Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Christine Jardine and Ian Murray(2 weeks, 5 days ago)
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Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
I am sure that, like the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie) and myself, the Secretary of State for Scotland is watching with bated breath for the latest Scottish Budget. After 17 years of incompetence, people are looking for change in Scotland, and the Labour party is promising it. Will the Secretary of State follow the initiative of his Scottish leader, Anas Sarwar, in saying he will reinstate the winter fuel allowance and make representations to the Prime Minister to reconsider other policies, such as the national insurance changes, which are creating instability and uncertainty for the Scottish economy?
Ian Murray
I have a lot of respect for the hon. Lady, but this is another instance where the Opposition parties in this Chamber want all the benefits of the Budget, but they do not want to be able to pay for it. We have announced the largest settlement for Scotland in devolution’s history: £47.7 billion, which is £4.9 billion extra. The Chancellor delivered £4.9 billion extra in Barnett consequentials alone from this Dispatch Box during the Budget—the SNP voted against it, but will spend it today.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Christine Jardine and Ian Murray(1 month, 3 weeks ago)
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Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
As the Secretary of State knows, I recently had the opportunity to visit California with the Scottish Affairs Committee to look at how that state has created an environment that encourages new space projects. In Scotland, we have a unique opportunity, not least because of developments in Glasgow, but also because the University of Edinburgh is already well respected and part of the programmes at Stanford, New York University, Columbia and NASA. What will the Government do to encourage the creation of that sort of environment in Scotland, and will the University of Edinburgh, given its reputation, be central to that?
Ian Murray
Scotland will be central to the space sector, and I very much welcome the question. We will fully back the space sector, as I said to the Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone). The Minister for Science has been to the UK Space Agency’s new office in Edinburgh, and the Minister for Data Protection and Telecoms has met Orbex. I have met Orbex and been to Unst in Shetland to visit the spaceport up there. We will fully back this; of course, its potential reaches to infinity and beyond.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Christine Jardine and Ian Murray(3 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
I congratulate the Secretary of State and welcome him to his place. I associate myself with his earlier remarks, particularly about Scotland’s Olympians and Paralympians. I was delighted to hear the recognition in his first answer of the role that our universities will play in a new industrial strategy, which is going to be vital in Scotland, particularly in the light of the recent admissions about the mess that the Scottish National party has made of our economy in Scotland. That is why I was baffled to see the UK Government cutting £800 million from a supercomputer project at the University of Edinburgh that has the potential to support research on drug discovery, climate change and advanced engineering. What discussions did the Secretary of State have with the Chancellor of the Exchequer about the impact of that?
Ian Murray
As the hon. Lady will know, the Chancellor of the Exchequer did a full audit of Government spending in the first weekend that she was in office, and found a £22 billion black hole. The exascale computer that she talks about was announced by two previous Prime Ministers and two previous Chancellors, and indeed was in the Budget in the early part of this year, but no money was allocated and therefore the project has been paused, pending both the Budget on 30 October and the spending review next year.