Budget Resolutions

Douglas Ross Excerpts

Monday 1st November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

It is a privilege, as always, to lead on behalf of Scotland’s national party in this or any other debate.

Anyone watching today’s proceedings or any of the proceedings on the Budget who thinks this was a sensible way to take decisions about billions upon billions of pounds of public money really needs to get out and look at what happens in proper Parliaments in proper democracies where those Parliaments are given a chance to scrutinise budgets for weeks, if not months, and where Opposition parties are invited to put in their proposals and sometimes get them accepted by the Government of the day. Several Conservative Members have demanded to know what Labour would do if this was its Budget, knowing perfectly well that it would not matter how brilliant an idea came from the Labour Benches, or any other Opposition Benches, it would not have a cat in hell’s chance of getting into the Budget, because the single criterion that matters most for the way that a suggestion is taken in this place is not how good it is but what side of the House it has come from. It is no wonder that this place is in such a mess.

[Douglas Ross (Moray) (Con)]

Can the hon. Gentleman explain how he believes the Scottish Budget will take place this year now that his party has gone into a coalition of chaos with the Scottish Greens? Will there be a similar adoption of ideas from the Opposition parties in Scotland?

[Peter Grant]

During the previous time that there was a pro-independence majority in the Scottish Parliament, that majority Government did in fact open their door to discussions with the other parties, and the hon. Gentleman’s party was quite happy to take advantage of that. He may remember, in fact, that it was an initial suggestion from his party that led to the Scottish Government introducing and maintaining to this day a record of 1,000 additional police officers compared with the maximum number that ever existed in Scotland under the previous Lib Dem-Labour coalition.

This will be seen as the year the Tories finally ditched any pretext that Budget day has anything to do with the public finances, helping the economic recovery or sustainable growth. Budget day has become purely and simply a propaganda exercise for the Government, and particularly for the Chancellor. That is what the days and days of utterly inexcusable leaks were about—leaks that until 10 years ago would have meant automatic dismissal or resignation for the Chancellor. The Chancellor seems to measure its success not by how effectively it closes the gap between rich and poor, because it does not, or by whether it delivers on any of his party’s manifesto promises—that is on the off chance that anybody can find any that havenae been broken—but on how many favourable headlines he gets in the right-wing press. It is almost as if the Chancellor has worked out how important the right-wing press is going to be in choosing the next Tory leader in a year or two’s time when the present incumbent gets fed up with being Prime Minister and goes off to do something different.

This Government have a track record of spending millions of pounds on pushing soundbite slogans that are utterly meaningless. [Interruption.] I will give way to the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) if he has got—[Interruption.] Okay, if he does not want to intervene he can keep his mouth shut. In 2015, George Osborne gave us a “long-term economic plan” that changed, on average, every three months until he resigned. In 2017, we had “strong and stable”, leaving Britain weaker and less stable than it has ever been in peacetime. In 2019, we had “get Brexit done”, which meant we all got done over by Brexit, and in 2019 also we had an “oven-ready deal” that left most of us feeling that we had been stuffed like Christmas turkeys. This month’s catchphrase is “levelling up”. Looking at the detail of this “levelling up” Budget, it is like claiming that you have levelled out the potholes on the road by digging a massive great hole somewhere else in the road to supply the rubble to fill in the original potholes. It is about filling in holes left behind elsewhere in our economy and in our public services by 11-and-a-half years of a failed Tory Government trying unsuccessfully to maintain a failed British state.

The Government want us to believe that they are making things better for some people without making them worse for anybody else. Some people will get a bigger piece of pie, but nobody will have to make do with a wee-er piece of pie. You cannae do that unless the pie is getting bigger, but the fact is that the pie is still much, much smaller than it was when the Tories came to power.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies said in response to the Budget:

“For most departments, the budget increases announced today will be welcome, but not enough to reverse the cuts of the 2010s.”

If the best the Tories can say about this Budget is that, with a following wind and a wee bit of luck, they might just be about be able to remediate most of the damaging cuts they have inflicted on us during their term of office, that does not strike me as a cause for celebration. That is why they will not see a great deal of positive responses to the Budget from those on this side of the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Douglas Ross (Moray) (Con)]

I know that time is tight tonight, but I cannot let the speech from the hon. Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant) go without some response. It was lacking much coherence and any credibility. We heard from him that the covid-19 pandemic should have been predicted. His party have been in government in Scotland for almost a decade and a half, and I do not remember at any point, prior to covid hitting, warnings about that pandemic.

As for credibility, I would have had a little bit of support for the hon. Gentleman if he could at least recognise that this Budget delivers £600 million of additional funding to the Scottish Government this year; and that, for the next three years, it delivers an additional funding pot of £4.6 billion each year for the Scottish Government added on top of what they already have, making it the most generous settlement since devolution in 1999. The SNP now has more money to spend as a Scottish Government than any of their predecessors, and it has to recognise that this has been a very good Budget for Scotland.

The hon. Gentleman spoke about a local distillery in his constituency and how the Government should look at the taxation scheme to support the employees in that distillery. I hope that he considers that when he goes to the SNP conference later this month, because a motion is laid down in its conference papers right now calling for his party to look at “raising additional revenue by taxing the significant profits of the Scotch whisky industry”.

[Peter Grant]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Douglas Ross]

I will give way, using my own time, to hear what the hon. Gentleman thinks about the proposal from his fellow SNP members to tax whisky even more.

[Peter Grant]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the SNP policy is that spirits should be fairly taxed regardless of how they are produced, unlike the system that has been maintained in the United Kingdom since the day alcohol taxation was first invented? Does he accept that that is the SNP’s policy as of now?

[Douglas Ross]

I will come on to taxation, because the Exchequer Secretary is sitting on the Front Bench and I want to make my own comments about that. However, there was nothing from the hon. Gentleman, leading the SNP in the response to the Budget debate tonight, about what his party are putting forward for debate at its conference later this month, which would see taxation on Scotch whisky go up. What we have seen from this Government is a fifth successive UK Government Budget that has frozen taxation on Scotch whisky, and that is something that I welcome for the many distilleries in Moray and across the country. There has been nothing from him or any SNP representatives so far tonight about the £172 million being invested by this Government on levelling-up projects across Scotland. From the borders to Edinburgh, from Ayrshire to Aberdeen, those projects will get funding from this Government.

The hon. Member for Inverclyde (Ronnie Cowan), another SNP speaker today, used a quotation to suggest that he would wash the money coming from the UK Government to deliver these projects. These are projects that have been outstanding in Scotland for years. If the SNP Government had acted to deliver them, they would not be looking for investment from the UK Government, but because we have devolution and Scotland has two Governments, we are seeing the UK Government delivering these projects where the Scottish Government have failed.

Finally, I want to comment on the duty freeze on spirits, which is very welcome in Scotland. We know that there is a wider review of alcohol taxation in the United Kingdom; the Prime Minister announced it at Roseisle distillery in 2019 on a campaign visit to Moray. While the Exchequer Secretary is on the Front Bench, will she reassure the distilleries in my constituency and the Scotch Whisky Association that this Government will be true to their word? In their briefing notes on the Queen’s Speech after the 2019 election, they said that the review would

“ensure our tax system is supporting Scottish whisky and gin producers and protecting 42,000 jobs supported by Scotch across the UK.”

That is what I will be holding this Government to. I hope to see a very good response in the near future.