Chamber and committees

We will not stand in the way of the much-needed additional funding, but we cannot simply carry on as this Government has done over the past 18 years. [Interruption.]

We have had 18 years of decline in public services and 18 years of seeing our waiting lists get worse. One in six Scots is on a waiting list. We have also seen education sliding down the rankings. My colleague Pam Duncan-Glancy set that out very clearly. Just today, we have seen that attainment is down, that the number of children leaving school with highers is down and that the number of young people going to positive destinations is down. Those are the consequences of 18 years of SNP Government.

Will we support that? No, we will not. That is why, although we will not block the funding going into the Scottish budget—

Members: Oh!

Thank you, Presiding Officer. It is always wonderful to hear from the Minister for Parliamentary Business, but maybe not while I am trying to speak.

In July, the UK electorate made a critical decision to end 14 years of Conservative Government, but let us be clear that it was not until the budget in October that the serious step was taken to end the worst excesses wrought by the Conservative Government and the economic damage that it meted out. It was the budget that changed that. It was that budget that took the first steps towards delivering on the mandate that the UK Labour Government was given: to fix the foundations of the public finances following the disastrous economic legacy left by the Conservative Government, to halt the destruction of our public services, and to provide a Government that genuinely sought to focus on being in the service of working people.

With the £25 million from the Scottish Government and £200 million from the UK Government on top of the £100 million city deal, this is one of the largest industrial interventions that this country has seen in decades, but it is not just about the money. A number of policy and regulatory changes will be required, particularly if we are looking at project willow and biorefining. Will the cabinet secretary set out how those things will be examined and how she will take the actions that we expect to see in the project willow public document in the coming days, so that we can implement those changes?

What Scotland needs is not simply an increase in funding but a new direction, which can be delivered only by a Scottish Labour Government.

If he would not mind letting me finish this point.

That required difficult decisions to be made, but there is no doubt about the overarching impact of the budget. There is a massive injection of funding to our public services, including £5.2 billion for Scotland alone. That is the very real difference that a Labour Government can make. That is a real start; it is not the end point, but a start on alleviating the damage that was caused by the past 14 years of UK Government.

To ask the Scottish Government how it will work with the United Kingdom Government on the recently announced £200 million investment in Grangemouth, as part of the national wealth fund. (S6T-02380)

If he wants to correct my numbers, they are right here. Resource funding is real: last year, it was £46.9 billion and this year it is £49.8 billion. I have done the maths. Maybe my calculator is wrong, Mr Gibson—feel free to come back, but those are the numbers that I am basing that on.

We had 14 years of Tory decline, 14 years of dismantling public services and 14 years of chaos and incompetence. That is what that budget set out to address.

The cabinet secretary says that to will the ends, we must will the means. However, what did her colleagues do? Did they vote to end those 14 years of decline? Did they vote for the record increase in funding? Did they vote for those things? Did any of them vote for it? It was not nine of them that voted for it—it was none. Frankly, that argument has absolutely no coherence whatsoever.

We cannot support the record of this Government.

We need reform—[Interruption.] We need Scots to have public services that serve their interests—[Interruption.]

Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I am grateful. I know that it is hard for members to have respect for what I am saying, but clearly I am getting them very excited.

Critically, if the SNP’s argument had any credibility, it would have come forward with alternatives to the measures set out in the UK Labour Government’s budget, but it has offered none. We have not heard a word about what it might do. We certainly have not heard SNP members repeat the First Minister’s claim that we should equalise tax rates, because we know that that would lead to £636 million being lost from the Scottish budget. Neither have we heard them repeat their claims, which they made during the general election campaign, that we should borrow more. I do not think that anyone could credibly claim that they are doing that.

Frankly, the SNP is out of credibility on the budget, because it simply has no alternatives—it has nothing to say. The budget is an important step. It will see increases in the revenue that is available to our public services, thanks to that £5.2 billion in the block grant.