Chamber and committees

I have mentioned the Verity house agreement and the work towards a fiscal framework that is being done here in Scotland, but is there anything in the upcoming English devolution bill that we should look to emulate when it comes to the relationship between central Government and local government in Scotland?

Jonathan Carr-West, you touched on the Verity house agreement earlier and in your submission, and you talked about the surprise council tax freeze demonstrating a failure of the principles of trust and respect. Here in Scotland, there is a lot of enthusiasm, particularly in local government, for the Verity house agreement. Can it be saved, progressed or turned into something meaningful that can be rescued in the eyes of local government?

Good morning. The Improvement Service and SOLACE are working on six short-term local government transformation projects. Do you get updates on those six projects, and are any themes developing that might assist councils in bridging some of the expected budget gaps in the next year to 18 months in the projects that are to be delivered?

The Labour Party was clear throughout the general election that there were going to be tough decisions as a result of the mess that the Conservatives had left, but we did not realise how bad that mess was going to be. The chancellor set that out and said that there would be an immediate review by the Treasury. BBC Verify and the OBR have also confirmed that. The Conservatives committed to spending that money because they knew that there was no way that they would ever be asked to pay it back, and now the country finds itself with that £22 billion bill.

I am sorry, Mr Stewart, but I have taken a number of interventions and I am halfway through my time already.

By taking those tough decisions now, getting our public finances under control and offering stability after years of chaos, we can maximise the chances of spreading fairness and opportunity across the country for the next five. I assume that this Government has no intention of suggesting ways of fixing the foundation of our economy, which will help us to get out of that black hole, because it has been in power for 17 years. What advice could this Government offer the new chancellor? With the Government having delivered three emergency in-year budget cuts in a row, what wisdom is this Government best placed to offer the new chancellor on financial management and sound decision making?

The chancellor has talked about removing waste by removing spending on consultancy and refusing to pay any more money towards the dodgy Covid contracts that the Tories gave their friends, and she has vowed to recoup that money. The SNP has 17 years of failed financial interventions, incompetence, waste and inefficiency to look back on, and that wasted money has come at a price of more than £5 billion of taxpayers’ money. When it comes to offering suggestions and learning lessons, I suggest that the Government takes a page out of the new chancellor’s book rather than the other way round.

Rachel Reeves spoke about the fundamental link between economic growth and housing for everyone. Labour has already begun to deliver on the commitment to build 1.5 million homes over this Parliament. In contrast, the Scottish Government took the decision to strip affordable housing budgets, and we have today the worst homelessness figures on record. There are 10,000 children in temporary accommodation, and housing starts and completions at the lowest level in years. That is the SNP’s financial decisions—the inefficiency, waste and mismanagement—coming home to roost, and children in temporary accommodation are paying the price for that.

To govern is to choose. The chancellor has made difficult decisions, but she has had to. They will mean that, when the foundations of the economy have been rebuilt, Britain’s public services, the national health service and people’s mortgage payments can never be put in the danger that Liz Truss and the Tories put them in. The chancellor has been clear that there will be no return to austerity and that budgets will grow.

Let us assume that this debate has not been a waste of parliamentary time attempting to distract voters from the Government’s ever-increasing list of abject failures. Let us assume that there was merit in discussing the priorities of a budget that has not yet been published, but we cannot assume that, can we? This is the real world and this country is crying out for change after years and years of SNP and Tory failure.

We are comparing apples and oranges here—of course we did not complain when the Government spent money on furlough. We complained when the Government spent a ridiculous sum of money on the Rwanda scheme, which we knew was never going to come to fruition. Taxpayers’ money was marched right out of the country.

Labour will fix the £22 billion mess that the Conservative Government left, not because it is easy or because it will win us elections or make us more popular but because some things are more important and because it is the right thing to do.

I will take Mr McKee’s intervention.

I start with an assumption that the Government has brought the debate to the chamber in good faith, so that we can debate the budget priorities of the Labour Government. If that is the case, the cabinet secretary—who will perhaps catch up on this when she comes back into the chamber—may be in position to take a clear-eyed look at where the UK’s bank balance has been left by the outgoing Conservative Government. It is not that the Tories just dipped into the country’s overdraft to get through a tight spot in the hope or knowledge that they could pay the money back later; the Tories drove a horse and cart through the country’s overdraft limit—and kept going and going and going. The Treasury had a £9 billion reserve.

I am spoilt for choice.

Essentially, you will update a 2022 figure for a one-year increase, but you will appreciate that that will be applied in 2025, which is three years later than the 2022 data. What is the rationale on applying just a one-year uplift to figures that are three years out of date?