Finance (No. 4) Bill

Debate between Stewart Hosie and Michael Connarty

Wednesday 18th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Stewart Hosie]

That is absolutely right, but I want to be careful in answering. It is not good enough to say that people in the north or Wales or Northern Ireland or Scotland will lose, because unemployment and poverty in London is enormous. The geographical areas are not the ones traditionally described in lazy journalism—it is not that the north is poor and the south is rich—because pockets of poverty and of wealth exist in every single constituency in the country. The hon. Lady is right, however, that there are such pockets.

Even with all the pain and austerity, and the social and economic problems that the Government’s plans will cause, the Chancellor has been able to find a tax cut for millionaires. How does he justify it? Whatever his justification, the measure does not make sense economically, to answer the points made by the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns), who seemed to think that the measure is economically robust.

The Government’s fiscal rules—that the structural current deficit should be in balance and that debt is falling as a share of GDP in the final year of the forecast—are under enormous pressure. The problem—this is the evidence we ought to look at—is that the deficit in this Budget was forecast in the 2011 Red Book for 2011-12 to be £90 billion, but it is now forecast to be £98 billion. That is £8 billion worse than planned. The net borrowing requirement in the 2011 Red Book was forecast for 2011-12 to be £122 billion; it is now £126 billion. That is £4 billion worse than planned. The national debt or the treaty ratio that was due to peak at 87.2% of GDP—£1.25 trillion—in 2013-14 is now expected to rise, on the same count, to 92.7% of GDP in 2014-15. That is up again; it is worse than the Government’s forecasts. Everything is going in the wrong direction, so this is the wrong time to forgo revenue yield.

[Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman has set out the figures for the overarching macro-economic situation very well, but is it not clear from the OBR that the effect on business investment will be minus 6.8%? The Budget incentivises no one in terms of the real growth that we require.

[Stewart Hosie]

The points on business investment are incredibly well made. The Government’s targets were based on heroic rates of growth over four and five-year periods, but the 2011 Budget forecast for 2011 business investment growth was 6.7%. By the time of the 2012 Red Book, the forecast was 0.2%. The 2011 Budget forecast for 2012 was 8.9%, but as the hon. Gentleman says, that has been marked down to only 0.7%. Of course, that makes it even more extraordinary that there is a net fall year on year of central Government consumption and investment, which in normal circumstances in normal countries would be called an automatic stabiliser and would compensate. Of course, this country does not have that.

That means that for the Government to stay on their course, they almost certainly need the revenue yield that the 50p rate would have delivered. There is a debate on precisely how much that yield is. It could be the £360 million over four years forecast in the Red Book, or it could be the higher £3 billion a year static forecast we have heard cited. Whatever the actual figure, given that all those other metrics are going in the wrong direction, it is extraordinary that the Chancellor is prepared to forgo any revenue yields, whether they are in the hundreds of millions of the £1 billion range.

Scotland Bill

Debate between Stewart Hosie and Michael Connarty

Tuesday 15th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Connarty]

I am not giving way yet.

If this is about the electorate—I hope it is, rather than about the manipulation of party machinery—it is important that the electorate know who is representing them. The system at the moment is not clear—indeed, it is deliberately confusing for the electorate. It has nothing to do with the intelligence of the electorate; it is a matter of how all the political parties use the list system. We should genuinely consider moving to a system that can be recommended for its clarity. Having two constituency Members for the Scottish Parliament and one Member for this Parliament would be correct and clear, and people would like it.

What has happened is that people in this place do not care whether the electorate like it or not. This is the key point: they do not treat the electorate properly. I have to say that the SNP argument is completely flawed. It has nothing to do with whether SNP Members respect the electorate; it is about whether their party can get an advantage out of it. It is the same with all minority parties. If my party acts in the same way, it is equally wrong. I therefore believe that new clause 1 deserves serious consideration and support. If parties want to top up to a certain number because they cannot run the place without 129 Members, that is where the additional Members should come from. We should call these people what they are—party-nominated Members. That is what happens in Germany: people are nominated by their parties to appear on the list to stand for Parliament or for the European Parliament. People are clear about what they are getting, but what they are not getting is representation.

On new clause 2, the use of resources must be controlled in some way. In Scotland, people are running party machinery in constituencies using the list system resources. To have an office in Whitburn, someone should be representing all the Lothians. For that office to be used only for one Member who is trying to become the first-past-the-post Member for the Linlithgow constituency is the wrong use of resources—and we must find some way of controlling that.

[Stewart Hosie]

The hon. Gentleman makes that allegation, so can he confirm that this is a parliamentary office for list Members and not a party office?

[Michael Connarty]

My understanding is that it is an office used by the Member of the Scottish Parliament, who happens to be the person who keeps standing for election to the constituency under first past the post. That may be coincidental; it may be that it is so difficult for the other Lothian Members to get public transport from the centre of the city to the office that they use it solely as a telephone base.

It is important for us to bear in mind the aspiration of the House of Commons that list Members should represent a party that will use them in a way that bolsters the process in the Parliament, rather than shattering and scattering them throughout Scotland and sending them scurrying after votes in the hope that they might at some point secure a first-past-the-post seat, or perhaps secure some proportional extra seats for their party by being seen to be more active. That is not the vision that I was sold in the Scottish Constitutional Convention, it is not the vision that was presented here, and it is not the vision conveyed to me by Scottish National party members at that time. Why are SNP members now willing to accept a second-class option rather than delivering what we promised to the people of Scotland?

[Stewart Hosie]

I asked a simple question. I will repeat it. Is that office a list parliamentary office paid for with parliamentary resources to enable list Members to do their parliamentary work, and is it within the region to which they are elected?