Budget Resolutions

Jamie Stone Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Joani Reid (East Kilbride and Strathaven) (Lab)]

Nobody is more pessimistic about Scotland’s future than the SNP. John Swinney has been working extremely hard the past couple of days to ensure that no inappropriate celebrations are held. One of his complaints, covered in the press today, is that Labour is cutting energy bills by only £150, with that doubling for the poorest households. But we on the Government Benches are not pessimistic when it comes to Scotland’s future—we are optimistic, and we are backing that optimism with cold, hard cash.

Some £10 billion of additional funding for Scotland has been announced since the Labour party took office last July. That money is available because in the United Kingdom, we pool resources and we share strength. That money could be used to improve our schools—once our greatest pride, they have slid down the international league tables. That money, coming from a Labour Budget, could be used to deliver significant improvements in the NHS, and yet under the SNP, waiting times keep on rising. That money could be used to tackle crime, something that is needed given the alarming rise in violence.

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

Further to the remarks of the hon. Member for Arbroath and Broughty Ferry (Stephen Gethins) about Scotland, where pregnant mothers in my constituency have to make a 200-mile round trip to give birth, would it not be great if some of this money was spent to make the maternity service fair for mums?

[Joani Reid]

I could not agree more. More than that, the SNP needs to deliver on promise after promise that it has made about the NHS while absolutely failing to deliver any improvements, despite the fact that Scotland has been given a record settlement. The money is out there, but under the tired and wired SNP, the ideas to use it effectively are not.

It is my belief that Labour’s victory in Scotland’s general election rested on the support of three core groups. The first were young families and couples paying their first mortgage. I have met hundreds of such families on the doorstep in East Kilbride, Strathaven and across our villages. I know that the past 18 months have been tough, but we are now delivering for those families; mortgage costs are down and wages are up, and the Budget brings new action to cut fuel bills by between £150 and £300 a year.

Our second key group of supporters were people who are in work but rely on benefits to help to pay their bills. For 14 years, they were soft targets for austerity and denounced by right wingers as scroungers. Despite many of them working every hour they could, they increasingly struggled to support themselves and their families, and many were desperate for help to arrive—and help has now arrived. I am proud to support this redistributive Budget and proud to back a Government who do things like twice announcing substantial increases in the minimum wage, abolishing the two-child benefit cap, with the despicable rape clause, and legislating for a real-terms increase in universal credit. The last measure alone will directly benefit 450,000 households in Scotland.

The third group who voted for us back in July last year were those aged between 18 and 24—the hundreds of thousands of young people whom the SNP Government have completely ignored. They are not the ones living in Glasgow’s west end or Edinburgh’s Morningside, who do not look to further education colleges to give them the training and skills that they need to get on in life. Here I admit that the news is mixed, because yes, a UK Government can invest directly in Grangemouth to lead the way in bringing in the skills needed for the clean energy future, or back Inchgreen dry dock to help access to defence-related jobs—both are happening thanks to this Budget—but no Budget can change the SNP’s policy of starving FE colleges of money or doing everything it can to block the renewal of Scotland’s nuclear fleet. To change any of that, we need to get Anas Sarwar into Bute House as the First Minister next May, and it is our belief that we can see that happen. That is our final piece of optimism for Scotland.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

Last week I had the pleasure of visiting a very remote part of Wester Ross—a new part of my constituency—with the intrepid Olivia and Susie from my office. We went first to Badluarach on the south side of Little Loch Broom. There, I spoke with a crofter, Lisa Stewart, across the wall of her croft. She was initially rather startled when I appeared, partly because I was dressed like this, and I think she mistook me for a Mormon missionary.

We spoke of many things, one of which was that we had in the past an outreach clinic at Dundonnell where nurses and doctors would attend, and local people— elderly people in particular—could go with their ailments without having to make the long return trip to Ullapool. After covid, that once-a-week service was reduced to once a month, and Madam Deputy Speaker, you can imagine what concern that causes my constituents in this remote area, particularly the elderly and particularly during winter weather.

Our intrepid trio then travelled in a little open ferry to Scoraig, on the other side of Little Loch Broom. The weather was choppy, the wind was getting up and I, in my suit, got rather soaked by the spray. In Scoraig, the locals told us about their deep concern at the state of their little jetty and of the similar one at Badluarach, which we had left earlier. I might point out that although Scoraig is on the mainland—it is on a peninsula—it is entirely inaccessible by any road; one can only get there by ferry. If one of these little jetties goes down, people cannot get to see the doctor or the nurse, and secondary pupils who spend the week in Ullapool cannot return to their homes for the weekend.

There is a point behind all this, Madam Deputy Speaker. We heard in the Budget that His Majesty’s Government are giving the Scottish Government £820 million, and people in the remote parts of my constituency want to know where that money goes, because we see precious little of it ever coming to where we need it. We need the money to be spent on doing up the little jetties, and it would not cost much to do them up. We need the money to keep the clinic in Dundonnell open. It is incredibly important to people, but we always seem to see the money spent further south.

What I am arguing for is a degree of transparency in the way the Scottish Government go about their spending. I am not saying for one instant that we in Westminster, or the UK Government, should tell the Scottish Government how to spend their money, but if we could see where the money was going, colleagues of any party whatsoever in Holyrood could start to ask the difficult questions—the questions that should be asked.

I am going to abuse my position in my last minute and simply make the following point, which I think would help the Budget. Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks is upgrading the grid all over Scotland, and I accept that that is a strategic necessity for this country. Where SSEN proposes to put in a battery or new pylons, it is offering financial incentives—money—to local communities that will be affected. The important thing is that the electricity generated in the Western Isles will come through a vast undersea cable to Little Loch Broom. It will make landfall at Dundonnell, and then possibly come to where we are today, but the communities either side of that loch—Badluarach on one side, and Scoraig on the other—will receive not a penny. I hope that SSEN is listening to us, because there is a moral argument that it should take into account those communities as well. That money would be of enormous assistance to the UK’s Budget and the Scottish Budget.