Spending Review 2025: Scottish Public Services

I am sure Members across the House will have seen the wonderful news this morning and join me in congratulating Ferguson Marine on winning a substantial Ministry of Defence shipbuilding contract through BAE Systems. That is great news for the workforce, who will play a key role in keeping our country and its people safe. Shipbuilding on the Clyde is thriving thanks to the UK Government’s record investment in defence, supporting 4,000 jobs; this is a real defence dividend for Scotland. This is investment that the SNP seeks to block, but Labour will build.

This is the last Scottish oral questions before summer recess, so can I thank you, Mr Speaker, your team and all the House staff for all your work over the last year? This was a historic spending review for Scotland that ended austerity. Along with last year’s Budget, it delivered an extra £14 billion as a UK Labour Government dividend to Scotland. That is more money for our NHS, police, housing and schools. Scots will not accept continued SNP failure on Scottish public services and will rightly ask the SNP: where has all the money gone?

This UK Labour Government are delivering the largest budgetary settlement in the history of devolution, with an extra £9.1 billion to invest in Scottish public services, yet the SNP Scottish Government continue to squander opportunity after opportunity and waste the public’s money. Will he join me in urging the SNP Scottish Government to get a grip and invest in projects that matter to our communities, such as the East Calder medical centre, which has not materialised after SNP dither and delay?

I absolutely join my hon. Friend in that call, and I pay tribute to his tenacious campaigning to see East Calder’s new medical centre delivered. I am 10,000 GP places short in my own constituency, and the SNP needs to take that seriously. The spending review generated £5.8 billion in health-related Barnett consequentials for Scotland. My hon. Friend is right to stand up for his community in East Calder, and I ask the SNP: where has all the money gone?

I have previously praised in this Chamber the efforts of the fire and rescue service in responding to more than one major incident in Cumbernauld. Both my constituents and I are therefore concerned that the proposed cuts to Cumbernauld fire station will undermine its ability to respond to incidents and put lives at risk. Will the Secretary of State make representations to the Scottish Government to invest in fire services in one of Scotland’s largest towns?

My hon. Friend quite rightly speaks out against the cuts to Cumbernauld fire station, which sadly is just one example of the SNP’s dangerous mismanagement of Scotland’s fire services, as the Fire Brigades Union in Scotland told me just last month. There are 9.1 billion reasons why the SNP Government should choose to invest in local services, including in Cumbernauld, but after 18 years of failure and neglect my hon. Friend’s constituents will rightly not hold out much hope. Across Scotland, we need a new direction next May, with Anas Sarwar as the First Minister.

Does the Secretary of State share my view that, whatever the SNP Scottish Government’s budget, they have cynically and systematically deprived funding from areas that do not support independence, leaving councils such as Dumfries and Galloway and Scottish Borders and their health boards struggling to provide basic services?

I would extend that and say that the whole of Scotland voted against independence in 2014. It seems to me that the SNP Government’s strategy is to starve all Scotland’s public services of the vital funding that they require.

The spending review came off the back of last year’s autumn Budget, which hit businesses in my constituency in north-east Scotland very hard, whether it was family businesses and farms with the changes to agricultural property relief and business property relief, or the extension of and increase in the energy profits levy hitting investment in our vital oil and gas sector. What conversations is the Secretary of State having actively with the Treasury to ensure that north-east Scotland does not have to pay the price for this Government’s decisions again next year?

I have had a minimum of 14 billion conversations with the Treasury with regard to funding in Scotland. This is the largest settlement ever in the history of the Scottish Parliament. This Government’s decisions in the October Budget and the spending review have given us the highest growth in the G7, the highest business confidence in a decade, record inward investment, three major trade deals and the conditions for four interest rate cuts, all helping businesses right across Scotland—everything that the hon. Lady and her party voted against.

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

Like the Secretary of State, I welcome the great news for Ferguson Marine this morning. As he knows, Scottish Liberal Democrats secured funding for key projects across Scotland in last year’s Scottish budget negotiations, including the Eye Pavilion in Edinburgh, which is so important for my constituents and his. We welcome the additional funding as part of the spending review to help projects such as that, but almost two decades of SNP mismanagement have left our health service in dire need of investment and improvement. Does he agree that the SNP should invest this funding wisely in GPs, dentists and care so that our constituents can see the same focus on innovation in health that was announced by the UK Government last week?

The hon. Lady makes a good point about the Eye Pavilion in Edinburgh, which is a symptom of the whole of the Scottish Government’s strategy for our NHS services. The SNP promised a new Eye Pavilion in its manifestos in ’07, ’11, ’16 and ’21, and it is yet to deliver it. I bet we see the same process and the same promises in its manifesto in May next year. One in six Scots is stuck on a waiting list, the NHS app is years behind other parts of the UK, and we have the worst cancer waiting times on record. I am sure the hon. Lady and millions of other Scots know that the SNP has failed their NHS. If the SNP had any idea how to fix it, it would have done it by now.

During the spending review period, the Scottish Government will have to continue to mitigate some of the cruellest Westminster policies. They had to do that under the Tories, and it continues under Labour, not least with the two-child cap. Can the Secretary of State tell us whether there are any plans to scrap it?

The hon. Gentleman and his colleagues voted against the Budget. They voted against all the measures to raise revenue in the Budget, and they voted against the actual spending of it. From the second that this Labour Government took power just over a year ago, there was £14 billion extra going into the Scottish budget. The Scottish Government need to be spending it well, and I am sure the Scottish public will look dimly on a Scottish Government who cannot spend it and improve our public services.

I am not sure the Secretary of State quite caught the question there. We voted against the two-child cap. If there is cash to go around and UK Departments are getting bigger spending increases than the Scottish Government, why will he not prioritise child poverty? The Child Poverty Action Group described getting rid of the two-child cap as “the most cost-effective way” to cut child poverty. It was described by the Pensions Minister as “immoral”. The Cabinet Office’s recent report “Tackling Child Poverty” stated:

“There is a lot we can learn from action already being taken in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland”.

Will the Secretary of State make scrapping the two-child poverty cap a priority, or will he insist on failed Tory policies?

Going by the votes last week, the hon. Gentleman wants to keep the failed, broken welfare system that the Tories put in. What we have done as a Government is a pay rise for 200,000 Scots, day one rights for sick leave and parental leave and £150 off energy bills for more than half a million Scottish households, and we have banned exploitative zero-hours contracts. There are 10,000 children in Scotland every single night going to bed without a home. That is a dreadful record for the Scottish Government.