The next item of business is a debate on motion S6M-17980, in the name of Craig Hoy, on demanding a better deal for taxpayers in Scotland. I invite members who wish to speak in the debate to press their request-to-speak buttons, and I call Craig Hoy to speak to and move the motion.
14:52
Under the Scottish National Party, Scots are being hammered with high taxes while public services continue to decline. That is why the motion that I will move in this Parliament—a Parliament that is paid for by each and every taxpayer—will force every member of the Scottish Parliament to decide whose side they are on: whether they want to be on the side of the bloated SNP state or on the side of delivering a better deal for Scottish taxpayers. Those taxpayers are sick and tired of an SNP Government that costs them more but delivers less, of a Government that spends their money on inward-looking fringe obsessions such as gender reform and policing free speech, and of paying for meaningless quangos and a civil service that has doubled in size since 2014.
People are paying more for public services that simply are not working. We all know, deep down, that that is the case, because our constituents tell us so. Our postbags and inboxes lay bare 18 years of SNP failure on schools, hospitals, roads and railways. However, it is clear from the amendments today that it is only the Scottish Conservatives who know what the public want and need. That is why we propose a tax cut for Scottish workers, scrapping the 20p and 21p rates to create a simplified 19p rate for income up to £43,600 a year. That is a tax cut for hard workers of up to £444, while still funding front-line public services.
Will the member give way?
I have a lot of waste to identify, so I will give way later if I can.
The SNP is costing Scotland £1 billion a year in lost growth and countless billions more through incompetence and waste. The SNP Government boasts that its so-called progressive taxation—a system that taxes nurses and teachers more—is bringing in £1.7 billion a year, but the Scottish Fiscal Commission estimates that there is an economic performance gap between Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom of £1.1 billion in this year alone. We know what is really going on: the impact of the SNP’s tax rises on Scots feel very real indeed, but the benefits are simply another SNP false promise.
That missing billion, in black and white, is the true cost of John Swinney. The Fiscal Commission is being characteristically diplomatic in describing it as an “economic performance gap”. I call it the deep and corrosive economic effect of 18 years of an anti-growth, anti-business SNP Government.
Every independent forecaster, from the Institute for Fiscal Studies to the Office for Budget Responsibility, the SFC and the Fraser of Allander Institute, warns that the SNP Government cannot continue on the fiscal and spending path that it is on. A benefits bill that is set to soar to £10 billion by the end of the year is £2 billion more than the Government can afford. The number of senior civil servants is soaring, and quango after quango is spewing out bizarre and costly recommendations and regulations. John Swinney’s high-tax, low-growth Scotland simply cannot continue. That means taking the SNP’s client state head on.
When we brought forward our fully costed plans for tax cuts this year, Shona Robison said that they would be impossible. However, on Monday, John Swinney finally admitted that she has got it wrong, announcing that, this week, the SNP Government will reveal £1 billion of SNP waste that the SNP itself has identified. However, when the SNP talks of public sector reform, we do not expect much action.
We would deliver it, however. We would reduce the size of the civil service back to pre-2016 levels within five years. We would introduce a new taxpayer savings act to cut the number of quangos by a quarter, through closing down and merging unnecessary bodies such as the Scottish Land Commission and Community Justice Scotland and creating a Scottish agency of value and efficiency—SAVE—a short-term, business-led body that is designed to mount a war on waste to claw back £500 million of misspent public money. We would introduce tighter public spending rules that would clamp down on the frivolous use of taxpayers’ money and introduce sanctions on individuals who breach those rules. We would apply a zero-based accounting system to the annual budgetary process of the Scottish Government, and we would go on to reduce red tape on public services such as the national health service by reducing their statutory reporting requirements. We would also slash the cost of government, making efficiencies in public relations and human resources departments. That would mean more doctors, fewer spin doctors and more shared service hubs across government.
We would make sure that every public sector worker is focused on delivering for taxpayers. We would ban woke roles in equality, diversity and inclusion. We would end once and for all the Scottish Government’s obsession with gender issues, and ban the production of all non-statutory guidance that relates to gender identity or trans issues across the public sector.
Craig Hoy has given some examples, which is what I was going to ask him for. He says that we want to save on railways. Does that mean that safety goes down? He says that we should reduce reporting requirements, yet his colleague who is next to him always asks for more transparency. Surely he cannot have both.
I will gladly give to John Mason the two papers that I have that detail everything that we can do to cut the horrendous waste across the Scottish public sector.
We need to do more work to dismantle the SNP’s secretive and inefficient client state. We would remove the smoke and mirrors around public sector decision making by extending lobbying laws to organisations that are funded by SNP ministers just to tell them what they want to hear. We would also create a new accountability and transparency dashboard, which would provide clear information about how taxpayers’ money is spent and who signed it off.
There are two sorts of SNP waste—the sort that, rightly, angers people, and the sort that, rightly and roundly, outrages them. Take the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care’s use of a taxpayer-funded limousine to meet his friends in the pub for a pre-match pint prior to going to the football. It is to Neil Gray’s discredit that he has not resigned, but it is to the public’s dismay that John Swinney has not sacked him. Such is the level of SNP contempt for hard-pressed taxpayers that that kind of behaviour goes unchecked in SNP Scotland.
The SNP says that it will change, but the past is the best guide to the future. The SNP’s credit score with the country is seriously impaired. A billion pounds has been wasted on Barlinnie prison, which was meant to cost just £100 million; £500 million has been wasted on two out-of-date ferries; £50 million has been wasted on malicious prosecutions; and £30 million has been wasted on a national care service that was scrapped before it even started. That is the reality of the SNP’s casual disregard for taxpayers’ money.
In contrast, we would deliver tax cuts for workers, wage a war on waste right across government, and tackle head-on the SNP’s bloated client state.
Those are the policies, based on sound, common-sense Conservative values, that Scotland so badly needs. Sadly, it will never get them from the SNP Government.
I move,
That the Parliament notes that the Scottish Government’s failure to grow Scotland’s economy has led to an economic performance gap worth £1.1 billion in 2025-26 alone; believes that there should be a crackdown on wasteful expenditure from the Scottish Government through the tightening of spending rules in the Scottish Public Finance Manual, reducing the number of highly paid senior executives within the public sector, and reversing the recent ministerial pay rise, and calls on the Scottish Government to use the proceeds of a crackdown on waste to cut income tax by up to £444 for every person in Scotland by abolishing the 20% and 21% rates of income tax, so that everyone earning up to £43,662 pays 19p for every £1 earned.
14:59
The investment that we are making this year in our public services is made possible by the tax choices that we have made and the vital additional funding that they provide. The Tories and, indeed, other Opposition members need to explain to the Parliament what they would cut if we had not taken those tax decisions, but instead, we hear demands for further spending and, at the same time, cuts to taxation—[Interruption.]
Cabinet secretary, please resume your seat. I will set some parameters here. I appreciate that some individuals are seeking to make an intervention, which is perfectly laudable, but others are shouting from a sedentary position, which is not acceptable and will not happen, not least because I will have to keep interrupting, which will shorten the debating time of members who are further down the list in the debate.
Their position is not credible and the public knows that it is not credible, which is why the Tories have such low support among the public.
In Mr Hoy’s speech, he spelt out exactly what measures the Conservatives are going to take. Why can the cabinet secretary not admit that?
We know the standard of what is provided by the Tories—unfunded tax cuts made on the back of a fag packet. We will take no lessons from a party that destroyed the economy. Many members on the Conservative benches supported Liz Truss and her economic policies, which hard-pressed householders are still paying for through their mortgage payments. We have had Tory economic policy during the years—[Interruption.]
Mr Johnson, please do not.
Michael Marra seems to want to defend that for some strange reason. The Conservatives proposed almost £1 billion in tax cuts last year in advance of the budget, and the impact of that approach on our essential public services, including our NHS, would be profound.
Our progressive approach to tax underpins the entire Scottish budget, allowing us to support the most generous social contract in any part of the UK, which includes things such as free prescriptions, free higher education and support such as the Scottish child payment, all of which would be put at risk with the Conservatives’ contrasting income tax proposals, which would seek to reverse our progressive approach and give the greatest tax cut to the top 25 per cent of income tax payers.
I am grateful to the cabinet secretary for giving way. When did she first become aware that there were at least £1 billion of savings to be made in efficiencies, as was revealed in The Herald on Monday? Where is she looking for the £1 billion? It seems so difficult for her to understand—and I do not believe that it can be—that we are proposing a costed programme of savings. The Government is saying that it is going to save £1 billion. Where is the £1 billion to be saved? Let us hear where the £1 billion is to be saved.
I am sure that Stephen Kerr will be on the front bench tomorrow to hear Ivan McKee’s statement on public service reform, in which he will set out the work that is already under way. It started many years ago and has been accelerated by the work of the Minister for Public Finance. Stephen Kerr will see the detail of that tomorrow, and I am sure that he will be present for it.
The Opposition is also keen to talk down the Scottish economy. Day in, day out, we hear that in this place. The reality is that the Scottish economy is one of the best performing in the UK.
Will the cabinet secretary take an intervention?
I will later, if I have time.
Since 2007, gross domestic product per person in Scotland has grown by 10.3 per cent, compared with 6.1 per cent in the UK, and productivity has grown at an average rate of 1.1 per cent per year, compared with a UK average of 0.4 per cent. Most recently, in 2024, Scotland’s economy grew by 1.2 per cent, compared with a UK rate of 1.1 per cent.
I will give way to Daniel Johnson.
It will need to be very brief, Mr Johnson.
Would the cabinet secretary care to quote those figures since 2016 and acknowledge whether they are higher or lower for Scotland compared with the UK for that time period?
It is the long-term growth that matters. [Interruption.]
I do not know why Daniel Johnson and the Opposition—
Will the cabinet secretary give way?
No, thank you. I do not know why Daniel Johnson and the Opposition cannot accept that it is a good thing that, since 2007, gross domestic product per person in Scotland has grown by 10.3 per cent compared with 6.1 per cent in the UK. Why can they not simply accept that that is a good thing?
Will the cabinet secretary give way?
Will the cabinet secretary give way?
The cabinet secretary is now in her final minute.
Craig Hoy talked about an economic performance gap, but Professor Graeme Roy from the Scottish Fiscal Commission has been clear that, in the context of income tax, that does not refer to an assessment of Scottish Government policy or performance—rather, it is
“purely a technical measure and is not meant to be a commentary on Scottish Government performance.”—[Official Report, Finance and Public Administration Committee, 10 December 2024; c 37.]
That is what Graeme Roy from the Scottish Fiscal Commission has said.
To conclude, last week’s spending review has not helped the position in Scotland. An increase of spending of just 0.8 per cent over the next three years, compared with an average of 1.2 per cent for UK departments, leaves us facing a £1.1 billion shortfall. The spending review was disappointing for resource and capital spend and infrastructure investment.
You will need to conclude.
To come back to the point about public service reform, tomorrow Ivan McKee will set out the detail of what we have been doing and what we will do. We will do it in a way that is sustainable and works out the detail, not the nonsense that we have heard from the Tories today.
I move amendment S6M-17980.2, to leave out from “notes” to end and insert:
“believes that public service reform must be an ongoing process in order to deliver the best use of public funding, and recognises that the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party’s arbitrary scheme would lead to a cut in available public funding for vital services like the NHS.”
15:06
In what is a feat of surprisingly accurate economic analysis that you would not expect from the acolytes of Liz Truss, the Scottish Tories have pinpointed one of the deep problems at the heart of Scotland’s finances. That problem is, of course, the Scottish National Party Government. It has an abysmal record of 18 years of waste, incompetence and, increasingly, chaos—£6.7 billion of taxpayers’ money wasted on ferries that do not sail, prisons that do not get built, a deposit return scheme that did not recycle a single bottle and a national care service that did not employ a single carer. Hard-working Scots are literally paying the price of SNP failure, with over £1.6 billion spent on the scandal of delayed discharge because the SNP cannot get Scotland’s NHS working.
Normally, whenever I lay out that litany of waste, it is met with complaint and howls of derision from SNP members, but it is good to have supporters on the front bench today, with the belated admission that, by their own estimates, they waste £1 billion a year. That is, of course, on top of the tally that I have just laid out.
Scotland has also suffered from the chaos and financial mismanagement of finance secretaries, who, with one exception, still sit around the Cabinet table. There has been failure to supply crucial information to the independent forecaster, refusal to publish core documents, including a pay policy, capital spending plans and the medium-term financial strategy, and chaotic, knee-jerk in-year announcements such as the council tax freeze that nobody knew about. Party politics is always put first.
Budget after budget does not even last six months, and there have now been three consecutive years of emergency in-year cuts slashing funding across the board to balance the books. There really is no other word for it—it is complete and utter chaos.
The Labour Party believes strongly in progressive taxation, but to ensure public support for progressive taxation, we have to show people what they get in return, and the SNP has utterly failed to do that. Every year, Scots are paying more and getting less in return. One in six Scots is on an NHS waiting list, schools are sliding down the international league tables, there is a housing emergency and councils are cutting key services. Better public services, more investment and a better standard of living is what people should be getting from paying their fair share in tax, but, under the SNP, that could not be further from the truth.
Meanwhile, the Tories have failed to acknowledge the economic and fiscal realities in which the UK operates. British public finances were left in a truly terrible state by the previous Tory Government. Over 14 years, it presided over a low-wage, no-growth economy. It inflicted austerity on public services, doing lasting damage to them all. It crashed the economy, sending interest rates spiralling. It presided over a cost of living crisis with sky-high inflation not seen since the 1970s. It closed the last Parliament with living standards lower than they were at the opening of that Parliament for the first time since the Napoleonic wars. It spent the last year of that Parliament promising money that it did not have in a desperate attempt to buy votes, leaving a gaping black hole in Britain’s public finances. It spent the annual national reserve three times over in the first three months of that year, Mr Hoy. All of that left the incoming UK Labour Government with a major clean-up operation to undertake. There was no apology, no humility and no shame from the Conservatives.
Frankly, the Conservatives’ plans today are not worthy of the back of a fag packet. This afternoon, they have brought half-baked, reheated tax cuts to the Parliament, and we should not believe a word of it. Cutting down on quangos would not deliver the savings that are needed for such drastic tax cuts; they would surely mean deep cuts to core public services such as our NHS. The Scottish Fiscal Commission has projected that the NHS will account for an increasingly large share of the Scottish budget: up to almost 55 per cent in the next 50 years. With an ageing population, that investment is absolutely essential. Are the Conservatives really proposing that we defund our NHS to fund tax cuts?
The UK Labour Government is facing up to the mess that both parties here in the chamber have made of our country. Last week’s game-changing spending review saw record investment for Scotland, with a £9.1 billion boost to Scotland’s budget—the highest settlement in the history of devolution.
Will Michael Marra give way?
No, thank you, madam.
Mr Marra is about to conclude.
To give you the words of the Daily Record, the Chancellor’s spending review
“means the SNP Government can no longer blame Westminster for Scotland’s ills. Successive SNP First Ministers have cited UK Government austerity as the reason for struggling services. Rachel Reeves, who has handed Holyrood an extra £9.1bn, has called time on that excuse.”
Enough of the excuses from the SNP. Enough of the half-baked ideas from the Tories. Let us get our economy moving.
I move amendment S6M-17980.1, to leave out from “believes” to end and insert:
“understands that the Scottish National Party administration has wasted in excess of £6.7 billion of taxpayers’ money since 2007; believes that the Scottish Government’s reckless spending and failure to grow Scotland’s economy has led to an overreliance on tax increases to plug annual budget gaps; welcomes the UK Government’s decision to decisively end austerity, deliver a record budget settlement for Scotland, and pledge an extra £9.1 billion over the next three years, and believes that the Scottish Labour Party’s plan to establish a Scottish treasury with strategic oversight for spending in all Scottish Government departments is essential in order to put an end to waste and ensure that people in Scotland get value for money.”
15:11
In this debate, we will cover ground that we have covered many times before. Although the Scottish Conservatives routinely ask in the Parliament for additional spending, they also routinely deride the taxation that is needed to provide that spending. The Tory magic money tree is sadly a figment of their imaginations. In the real world, countries need to generate revenue, and that means taxation. Taxation is the means by which we pool our resources for the collective good. That money is then allocated for spending and investment by a democratically elected Government.
It is a truth that is not universally accepted in the UK that, if you want Scandinavian levels of public services, you have to pay Scandinavian levels of tax. Believing in a magic money tree or in the growth fairy does not eliminate that truth, however much you wish that it might. High GDP growth does not, by itself, contribute to quality of life and society. In isolation, what it tends to do is indicate that the rich are getting richer while more and more people are being left behind. To see that, we have only to look to America, where there is high GDP growth but staggering levels of poverty, homelessness, violence and people without healthcare, and high maternal mortality.
No matter what your GDP is, redistribution of wealth is needed to fund public services and to ensure a functioning society. Without wealth redistribution, the rich will forever get richer while the poor get poorer, until the fabric of society frays and falls apart. For those who believe in a growth-first economic model—those who say, “Once we have growth, then we can put money towards community centres and universal childcare”—what is the magic level of growth that suddenly unlocks that policy change? When has enough wealth been generated that we can start to redistribute it? That model is a toolbox fallacy.
One of the pieces of evidence is something called the Laffer curve, which, as some of the member’s predecessors in the Government knew, is a diagram that shows that when you increase tax, sadly, at one point, the revenue starts to go down.
I am aware of the Laffer curve. I am also aware of where it has been discredited and where it applies. It applies specifically to income taxes and not to the kind of taxes that the Scottish Greens advocate, such as land value tax and wealth taxation.
Our society is extremely wealthy. There is no shortage of money. It is just that it is concentrated in the hands of a few very wealthy people.
For a bit of fun, when preparing for this debate, I put this question into an artificial intelligence chat interface:
“Between lower house prices, free tuition, baby boxes, free prescriptions, free bus travel for under 22s, free eye tests, and free social care is a person earning £100,000 a year in Scotland better off than a person living in England, even with Scotland’s different income tax regime?”
Its conclusion was:
“If you’re single, child-free, and healthy, England may offer better net income. But if you have a family, children in education, or elderly relatives needing care”—
which is most of us—
“Scotland’s public services can provide significant non-cash value that may outweigh the tax difference.” [Interruption.]
I have only four minutes.
The member is about to conclude.
I then asked the AI:
“What about someone earning an average Scottish wage?”
The response was:
“For someone earning the average wage, Scotland is likely better overall than England due to ... Comparable or slightly lower income tax ... Significant savings from public services”
and
“Lower cost of living”.
Thank you, AI—I could not have said it better. [Interruption.]
I call Willie Rennie to open on behalf of the Scottish Liberal Democrats.
15:16
I think that I like—[Interruption.]
Mr Rennie, could you sit down, please?
Could those on the Conservative benches show some courtesy and respect to other speakers in this debate, please?
I again call Willie Rennie to open on behalf of the Scottish Liberal Democrats.
I like this new Lorna Slater, who is outsourcing intelligence to artificial intelligence. We might see some new radical policies—perhaps even more radical than before.
I like a robust and colourful contribution in the chamber. I admire Craig Hoy for his approach to politics, because it is sometimes very entertaining and educational. However, I have to say that he took a kamikaze approach today. I was looking back at a headline in a newspaper in, I think, 2022. It said:
“Boris Johnson’s partygate scandal a ‘difference of opinion’, Craig Hoy says.”
He was dismissing the partygate scandal, somehow.
I think that it is reasonable to ask questions of Neil Gray—as long as we understand that we need to reflect on our own past comments and observations on our own party when doing so. For Craig Hoy to make that speech about economic and financial competence, given his party’s responsibility for Liz Truss, Brexit and even Boris Johnson, took a great degree of courage. I give him full credit for making that attempt this afternoon.
Public service reform should be boring. It should be boring, detailed and hard work to find out where efficiencies can be made. The more exciting that public service reform is, the more superficial it is—in such cases, it is more of a vote-catching effort than it is a real attempt at public service reform. I am afraid to say that Craig Hoy’s list today was just all eye catching, rather than a real attempt at changing the way in which public services operate.
The size of the state has increased—there is no doubt about that. What we need to work out is how we get it back down to pre-Covid levels. We need a detailed understanding of that. I hope that, tomorrow, the minister will set out a very clear programme of boring, detailed change that results in a difference, because it is the difference that really matters in the long run.
We also need digital and AI—this is perhaps where I agree with Lorna Slater—to be at the heart of the work that we are doing.
Daniel Johnson rose—
I will see whether I can give way shortly.
I am afraid that I speak to a number of experts in that sector who believe that the Government is just not at the races when it comes to aligning the public services in a way in which digital processes can be used to bring uniformity and deliver efficiencies. Many experts out there are saying exactly that.
Daniel Johnson rose—
I am sorry, but I have only four minutes.
The main point that I want to make is that, to get our public finances back on track, we need to get our economy moving. The biggest problem that we have is the economic inactivity rate, which is at 24 per cent. In England, it is at 21 per cent, which is not much better, but the figure is just dreadful in Scotland. At the heart of that is getting the NHS into a position in which it can get back to work people who would work if they were able to do so. That is now about ailments of the mind, whereas in the past it was about ailments of the body.
We need to reorientate the NHS so that it is focused on economic productivity. That will make a tremendous difference to the taxes that we raise and to our ability to afford public services. If we can sort that, we will have achieved something in this Parliament.
We move to the open debate. I advise members that the small amount of additional time that was available has been entirely used up by the preceding front-bench exchanges, so members will need to stick to a four-minute limit. Any interventions that are taken must be absorbed within members’ agreed speaking time.
15:20
My colleague Craig Hoy outlined a commonsense vision for Scotland’s economy—a vision that is rooted in fairness, ambition and opportunity. We fundamentally believe that Scots deserve a better deal than what they are currently getting under the SNP Government. After 18 years in power, the SNP is presiding over a stagnating economy, a ballooning civil service and an economic performance gap of £1.1 billion, with billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money wasted on pet projects—money that should have gone to front-line services instead.
The list of SNP failures is too long to go through this afternoon. The impact is simple: people are paying more and getting less—I agree with Michael Marra on that. One key difference between the Scottish Conservatives and other parties in the chamber is that we believe in small government. We believe in empowering people to succeed, not holding them back. However, the SNP, the Greens and Labour want to keep people stuck in the doldrums in perpetuity.
Although the Scottish Conservatives support vulnerable people, the SNP is handing out hard-earned taxpayers’ money, with the cost of the welfare state expected to reach £9 billion by 2030. The cosy left-wing consensus that has held Scotland back for decades is dumbing down Scotland rather than lifting it up.
Could Rachael Hamilton specify who those handouts are being given to? Who are we talking about?
We have identified many tax-saving policies that the Government could implement. We agree with the Scottish child payment, but we want people to be lifted up, not knocked down. We want people to have jobs and to be supported into work. We do not want them to be held back in the way that the Scottish Government is holding back the economy. I point out to Shona Robison that even the Scottish Fiscal Commission has told us that Scotland faces an £851 million income tax black hole due to the rising costs of benefits, public sector pay and new policy commitments.
Beyond the fiscal mismanagement—although Shona Robison does not seem to accept that the SNP is mismanaging the economy—the SNP has a bloated public sector that now accounts for the second-highest share of employment of any region or nation in the UK, and the bureaucracy continues to grow. Scotland now has 130 quangos, with more on the way.
Then there is the tax system, which has been described as “daft” by one of the SNP’s own MSPs. Scotland is now the highest-taxed part of the United Kingdom, which is not something to be proud of. The SNP should be ashamed. Workers here are unfairly penalised and pay more tax than those who do the same jobs elsewhere in the UK.
In my constituency, which is in the Scottish Borders, residents told me last week that they feel like they have been paying more but getting less, which is something that we have heard many times in the chamber. People see local services in decline, despite SNP claims to the contrary. We must offer people a different path for Scotland and a better path to economic prosperity.
The Scottish Conservatives have put forward positive and practical policies that would improve people’s lives. We believe in a smaller and more efficient state that delivers better value for money and better services for lower taxes. We would give Scottish taxpayers a better deal by cutting taxes to 19 per cent for all taxable income up to £43,600. That would be worth £444 to ordinary working Scots. We believe in restoring value for money, and we would introduce a taxpayer savings act.
Tomorrow, we will hear from Ivan McKee about public sector reform, so SNP ministers clearly agree that there is blob and bloat in their Government. We believe in rebuilding trust with the public. We believe that Scotland can do better. The SNP should be listening to the Scottish Conservatives.
15:25
Let us start with the ludicrous suggestion that, after taking no pay rise, Scottish ministers should continue to wear a hair shirt and endure declining real incomes year on year, even though the UK has had cumulative inflation of 70 per cent over 17 years. Which other societal groups do the Tories feel should not receive a pay rise for 17 years? It would certainly not be UK ministers—there are now 121—under successive Labour, coalition and Tory Governments. There has not been a peep about their pay from the Westminster devotees to my left—the Tories—which completely devalues their already threadbare argument. It is just a cheap, nasty and rather pitiful shot that devalues what was already an incoherent and poorly cobbled together motion.
The Tories suggest that they would cut tax
“by up to £444 for every person in Scotland”.
I was not aware that every person in Scotland paid tax, as the clumsily written motion suggests. Children, many pensioners, prisoners, students, the unemployed and so on do not pay tax. The motion says “up to £444”, which means that some people would gain very little—I note that it is not an average, but “up to”, which is like buying double glazing and getting “up to” X pounds off. The Tories must do better if they are to reclaim even a soupçon of the credibility that they lost by backing the Liz Truss economic catastrophe less than three years ago, which led to the highest UK tax take since world war two.
How much would the Tories’ tax cut reduce spending by? What would be cut? They suggest a nice, easy target:
“highly paid public sector senior executives”.
The UK Tory Government that they urged us to re-elect last year did not cut such jobs, but apparently we should. Which ones? What would be the impact on public service delivery if talented people voted with their feet and left the public sector? It is just empty, lazy, thoughtless populism, which is aimed at clawing back votes from the Faragists. Come budget time, we will no doubt hear from Tory MSPs the same tedious litanies in which they demand more expenditure in every single Scottish Government portfolio ad nauseum. It is as boring as it is stupefyingly predictable.
If the Tories truly believed in a crackdown on waste, one might be more sympathetic. However, that is belied by their UK Government’s waste of tens of billions on shoddy defence procurement, dodgy public-private partnerships in services, which were often provided by Tory pals, and high speed 2, which has been delayed again and is set to cost over £100 billion.
Will the member give way?
As for the economic performance gap, I quote the evidence that Professor Graeme Roy gave to the Finance and Public Administration Committee last week:
“The net tax position is interesting ... it is not an assessment of Scottish Government policy or performance ... As we highlight in the report, it could be down to different policy decisions; it could be the result of a UK Government decision having an impact on Scotland relative to the UK; it could be a Scottish Government decision having an impact on Scotland relative to the UK; or it could just be down to general economic performance in Scotland ... London is also a factor ... If the city has a really good year ... it will be harder for Scotland with regard to the net tax position.”—[Official Report, Finance and Public Administration Committee, 10 June 2025; c 20.]
EY’s annual UK attractiveness survey reports that Scotland, which has only 8.2 per cent of the UK’s population, secured 15.8 per cent of UK inward investment projects last year, which created 4,330 Scottish jobs. That record market share cements Scotland as the UK’s top destination outside London for the 10th year in a row, and the sixth best in Europe. Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow remain among the top seven UK cities for foreign direct investment. EY’s global investor survey found that a quarter of those who are planning to invest in the UK are targeting Scotland, which maintains our long-standing position as the UK’s preferred destination outside London.
Will the member give way?
Scotland’s continued success in attracting inward investment is testament to our skilled workforce, world-class universities and commitment to innovation. Despite global economic instability, investors recognise the strength and stability of Scotland’s economy.
You need to conclude.
Those projects bring high-quality jobs and long-term opportunities to communities across the country, which is a clear sign that Scotland is open for business. Inward-looking Tories do not want to hear that and would close our overseas offices, where Scottish Development International engages with investors. We will pursue growth while the Tories undermine efforts to secure it.
You need to conclude.
I apologise for not taking interventions, but a speaking time of four minutes is clearly not long enough.
15:29
Our motion demands an end to the high-tax and low-delivery agenda that the Scottish Government has been pursuing for the past 18 years.
The Scottish Conservatives accept that the Scottish Parliament should have a wide range of powers over taxation to support Scottish businesses and taxpayers and to incentivise strong economic growth. Those are both things that the Scottish public would no doubt support. However, since receiving powers over Scottish income tax, the SNP has used them to turn Scotland into the highest-taxed part of the United Kingdom. After years of endless tinkering with Scottish income tax, the Scottish Government has left us with a system in which anyone who earns more than about £30,000 pays more in tax than they would if they lived in any other part of the United Kingdom
The Scottish tax system has no fewer than six separate bands, and the Institute for Fiscal Studies has described the system as being “unnecessarily complicated”. The Scottish Parliament information centre has pointed out that, since 2017-18, the higher rate threshold has remained largely unchanged, which has dragged thousands more taxpayers into the higher tax bracket. About 22 per cent of Scottish taxpayers now pay the higher rate, with that percentage having doubled over the past eight years.
Our motion mentions the economic performance gap that the Scottish Fiscal Commission has identified. The SNP’s tax system is no doubt responsible for some of that gap. The Scottish Fiscal Commission’s findings assume that the changes to the tax system will have certain behavioural impacts. Further analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies shows that the behavioural changes might be even worse than the Fiscal Commission’s assumptions. That means that much more spending is being wasted and that people are getting a worse deal. I very much doubt that that is what the Scottish public wanted as a result of taxation being dealt with in this Parliament.
What are taxpayers getting in exchange for their higher taxes? Scotland’s education system is now internationally average. Scotland has record NHS waiting lists. There has been a litany of broken promises on upgrading roads. It is clear from those things, combined with a bloated and costly public sector and the millions of pounds that have been spent on ferries, that the Scottish public are getting a raw deal.
Our motion sets out what a better deal for taxpayers would look like. As well as cracking down on waste, we would abolish the basic and intermediate tax rates. That would ensure that every Scot would save up to £444, with those earning up to £43,662 paying 19p for every £1 earned.
As Sir Tom Hunter recently warned, Scotland is not reaching its full potential. We need a new approach to the country’s finances instead of the old-fashioned left-wing approach that has dominated the Scottish Government for far too long. A package of commonsense changes such as the ones that we have proposed would be the first step in making progress.
The Scottish Government needs to stop managing decline and start rewarding success. We have lots of successful businesses across the country, but that success is being stifled by the Scottish Government’s measures. We would empower Scotland and give Scottish taxpayers the value for money that they deserve, rather than them paying more and getting less.
15:33
We need to lower the temperature a bit. As members know, I always like to strike a consensual tone, so I thank the Government and the Conservatives for providing arguments that I can agree with.
I agree with the Conservatives that the Scottish Government suddenly furnishing us with the figure of £1 billion of waste a year is somewhat striking, in relation to both the quantum and the fact that it has taken the Government 18 years to come forward with that. In turn, I agree with the Government that it is somewhat ironic for the Conservatives to present such a miraculous plan. I note that the savings are not added up in the Conservatives’ documentation, so we do not know whether their sums add up at all.
When did we last hear about a 19p basic tax rate? That is right—it was in the mini-budget from Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng. With straight faces, the Scottish Conservatives are coming to the chamber with exactly the same uncosted tax cuts as were proposed by the UK Conservative Government that led to the calamity of increased mortgage bills, a run on the pound and a run on the cost of UK borrowing. That is simply not credible.
Will Daniel Johnson give way?
I am happy to give way if Craig Hoy can explain why the Scottish Conservatives are doing that.
Does Mr Johnson think that the people who are watching the debate will find it a bit rich that the Labour Party, which broke its promise on tax, is lecturing the Parliament about tax?
With that, we find out that the Conservatives have learned precisely nothing.
Let us look at public service reform. Frankly, I think that Willie Rennie was absolutely right to say that public service reform should be routine—it should be boring, measured and continual. The problem is that the Scottish Government has postponed it for 18 years. However, the Conservatives have made a critical mistake, because such reform is not about shrinking the state but about looking at where head-count increases should occur. The reality is that, over the past decade, civil service head count has increased by 71 per cent—that is three times the rate of head-count increase in the NHS and 10 times that of local government—while police head count has fallen by 6 per cent and that of further education by 10 per cent.
Does Daniel Johnson recognise that a large portion of that increase is due to the establishment of Social Security Scotland and the devolution of welfare benefits?
Social Security Scotland accounts for 3,000 of the head-count increase, which is less than a third. The total head-count increase is between 8,000 and 9,000, and about a third of that is from Social Security Scotland, so that is not an adequate answer.
This comes at a time when we have £6.7 billion-worth of waste from things such as ferries and scrapped deposit return schemes and when the Scottish Government seems to seek to reheat the arguments for full fiscal autonomy, with the loss of the 20 per cent premium that we gain through the Barnett formula.
Ultimately, there is a lack of engagement with the economic performance gap, which is dismissed as a technicality. It is not a technicality. The performance gap boils down to a difference in the earnings of everyday Scots; it is about tax receipts.
It is instructive that the cabinet secretary could not answer my question about the increase in GDP per head since 2016—it is 4.4 per cent for the UK and 2.6 per cent for Scotland. That date is important because 2016 is the year against which fiscal devolution is benchmarked; it dictates how much money we have to spend. The fact that the cabinet secretary could not answer that question and does not understand its relevance tells us everything that we need to know about the Scottish Government’s incompetence when it comes to public finances and the economy.
George Adam is the final speaker in the open debate.
15:37
I found the opening remarks from Tory members quite entertaining—indeed, if people took them seriously, they would be offensive. In particular, I chuckled at the line that it is only the Scottish Conservatives who know what Scots want. That was a total belter, as they say in my neck of the woods. We must give the Conservatives their due—if Tory political spin were renewable energy, Scotland would reach net zero by tea time. As we live in the real world, we know what the Conservatives are really all about.
The Conservatives come here today to demand a better deal for taxpayers, as if they have not just spent the past 14 years making everyone poorer, crashing the economy and sending household bills through the roof. The same crowd who gave us Liz Truss and a mortgage hike now want us to believe that they have the answers. The Tories want us to believe that they have suddenly found a magic formula for fixing the economy—after they crashed it, after they hiked mortgages and after they dragged us out of the European Union, which is costing Scotland billions. Now here we are, with a motion built on slogans that has very little substance.
The Conservatives talk about cracking down on waste but offer no real plan, just the same old Tory playbook—cut taxes for high earners and slash public services to pay for that. They want to rip £1.5 billion out of the budget and then pretend that nobody will notice the consequences to the NHS, schools or social care. Those of us with longer memories know exactly what the Tories are all about and what Tory economics means for our communities.
In the 1980s and 1990s, it was the Conservative Party that sucked the economic life out of towns such as Paisley. We watched as the looms fell silent, the mill gates closed, the Anchor and Ferguslie mills all disappeared, and the car factories and electronic firms that once sustained local families shut down, one by one. Unemployment soared, and that was believed to be acceptable by an uncaring Westminster Government. Community spirit in Paisley and in towns across Scotland was tested to the limit. That was not reform; it was Tory economics at its harshest—and it did not support anyone from my community. That is what Tory value for money looks like in the real world, in real towns and for real people in Scotland.
We now have a Scottish Parliament and a Scottish Government that have delivered a balanced budget that funds front-line services—a budget that most parties in this Parliament supported. While the Tories were voting against that budget, the Scottish Government was investing in our NHS, boosting education, reintroducing winter fuel payments for pensioners and protecting the vulnerable.
More than 60 per cent of Scots are better off under our tax and social security policies. Most Scots pay less income tax than people elsewhere in the UK. That is fairness in action.
Unlike the Conservatives’ lack of a plan, our approach is progressive, responsible and honest about how we will fund the services that people rely on. For far too long, the Tories have postured in the chamber while Scotland has been getting on with the job. We are growing the economy. For the 10th year in a row, Scotland is the top destination in the UK for inward investment outside London.
Scotland deserves better than further reheated Tory austerity. Scots deserve a Government that invests in our people, protects the most vulnerable and builds for the long term. That is exactly what this Scottish Government is doing every single day. It is time for us to reject this Tory nonsense.
We move to closing speeches.
15:41
The content of Craig Hoy’s opening speech was spectacularly Trumpian. Not only does he want to implement something like DOGE—the US Department of Government Efficiency—to get rid of imaginary waste, but he wants to ban diversity, equality and inclusion and remove support for trans kids and adults. That is a heck of a track record to go on, given the success of the Trump regime in America, which has seen the largest protests ever against such policies. Good on the Scottish Conservatives for picking up on some popular policies there.
Will the member take an intervention?
No—I have only four minutes.
One of the things that Craig Hoy said that he would get rid of is the Scottish Land Commission, which is the public body that supports land reform. Land ownership in Scotland is highly unequal and concentrated, with a small number of individuals and entities owning vast areas of land—433 landowners own 50 per cent of Scotland’s privately owned land. That concentration limits opportunities for local and community development, especially in rural areas. It is mind-boggling that the Scottish Conservatives, who purport to champion rural areas, would want to get rid of that body. However, the Conservatives are, of course, in the business of keeping rich and powerful landlords and landowners rich and powerful. That is what they are here for.
As for Michael Marra’s contribution, Scotland offers more generous and accessible public services than England does, because of higher per capita spending and the different policy choices that are made in Scotland. The big question is whether Labour will bring in policies such as free school meals, free bus travel for under-22s and free prescriptions throughout the UK to bring England’s public services up to the level of Scotland’s. So far, England has been lagging behind. Now that Labour is in government at Westminster, the Scottish Labour Party needs to look at how it will help England to catch up.
[Made a request to intervene.]
I am sorry, Mr Kerr. I have only four minutes, so I need to press on.
The single most important tax reform that we could make in Scotland is to reform council tax. Unfortunately, every party other than the Scottish Greens voted against our proposals to revalue council tax and move away from the absurdity of using 1991 property values, which has most people paying the wrong rate and makes the tax regressive, which means that the people who have the least pay the most. That is not fair, and nor is it raising the money that our councils need to provide public services.
We have only to look at Liz Truss’s mini-budget and Donald Trump’s big, beautiful bill—I am sure that Craig Hoy is a fan of it; he certainly sounded as if he was adopting Trumpian policies—to see how tax cutting can be counterproductive to economic success, and downright devastating for ordinary people.
Tax cuts largely benefit the wealthy. Public services largely benefit people on average wages who have children, health needs and care needs. I know who I would like the Government to support.
15:45
I welcome the new consensus in Scottish politics, which has been signed up to by all sides—and perhaps even by artificial intelligence—that the Scottish Government is wasting a massive amount of money. Clearly, we will hear more about that tomorrow in a well-advertised statement: Willie Rennie expects it to be very boring but, hopefully, very detailed. The minister is well aware that the Parliament’s Finance and Public Administration Committee has been calling for a proper programme of public service reform for years now, and many independent bodies have bemoaned the fact that there has been no evidence of it as such.
This is a Tory debate, and we have heard the Tories’ proposition based on their recently published policy document. I gave it its second download just this afternoon, and a thriller it is. There are plenty of pictures of Russell Findlay looking moody. Does he ever look anything but? It sets a savings target of some £642 million. It identifies a £1.5 million saving by closing Architecture and Design Scotland. Unfortunately, however, £500 million of the heavy lifting is to be saved by drawing a target around that figure on one of the pages of the document. That is how the money is to be saved. It is a project to save half a billion pounds with no detail whatsoever about how to do it.
The rest of the money is to be saved by
“STOPPING THE WASTED TIME ON WOKE”.
That is a risible attempt at an intervention in the public spending debate, which is not worth the publication at all. It is right-wing populism by numbers. It is fantastical nonsense.
That brings me, in part, to Kenny Gibson’s speech and his rejection of the tax changes that the UK Labour Government has put in place. He is of course right to point out some of the challenges that arise from those tax changes. Unfortunately, the SNP Government has rejected the entirety of the tax adjustments of some £45 billion, which have had to be used to try to rescue the public finances from the mess left by the Tory Government.
It does not stop there. Prior to the UK budget that was set out last autumn, there were demands from the SNP Government for £70 billion of additional spending—and the Scottish Government did not stop there. In the run-up to the spending review, just in the past few weeks, there was another £20 billion-worth of demands for public spending.
In total, there were £90 billion-worth of demands, with a complete rejection of £45 billion for raising the money. That is not credible and not sensible. Frankly, for a Scottish Government that wants to engage with the UK Government on a proactive basis and on a proper level, as we regularly hear from the cabinet secretary, it is not fit for purpose—far from it.
Last week, we had the unedifying spectacle of the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government agreeing with Alba and Reform that the Barnett formula should be scrapped in Scotland. It is utter nonsense to give up voluntarily an additional 20 per cent for spending on public services in Scotland.
Lorna Slater asked about the funding of public services across the rest of the UK. She might have missed the massive expansion of free school meals south of the border, but she will know that £9.1 billion of additional spending is coming to Scotland.
I pay tribute to Daniel Johnson’s very relevant observation that the date of 2016 is incredibly important to the fiscal framework in this country. I advise the cabinet secretary to revise her speaking notes on that basis. The fact that UK GDP per head grew by 4.4 per cent, compared with the 2.6 per cent figure for Scotland, is critical to the economic performance gaps: it flows through the fiscal framework, to which the cabinet secretary is a signatory.
15:49
I thank everyone who has taken part in the debate.
I will start with Willie Rennie’s contribution and give him my sincere and heartfelt assurance that my statement tomorrow will, indeed, be very boring but that it will address the challenges that he has identified. He is absolutely right that treating the debate as some kind of show will not get to the reality of the detail that must be dealt with in order to transform Scottish public services. I will go through that in more detail tomorrow.
Willie Rennie made a number of points about digital, which, again, I will cover to a significant extent tomorrow. AI is very much part of our consideration, but we need to get the balance right and ensure that ethics are well considered when we roll it out. I will talk more about that tomorrow.
Although we might disagree on much, does the minister agree that this is not about shrinking the state, and that reform must be about freeing up people for front-line public service delivery?
Yes, I agree. It is not about a smaller state; it is about a state that is the right size to deliver what it needs to deliver and getting the workforce and resources in the right place to do so.
Willie Rennie talked about our NHS. Just yesterday, the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care unveiled two documents on service renewal and population health that articulate how we are going to take the reform agenda forward in the health and social care space.
Craig Hoy talked at length about all kinds of stuff. As usual, he was looking for uncosted tax cuts at the same time as spending increases, which is what we have come to expect from the Tory Party.
I think that I must have been the third person, after Michael Marra, to download the Tory document. I had a wee look at it while I was listening to Craig Hoy. As far as I can tell, he identified three public bodies that he wants to get rid of, which is a long way from the quarter of public bodies that he is targeting. He would then, of course, add another one, by putting in place a new quango whose job I am not quite sure of but which seems to be about taking forward work that this Government is already doing, without an additional quango.
If he was paying attention yesterday, he would have noticed that the health secretary has merged two NHS bodies. We are very much in the business of looking for opportunities to save cash and, where that involves structural change, we shall take that forward. Again, I will say more about that tomorrow. [Interruption.]
Does somebody want to come in?
No. There was a lot of chuntering from a sedentary position.
I will move on to Rachael Hamilton’s—
Will the minister give way?
Yes, indeed.
I thank the minister for taking the intervention. When you are looking for savings, will you also look for savings from ministers taking limos to pubs? [Interruption.] Those are savings that could easily be had.
Speak through the chair, Mr Lumsden.
I missed some of that. Douglas Lumsden needs to be a bit more articulate, perhaps, but I do not think that I missed anything.
Kenny Gibson characterised the motion correctly when he talked about it being more akin to an approach taken by double glazing salesmen. If we are to look for inefficiencies, a very interesting place to look is personal protective equipment contracts south of the border.
On the recycling point, I note that Craig Hoy is very much in the recycling business; as Daniel Johnson pointed out, he is recycling Truss’s policies.
On the Scottish economy, as Kenny Gibson referenced, there is higher GDP growth per person over the long term, higher productivity growth per person over the long term, lower unemployment in the here and now, and the best FDI performance over the past 10 years anywhere outside of London. That is a consequence of the international offices that SDI has around the globe; of course, the Tories want to close those, shutting off access to international investors.
There was higher growth in the Scottish economy in 2024 than in the UK economy. Interestingly, for half of that year, the UK Government was under Tory jurisdiction and, for the other half, it was under Labour jurisdiction, so I do not know who we would blame for the poor performance of the UK economy vis-à-vis what happened in Scotland. In addition, more people earn the real living wage in Scotland than in the rest of the UK.
I listened with interest to Russell Findlay on “The Sunday Show” at the weekend. He threw out a number, and I had to go back to check whether he had articulated it correctly, because he claimed that 5,500 public sector workers in Scotland earn more than £130,000 a year. We have not been able to source that figure. If he has the stats for it, I would love to see them. However, we think that he is including in that the 6,000 consultants—and employed general practitioner staff on top of that—who are of course in that bracket, because we can find only a few dozen beyond that number that are in that category. [Interruption.] If Russell Findlay’s message to the people of Scotland is that he is going to take an axe to NHS consultants, people should be aware of that.
In my closing remarks, I want to talk briefly—
You need to be very brief.
—about the work that we have done on public service reform. It is important to recognise that we are on a journey. Much has already been done. Tomorrow, we will articulate the next stage on that journey. We have reduced the number of public bodies in Scotland from 199 to 131. As a result of the Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Act 2012, we have saved almost £2.5 billion in back-office costs over the past 10 years. In the past two years, we have saved £280 million through the work that we have done on procurement, estates and the automation of back-office functions.
The Scottish Government balances its budget every year. We take Scotland’s finances seriously. Next week, we will lay out the detail of our medium-term financial strategy and our fiscal sustainability delivery plan, and, tomorrow, I will lay out the work that we will take forward in the next phase of our public service reform agenda.
15:55
I am not usually someone who gets confused, but—my goodness—I am confused today. The Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government is very fond of asking Opposition parties to spell out exactly what we would do differently, but, when we do, she objects. She dismisses all our accusations of SNP waste, but she has now admitted that we are right.
As for Lorna Slater’s speech, I have to say that I am very glad that it has been a short debate.
I will set the debate in context by acknowledging some of the fundamental weaknesses in the Scottish economy, which have been much debated by the independent analysts. As well as flagging up the extent of the fiscal predicament in which the Scottish Government finds itself, the analysts have made it clear that that is largely a result of the Scottish Government’s own decisions. They have highlighted the failure to deliver sustained economic growth; concerns over tax structures, especially differentials; and issues with the delivery of more efficient public services, which, as we know, is a subject that has been exercising the mind of the Finance and Public Administration Committee for many months—although I am not sure that members would have got that impression from what the committee’s convener said in his speech.
The bottom line is that Scotland has not been creating the growth that it desperately needs to create to pay for the increasing demands on public services. Senior figures in business—people such as Sandy Begbie—are all telling us—
If what Liz Smith has said is the case, can she explain why, last year, the Scottish economy grew faster than the UK economy?
Daniel Johnson made a very relevant point about the extent of the growth of the Scottish economy over a period of time. The economy’s growth over time is the key issue that analysts are talking about.
I pay tribute to the Deputy First Minister, who made a very interesting speech at Panmure house two weeks ago, in which she identified that a top priority was ensuring that there is much better collaboration between the public and private sectors. That is exactly what we must do to stimulate the growth that is so sadly missing. That is an important part of what is required, and I hope that that is now part of Scottish Government policy. If it is not, we will have even more difficulties in paying for public services.
The public sector is bloated—there is no question about that. Every figure that we look at tells us that it is bloated. I want to come back to a point that was made in the chamber some months ago. During the Covid pandemic, we all got used to the state bailing us out. At the time, that was absolutely fine and correct. However, that expectation is still with us—people still expect the state to do all the work for the Scottish economy. That is not good enough, because it is not solving the problems that we need to address.
We need to attend to the economic inactivity in this country. Willie Rennie said that that was the most important problem; it is. We need to get people back to work. We need to get people to take personal responsibility for their lives and not expect the state to do everything. The Scottish Government needs to waken up to the fact that, for a long period of time, all of its policy development—especially when it comes to welfare spend—has been all about a big state. That approach is not working for Scotland. As several of my colleagues have argued this afternoon, we are getting less while paying more. That simply cannot go on.
I finish on a point that was raised, interestingly, by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which said that it is absolutely imperative that we have a proper debate about universalism. The Scottish Government, with its social contract, is absolutely in thrall to the principle of universalism, but we clearly cannot afford that universal principle in the area of welfare spend.
The cabinet secretary has often asked me what we would cut. I throw back to the cabinet secretary—I have argued this with the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice—that we have to have a debate about universal policy, because there are areas of universal policy that give benefits to people who could easily afford to pay for some of those benefits themselves. That is not how the welfare system should work: it should be about lifting up those who are in particular need and targeting those who—
Will Liz Smith take an intervention?
I am not sure that there is time—I am about to finish.
Very briefly, minister.
I am interested to hear who specifically Liz Smith would intend to target with that measure.
Also, while I am on my feet, I want to let her know that the economic inactivity rate in Scotland at the moment is 21.6 per cent. When her Tory Government was in office this time last year, the rate was 22.3 per cent, so it is lower in Scotland now than it was when the Tories were in office down in England.
There are two points there. Economic inactivity is the key issue. As Willie Rennie rightly pointed out—
[Inaudible.]
Minister, please.
What the minister said from a sedentary position is not correct in relation to the balance of the Scottish economy against the UK economy.
Those are the numbers.
I am sure that we can debate that offline—I have gone with the Scottish Fiscal Commission’s statistics.
On the question of universal payments, the minister asked me what I would do. I think that we have to look at the areas of universal payments in which, quite clearly, the payments are not all being taken up. That is an area of overspend. It is also a case in which we should be targeting those who are most in need and not giving out a whole range of benefits to people who do not necessarily need them. That is a way forward and, on that point, I will finish.
That concludes the debate. There will be a brief pause before we move on to the next debate, to allow front-bench teams to change.
Air ais
Portfolio Question TimeAir adhart
Defence Sector (Economic Contribution)