Budget: Scotland

Johanna Baxter Excerpts

Tuesday 7th January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Johanna Baxter (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Gregor Poynton) for securing the debate.

This Labour Government have committed £47.7 billion in funding for Scotland for 2025-26—the largest Budget settlement in the history of devolution. That includes £3.4 billion allocated through the Barnett formula, supporting Scotland’s public services to get back on their feet. The settlement prioritises investment in key public services, including significant funding for our NHS. That is an additional £789 million in health-related consequentials for 2024-25 and £1.72 billion for Scotland’s NHS in 2025-26. Despite that unprecedented financial support, Scotland’s NHS remains in crisis. One in six Scots now sits on an NHS waiting list.

Social care remains a significant area of concern under the SNP’s leadership. Whereas our UK Government have announced plans for an independent commission on social care and have put in place an interim package of support, the SNP has had to abandon its National Care Service (Scotland) Bill, wasting millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money while 9,000 people in Scotland wait for social care assessments and support.

My constituents in Paisley and Renfrewshire South would no doubt question why, given the level of financial support the Scottish Government have, the local SNP-controlled Renfrewshire council has just made the disgraceful decision to approve £19.1 million of cuts to health and social care provision across my constituency. That decision will directly affect the most vulnerable people in the communities in my area. It comes on the back of cuts already made with the closure of the Montrose care home and cuts to vital services such as the Falcon day services, which support people with disabilities. They are further evidence of the SNP’s lack of a coherent plan to fix social care in Scotland.

We are running short of time, so to enable others to get in I will leave it here. The Labour Government’s investment in Scotland marks a new chapter for Scotland—one that prioritises investment in public services that work for Scottish people and fixes the foundations of our country. The SNP has no excuses now and nowhere to hide. It should use the money it has been given to support the most vulnerable people in our communities.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Bowie]

These socks were a Christmas present from my mother; I promised her that I would wear them at work and that is what I am doing today. They are very good socks, so I thank the hon. Gentleman for drawing the Chamber’s attention to them.

As I was saying, that was Labour’s workers tax—their state penalty on family businesses—and its first attack on business. Let us turn to its second attack on successful Scottish industries, specifically the Scotch whisky industry. The week after Burns night, which is in a couple of weeks’ time, tax on spirits such as whisky will rise, and will continue to rise by a percentage higher than the consumer prices index. The industry is already suffering from a decision to raise duty by 10% last year, which some of us protested about from within Government at the time, and which led to a reduction by £300 million in revenue for Treasury. The move by Labour increases the tax discrimination on spirits and undermines any claim that this Government can make about supporting brand Scotland. If this is how the Government treat Scotland’s national export, we really have some big questions to ask.

This Labour Government are taxing entrepreneurship and penalising success. However, they are not content with hammering small businesses, our workers and our most successful food and drink export. They are also intent on destroying one of our most successful industries, one which is integral to the economic success of north-east Scotland and on which so many thousands of jobs and indeed our energy security depend—our oil and gas sector.

The decision to extend and increase the energy profits levy, to remove most of the investment allowances and to ban all further exploration is driving away investment and leaving us far more reliant on foreign imports. The evidence is there. Apache has already said that it is pulling out of the North sea and there were others to follow. Labour’s changes to the windfall tax will cost up to 35,000 jobs and £13 billion in economic value, and all so that it could splurge on eye-watering public sector pay rises to buy off its union paymasters, who supported Labour into Government. But I have not finished yet.

[Johanna Baxter]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that is not buying off union paymasters but delivering a pay rise for hard-working Scots?

[Andrew Bowie]

The hon. Lady should tell that to the hard-working Scots who are being laid off in Aberdeen in north-east Scotland as a direct result of the decisions of this Labour Government, including their decision to extend the energy profits levy, ban new investment in the North sea and preclude new exploration. She should tell that to those hard-working Scots who are worried about what the decisions by this Government will mean for them and their families, and whether they will have a job in Aberdeen in north-east Scotland in the next few years. Those hard-working Scots look with terror at what this Government are bringing down the line.

I have not even turned to farming yet. I am incredibly proud to represent some of the best farms producing the best berries, beef, lamb and crops in Scotland. The vast majority of those farms are family-owned, but due to the changes in the agriculture and business property reliefs that I outlined when I described the situation facing family businesses, their future is incredibly uncertain. Many farmers have already come into my office and claimed that it is now simply too expensive and too difficult to countenance passing their farm on to the next generation. This Labour Government are overseeing the destruction of our family farms. Even worse than that, however, is that their naivety or their incompetence, or possibly a terrifying combination of both, has seen the Labour Government announce that the agricultural funding to Scotland will no longer be ringfenced, despite the specific and pointed ask of the NFUS during the election and in the run-up to the Budget.

The impact of Budget 2024 on Scotland is, in one word, disastrous. Our small and medium-sized businesses have been hammered by additional taxes; our family firms and family farms fear for their future; our whisky industry is punished yet again for its success; our oil and gas industry, and its workers, have been sacrificed on the altar of the eco-mania, or possibly the egomania, of the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero; our agricultural sector has been ignored; and our Union, frankly, has been undermined.

Growth is falling, confidence is collapsing, uncertainty is rising and people in business are worse off. That is the impact of Budget 2024 in Scotland. I wish my friends in the Labour party well in trying to sell this Budget to the people of Scotland, who seem mightily unimpressed with the Government’s performance thus far.