Alistair Carmichael
Main Page: Alistair Carmichael (Liberal Democrat - Orkney and Shetland)Department Debates - View all Alistair Carmichael's debates with the Scotland Office
(2 days, 20 hours ago)
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Gregor Poynton (Livingston) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the fiscal impact of the Autumn Budget 2024 on Scotland.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz. I am delighted to begin this important debate on the fiscal impact of the UK 2024 Budget on Scotland. The Chancellor delivered a Budget on 30 October that was the largest settlement for the Scottish Government in the history of devolution. It means an additional £1.5 billion for the Scottish Government to spend in this financial year, and an additional £3.4 billion in the next. That amounts to a total of £47.7 billion for Scotland’s budget in 2025-26, the biggest financial settlement in the history of devolution.
The Budget keeps Labour’s promises to Scotland and the Scots, who put their faith in a Labour Government. The road ahead is not easy, nor were all the individual decisions made in the Budget, but the appalling economic inheritance left to this Government by the Tories, who gave us austerity, Brexit chaos, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, needs clearing up.
After 14 years of Tory chaos, division and decline, the Budget turns the page on those lost Tory years, fixing the foundations and rebuilding our country. It supports Scottish businesses to get the Scottish economy motoring again. It provides funding for green freeports, city growth deals, Great British Energy and hydrogen projects to fire up growth and deliver good jobs across Scotland. It will remove connectivity black holes, through Project Gigabit and the shared rural network, boosting 4G coverage in the highlands and islands, and provide £125 million for GB Energy, headquartered in Aberdeen, with hubs in Edinburgh and Glasgow. It will fund two hydrogen projects in Cromarty and Whitelee, and extend the innovation cluster in the Glasgow city region for a further year.
The Budget will implement the 45% and 40% rates of theatre, orchestra, museum and galleries tax relief, to provide certainty to businesses in Scotland’s thriving cultural sector. It will provide Scotland’s world-renowned whisky industry with up to £5 million for His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to reduce the fees charged by the spirit drinks verification scheme, and end the mandatory duty stamps on spirits from May this year. It will kick-start growth at a local level by investing £1.4 billion in local growth projects across Scotland for the next 10 years, including £26 million for the Forth green freeport.
The list goes on. The Budget supports working people by boosting the national living wage, resulting in a pay rise to around 200,000 of the lowest-paid Scots, and extends the temporary 5p cut in fuel duty, benefiting an estimated 3.2 million people in Scotland by £58 a year. The Budget also supports Scottish pensioners and those on welfare benefits. The Government’s commitment to the triple lock will see over 1 million Scottish pensioners benefit from £8.6 million a year more during this Parliament.
Pension credit is up, benefiting 125,000 of the neediest pensioners in Scotland. The Budget uprates working-age benefits by inflation, resulting in 1.7 million families in Scotland seeing their working-age benefits going up by an average of £150. It also reduces the maximum level of debt repayments that can be deducted from a household’s universal credit payment each month, from 25% to 15%. That will benefit the average Scottish family by more than £420 a year. And that is not all: Labour’s manifesto commitment to Brand Scotland has been realised. An initial investment of £750,000 this year will fund trade missions, promote Scottish goods and services around the world, and help Scottish businesses export for the first time.
This Budget also marks the end of the era of austerity. It provides billions of investment in public services and prioritises investment in our economy to jump-start growth, while raising money from those with the broadest shoulders. It provides significant increases in investment to ensure that we have the public funding available for Scotland’s NHS, schools and public services. In short, this Budget is good for Scotland.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
One other thing that the Budget did was to remove the ringfence around agricultural support payments. Surely an intervention as significant as that in the operation of a UK-wide market should be made on a UK-wide basis. I do not understand the rationale for the Treasury decision. Can the hon. Gentleman explain it to me?
Gregor Poynton
As I said at the start, not all the decisions in this Budget were easy. We had been left a horrible economic inheritance by the Tories, and we needed to make decisions to tackle that and clear the mess up that they made.
The decisions in the Budget mean that the Scottish Government are receiving more per person than the equivalent UK Government spending for the rest of the UK. As I said, in 2025-26, we will see the biggest financial settlement to the Scottish Government in the history of devolution. Sadly, however, we know from bitter experience that more money to the Scottish Government does not guarantee success, because the Scottish National party is taking Scotland in the wrong direction and being careless with Scotland’s money.