Luke Graham
Main Page: Luke Graham (Conservative - Ochil and South Perthshire)Department Debates - View all Luke Graham's debates with the HM Treasury
Devolved Powers in Scotland
Luke Graham Excerpts(7 years, 2 months ago)
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Luke Graham (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I will make it nice and brief. Devolution, as my colleagues rightly said, was meant to bring power closer to people and to ensure that our two levels of government worked better together.
I want to focus on spending choices in health and education. In health, we know that there is a gap. In England, spending has been increased by 50% in the last 10 years. In Scotland, spending has increased by 34% and, after 20 years of devolution and 10 years of SNP Government, Scottish people still have the lowest life expectancy in the whole United Kingdom. That is a problem.
My real focus today, however, is on education. To put it bluntly, the nation of the enlightenment is foundering under the yoke of nationalism. Despite substantially higher overall spending in Scotland—£37.9 billion, up from £34.2 billion—Scottish schools and colleges have suffered. Spending in further education has been squeezed by the decision to abolish the graduate endowment fee, increasing the burden on the public purse to pay for free tuition fees for Scottish and EU students, although not for our nearest neighbours from England, Wales and Northern Ireland. That decision has actually led to a smaller percentage of deprived children going to university than in any other part of the United Kingdom. Just 12.5% of the poorest 20% in Scotland go to university, versus 20.2% in England. Since 2006, our reading score has dropped from 499 to 493; our mathematics score from 506 to 491; and our science score from 515 to 497.
That is unacceptable, but it is not just the SNP’s spending decisions in education and health that are harming Scotland; it is the deliberately divisive nature of the SNP Administration—from frustrating the relationship with the UK Government to the Cabinet Secretary for the Economy, who is from my constituency, refusing to meet me about a city deal for four weeks and counting. That is neither good nor bad devolution; it is dysfunctional devolution, and we need to bring it to an end.
Tommy Sheppard
Sit down, please. I have not got time.
Despite that adversity, there have been many achievements. Time is short, so let me list just 10. First, in Scotland, people get free medicine. Since that policy was introduced, 34,000 free prescriptions have been issued in Stirling.
In Scotland, we do what we can to make taxation progressive. Higher-rate taxpayers in Scotland today pay more than they do in England. People with larger houses pay more when they sell them than they do in England, and people who live in larger houses pay more council tax than they do in England.