Forth Valley: Industry

9. What fiscal steps she is taking to support industry in the Forth valley.

As my hon. Friend will know, last year the Government signed a £100 million Falkirk and Grangemouth growth deal with the Scottish Government. At the Budget this year, we further recognised Grangemouth’s centuries of history as a key UK industrial site by announcing additional investment of up to £14.5 million to support industrial projects that can create jobs. Alongside that, the National Wealth Fund is ready to invest £200 million alongside the private sector to help unlock Grangemouth’s full potential and secure our clean energy future.

I welcome the additional £14 million-plus to get new industry delivered quickly in Grangemouth and the £25 million to finalise the freeport in the Budget two weeks ago. Forth Valley college is vital to giving local working-class kids the skills they need to grasp the new opportunities that must come to Grangemouth, but it has been failed by the SNP Scottish Government’s staggering 20% cut to colleges since 2021. The Alloa campus now faces closure. Will the Minister consider stepping in with direct skills support for this vital college?

Education and skills policy, including the funding and operation of colleges, is fully devolved to the Scottish Government. That means that it is for Scottish Ministers to decide how to support Forth Valley college with the overall settlement. As my hon. Friend will know, the spending review provided the Scottish Government with their largest settlement in real terms since devolution in 1998, and the Budget provided an additional £820 million to Scotland through the Barnett formula. In the months ahead we will be campaigning to ensure that decisions about how to invest that funding in Scotland’s future will be taken by Anas Sarwar and a Scottish Labour Government.

The challenges experienced by the businesses of Forth valley are the highest industrial energy prices in the G7, Labour’s farm tax, Labour’s family business tax, Labour’s £26 billion raid on the cost of employing people, Labour’s fiscal drag on everybody’s earnings, the Potemkin support for Grangemouth, the ambivalence to Mossmorran and the defunding of the Acorn project. For how long does the Minister think Scotland should put up with this chaos from Westminster?

The hon. Member is happy to criticise tax decisions taken by this Government, but where does he think the largest spending review settlement since devolution began came from? Where does he think the £820 million announced at the autumn Budget came from? He needs to support the tax decisions we take if he wants the investment to go into Scotland.