so let us work together in partnership and have strategies that work together.

The next change of approach that we require is to accept—sometimes, this Parliament has not accepted this—that work is a good thing. People should be striving towards working. There is no shame in the fact that some people cannot work, but, if people can work, they should work. People should pay taxes, because that is good for society, and they should participate in society.

The next point—about which, again, this Parliament has had some blind spots—is that people feel a bit squeamish about certain sectors. I recently went down to see Babcock in Rosyth. There are 3,000 workers there now, and the place is absolutely buzzing. When I was the MP for Dunfermline and West Fife, at the height of the construction of the aircraft carriers, Babcock had 1,500 workers. The number is double that now, and we should celebrate that. Good young apprentices are getting good jobs that contribute to the defence of this country. That is an important factor. We need defence in this country, so we should celebrate the fact that Scotland has many great defence businesses and we should support them. We should say loudly and clearly that we are with them.

The next point is about energy. We have flip-flopped all over the place on that, depending on what the international challenge is—whether it is on price, security or the climate. Let us have consistency, so that businesses know what is expected of them, rather than having constant change, depending on which way the political winds are blowing.

We need pragmatism and an approach that works. The Government has various levers that it can use effectively. In an excellent contribution, Lloyd Melville highlighted exactly the power of procurement. That covers housing and all the areas around education and universities. All of those are great political levers, so let us use all of them to grow the economy of this country, because, together, by hunting for agreement, we can get economic growth to help the very people in Buckie that Karen Adam talked about.

17:17

He is a charmer, is he not?

On the point about skills and the workforce, what is the cabinet secretary’s answer to the high levels of economic inactivity in the workforce aged 16 to 64? I have not heard anything yet that gives me confidence that the Government is on top of that issue.

When I intervened on the cabinet secretary to ask her about the balance of her speech, the next sentence from her was about another tax. She may say that I should take the whole speech in its context—she did talk about other things—but the message that was clearly sent out was about a traditional tax-and-spend approach and policy. The trouble with that is that we need to have trust in taxation.

We saw what happened when Humza Yousaf was First Minister. He lost control of the narrative and the rhetoric, and it sounded as though he was going to increase taxes for ever. He got very excited about the prospect of which taxes he could increase. Pretty immediately after that, there were severe attempts by the Government to bring the budgets back into control in year. For two years in a row, in fact, emergency cuts had to be introduced to the Scottish Government’s spending proposals.

I say all of that because it knocked public confidence, and, when we lose confidence and trust in taxation and the Government, we get behavioural change. Sometimes it is not the policy at the time that causes that change but the prospect of what the policy might be in two or three years’ time. When people who are mobile make decisions about where they are going to take a job, they do so with a view to the future and where they think the Government is going. We are not talking about millionaires here; Patrick Harvie talked about doctors and consultants, and we have a significant problem in Scotland with the recruitment of consultants.

I am a generous man and I have full confidence in the front bench to sort out that puzzle and conundrum. It will require resolution, because it is looming fast. The £5 billion—the Deputy First Minister could not quite bring herself to say that—is a huge amount and the issue will require resolution quickly, because such savings take a long time to implement. We cannot just pull a lever and have things happen—things take a long time to happen.

I am confident that Jenny Gilruth and Ivan McKee will introduce the changes that are required, and I think that the First Minister has set them that task, but I am not sure that I have heard that today.

I have been listening carefully to the cabinet secretary’s contribution. She has, in passing, referenced the challenging fiscal set-up, but most of what she says sounds as though she will increase taxes to close the gap. Is that what she is implying?

I believe that that is part of the problem, and we should not kid ourselves that it is all just one equation. I accept that and I encourage firmer and faster measures, but we are in this Parliament, where we need to make decisions about our finances. We need to be focused rather than deflecting on to other Parliaments and other issues.

Public service reform will require to be substantial, and we will need to engage in new methods of reform. I will work in partnership with Ivan McKee and Jenny Gilruth to make that happen and reach agreement, if we possibly can, because I accept that change is hard. Today, I met an organisation that promotes social impact bonds. I know that that area was in the Scottish National Party’s manifesto—it was in ours, too—to incentivise investment from private sources in order to secure a return for substantial change. We know that, when a fire is going on in public services, it is difficult to implement change at the same time, because of the people and money that are available, so I am in favour of such measures.

I am in favour of tax reform and, on the face of it, I agree with everything that is in the Green amendment. Council tax reform is long overdue. I would favour moving from taxation of physical assets through business rates to online taxes for Amazon and other such companies. My problem with that is the rhetoric, which sounds too enthusiastic about increasing taxation.

We should have reform, and we should work on the basis that it is revenue neutral as a starting point, before we even consider whether it should result in increased revenue in the future. It sounds as if I am being boring, but a bit of boringness in politics does no harm, because it brings predictability and confidence. The Government and parties sometimes reach for easy solutions, but sometimes the easier and more glitzy something sounds, the more unbelievable it is.

Let us focus on actually making the change. Let us build confidence among taxpayers. Let us grow the economy. Let us make sure that we have more participation in society and the economy, so that more people contribute to taxation—that way, I will get excited. That is the change that we need, and I urge members to vote for our amendment.

I move, as an amendment to motion S7M-00249, to leave out from “welcomes” to end and insert:

“notes that fair taxation must recognise the current cost of living crisis and the impact that any tax increases can have on individuals and businesses; believes that the Scottish Government must prioritise getting Scotland’s finances in order, in light of warnings by the Institute of Fiscal Studies that it faces a ‘fiscal reckoning’; considers that taxpayers in Scotland deserve value for money as well as confidence that their taxes are being spent wisely, and believes that the trust that taxpayers should have in a government to spend wisely has been lost over the last 19 years of an SNP administration.”