Chamber and committees

The critical point here is ensuring that those with talent gain skills and employment. At a time when we are experiencing labour shortages across the economy, employers continue to report a lack of flexibility in many of the skills programmes that the Scottish Government currently offers. Does the cabinet secretary feel an urgency to review the effectiveness of our skills programmes in order to ensure that we adequately address those labour shortages as much as we can?

I am pleased that the Scottish Government has announced the final tranche of £80 million of the original £370 million of business support funding that was initially announced in January. However, that was to deal with omicron. Given the urgency that many of those businesses face, when does the First Minister expect the £370 million to be fully paid out and in the hands of businesses? Although the change from regulation to guidance of public safety measures such as face masks will be welcome, there may be some confusion given the on-going recommendation to wear face coverings. Will there be updated guidance and information to avoid that confusion?

Thank you, Presiding Officer. I will try not to notice the disappointment on members’ faces as I rise to speak when you have just said that.

We have become used to, if not weary of, finance secretaries making unexpected last-minute announcements as we conclude the budget process. However, the unexpected announcement that the cabinet secretary made the other day was very welcome indeed. I offer my congratulations to her and her husband. Parenthood is genuinely a blessing and a joy—most of the time.

Let me turn to the budget. It comes at an important time, because we all recognise and hope that we are entering a new phase of the virus in which we can genuinely start to look towards recovery, rather than just dealing with the emergency. We can all agree that the Covid costs have not gone away, but recovery means going further than simply accounting for those costs. It means saying what action we will take in order to build that recovery.

What the budget needed to do was to set out clear plans to help our shattered public services get back to normal, businesses to get back to trading and schoolchildren to recover the learning that they have lost. Although there are many things in the budget that we can support, such as the doubling of the Scottish child payment, I would argue that there is sufficient focus and clarity in those detailed steps to build recovery, and that is where the budget falls short.

There has been a lot of hot air, heat and argument about what the Opposition parties may or may not have been saying. Let me set the position out very clearly in numbers. At the point that it was passed, there was £37.8 billion of resource funding in last year’s budget. That included £1.8 billion of non-recurring Covid spending. The Covid money rose to £4.6 billion, but when compared with the £39.2 billion of resource spending in the coming year’s budget, that left £3 billion unallocated. It is true that there is less money overall if we include the non-recurring Covid money, but that non-recurring point is important, because the money was unallocated in the coming budget.

We set out proposals within that envelope of £3 billion that would deliver recovery. The Government’s contention is that, because of Covid, the cost of just running services more than exceeds that £3 billion. That may be so, but I do not think that it has clearly demonstrated that. Therefore, I make no apology for setting out our proposals in detail. I say politely to Kenny Gibson that, if he wants to accept invitations, he needs to do so. If he had got back in touch with me, I would have sat down with him and my dossier and gone through it literally line by line. Likewise—

I will in a moment, when I have finished the point.

Each one of those proposals was published with detailed costings. They may be wrong, but I would be happy for Mr Gibson to sit down with me and point out where they are wrong.

Is Murdo Fraser concerned, as I am, that there are still nightclub owners who are saying that they are yet to receive money? Indeed, some are claiming that they have been refused it because their music is not loud enough. One person said that a nightclub has to play its music at above 85dB to be a nightclub.

Will the member take an intervention?

If the member can explain why SNP MPs voted with the Tories against those proposals, I am happy to take the intervention.

What has been lost in the post is whether the SNP agrees that we can talk about reserved matters and about what MPs do in Westminster. There is a huge amount of inconsistency from that side of the chamber.

The plan against which SNP MPs voted would have given most households £200 off their annual bills and delivered targeted support to the hardest hit by increasing the warm homes discount—815,000 households would have received £600 off their bills if plans from both the UK and Scotland were included.

I note with interest, and I will consider in detail, the measures that the cabinet secretary has introduced. I would be interested to look at their detailed impact, and at who will benefit from the £150 council tax reduction. Critically, I have a key question on whether disabled households will benefit.

I might have missed the answer to my intervention, but I am interested to know where the money is coming from if not from Barnett consequentials. I noted that, in the published spring budget revision, £284 million was in the reserve and I wonder whether the funding is coming from there. It would somewhat indicate that more money is available as the budget process goes through.

Clearly, much more work needs to be done and we will examine the detail.

I was pleased to hear the cabinet secretary discuss the various allocations of the remaining £104 million, but I only totalled an additional £36 million in what she has stated. I would be grateful if she could state when the extra £60 to £70 million will come.

Do I need to wind up, Presiding Officer?

If Mr Swinney would just wait a moment!

The key point is that there are two fatal flaws in the budget. We cannot build social care recovery on low pay, and that recovery is needed if we are going to deal with the backlog problem. I contend that simply raising the pay of social care workers by 48p is a problem, because we will not be able to recruit and retain the social care workers we need to deal with that backlog.

We cannot vote for a budget that does that, nor can we vote for a budget that treats council services as a budget line to be raided and redistributed elsewhere. Council services are not something to be expended in the cause of recovery; they are the foundation of recovery. We need roads, schools, libraries and play parks, and we cannot afford to cut them if we want a recovery that is worthy of the name.

Since the budget was first introduced in December, the cost of living crisis has come to dominate headlines, which underlines the challenge that recovery poses. In recent days, we have heard that the profits of multinational oil and gas companies are spiralling. BP has announced £9.5 billion-worth and Shell £14 billion-worth of profits. When Labour comes forward with a proposal to tax those profits and use them to alleviate the cost of living, what do SNP MPs do? They vote down those proposals with the Tories. Frankly, that is shameful.