Devolution in Scotland

Johanna Baxter Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Graham Leadbitter]

It is the adult disability payment in Scotland, rather than PIP. Fundamentally—I am sure the hon. Lady knows this—if the UK Government decide to cut a vast amount out of the social security system, that will have a really significant impact on the Scottish budget. Week after week, Labour Members call for more money to be spent on certain things in Scotland, but at the same time they seem to be suggesting a substantial cut to the Scottish budget with the change to the social security budget.

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

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Graham Leadbitter]

Can I respond to the first intervention first?

If a substantial budget cut comes through on the back of that, that will have a serious impact on what the Scottish Government can do, whatever colour that Scottish Government may be following the next elections.

[Johanna Baxter]

I thank the hon. Member for giving way. He talks about a budget cut to the Scottish Government, but does he not recognise that this Westminster Government have actually given the Scottish Government the largest funding settlement in the history of devolution? What has happened to the money?

[Graham Leadbitter]

I gently remind Labour Members that every single year should be the largest devolution budget, because inflation goes up every year. There has not been a negative inflationary year in my lifetime, so it should be going up every year. There should be a record settlement every single year. That is just inflation. That is basic economics. I know those on the Government Benches struggle with that sometimes.

On council tax and water charges, we have the lowest in the UK. We are, for over a decade, the top destination outside London for foreign investment. Since the SNP came to power in 2007, GDP per capita has grown in Scotland by 10.3% and by 6.1% for the rest of the UK.

There are things that have been done, both by the Labour and Liberal Executive in the first few years of the Parliament and by the SNP Government since 2007, that have delivered substantial benefits for the people of Scotland. On health, briefly, we have had more GPs per head than any other part of the UK for the past five years; they are also the best paid, recognising the challenge and importance of that role. Scotland’s core A&Es have been the best performing in the UK for nine years, with lower average waiting times. We have abolished prescription charges and, as the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) referred to, we have free eye examinations as well. In addition, more than 1,000 school building projects have been completed since 2007, and 96% of our school leavers go into further training, further education or workplaces.

In his submission to the Backbench Business Committee, the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross described this place as the parent of the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government, but I would describe the Scottish people as the parent of the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government through the Scottish Constitutional Convention. I very much commend the hon. Member for his work in that role. Fundamentally, I would say that the parent of the Scottish Parliament is the Scottish people who voted for it and who continue to back it and elect it and the Government.

That brings me to my final point. The Scottish Parliament is on a journey. It was formed in 1999 and has continued on a journey.

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[Johanna Baxter]

My hon. Friend talks eloquently about the pressures on the health services in Scotland under the SNP Government. Does she share my concern about the dental deserts that now exist in Scotland? Just yesterday, a constituent contacted me to say that they had been told that their daughter would have to wait three years for an orthodontist appointment—or they could pay more than £2,000 and receive a private appointment in two weeks.

[Melanie Ward]

My hon. Friend makes an important point about something we see too frequently across Scotland: our people being forced to opt in to private healthcare because they cannot get treatment under the SNP’s NHS. That is completely unacceptable. I know that similar waits exist for assessments for autism and for mental health support. There is a crisis across Fife and the Scottish Government are refusing to give NHS Fife the support needed to try to make a difference.

The problems do not just exist in our health system; sadly, they also exist in our education system. Our educational outcomes in Scotland worsened this year, with the gap in attainment between the richest and poorest students growing, including in Fife; that happened after Nicola Sturgeon said that eradicating that attainment gap was the priority on which she wanted her record as First Minister to be judged. As my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow West (Patricia Ferguson) said earlier, Scottish Government failure on the targets they set for themselves is a hallmark of their time in office. The same Nicola Sturgeon proclaims her love of literature at book festivals, yet she was part of successive Governments who have presided over the closure of almost 100 libraries in Scotland.

On skills, we saw the UK Government having to step in recently to save a welding skills centre because the SNP Government refused to do so. The SNP Government’s indifference and often opposition to the highly skilled, highly paid jobs that the defence industry provides across Scotland and in constituencies such as mine has meant young workers missing out on the opportunity of a secure, highly paid job. It is also deeply irresponsible at such a dangerous time in the world, with Russian aggression in Europe right on our doorstep.

All those cuts stack up, while the bill to the taxpayer for SNP waste becomes ever more eye-watering: nearly £1 billion spent on Barlinnie prison, almost double the original cost; more than £400 million or four times the original estimate spent on two ferries, with one ferry still not in service eight years later; and let us not forget the costly shambles that was the deposit return scheme, flunked by the SNP and the Greens and described by the SNP’s leader in Westminster, the right hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Stephen Flynn), as a “self-inflicted wound”.

The purpose of devolution is supposed to be to take action in Scotland on Scotland’s problems, and to help to make our nation the best it can be. Yet too often that is not the reality under this Scottish Government, as a couple of examples from my own constituency show. At the peak of summer this year, when many businesses in Kinghorn and Burntisland were looking forward to making the most of tourism season, because we are blessed by beautiful beaches, the beaches were closed because sewage spills made the water unsafe to swim. Some of my constituents became physically sick because they had swum among sewage, yet the chief executive of publicly owned Scottish Water said over the summer that the concerns of my constituents “should not be overblown”. This issue has a real social and economic impact on people in my constituency, not to mention a health impact. It is the direct result of the SNP’s failure to invest in our sewerage network and in regular water-quality monitoring.

I wrote to the Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Climate Action and Energy in August and received a response that began with a comparison between Scottish and English bathing waters. We are familiar with that: if we raise a problem in Scotland, we hear, “Well, it is worse in England.” Even if that were true, that is exactly why this Labour Government are taking tough measures to crack down on polluting water companies. Yet water quality is another devolved issue, creating significant problems that the SNP Scottish Government seem completely disinterested in solving.

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

I thank the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) for securing this important debate.

The last Labour Government had many remarkable achievements, including Sure Start, the national minimum wage and the Human Rights Act 1998, but right up there among our proudest was delivering devolution to Scotland. That was our vision, rooted in the belief that communities are best placed to make local decisions that shape their lives. I know this might age me somewhat, but I was proud to be active in the campaign for the establishment of the Scottish Parliament and campaign for a Parliament that had tax-varying powers. Indeed, I still have my “Yes-Yes” t-shirt to prove it.

We have seen the success of devolution in London, Manchester and Liverpool, with better transport, more house building and more investment in grassroots sports. When power is put in the hands of those who know their communities best, devolution delivers. Yet I fear that the obsession of the SNP Government in Holyrood with seeking to rerun referendum after referendum has paralysed Government north of the border. Their endless fixation on independence has come at the expense of delivery. They promised more homes but built a housing crisis; they pledged to strengthen our NHS but put party politics over patients; and instead of serving Scotland they have sunk to sleaze and scandal.

Councils across our country are on their knees after funding cuts year after year. Local government funding in Scotland over the last 18 years has fallen by 42%, which is less than it would have been had it kept up with inflation. In a summer interview promoting her catalogue of career failures, Nicola Sturgeon admitted that she might leave Scotland “for a wee while”—the great champion for independence now fleeing the wreck her party has created. While London, Manchester and Liverpool reap the rewards of devolution done properly, for the last 18 years Scotland has been left with a Government more interested in constitutional games than the real business of governing. Although that might be a game to some of those on the Opposition Benches, the consequences for my constituents are very real, and I will speak to one example.

While the Scottish Government have been handed the largest funding settlement in the history of devolution by this Labour Government, in my constituency of Paisley and Renfrewshire South, the SNP-run health and social care partnership is swinging the axe on vital frontline services to plug a £19 million black hole in its budget that it created. Right now, it is holding voluntary severance talks across the partnership, cutting jobs and gutting and hollowing out services that have already been stripped to the bone.

Users of the Disability Resource Centre, which is a lifeline for people living with physical disabilities, many of whom reside in my constituency, now face a review of their fees and transport costs backdated to April. That potentially means bills of more than £1,000 hitting the doorsteps of some of the most vulnerable people in our community, driving them out the back door and slamming it shut on the vital services that they rely on across Renfrewshire.

Last year, the SNP locally was humiliated into a U-turn on a proposed merger of the Mirin and Milldale day centres after brave campaigners stood up to say no to cuts to the vital services their families rely on. Yet last month, the SNP dragged back the same cruel proposal, putting the same families through the same anguish all over again. It is cynical, it is calculated and it is downright cruel. Hon. Members need not just take my word for it. These are the words of Linda Murray, a member of the Renfrewshire Learning Disability Carers Group, who said last month:

“We knew it wasn’t a done deal last year. We basically got a stay of execution…We’re tired, we’re exhausted, it took a lot out of all of us and we expected to at least get a couple of years’ grace”.

We have seen it all before. Just like its endless independence obsession, the SNP ignores the will of the people and grinds our communities down until exhaustion delivers it the outcome it demands. That is not democracy; it is harassment of vulnerable families. The result is that the most vulnerable people in my community are robbed of the care that they rely on. That is not just a failure of leadership; it is a disgrace. The SNP lead for the local integrated joint board said:

“The IJB’s financial challenges have been well documented”.

I rarely say this of the SNP, but I happen to agree with her. Those financial challenges have been well documented, so why have the local SNP representatives not challenged their own Government in Holyrood to get them the money that they rely on, especially when the Government have been given such a generous financial settlement from this Labour Government?

In truth, it has been 18 wasted years—years of scandal, years of sleaze and years of division—while schools in my communities have been subject to decline, our hospitals struggle and our services face collapse. This is not about money, because the Scottish Government have the money. This is not about powers, because they have the powers. This is about excuses, and for the SNP Government in Holyrood, they have no excuses left. Scotland deserves better, our NHS deserves better, our local people deserve better, and next year, the people of Scotland can choose a new and fresh direction with a Scottish Labour Government led by Anas Sarwar.