Comprehensive Spending Review

Stewart Hosie Excerpts

Thursday 28th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Danny Alexander]

I will press on, and give way in a moment.

Thanks to Labour’s profligacy, there really was no money left. The country knew it, our business leaders knew it, and, as we discovered, the Labour Chief Secretary knew it too. By May, the alarm bells were ringing—the danger was real. Whether one wants an expansive social policy, a smaller state, or more or less public spending, it must be underpinned by proper control of the public finances. If that control is lost, the policies that have been built, whatever they are, will inevitably crumble.

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

The Chief Secretary said that to be taken seriously one needs to have a credible and detailed plan. He then went on to say that the Government have laid out their plans in detail, so perhaps he can give us some of that detail. Which Revenue offices will shut? Where will the Department for Work and Pensions closures be? Among the 35,000 Ministry of Defence civilians, where will the jobs be lost? Will he give us the detail in the same way as when the spending plans in the 2004 and 2007 CSRs were announced?

[Danny Alexander]

There is a great deal of detail in the spending review document, as the hon. Gentleman knows because he has had a chance to study it, and of course Departments will set out more detail in due course. He would have a bit more credibility on the subject of controlling the public finances if his colleagues in the European Parliament had not just voted for the 6% rise in the European Union budgets.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

The one thing that I would say about the CSR is that—no matter how many times the Chancellor said it during his statement, no matter how many times the Chief Secretary said it today and no matter how loudly the hon. Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride) said it a moment ago—it was not fair. The cuts—£81 billion a year by 2014-15—and the tax rises were not unavoidable.

Every decision taken by the coalition was a political one, but it was the failure to understand the consequences of the decisions that astonished me. Nowhere was that more so than in the defence elements of the CSR and the strategic defence and security review that went along with it. The decision to cancel the Nimrod programme puts a huge threat over RAF Kinloss and a huge question mark over RAF Lossiemouth,

[Greg Hands (Chelsea and Fulham) (Con)]

What would happen under Scottish independence?

[Stewart Hosie]

The Parliamentary Private Secretary is chuntering away about Scottish independence. It is interesting, is it not? He normally wants to deprecate countries such as Ireland and Iceland, but they still sit above the UK in the world prosperity league. I shall give him a copy of The Scotsman to look at later, before he decides on another ill-judged sedentary intervention.

The bottom line is that those defence cuts threaten to add to the 10,000 military job losses under Labour and to the £5.6 billion military underspend in Scotland under Labour. Far more importantly, they would represent a 25% reduction in the entire military footprint in Scotland. If the cuts go ahead, they will represent a 25% hollowing out of the entire economy of Moray. When Conservative Ministers say that we are all in it together, it strikes me that that is not absolutely true and that it is not absolutely fair.

The CSR was not just about the Scottish block but about other UK spending decisions, yet somehow Scotland was portrayed as doing better than most UK Departments. That is nothing but spin. The House of Commons Library makes it clear that the Department of Health, the Department for International Development, the Department of Energy and Climate Change, the Department for Work and Pensions, the Ministry of Defence, the Cabinet Office, the Treasury, the Law Officers, the Northern Ireland Office, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and the Wales Office all did better. A little more substance and a little less spin would not go amiss.

That is important because the cuts represent £1.3 billion in cash terms next year and, above all expectations, there will be an £800 million cut in capital expenditure. That directly threatens 12,000 Scottish jobs. It is dreadfully disappointing—the cuts were announced on the same day as the Scottish quarter 2 GDP figures, which showed Scottish growth up at 1.3%, above the 1.2% for the UK, and confirmed the decision to have direct capital investment to protect jobs during the recession. That makes it all the more ludicrous that the Government would seek cuts of such magnitude before recovery is secure.

[Rehman Chishti]

Did the hon. Gentleman respond to the Government’s spending challenge with his own ideas about where the savings should be made, with £44 billion as a starting point?

[Stewart Hosie]

What I did, possibly before the hon. Gentleman was a Member of the House, was to table amendments to previous legislation to set out a much more sensible framework for a proper programme of fiscal consolidation, based on the successful New Zealand model, rather than the flawed Canadian model that his party and the Liberal party are now following.

One of the things that I find extraordinary, which the Chief Secretary could not explain earlier, was the lack of detail in the Government’s plans. The Department for Transport is expected, among other things, to reduce its administrative costs by one third—£100 million a year. The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is expected, among other things, to reduce its administrative costs by £400 million. In the Home Office, the UK Border Agency is expected to cut its support function costs by £500 million.

I am not necessarily saying that that cannot be done: what I am asking is how. Which offices will close, how many jobs will be lost, how many staff will be sacked, and where are they located? Of the 42,000 job losses in the military—the 25,000 civilian and the 17,000 uniformed —which ones are those, in which units, where are they currently based, and when will they go? Why would not or could not the Chief Secretary give us that information today? It gives the impression that the Government are making it up as they go along.

I am aware that time is short and I know that many other Members want to speak, so I have a specific question for Treasury Ministers. Page 50 of the comprehensive spending review makes it clear that

“interest rates on Public Works Loan Board (PWLB) loans have been increased to 1 per cent above UK government gilts.”

It goes on to add, unsurprisingly:

“The amount of self-financed capital expenditure is forecast to fall by 17 per cent over the four years.”

This will bring in to the Government, according to the table on page 12, £1.3 billion. That will be about £120 million from Scotland.

Will the Minister please confirm that there will be a requirement in Scotland for another £120 million of cuts, and £1.3 billion of cuts throughout the whole of the UK, in order to find the money to pay the extra £1.3 billion in interest charges because of the increase on Public Works Loan Board loans? I would be grateful for confirmation of that today.