 Mynd i ddifu��innoddiol, ac mae'n ddweud yn ymddineg cyfnod, ac mae'n ddweud yn cysylltu'r cyfnodd cyfnod di yn…, yn ymddineg cyfnod di yn…, yn ymddineg cyfnod di yn 1, 5, 6, 9, 3, yn ymddineg cyffredinol, ac mae'n fwynt yn ymdineg cyffredinol. Fefalle, ddim yn ddifuNAg, neu ddim i ddydd, yn cydweillio gweld yn cyfrifnoddiol, yn cyfnoddiol, gennym ddifuedd yn ymddineg cyfnoddiol, a i ddifuedd y fath amdwynau Minister of 14 minutes of thereby, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. The Budget Scotland No. 5 Bill for 2016-17 maintains our strong record of managing the public finances using the fiscal powers currently available to us. It confirms our plans for taxation and expenditure to deliver sustainable economic growth, improve Scotland's public services and to create a fairer and a more prosperous economy with opportunities for all of our citizens to flourish. It is also a historic budget, given the context provided by this week's agreement with the United Kingdom Government on the fiscal framework that will support the Scotland Bill. That agreement has significant implications for future Scottish budgets, which the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament will need to consider in the coming months. However, let us not forget the significant events that have already occurred in relation to the setting of this particular budget. Two weeks ago, Parliament voted to set the Scottish rate of income tax at £10. That means that the lowest paid taxpayers in our society are protected and that the rate of tax paid by Scottish residents in 2016-17 will be the same as it is today. Our decisions on taxation have been based upon the principles that I set out in earlier legislation and are designed to deliver a coherent tax framework for the people of Scotland. The first decision on setting a rate of income tax in Scotland has therefore been one of substance and one that has required me to balance the opportunities and the risks presented by our new tax powers. It has not been a case of making proposals without identifying how they could be implemented without effect on individuals. It has been based on the same approach that I have undertaken when setting all-devolved taxes. With London building's transaction tax, the first tax power devolved to this Parliament in over 300 years, I delivered a progressive regime where the UK Government had passed up the opportunity to deliver that reform in the past. However, progressivity in itself is not sufficient justification for increasing the tax burden on the lowest paid taxpayers. Taxes must also be proportionate to the ability to pay and I stress the ability to pay. It will be of limited reassurance to our pensioners or our newly qualified teachers or our postal workers to know that people in higher salaries will be paying more in increased taxes than they would be as they see their weekly budget come under increased strain. They will not care that others are paying more, they will care that they are having to pay more. That is not a burden that I am willing to impose in this budget. Instead of increasing the tax burden, of course, Willie Rennie. On the other side of the coin we are seeing massive cuts to local authorities and because of his financial straitjacket he is now imposing the significant cuts. A senior SNP councillor spoke out today about cuts to music, to school transport and to vulnerable children. Is he listening to anybody about those cuts to local authorities? For individual local authorities to take the decisions that they want to take about their budget choices. If I look at some of the examples that Mr Rennie cites in the list that he has just given there, those are often the options that are circulated before council meetings and when councils take their decisions they reject those options that are put in front of them. That is exactly what has happened in countless local authorities around the country. I will give way to Mr Harvie. I am grateful to the Deputy First Minister for giving way. If it is for local councils to make their own decisions about how to manage those cuts, why is it not also for local councils to make their own decisions about tax rates that should be set locally? The Government has a commitment to freeze the council tax for the duration of this parliamentary term and we are determined to ensure that we deliver the commitment to the people of Scotland that we gave in the 2011 elections. Governments that keep their promises are respected by the public. Instead of increasing the tax burden, the budget protects household incomes. It provides leadership to employers across the country by ensuring that over 50,000 of Scotland's lowest paid workers receive a pay rise and earn at least a living wage. Given that tens of thousands of public sector jobs are going to be lost as a result of this budget, regardless of at the end of the day who has fought it is, given that tens of thousands of jobs are going to be lost, will the Deputy First Minister consider setting up an emergency task force to help those people to get other jobs? I frankly think that the claims that have been made about public sector employment are utterly exaggerated. That is what I think in this debate. I will cite the evidence for that. In the last 12 months, the number of jobs lost in the public sector in Scotland and the devolved public sector has been 500. 1 per cent of public sector employment when employment in Scotland has risen by over 20,000 jobs. That is the context that I would put on the points that Mr Rowley has raised with me in the debate today. This budget ensures that our older citizens are able to access free personal care in an integrated health and social care system. The tax on ill health that prescription charges represent is abolished, saving those with long-term illnesses around £104 a year. Families across the country will benefit from free school meals and 600 hours of early learning and childcare, saving £707 per child per year. Households have their council tax frozen for a ninth consecutive year, saving the average Bandy household around £1,550 over the course of this Parliament. We continue as a Government to mitigate the most damaging effects of the UK Government's welfare cuts. That is what this Government is doing to protect household income in Scotland, and that is what is implicit in the budget before Parliament today. I will give way to Dr Simpson. I just wonder what he feels about the Clackmanager SNP budget that was passed last week, which imposed a 7.1 per cent cut on every single third sector organisation, primarily supporting self-management in health conditions but also children. If you take into account RPI at 1.3 per cent, that is in real terms a cut of 8.4 per cent, is that the sort of budget cuts that he approves, Mr Swin? What I would say to Dr Simpson is that individual local authorities must make their choices within the resources available to them. I am also entitled to insist on the need to freeze the council tax, the need to invest in health and social care and its integration with £250 million of new investment. Is Dr Simpson against that investment that the Government has made available and also ensuring that the Government takes steps to protect the delivery of education at local authority level, to which I now come in my remarks? Education lies at the heart of the Government's inclusive growth agenda and is central to our efforts to tackle inequality and to improve educational outcomes. Under this Government, 607 schools have been replaced or refurbished, that is nearly a quarter of the whole school estate. We have introduced free school meals for children in primaries 1 to 3, benefiting almost 130,000 pupils and saving families' important resources. Our young people achieved a record number of higher and advanced higher passes in 2015 and the number leaving school for a positive destination in education employment or training is now at a record high of 93 per cent. Almost 11,000 more students successfully completed full-time college courses, leading to recognised qualifications in 2014-15 than in 2008-9, an increase of 24 per cent. This year, record numbers of Scots have applied to go to university here and 18-year-olds from our most deprived communities are now 65 per cent more likely to apply than they were in 2006. The percentage of newly qualified teachers in employment after the probation period has increased. That is the effect of the Government's investment in education. We have not scrapped the education maintenance allowance, we have expanded it, enabling more young people from low-income families to stay on at school or at college. We have not scrapped maintenance grants for the poorest students, we have increased the level of the busery, we have not scrapped disabled students allowance, we are continuing to provide this vital support and we have not made and will never make education dependent on the ability to pay. No front-door tuition fees, no back-door taxes will keep tuition free, saving 120,000 students in Scotland up to £27,000 over the course of their degree. I will have to make some more progress, but we know that there is much more that we need to do. We want to create a world-class education system that delivers success for all of our children. Our overall aim is to raise standards everywhere but to raise them most in the areas that need it most. As the First Minister has indicated on several occasions, action in this area is an absolute priority for the Government. We previously announced the £400 million attainment Scotland fund to support schools in our poorest neighbourhoods to raise attainment. It is now about to enter its second year of operation and, over the next three years, we still have £80 million of the fund to spend. I have looked at this carefully, I have considered the resources that I have available, including my latest assessment of forecast receipts from the devolved taxes and I have decided that we are in a position to do more than I had already planned to do. I can today confirm to Parliament that I intend to double the amount of funding that we had planned to allocate to the attainment Scotland fund over the next three years, taking that fund from £80 million to a total of £160 million. Ministerial colleagues will announce further details in due course, but I would hope that all members in this chamber will welcome the substantial additional investment in measures to help to ensure that every child has the opportunity to realise their potential. I thank the cabinet secretary for giving way on that point. On the attainment money, can he confirm that every local authority that is allocated a certain amount of money will receive all of that money and that there is not this technical ambiguity that it must be drawn down that it will receive all of the money that he allocates to them for attainment? I can give Jenny Marra the assurance that the authorities that are allocated the money will get the money that they are allocated, but what we will do is we will focus it. I actually thought that that might have been an intervention from Jenny Marra welcoming the fact that the Government was increasing investment on the children that need it the most, but I suppose that that would be just a little bit too much to hope for on a Wednesday afternoon in Parliament. The budget does not just lay the foundations for our children's future, but this Government will continue to invest heavily in Scotland's infrastructure using all the levers at our disposal to maximise investment and to support economic growth in Scotland. At the same time, we will continue to offer a competitive advantage for the majority of business rate pairs within the United Kingdom. I have reflected on feedback from a number of businesses and can confirm today to Parliament that I have moderated the adjustment to the level of relief available for empty industrial properties proposed in the draft budget. 100 per cent relief will now be available for six months rather than three months as originally proposed, and I will also extend the fresh start and new start reliefs for the duration of 2016-17. Finally, I look forward to the forthcoming review of business rates, which will be detailed shortly and the opportunity that provides to test our business rate policies to continue to support investment and growth. The Government is committed to protecting our public services and to pursue ambitious reform to help to ensure that public services meet the needs of the people of Scotland. The budget contains a series of measures to demonstrate our further commitment to extend digital applications in public services. We will invest £250 million to deliver the most significant reform to health and social care since the creation of the national health service in 1948. We will invest a further £200 million over the next five years in six new elective treatment centres. As well as maintaining 1,000 additional police officers, the front-line police resource budget will be protected in real terms and we have allocated further funding to support continued reform. We will continue to prioritise the preventative interventions across all of our services by building on the success to date of the early years collaborative. Those are the measures that the Government will take to support the sustainability of the public services. I welcome the agreement of Scotland's local authorities to the financial settlement that we are providing, which, when taken together as a package of funding, will enable them to increase the pace of reform and improve essential public services to communities all over the country. As we debate the priorities in the budget today, we do so over a changing financial landscape where this Parliament will, in the years to come, acquire even greater responsibilities to exercise fiscal flexibility. The Scottish Government will set out its priorities in that respect before Parliament rises for the election campaign, but the budget before Parliament today establishes very strong foundations for the delivery of public services, for the achievement of sustainable economic growth and to ensure that the priorities of the people of Scotland are delivered by the Government of Scotland. I move the budget. Many thanks. I now call on Kezia Dugdale, Ms Dugdale, 10 minutes, so thereby please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Yesterday was a historic day for this Parliament. The deal on the fiscal framework has ushered in a new and exciting era of devolution, and I congratulate the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister on their efforts in that regard. The new powers that we have bring in an age of responsibility, not just the responsibility to govern well but the responsibility to use those powers, to do things differently and to offer real change. After a day of congratulation and consensus comes a day of decision. This is the big choice that will define Scottish politics, because we are faced with the choice between using our powers or continuing with failed Tory policies, and the Labour Party will choose to use our powers. Today we will oppose this austerity budget, and we do so not in the spirit of oppositionalism but in the spirit of a new powerful Parliament. We do so in the spirit of a new powerful Parliament with a positive alternative. Setting the Scottish rate of income tax one pence higher than the rate set by George Osborne. No, thank you, I would like to make a bit more progress. This is a Parliament that has so often heard arguments from all sides about what we can't do and what we shouldn't do. Today, again, I stand to say what we can do and what we should do. More than that, I will argue what we must do. Since I put forward the alternative to austerity 22 days ago, some things have become clearer. First, let me make a bit more progress. First, it is beyond any reasonable doubt that this is a fair policy. Let's look at the facts. It is simply a fact that low earners will be protected from this. Ms Kiz, Mr Dugdale is not giving way at the moment, it appears. Allow her to make some progress. Say to Mr Stewart that he should listen to the facts before he ignores them anyway. Analysis from Spice shows that, out of every pound raised by this measure, 92 pence will come from the top half of earners. Two thirds come from the top 20 per cent of earners. Those SNP MSPs who told us that an entirely new state could be established in 18 months now tell us that a simple flat rate payment of £100 could not be paid until the new powers come in. Oh, go on, Mr Stewart. Thank you, Presiding Officer. We have yet to hear from the Labour Party after many, many requests how that debate scheme is actually going to work. Maybe Ms Dugdale today can outline exactly how that is going to work, or is she willing to take the gamble of making the poorest in our society pay for their mistake and being unable to deliver? Thank you, Mr Stewart. Point made. Ms Dugdale, please continue. Order from the rest of you. There we go, Presiding Officer. They tell us that it is all too difficult, it cannot be done. Council leader after council leader have come out and told us that this cannot be done. Union leader after union leader has said that it is fair. The expert analysis shows that, because of the changes to the personal allowance, even before our £100 payment, even if you accept that such a simple thing for a single year is all too difficult, even then, no one earning under £90,000 a year will pay a penny more in tax next year than they did this year. I think that the University of Stirling, the Resolution Foundation, the House of Commons library all confirmed that the richest would pay a higher amount in percentage terms and in cash terms. That is a progressive policy. For a moment I can assume that she manages to get the £100 to low-income households. Can she confirm today that will any of that £100 be clawed back in tax or tax credits? It is a simple question, can we get a simple answer? Is he a Dugdale? It is quite clear that it is protected from tax. I would also say to the First Minister, look at the experts. Order. I say to the First Minister that, come 2017, she will have the power to do this. Is she still opposed to it? Is it the detail or is it the principle? Mr Dugdale, would you sit down for one second, please? I wish to say to the chamber that Mr Swinney was heard in almost perfect silence. Please can we extend the same courtesy to Mr Dugdale? Mr Dugdale, please proceed. Butch is the weight of evidence that those searching for reasons to oppose our plans now scrabble in the dirt for excuses not to do the right thing. Paised in this Parliament, the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister told low-paid workers that the lowest paid will pay more than higher earners. For them to do this, when they know that the richest will pay more than 100 times more than the lower paid is beneath the office that they hold, it betrays any claim they make to support progressive taxes. It is just plain wrong. The second thing that is now beyond doubt is that this budget is going to inflict unnecessary pain on every community in Scotland. Almost unbelievably, the Deputy First Minister told this Parliament that the cuts in this budget will have a minimal impact. He needs to only read the front pages of any local newspaper, talk to any teacher. He could have bothered to go out and speak to the hundreds of trade unionists who assembled outside this Parliament at lunchtime today. To understand how utterly divorced from reality that position has become, because the terrible toll of those cuts is there in black and white in the budgets being passed with heavy, heavy hearts by local councillors of all political colours. Here are some of those choices. 170 jobs were lost in Angus this week. This week, Clackmannanshire will consider cutting 350 posts, Highland 282 on Thursday. Across Scotland, thousands of workers are losing their jobs, cleaners and supply teachers, early year staff, libraries closing in Fife, Aberdeen, school librarians sacked in Argyll and Bute, the number half in Clackmannanshire, English and maths teachers cut, classroom assistants lost in Falkirk, support assistants lost in Edinburgh. In the Deputy First Minister's own backyard, they have already cut educational psychologists for vulnerable children and families with additional support needs, with more cuts around the country. They can put whatever spin they want on those cuts, they can rename them, they can re-badge them, they can even re-profile them, but they cannot deny that those cuts are real and that they are painful. The final thing that has been clear since the start of this budget process is that our proposal is the only alternative to those cuts. Why? Because we cannot escape the responsibility of the choice we are faced with. Will we use our powers, the powers we came together to demand or will we accept cuts? Scottish Labour cannot, in good conscience, do anything other than argue to use those powers. It is now for others to search their own conscience. Every single MSP on the SNP benches promised their electorate that they would oppose austerity and offer an alternative to George Osborne. Yet today, for the third and final time in this budget process, they will unite with the Tories not to end Osborne's cuts but to enforce George Osborne's cuts. Party that was elected on the basis of one very simple argument, Nicola Sturgeon made her name on this particular argument, that more powers means different decisions from the Tories, now finds itself applauded by the Tories for delivering those cuts. I ask every SNP MSP, is this what you were elected for, when low-income workers will not be a penny worse off, when they will actually be better off, when every single expert agrees that this is a progressive policy, when thousands of workers are losing their jobs, workers they made a promise to, when staff are being sacked in our schools in their own constituency. Why is there not even one free-thinker in the SNP who will support us as we bring forward the thing that they have always claimed that they support? Today, together, we can do something no one else in the UK has the opportunity to do. We can vote to end austerity. Simply by pressing a button, SNP MSPs can join with Labour MSPs and they can end austerity this year today. What you told voters you wanted is here in front of you. We have handed it to you. Take it. Use our new powers. Don't leave them on the shelf. Stop these cuts. Save these jobs and invest in Scotland's future. I now call on Murdo Fraser. Mr Fraser, you have six minutes, please. I start, Deputy Prime Minister, by welcoming two announcements from the Deputy First Minister this afternoon. We welcome additional funding for the attainment fund for education, although we would question once again why the Scottish Government persists in using the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation rather than measures that identify all the children in need of support wherever they might live. The money surely should follow the children, not a postcode. Secondly, we welcome the movement that has been on empty property relief for industrial properties. The cabinet secretary will know that there is an issue that I raise with him during budget discussions and does reflect widespread concern in the business community. Deputy Presiding Officer, the background to this year's budget has been somewhat different to what we have been used to in the past. We have had the fiscal framework discussions happening at the same time. Discussions that I am delighted to see have now been successfully concluded. Secondly, the debate around the budget has been dominated, as we have heard, by the setting for the first time of the Scottish rate of income tax. The debate on tax rates is both welcome and refreshing, and the taste of things to come as this Parliament acquires more powers and responsibility in future. On the question of tax, I set out the Scottish Conservative view during the stage 1 debate three weeks ago. Our view has not changed. We do not believe people in Scotland should be taxed more highly than those in the rest of the United Kingdom. I am delighted that that principle is one that seems to be shared not just by this party, but by those on the Government benches, who are happy to join with the Scottish Conservatives in a new taxpayers' alliance, working hand in glove to protect hard-pressed Scottish families against the tax grabbers in Labour and the Liberal Democrats. However, I do wish that those on the Scottish National Party benches who oppose those plans for hiking income tax would have the courage of their convictions and not hide behind the detail of Labour's proposals. It has been a part of the SNP narrative that Labour's plans are not progressive, something that is, to be fair, contradicted by independent commentaries from the likes of the IPPR and the Resolution Foundation. Therefore, I would encourage SNP members to oppose Labour's tax grab, not on the detail, but on the principle, for in doing so they will have the public on their side. A Lippsaws-Morrie opinion poll conducted this month showed that the number of Scots who believe that taxes in Scotland should be set at the same or a lower rate than the rest of the United Kingdom is 64 per cent, as against a mere 30 per cent who feel that they should be higher. By a factor of more than two to one, Scots oppose higher taxes here, so the SNP should stand firm with us and be confident in their argument. We are on the people's side, and when it comes to tax, the Scottish Conservatives speak for Scotland. While we welcome the Scottish Government's approach on tax, this is only one aspect of the budget. As I said in the stage 1 debate, there are other elements of the budget that we feel are profoundly damaging. Our overall approach has been to promote measures that we believe would benefit the Scottish economy, not just because a strong economy in providing jobs is important in itself, but because of the growing link that will be between our future economic performance and the tax income that will come to the Scottish Government. I set out in the stage 1 debate a number of concerns that we had about the budget as proposed. The increase in non-domestic rates with the doubling of the large business supplement, which will hit many relatively modest businesses, seems to fly in the face of everything that we have heard from the First Minister and indeed everything that we have heard this afternoon from the Deputy First Minister about making Scotland the most competitive part of the UK in which to do business. We raised previously concerns about the changes to empty property relief, to end the exemption of industrial property. The cabinet secretary has moved in some direction, but there will still be concerns about the impact of that. We continue to have concerns about LBTT, where the evidence shows that the collection rates for domestic properties are well below the Scottish Government's projections. We believe that the cabinet secretary needs to revisit his figures to ensure that the tax take from that proposal is more in line with the original projections. We have concerns about the cut in the help to buy funding by £50 million, given the value of the scheme in extending the benefit of home ownership and helping to stimulate the construction sector. We have persistently, over the years, been opposed to cuts in college funding, which will now see a fall of 152,000 college places. We have asked for an additional £60 million in funding to reverse those cuts. The SNP will argue that that is mostly part-time courses that have been affected. We should not forget that, for many working people looking to upskill, often returners to work such as women who have taken time out to have children, those part-time courses are absolutely essential. We should regret the impact on our economy from cutting them. We have proposed other changes that should have limited financial implications, such as asking for the school attainment fund to be funded in a different way, doubling the funding for community broadband Scotland, restoration of the annual grant to the Scottish Association of Young Farmers Clubs and for a review of local government funding allocations. That last point will be particularly important, given the unfairness that councils face in the north-east, which, with a decline in the oil and gas sector and the additional pressures that is putting on council services in that part of the country, is all the more acute. I had the opportunity to meet the cabinet secretary two weeks ago to present our proposals, and I thank him for his time. I am disappointed, however, that there has not been more movement on the key issues that we have outlined. We should be putting the growth of the Scottish economy at the forefront of government policy. Accordingly, while we support the setting of the Scottish rate of income tax at 10 per cent, we cannot support the budget as it stands. We fear that the cabinet secretary's proposals will be damaging to the Scottish economy and, in the long run, will cost us tax revenue. Deputy Presiding Officer, a Conservative budget would seek to grow the economy, reduce barriers to business growth, invest in further education and, by expanding our economy, widen the tax base and increase the tax take. That is not the budget that we have before us today. Accordingly, we will, as afternoon, vote against the budget at decision time. Thank you very much. We now move the open debate. I call on Mark McDonald to be followed by Ken McIntosh. Tight for time this afternoon. Up to six minutes, please, Mr McDonald. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. It was very interesting to watch some of the colour draining on the Labour benches as they realised that their pre-prepared line about the SNP budget being backed by the Tories had just been torpedoed by Murdo Fraser, and, in fact, it will be the Labour Party once again joining forces to vote with the Conservative Party in the chamber. Not just now, Mr McDonald. I want to move on. You may want to listen a little bit further. I would have thought that Kezia Dugdale might have learned her lesson previously about using Aberdeen City Council as an example in the chamber, but she has not. She stood up and said that libraries are closing in Aberdeen, which will come as news to people in Aberdeen because the council budget does not get set until tomorrow. Furthermore, it will come as news to the administration in Aberdeen, because when I read in the evening express of that very same proposal about the officers proposing that libraries could close, I read very clearly in that article that the finance convener of Aberdeen City Council, Willie Young, said that he would fight against that proposal when it came into the council chamber. Either Willie Young is going to lose the fight within his own group and the administration is going to press ahead with it, or Kezia Dugdale is coming to this chamber, putting forward a proposal that officers have suggested to councillors, but that the administration is not going to accept and has used it as a means to yet again imply something that is not going to happen. It is little wonder that Kezia Dugdale on television yesterday gave up on winning the election and said that she was going to settle for second place in May. During recess week, I visited Stonywood school in my constituency. It was a school that in 2008 I campaigned as a local councillor alongside the parent council and the local community to keep open. I made the argument at the time that the school role would increase as housing development took place and that there would be a need for a new school building. The reason for my visit was that rather than it being closed, plans are now in place for a new school building, plans that have been facilitated through the use of Scottish Government money through the schools for the future programme, a very welcome investment in my constituency and a welcome investment for the pupils and community of Stonywood, standing alongside other schools in my constituency that have benefited significantly through new buildings being put in place. There is a reason why that is important beyond simply the fabric of the building. A new school building built through capital has a revenue impact in terms of it being more cost-effective to heat, light and maintain. That frees up revenue spending that very often is spent lighting, heating and maintaining buildings that are no longer fit for purpose and allows that revenue to instead be put towards front-line services. That is an important element of why the schools for the future programme is important beyond creating fit for purpose first-class accommodation for our education system. In terms of health and social care integration, the money that the Scottish Government is putting towards this is very important. I have spoken to a number of healthcare workers and social care workers in my constituency over the past few weeks. One of the things that they have said is that they believe that bringing the two services closer together and removing some of the gaps that exist within the system is fundamental if we are going to improve the care that is provided to our vulnerable citizens. In terms of bed blocking or delayed discharge, that is exceptionally important. Many of us in the chamber are dealing with constituents who, at the moment, are unable to exit hospital because there is an inability to get appropriate care packages put in place, increasing the integration between health and social care, removing some of the silo mentality that exists and also paying a living wage to care workers and making it a more attractive opportunity for individuals to go into that line of work are all key to removing some of those barriers. The delayed discharge rate in Aberdeen was zero when I was a member of the council administration. It has crept upwards since then. I believe that there are some policy and changes that have taken place at a local level that have stymied some of the progress that was made, but I believe that the approach that is being taken just now will assist in reversing that very unwelcome trend. I will take a brief intervention from Patrick Harvie. I am grateful to the member for giving way. I am sure that all of us can identify specific elements of any budget that are welcome, but surely he is not asking the chamber to believe that everything is rosy in the garden and that there will be no cuts to local services as a result of this budget. I am not entirely sure where in my speech Patrick Harvie drew that inference, but what I have said repeatedly and I quoted the leader of my own local authority, who said that the savings that they were expected to make in Aberdeen City Council would be able to be absorbed without an impact on front-line services and on jobs. Therefore, if they are able to make that saving, I can only quote what the leader of the council herself is saying publicly on this issue. I have taken one intervention and I have only got 40 seconds left. What we also see in the north-east of Scotland is a drive towards improved infrastructure, the AWPR being pushed forward, the rail improvements to the north-east of Scotland, the new schools being delivered, but one of the things that I think is absolutely fundamental is the doubling of the attainment fund, which will benefit schools in my constituency and schools across Scotland in reducing the gap that exists too often between some of our most deprived communities and some of our more better-off communities. That is exceptionally welcome funding and it is why I will be happy to support the budget this evening. Many thanks and thanks for your brevity. Now I call on Ken Macintosh to be followed by Willie Rennie. Up to six minutes please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. At five o'clock today, John Swinney is going to ask the Parliament to vote to cut public services right across Scotland. The finance secretary has decided that what the Scottish people need right now is for the SNP to take £500 million from local authority budgets in every part of this country. Mr Swinney can be in no doubt what that means. He knows what that means because every single Labour councillor has told him so directly and I suspect that quite a few SNP councillors have done so too, those with some backbone that is. This SNP budget will mean cuts to our kids' education, cuts to old people services and cuts to disability support. Coslove told him that this will mean 15,000 jobs. That is the equivalent of closing the Tata Steelmill 50 times over. I was very surprised to hear him say that the job losses have been exaggerated. Has he made an assessment on jobs of his budget cuts? If so, can he tell me exactly how many job losses does he predict his cuts will cause? The cabinet secretary has decided not just to ignore the voice of local elected councillors. He has deliberately decided to leave those councillors with no choice, no ability to raise finance locally, no freedom to vary spending on most areas normally under local control. Mr Swinney has ordered them to sign in the dotted line or lose hundreds of millions of pounds more in centrally imposed SNP Government penalties. John Swinney has given our public authorities no choice but to cut services, but he has a choice. He has a choice because Scottish Labour has given him one. The SNP has a choice to ask those who can afford it to pay a little more, or they can ask or tell those who need it to make do with a lot less. That is the choice facing the SNP at decision time today. Do they use the powers of this Parliament to shape a different future for this country, or do they side with the Tories and vote for austerity across Scotland? Yes, the taxpayers' alliance. That is right. The taxpayers' alliance yet again. We often talk in this Parliament about our supposed progressive majority. Many MSPs seem to share a common agenda, built around the pursuit of a fairer and more caring society. We express our beliefs in support for a publicly-run NHS, good schools for all, a progressive and broadly redistributive tax system and, of course, in supposedly vocal opposition to conservative welfare reforms and austerity cuts. Many MSPs may talk like progressives, and here is one right now, Presiding Officer, but when it comes to action, the SNP has been found wanting. I thank Mr Mattadosh for giving way. He is normally a pretty honest bloke when I have come across him before. Can he give us a very simple understanding of how the labour rebate scheme would work to ensure that those poorer folk who are paying tax would benefit from that rebate? Mr Stewart steps right up when I need him most, because the SNP has fallen back on weasel words and excuses. As usual, the backbenchers have been issued with their crib sheets. Mr Stewart has just read from his. What is the first excuse that we have just heard from Mr Stewart is to avoid talking about tax at all and to pretend that, if only, the SNP were to be given more detail about Labour's rebate for low earners, they might actually vote for it. It's to pretend that we can't even do it, that we don't even have the power's excuse, and if I may say so, Presiding Officer, we've heard that one many, many times before, do you remember the bedroom tax for a year or more Labour-run campaigners across Scotland campaigned to argue that SNP should use their powers, use its budget to mitigate, and all that we heard was that we can't even do it, until that is, of course, Mr Swinney himself gave the game away, pointing out that he could allocate the budget, but he didn't want to let the UK Government off the hook. Then it all began to unravel. But was the second excuse on weasel word we're hearing? Well, this one is more worrying, because, frankly, it is more deceitful. It is to try to scare people on low to middle incomes that the tax proposal is going to clobber them. Just to be clear, Presiding Officer, Labour are proposing a £1 rise in income tax, and only for those earning over £20,000 a year, that's £1 in the pound from £20 to £21, and I think in anyone's language that's a 1 per cent rise. The SNP are deliberately trying to mislead people by calling it a 5 per cent rise. That is utterly shameful. To give you an example, Presiding Officer, Claire Adamson is here today, Claire Adamson, in her contribution to the debate on the Scottish rate of income tax in February 11 said, what are the lowest paid people in society to do in the months that it would take for the Labour Party to implement a 5 per cent slash in their income. Can I ask Ms Adamson, or if she hasn't got the time, Mr Swinney to apologise on her behalf. Ms Adamson, please apologise for that misleading statement. You talked a lot about weasel words. Here's a dictionary definition. A rebate is an amount paid by way of reduction return or refund on what has already been paid or contributed. Tell the Scottish people, Mr Mackintosh, how long do they have to wait from when that money is removed from their pay packets to when Labour is going to pay it back in, because you simply don't know— Mr Mackintosh, will you finish now, please? Please finish. Twenty seconds. Ms Adamson, either is ignorant of her own remarks or is clearly, clearly trying to deceive the Scottish public by talking about a 5 per cent cut in income. This is about austerity. Do we choose austerity or do we make a Labour's choice to use the powers for a better future for Scotland? Thank you. Now Colin Woolley, Rennie, up to six minutes, Mr Rennie, please. Do we follow by Joan McAlpine? It's quite interesting just observing the benches here on the SNP. Desperate, utterly desperate to find an excuse, utterly desperate to find an excuse— Order, please allow Mr Rennie to cut the seat. —not to ask to save public services. The laughing, the clapping, the enthusiasm from those benches when they have somehow found out a way not to increase taxation. We have spent how many years in this Parliament arguing for more powers through the Kalman commission and our commission, the steel commission and the Campbell commission before that setting up this Parliament with all the powers. Today we get the big chance, the big chance to use those powers, to do something about it with the urgent need of services to public authorities. We have seen SNP councillors speaking out, desperate—no, not just now—desperate to find ways of stopping the cuts to local authorities. Those people laugh and clap because they found a way of answering that question. If they were serious about dealing with the question of cuts to local authorities, they would not laugh and they would not clap because they would be desperately hunting for a way to save public services, but they are not. They are more desperate to talk as if they are left, but they walk right every single day. The language that they use of tax grabbers, of tax, is theft, is almost the language that is used. We have heard from the Conservative benches that they are absolutely delighted that they agree with them, but in reality we are facing massive cuts to local authorities. I welcome the decision by John Swinney today over his attainment fund. I think that that is welcome. I ever think that it is window dressing on a budget that is slashing public services to the core. Education budgets—it is half of what local authorities do. They are going to be slashed. There is no way of avoiding it, and we will see the harsh reality of John Swinney's cuts that are coming forward in the next few weeks. He has put a straight jacket around local authorities, a £408 million straight jacket around them. Those are now his responsibility. Every single cut to local authorities could have been avoided if John Swinney had made the decision and given them the flexibility to make a different decision. My priority for now is to propose a penny on income tax for education. It is a costly proposal, as we put forward in every single budget and have done in every single budget of this Parliament. It is a costly proposal. It will deliver £475 million worth of investment, and the reasons are quite simple. Scottish education is slipping down the international league in performance. We used to have one of the best education systems in the world, and it is now slipping down. 152,000 college places have been lost. We have got £500 million worth of cuts coming to local authorities, so the situation is urgent. That is why we need to invest a penny on education. What we will get is investment in colleges, investment in schools, the pupil premium, but also stopping the cuts that are coming and an investment in nursery education. The best educational investment that we can make, and the proposal is progressive, thanks to the fact that we in government raised the tax threshold up to £11,000. It now means that somebody would have to earn more than £19,000 to pay more tax next year in comparison with this year. Somebody in £100,000 will pay 30 times as much as somebody in the median wage. I think that that is reasonable, fair and progressive. What the SNP members ignore is the social benefits, the economic benefits that we will get from stopping the cuts coming, and the people who will lose their jobs as a result of those cuts will see no benefit to John Swinney proclaiming his protection of low-income taxpayers. He will see no benefit because he will not be paying any tax at all. He will be on the dole. That is the consequence of John Swinney's budget. Those are our priorities—a penny on income tax for education, to invest in schools, to invest in nurseries and to invest in colleges. We have raised a number of different issues to do with GP recruitment, the Keepwell campaign that the RCN has raised, the superfast broadband, which Murdo Fraser referred to, the house building rate. However, there was one particular issue that I wanted John Swinney to try to resolve. It is a small amount of money, but it would, I believe, have a great social benefit to society. That is budget cut to alcohol and drug partnerships. The budget for them is only £70 million, and he is proposing to take away £15 million of that budget. It is a small amount of money, but the investment that we can make in drug rehabilitation pays dividends in communities. Anybody who lives in a community that is blighted by drugs knows the consequences of that, so we are going in the wrong direction on drug rehabilitation. I would urge John Swinney that it is a small amount of money, but it will deliver a big benefit for those communities and those people who are affected by it. A penny for education is my priority, but I also urge John Swinney to look at the drug rehabilitation budget. I seem to recall that the Liberal Democrats were propping up the Tories in 2011, when they raised VAT from 17.5 per cent to 20 per cent. We should see Willie Rennie's comments in that context, given that VAT is the least progressive tax of all. I want to begin by welcoming the commitment to inflation and bursting rises for the NHS in this budget. A record investment of £13 billion cannot have been easy to achieve, given the £3.9 billion to Scotland's overall budget cut by the UK Government between 2010 and 2020. I want to concentrate particularly on the £250 million allocation to speed the integration of health and social care. It is a historic move that should change the way that we deliver care to frail people who neither want nor need to be in hospital. Sometimes these are young people with a life-changing illness or a learning disability. Sometimes they are terminally ill. Often they are frail elderly people with multiple conditions who nevertheless wish to enjoy life at home or, at the very least, in a supportive residential setting that feels like home. That £250 million is for them. It will deliver the care that they need. Crucially, it will mean that this care is delivered by workers who are properly rewarded by the living wage. Happy workers who are fairly recompensed tend to remain in post for longer. For patients, that means results in the continuity of care, which is so important to vulnerable people who require help with personal tasks. That is why I welcome the Deputy First Minister's clear instruction that this £250 million should be used in part to pay the living wage to home care workers. The economy committee of which I am a member recently finished an inquiry into fair work. We took evidence from the care sector. The coalition of care and support providers in Scotland told us that recruitment costs in the care sector amount to £3,500 for each new worker and that staff turnover is high. Duncan White of the UK Home Care Association estimated the staff turnover at 38 per cent. I wonder what, if we could have views on the situation in Dundee, where the SNP administration at Dundee has one of its proposals to cut home care services as we are reprofiling or reconfiguring it. It has got £250,000 cut from home care. At a public meeting with the finance convener from the SNP, they were saying about the bullying of home care. To continue, the social services council in Scotland highlighted the impact that low-paying work can have on-service users and patients. It said to the inquiry that low-pay can exacerbate staff turnover issues and ultimately affect the ability to provide continuity of care. A continuous caring relationship with an identified professional can be particularly important in many instances, particularly when supporting an individual with dementia. To illustrate the importance of that £250 million, I want to tell a story about a constituent who called me a couple of years ago in a state of extreme distress. The constituent's father was back at home having suffered from a devastating stroke. He desperately wanted to be at home, his family desperately wanted him to be at home, but the local authority claimed that he could not be provided with a care package that he had been assessed as requiring. There was pressure to put the man back into hospital, something that would have resulted in him being extremely distressed and would have affected his rehabilitation. I have already taken an intervention. I need to make progress. If it was anything like the last one, it would not be worth my while anyway. The local authority was resistant to doing this for this man because he did not want to foot the bill. The £250 million social care package should end distress such as this cost to my constituent and his family. It will be money well spent. It is exactly the sort of change that we all signed up to support the 2020 vision of the NHS. It is an example of preventative spend, which was the recommendation of the Christie commission, the principles of which were supported by every party in this chamber. We have a massive expert evidence that this is the kind of shift in resources that we require. The Scottish Government's expert group report on the effects of delayed discharge notes that unnecessary time spent in hospital can not only lead to significant deterioration in the person's physical and mental health, but that in turn will lead to the greater use of institutional care at a higher cost to local authorities. The BMA has noted that staying in hospital for unnecessary amounts of time increases the risk of infection, depression, loss of independence and increases the inappropriate use of NHS resources. I want to turn back to the comments of one social care worker in Glasgow to the inquiry, who said that it is a wonderful job as a privilege to support those less fortunate to try and attain fruitful lives. It is a vocational job with long, unsocial blowers, often fraught with the threat of violence. It seems that you have to wear a uniform to have the credibility such as nurses, doctors, police etc. While it is often social care that fills the gaps for those professions, pay attention to the area one day that you will be using it. Mr Swinney has paid attention to social care in this budget, and as a result, many vulnerable people in this country will benefit. I would like to congratulate him and support this budget, which gets his priorities right. Thank you very much. Thank you. There is no extra time in this debate. Please take interventions within your six minutes, Drew Smith, to be followed by Kenneth Gibson. I am grateful, Presiding Officer. I think that others have already made the point that this budget debate is probably the most important that this Parliament has had since it was established some 17 years ago. During that devolution referendum, the people in Scotland endorsed two principles—firstly, a Parliament, and secondly, a Parliament with the ability to vary income tax. In 1999, John Swinney's colleagues were elected on the promise that they would use the variable rate that was to raise a penny for Scotland. That was at a time of rising investment in public services by the then Labour Government. Three years later, John Swinney, leader of the SNP, dropped that policy, saying that Gordon Brown has increased taxes and has put more money into the public purse. I am now not sure whether that was meant as a complaint. Today, we find ourselves in a situation where two of the three largest parties—Labor and the SNP—are opposed to the UK Chancellor's ideological pursuit of austerity in the smaller state. The third party and the Scottish Conservatives, of course, support that approach, and they can put their case at the election. Since the election of the first coalition, and now the current Government, Labour and the SNP have both been in broad agreement that the economic approach is wrong. A austerity means cuts to vital public services and a burden of pain that has been borne not by those with the broadest shoulders but by those most reliant upon public services, those who work in public services, and their redundancies certainly are not being exaggerated, Deputy First Minister. Barely a question time goes by, where Government backbenchers do not invite Scottish ministers to blame the cuts that are taking place in Scottish communities today on the United Kingdom Government. Scottish ministers have, in all fairness to them, been consistent in calling for an alternative. They have also been consistent in the demand for more powers for Scotland. They have asserted again consistently that any new powers would be used to combat austerity and defend the most vulnerable against the cuts—calling for power, promising to use power, but little evidence of real shifts in spending to protect the services that are now most at risk, because many of those services are provided by Scottish local government. Services provided by Labour and SNP councils are like that. Cozzler says that those cuts are wholly misguided and threaten grievous injury to communities. John Swinney says that they are just exaggerating. The deal that members here complain about from the UK is, in fact, made worse and then passed on to Scottish communities by decisions taken here in Scotland's Parliament. MSPs present in this debate today are some of the first to then criticise local government for the cuts that they are voting for here today. That is wrong, Presiding Officer, and something needs to give. All across Scotland, charges are being introduced and increased on the most vulnerable service users. Those charges are not progressive. They have fallen those with little choice but to find the money or to give up a service which, until now, they relied upon. They have also fallen those without that choice. Those who find the service that they relied upon are simply closed to them or closed all together. There is nothing progressive about that. The fact that members here are both voting for those cuts and criticising them when their constituents complain is, frankly, more than inconsistent. The question for us today is what will we do now. The First Minister has said that education is her number one priority. What good is education as a number one priority when we refuse to protect school budgets? When music education has to be cut? When there are fewer classroom assistants? When there are reduced library services? Education delivered to our children by the same local councils bearing the brunt of austerity in Scotland because of decisions taken here in Scotland's Parliament? That is wrong, Presiding Officer. No exaggeration that it is wrong. I cannot understand why a party that argued for a penny for Scotland in a time of rising public expending cannot even admit that progressive taxation might have a role to play in the circumstances that our communities now face. That is in direct contrast to the withdrawal of services and charging for services, which is happening now. I accept the Government's argument that the variability of bans in taxation is needed to. My party remains committed to using that variability to further increase the progressivity of the tax system. However, I agree with John Swinney, who told the finance committee that he regards the Scottish rate of income tax as a progressive lever. The question is not whether the Scottish rate is progressive, as some have tried to argue. Does John Swinney agree with himself? Do we accept that there is no alternative to austerity? Do we believe that we have the right to complain about our deal and refuse to contemplate raising further revenue, while at the same time enforcing a worse deal on councils, which we also then prevent from raising their own revenue? Why is this Government so timid? Where is the progressive politics that this country has been promised? Time and time and time again. Why is it that two parties who are opposed to austerity are going to vote differently on this budget tonight? Under successive budgets, we are not making our society fairer. We are simply making Scotland the best place to be born into privilege, and it is for that reason that I cannot support that, and I will not support this budget tonight. Thank you, Mr Smith. I now call Kenneth Gibson to be followed by Malcolm Chisholm. As in previous budgets, today's debate once again shows that the SNP's only party committed to incapable of delivering a fair and balanced budget to provide the best outcomes for the people of Scotland. For example, a £444 million real-terms increase in the NHS budget in the year from March. With his resource, a deep-up mental expenditure limit to a limit cut by £271 million by Westminster, John Swinney has again had to ensure that our public services continue to operate effectively, creating an environment that will stimulate growth, mitigating against the worst aspects of welfare reform at the same time. Of course, Tory Government cuts mean resource budgets will fall by £1.5 billion over the next four years, a reduction of 5.7%. Labour's response to this year's £371 million cut is to demand an increase of income tax by a penny in the pound. Given that UK cuts over the next four years will be four times that, will our answer be to increase income tax by four pence in the pound over that period? If our week's Jackie Baillie called on Mr Swinney to set out his proposals for not one but four years, with an election in May, that always seemed to me somewhat bizarre. Either she expects the SNP to win or if Labour wins, they want the SNP to decide the budget for the next four years. How curious. Of course, we've heard no-long-term proposals from Labour itself. Indeed, short-term ones seem conspicuous by their absence. Labour talks of education, but the Deputy First Minister's announcement of a doubling attainment expenditure was met by stony silence and sour faces from the Labour benches. Of course, Labour's intellectual bankruptcy on the issue of a supposed rebate for low-paid workers falling in post-tax rise can best be summed up by the exchange on 11 February in this chamber when my colleague Stuart McMillan intervened on Lewis MacDonald and said, I've listened carefully to what Lewis MacDonald has had to say. Can he tell Parliament exactly what the details of his party's proposed rebate would be? To which Mr MacDonald replied, I would be delighted to do that once we have heard from the SNP whether it supports the principle of raising tax to address austerity. So there you have it. Promise to vote for me and I'll tell you what I stand for. No wonder we, in these benches, don't take Labour seriously. Is this going to be Labour's canvassing technique in the next election? A Labour member chaps a door? Hi, I'm Lewis MacDonald. Will you be voting Labour? Tell me your policies to the voter. Well replies, Mr MacDonald. I'd be delighted to do so if you promise to vote for me first. Farsical or what? Is there any possibility at all that we will now be giving details of how Labour's rebate will be delivered? When will the scheme be in place? How much will it cost and who will pay for it? When can those to whom it applies expect to receive their £100? To whom should they apply and what happens if their income changes over the year? Mr Rowley. We know that there's going to be around £500 million cut to public services in Scotland. Are you saying that there is no alternative to that? Is that what you're saying? What I'm saying is that this budget that the SNP has put forward is by far and away the most balanced approach to the £371 million cut imposed on the Tories. We know that your criticism is always about this Government, not about your former better-together allies in the referendum campaign. It's a real brass neck, but Labour and the Lib Dems come to this chamber in public last to people of Scotland to be extra tax as a price for austerity. They were both happy to vote for and pass on to this Parliament. Let's not forget on 13 January last year that Labour MPs voted with the Tories to make public spending cuts of £30 billion taking the UK back to spending cuts not since the 1930s. I recall when Jackie Baillie was an election agent for Wendy Alexander some years ago, backing Wendy when she called for year-on-year 3 per cent cuts to local government funding, something that the Scottish Government opposed. On top of that, until they realised the way the wind was blowing, Labour were happy to side with the Tories in calling for the Scottish Government to accept the Treasury's fiscal framework agreement, which has then seen our budget cut by £7 billion. Held up to scrutiny, Labour tax plans have totally disintegrated and are part of being unworkable for low earners. The fact that Labour had to be told that policy would hit half a million pensioners shows how ill-thought it was. In evidence to the finance committee, the STC was clear that raising tax across the board, as Labour proposed, would be unfair on low earners. The STC is concerned at the impact of a tax rise on low-wage workers, particularly those on precarious employment, when wages that experience the historically unprecedented collapse between 2009 and 2014 have barely started to recover. Maybe that's why, until 1 February, Labour backed the Scottish National Party Government's position on tax until the opportunity to call for it to increase. Instead of punishing households in difficult economic times, the Scottish National Party Government continues to lend a hand and reduces the burden placed on those trying to manage their own budgets with a fully funded freeze in council tax, saving people and bandit properties £1,500 at a time of high energy costs and real-terms wage reductions. In his opening speech, I thought that Mr Fraser would have taken this opportunity to apologise on behalf of the Tory party for backing an initial block grant adjustment settlement proposed by the Treasury that would have cost Scotland £7 billion over a decade, impacting on jobs, services, taxation and growth. Clearly the Tories will never stand up for Scotland, having exposed as mere ciphers for the London Government. How much would the impact on Scotland have had to be before the Tories in this chamber acted in Scotland's national interest? £10 billion, £15 billion? When the Tory stands in this issue sinks in, Ruth Davidson and her motley crew will have no chance of supplanting, even a bumbling and inept Labour as official opposition in this Parliament. You need to close, please, Mr Gibson. In the face of financial incompetence and absence of vision by the Opposition, I support today's budget. Thank you, Mr Gibson. Malcolm Chisholm, to be followed by Mike Murdoff. The very opposite of context is all when it comes to tax-led decisions. The context today is an all-out assault on public services that we have the power to prevent. That is why Labour has been absolutely focused throughout all the budget stages in February in saying that the priority for extra resources has to be local services in general and education in particular, and we have also been absolutely clear and identifying precisely where the money has to come from. Throughout the month of February, the response of the SNP has been astonishing, ever-changing, sometimes ridiculous and most of all completely out of proportion. I would sum it up by saying that the Scottish Government and the SNP in general has minimised the effect of the cuts on local government on the one hand, minimum impact on jobs and services as a phrase that will come to haunt John Swinney and the SNP in the next few weeks and months, and on the other hand, maximising the consequences for low and below average earners. That is rather a euphemism maximising because, really, they have been wildly exaggerating and misrepresenting the effect of our tax proposals. As Kezia Dugdale said, quoting the research centre of the Parliament, 92 per cent of the money from the 1p tax rate increase will come from people above average incomes. Kezia Dugdale also made this point because of the raising of the tax threshold in April. Nobody—this is disregarding the rebate scheme, which I know is the only thing that the SNP is obsessing about this afternoon—is disregarding the rebate scheme for a moment. Nobody under £19,000 in April and May will pay up any more than they are paying this year. Of course, the other thing that the SNP has obsessed about throughout the month of February is the percentage in terms of the tax paid, the percentage increase, whereas what really matters is how much extra money people are going to pay. John Swinney notoriously said that the man or the person or the man or woman earning £200,000 would have a lower percentage tax increase than somebody on low pay. Of course, what he omitted to mention was that the person on £200,000 would pay 132 times more in extra tax than the person on low pay. Once again, disregarding the rebate scheme, I give way to Chick Broody. I wonder whether, on the basis that you accept your line of £19,000, what is the impact of your tax proposal? What is the percentage change on the net disposable income of those, say, on £20,000 and those on £100,000? To take £25,000, for example, someone would pay £5 a month extra. That puts it in context when you think of the massive sums of extra money that would come from people on £100,000 and £200,000. The sudden attack on income tax from a party that I think is still considering a local income tax and that proposed a penny increase on income tax when public expenditure was increasing. That is an astonishing about turn, but turning to where they are minimising the effect on local government. 5.2 per cent cut again from the research centre. We recognise the 250 million extra for social care that Joan McAlpine and others spoke about, and of course that is a good proposal. Of course, it is an additionality for social care on the living wage that we welcome, but it will not have any positive effect on other services, in particular the decimation of education. I do not suppose that John Swinney, because he was busy yesterday, had time to look at the evidence to the education committee. Schools face major cuts to services in budget funding access, the newspaper headline. I have not got time to read it all, but Glasgow, East Ayrshire, they were all talking about the effect precisely on education. Of course I welcome the extra money in terms of the attainment gap, but it only goes to specific areas, and our policy in relation to the attainment gap is much better because it goes to all the children and young people who need it. Specifically, COSLA yesterday warned that the funding constraints would affect council's ability to tackle things like the attainment gap. For some areas, today's announcement will help, albeit in so far three years, but for many areas it will be no help whatsoever. 15,000 jobs COSLA said across Scotland. I know full well because 2,000 of those are in Edinburgh, and I have not got time to read for the third time in February the quote from the SNP leader of Edinburgh Council, but in summary he said that everyone will be hurt by these proposals. The SNP's minimal impact scenario is in glaring contradiction to what they generally say about those terrible cuts from London, but the worst part of the budget in terms of those cuts is going to be minimal impact. That does not make any sense whatsoever. It is not too late for them to change their mind. There has never been a better time for them to change their policy on tax. They are very riding high in the polls. The opinion polls are also saying that more people support our proposal than oppose it. They have covered from two Opposition parties. Most of all, of course, we have all-out assault on local government from the budget as proposed today. They may say, well, next year we will have more tax powers than we can change local government taxation, but local government in general and education in particular cannot wait another year. We must act now to protect them for the sake of our children and the future of Scotland. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I want to concentrate on two issues of particular importance to my constituents in our Garland butte ferry services and local government services. When the Scottish Government was first elected in 2007, it was on a manifesto commitment to start delivering a policy that should have been much talked about since the 1970s, road equivalent tariff. After the Western Isles call Tyree pilot in the Government's first term, the 2011 SNP manifesto promised to roll out RET across the whole Hebridean and Clyde publicly funded ferry network, and that commitment has been honoured. Buton Mull were the last two islands to be included, and they and the route across Loch Ffine experienced very substantial fare reductions in October last year. In addition, over the past nine years, a new ferry route has been opened up, a summer route from Addrossan to Campbellton, and frequency increased on almost all services. New vessels have also been built. I want to make some progress. New vessels have also been built after almost a decade when virtually no investment was made in the fleet, an issue that has created legacy problems, such as those that were experienced by people on island Colancy last spring. Some of those vessels are also being built on the Clyde, which is a major step forward in procurement. When necessary changes have had to be made, such as on the Danoone-Gurwick route, work continues to try and improve what is on offer with an intention to go on doing so by providing passenger boats after the next tender. I declare an interest. I am a user of that service regularly. I use most ferry services in my constituency regularly. Ferries are the lifeline for many communities. I am also pleased that the Scottish Government is engaged in reviewing freight charges because they underpin that lifeline. They are crucial to the health and future of many communities. I hope that a way can be found of ameliorating such charges. That would make an enormous difference. So would standardising vessels and short infrastructure, whose future-proofing with regard to worsening weather, be a big priority for the coming years. By any measure, this Government has delivered for the islands in my constituency. The budget underlines the fact. The deciding measure in the budget is figures, and they speak for themselves. In the last year of the Labour-liberal executive, the ferry budget was £85 million. Just to keep pace with inflation, that now would be £111 million. However, in the coming year, it will actually be almost £199 million. A ferry budget up 132 per cent, yet in the last five years, the Scottish Government budget has actually gone down in real terms. Our garland butte has many challenges—depopulation, poor digital infrastructure, distance, remoteness and the history of lack of central investment. The council has not reformed to meet those challenges. It needs to change. That is the issue, as Audit Scotland has pointed out. It is those challenges that led the Deputy First Minister to agree to meet with me and the council chief executive and the council leader just two weeks ago to discuss how our garland butte can be helped to change, given that it receives neither island funding or the city deal, yet its depopulation problems are the worst in Scotland. I hope that those discussions will lead to new thinking, because that is what is needed. It is not just the Scottish Government saying that reform is vital if our local authorities are to deliver for their areas. My constituents are saying it loud and clear about their own local authority. The recent consultation on the budget invited responses from communities, and it got them. I wish I had time to quote from more than two, but two will suffice. Here, on the extreme west of the constituency, Tyree Community Council said to the council that they must look at the way it conducts its business and provides essential services to the population in a much more thoughtful and innovative way, one in which the council genuinely and proactively engages with communities. That was a view from Tyree. On the east side of the constituency, from Glenorchee and Nechall, the community council observed at the council budget that the council shows absolutely no imagination and severely affects the most vulnerable and isolated sections of the greater community of Argyll and Bute, while protecting the core funding to middle and upper management. I am not many of those ill-thought-out proposals that were voted on—an indication of wolf being cried again by the council workforce management and administration—but several were voted on. Oh no! I know how Argyll and Bute council behave. Rabbits out of hats is what they specialise in, and the trouble is that people suffer in that process. Several, however, were voted through, including cutting every school librarian. That decision has provoked outrage across Argyll and Further, but it was a decision of the council themselves, the council administration. The prize-winning author, children's author Debbie Galori, pointed to the obscenity of having tried not at one end of the constituency and no school librarians at the other. But there is a better way—no, I am not taking Mr Finlay until he learns to apologise properly in this chamber. There is a better way. I am calling today on the council to take that better way, to use the money that could be used by not replacing the council chief executive, who is leaving to become chief executive of COSLA, using that £200,000 set aside for that task to make up the £191,000 that will be saved by cutting 10 part-time and full-time school librarians. Making that swap, Presiding Officer, would show that the administration is listening, it would put berns and books before senior salaries and it would start the process of decentralisation, which is much needed. Our budgets in this place will always be constrained until we decide to fend for ourselves. But when we need to, when we want to, when John Swinney, a financial wizard, wants to and needs to, he can work magic in making people reform, and that is the issue. This budget drives the process of reform. It is worth commending for that reason alone, but it also delivers for my constituents. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. The Scottish Greens would have reasons even before we consider questions of taxation to be deeply concerned about the budget that is proposed. At a time when the world should be increasing its level of ambition on issues such as climate change, we see a dramatic reduction in effort in the current government, not least on the energy efficiency and fuel poverty agenda. It is not enough simply to debate whether that is the result of a UK decision or a Scottish one. We need to reverse that decision by putting the investment in place. As well as that continued investment in unsustainable transport infrastructure, we would again be seeking to reverse those measures. I would be willing to work constructively with any Government, even despite those serious concerns, if they were willing to address the urgent challenges facing local services by raising the revenue that is necessary to protect them. Indeed, that is a case that the Scottish Greens have been making since 2011, since the last Scottish Parliament election campaign, in which we argued that council tax, as a diminishing share of local government revenue, would be eclipsed by fees and charges—the least progressive way of funding those services. That tipping point has already been reached. Council tax is no longer adequate to meet the needs of local councils. Mr Swinney said that the responsibility for managing cuts is devolved to local level, but the decision about how much revenue should be raised will be held to the centre in the Scottish Government. I am afraid that that is simply not a position that we can accept. I am glad that other parties agree with the basic principle that we must raise revenue in order to protect those services. We disagree about the means to achieve that goal, but I have exchanged views with Kezia Dugdale on the reservations that we have about the Labour proposal. It is reasonable to ask questions about the practical implementation of a rebate. I am glad that the communication that I have had there has been constructive in tone, but I regret that Kezia Dugdale came to the chamber today and suggested that the Labour proposal is the only alternative to administering the cuts at local government level, because we have shown very clearly that it is not. We have set out three clear opportunities that the Scottish Government has for raising revenue in a locally accountable manner that directly would fund local services and also would reverse the squeeze or begin to reverse the squeeze that has been had from the centre about local economic flexibility. Some of those issues are already on the Scottish Government's agenda, but just not yet. The First Minister, just recently I believe, has been talking about using the council tax multiplier into the future as an alternative to scrapping the unfair and much-loaded council tax. If we can use that multiplier in the future, why not use it now? We have shown that by using the council tax multiplier we can address the under taxation of high-value properties while benefiting people who live in low-value properties. If it can be done in the future, why not now? The Scottish Government has also, in my view, wisely taken measures to address the relief on non-domestic rates for disused and vacant buildings. Even if the Scottish Government now seems to be rolling back a little from that position, it is still a positive move. However, the perverse incentive that exists for the demolition of buildings in order to bring them into the vacant and derelict land category will be increased. Let us bring that vacant and derelict land on to the valuation role and make it all eligible to pay non-domestic rates. We have shown how that could raise in excess of £250 million a year, adding to that the revenue that would come from changes to the council tax itself. We would have a package of local finance measures that would raise roughly the same amount as the one-pence Scottish rate of income tax proposal that we have heard, but it would do so without that continued stranglehold from the centre against local flexibility. Greens regret that the Scottish Government is not open either to discussions about a national or, in our preference, a local approach to raising revenue that will be necessary to protect public services. That is why we will be voting against the budget today, but we will also continue to make that case enter the longer term to ensure that local government in this country is worthy of the name and has the ability to make economic choices that are necessary in the context of cuts to public services. I welcome the announcements made by the Deputy First Minister regarding the attainment fund and his increased rates relief. The debate takes place against the backdrop of the agreement that reached yesterday. The important agreement, as any budget, is a building block, not just for now but for future economic financial arrangements. The budget for 2016-17, set as it is against the Westminster agenda, has to balance the immediate impact of the estear cuts, yet still secure and provide the route to economic growth. It does that. My experience tells me that, in tough financial conditions, it is seductive to cut expenditure on areas that have a longer-term impact on the organisation's growth capability and to look only at the immediate cost base. In business, that tended to be areas of training and marketing. Those were quick short-term solutions with long-term disastrous consequences. The budget strides both the current short-term challenges, yet I believe that the minister maintains a focus that will continue to build economic growth, a growth that will underpin the objective of creating a fairer and more prosperous nation. After the impact of the 2008 recession, our economy has grown in each and every quarter of the last three years, the longest period of uninterrupted growth since 2001. That is no coincidence but a continuum of the economic strategy and the financial policies of this Government and the safe hands of the Cabinet Secretary for Finance. Extended by this budget, I am sure that the extension of the budget will be seen in future budgets. The budget offers a challenge to public bodies and to local authorities to seek to improve productivity through agreeing to share services across the public sector and to do so working also with the private sector to overcome the austerity. It is a paramount that public sector activities, local authority activities and departments within the local authorities more assertively consider the sharing of services provided through, for example, the consolidation of ICT delivery. It makes no sense now and or in the longer term to have three neighbouring councils, as we have in Ayrshire, with running three different payroll systems, for example, and many other examples such as that. The use and outsourcing of activities that can be meaningfully outsourced to social enterprises in the third sector just as happens in care services can also produce the increased productivity that will help to determine the public sector's major role in securing our future economic growth. We can argue all day about the detailed level of each item of expenditure that is proposed or, in some cases, not detailed, as we have just discussed in Labour's infamous penny on tax, with still no advice on the overall implications of the proposed rebate. The details are, of course, very important. I will not rehearse those as they have been much addressed by others today. Details that I believe the budget addresses, but, as importantly, the question arises, does the budget continue to address longer-term macroeconomic issues, the issues of a sustainable economic and environmental future, the issues of investment, innovation, internationalisation and inclusion? Yes, it does. On investment in our digital infrastructure, £130 million to improve connectivity across communities, homes and businesses. Investment in protecting the small business scheme and delivering rates reductions for more than 100,000 small businesses in Scotland and, of course, investment in the skills through the education funding. On innovation, through the funding council providing £120 million to eight innovation centres for world-class research in a whole series of technological sectors. On internationalisation, through new investment hubs in London, Brussels and Dublin and through a new trade and investment strategy. Above all, on inclusion and inclusive growth, through working with employers, employees and trade unions together to deliver the business pledge and the fair work convention to secure a high-wage, high-productivity economy that will create a leading, wealthy, healthy and green economy. The budget delivers those, and as yesterday shows, we are in safe hands. The debate this afternoon is one of the most important budget debates in the history of the Parliament, because there is a choice on the table this afternoon. We can choose to support the labour tax proposals that will support investment in public services or we can go down the route proposed by the SNP budget, which will result in £500 million of public service cuts. I welcome the debate this afternoon, because I think it is the chance to have an honest debate about the choices in front of us. It is unfortunate that the SNP MSPs have not been able to engage with that all through the debate. All through the debate, they have chuckled away, they have indulged in the pretense that this budget is fine and it will not result in £500 million of cuts. There was no greater example of that than from John Swinney himself, when he said that the claim that there are going to be thousands of council job losses was greatly exaggerated. That was patronising to those that are going to face the prospect of a P45 in the months ahead. I will only need to look at my constituency to see the examples of options that are going to have to be faced up to by the local council because of the allocation passed down from this Government. The healthy and happy project that promotes good health initiatives in Rutherglen is something that Government ministers have been delighted to visit and to praise and faces the prospect of losing all its council funding. Burnhill Sports Centre is only a stone's throw away from some of the Commonwealth Games venues, and we all agreed on how the importance of the Commonwealth Games legacy faces the prospect of closure. Those who want to use the other facilities face the prospect of leisure cuts going up by 20 per cent. Quite frankly, my constituents deserve better. There is another way, and that is the Labour option. Consistently, during budget debates, the SNP challenged Labour to bring forward an alternative proposal and to explain how we would fund the different options on the table. We have done that in this case, and it is a fair option. It would actually help the lowest-paid, and it would offset many of the cuts that people have spoken about this afternoon, though I will not give way. The SNP simply have indulged here in cutting-paste austerity, taking the Osborne allocation and reallocating it throughout Scotland. It is sheer hypocrisy. If you look at what happened at last year's election, Nicola Sturgeon appeared in many of the election leaflets for the election candidates and told the Scottish public that a vote for the SNP would put public services before austerity. However, the reality of the budget that we are facing here tonight is that austerity has been delivered and public services are being slashed. I am grateful to the member for giving way. He will of course recognise that, at that election, we were proposing a 0.5 per cent increase in public spending at Westminster, which would have brought an end to austerity. However, we did not get the result in that election that we hoped for. We now have a Conservative Government continuing to perpetuate austerity. That is the reality that the Scottish budget faces. James Kelly should acknowledge that. James Kelly. In this budget, Mr MacDonald, what you propose is a £500 million cut to council budgets. The Presiding Officer refused to accept the Labour amendment for this budget debate, but I would like to propose an amendment for the SNP leaflet that can be used in the future election campaign. A vote for the SNP in this election campaign is a vote for thousands of jobs to be lost throughout Scotland. A vote for the SNP is a vote for hundreds of millions of pounds of council cuts and a vote for the SNP is a vote for vital services to be slashed. In summing up, Deputy Presiding Officer, this debate is about choices. If we really are serious as MSPs in this Parliament, we should be looking to make the choice that makes a difference. We should be looking to support investment in schools, to protect council jobs and to defend local services. If we want to make those choices and promote those choices, we should not support the budget at 5 o'clock tonight. Before we move on, there have been a few instances this afternoon of members failing to speak through the chair. I know that it is only a few weeks to dissolution, but I would like standards to be maintained. If members could please speak through the chair. John Mason, to be followed by George Adam. Once again, we find ourselves debating the Scottish budget, but I think somewhat later than usual this year. As I understand it, the main reason for this is Westminster's continuing to go its own merry way, with little or no respect for the impact on the devolved administrations, so they had their autumn statement when it suited them, thus delaying our budget process. We have seen this lack of respect again in the discussions around the fiscal framework, as they have tried to cut the Scottish budget along the way, and it has required the Cabinet Secretary to valiantly fight them off. I find it disappointing and a bit depressing that, at the start of what is meant to be a new area in the relationship between Scotland and the UK, there is still this fairly open desire at Westminster to do Scotland down, if at all possible. It has not been surprising that a rise in the Scottish rate of income tax has featured again today, although I think that the decision on that was made last week. That has been Labour's big idea, and, to be fair, it is good to see them having ideas once again. For repeated budgets, Labour has asked for more spending in multiple areas but would not say how they were funding it. This year, they are proposing a partial funding with SRIT but, as usual, the spending desires outweigh the cash available. The key factor in this budget, as long as Westminster controls the vast bulk of our powers, is that, if Westminster cuts the Scottish budget, any Scottish Government of any political colour has to reflect that by cutting its budget, too. It is just not realistic to say that we can ignore Westminster austerity. It is worth remembering why Westminster austerity has come about. Labour and Tory Governments at Westminster failed to create an oil fund for a rainy day. In fact, according to Gordon Brown, there would be no more rainy days because he had abolished boom and bust. Of course, it was Westminster that failed to regulate the financial sector and the banks sufficiently. Asterity is not some random thing that fell out of the sky. Asterity was caused by Westminster mismanagement and a bit more humility from the Westminster parties might be appreciated. We have to live—absolutely, yes. I do appreciate you giving way, Mr Mason. Talking about mismanagement, we have heard so much today about cuts and spending. What about the NHS 24 IT budget, which is overspent by £50 million and the cap payments overspent by over £70 million? Do you not think that your own Government is wasting and mismanaging thousands of millions of pounds in Scotland? Before I call John Mason, can I just remind the chamber to speak to the chair, please? As the member says, IT has been a challenge and Westminster has found it a challenge as well. However, we should remember that control has been kept over major capital expenditure by this Government. For example, my favourite, the Airdrie Bathgate rail line, the M74 extension, the Borders rail line and I think that there are quite large savings on the fourth replacement crossing. It is a pretty good record, if you ask me. We have to live with the results of Westminster mismanagement and SNP Governments have done their best and done very well to protect ordinary people, including, for example, mitigating against the bedroom tax and other welfare cuts, protecting health expenditure and freezing the council tax. On that last one, let us remember that council tax is a regressive tax, taking no account of ability to pay. Raising the council tax would hit poorer folk relatively harder, and I am convinced that it is right to freeze it once again. However, longer term, the only answer is to replace the council tax, and I, for one, would certainly support local government having more autonomy going forward. However, I would like to see some over-centralised councils like Glasgow, if you do not mind, giving more autonomy to wards or sectors of the city. It cannot be all about transfer of powers from Westminster to Holyrood, from Holyrood to local authorities. There also has to be devolution in cities like Glasgow to actual communities. Having said that the council tax freeze should be supported, we also need to consider other tax-raising options. The one that we have spent a lot of time on in the finance committee and obviously here again today has been the Scottish rate of income tax. Let us remember that this power was given to us by the Scotland Act 2012. When it was going through, I was in the Scotland Bill Committee here. We had discussions with Conservatives and Lib Dem Ministers from Westminster as to whether they would give us wider powers and income tax, which would let us be more progressive and redistribute income and so on. I think that both Labour and SNP members wanted that. However, Westminster Ministers point blank refused and said that anything to do with redistribution had to be reserved to them. So now we have the power and we have studied it at length and lo and behold it is not very progressive. That is a shock. I do not think that I am the only SNP back-bencher who is very much open to a more progressive income tax system, but sadly for 2016-17 this is not an option that is on the table. Raising SRIT by a penny or two pence might seem attractive in offering more funding, but I certainly consider that any advantage from that would be outwead by the increased tax burden on ordinary people. Up until yesterday, we were not even sure what powers we would have in 2017-18, but I would suggest that we will have the opportunity, if we wait one more year, to be able to do something that is much more targeted, much more progressive and much more helpful to ordinary people. The easier times were when Margaret Thatcher and Gordon Brown squandered the oil money and spent profligately, but we are where we are. This is a time to do all that we can to protect ordinary people. It is not a time to raise tax for ordinary people. I support the budget. I have a number of points that I want to contribute. We must remain focused on what the Scottish Government has and continues to deliver. First and foremost, I want to talk about the £33 million of investment in attainment for this year, including support for the Scottish attainment challenge, to close the gap between our most and least deprived areas. I can also welcome the Deputy First Minister's announcement familiar on today. It has been gratifying as a member of the education committee that during our debate on attainment, the subject has been something that many of us have agreed on, regardless of political party. For far too long, we have allowed where you live to be a potential negative factor on your educational outcomes. That brought us to yesterday in the education committee where we had representatives from COSLA, council representatives and councillors themselves and officers as well. They were there to talk about the budget and the challenges ahead. There was much talk of the challenges and the difficulties, but there was a very positive question about how we find the solutions and the way forward. They were extremely positive, and they came up with all the great ideas that are working throughout Scotland at our local authority levels. I believe that the point that the Deputy First Minister keeps trying to put forward as well is that we need to look at those ideas and this innovation and to share them more widely to ensure that we can really deliver for the young people in Scotland. It was interesting to hear when Ian Robertson, the assistant director for education in Glasgow, admitted that, and I am paraphrasing what he said here, most of the authorities are not good at sharing the great programmes, they kind of keep it to themselves because they do not want to share it. That might be part of the problem that we are dealing with here as we look at ways of delivering education throughout Scotland. I remember as my time in local authority that we were told that the panacea was shared services and working together, but we have a situation here where a senior officer in one of Scotland's largest councils admits at a committee that councils are not good at sharing anything. If we have good practice and we have the ability to do this and they were so passionate during that five-minute discussion, then surely they should be doing everything that they possibly can to share that. All that investment and attainment alone is not enough. We have to ensure that pupils are learning within a positive environment. That is why I welcome that the Scottish Government has continued its substantial investment in school buildings through the Scotland Schools for the Future programme. We have investment in closing attainment gap, we have new and refurbished schools and the Scottish Government has invested £88 million funding package to maintain teacher numbers, ensuring teaching induction places and secured for all probationers requiring one. We have all that in place at local government level and investment from the Scottish Government. We have the teachers, we have the buildings and we have the vision and commitment on attainment. However, as the Deputy First Minister stated, the Scottish Government is still committed to free school meals for all primary ones to three pupils. Again, I want to talk about how we are still delivering during these difficult times. The continued investment of £1 billion in our highly successful higher education sector while ensuring the continuation of free education in Scotland. There is a continued investment of £600 of free high-quality early learning and childcare, offered to all three and four-year-olds and vulnerable two-year-olds, moving to a 1,140 hours by the end of the next Parliament. That is helping and supporting families throughout our country, ensuring that they are getting the support that they need. It is not as bleak and dark as the Opposition parties make out. From early years to higher education, the Scottish Government is investing on and a continued drive in closing the educational attainment gap. That is a Scottish Government who is supporting Scotland's families, working towards creating a more positive outcome and a better future for them all. All that work is on-going during devastating Westminster spending cuts. As I said during the stage 1 debate, even during those on-going attacks on Westminster, the Scottish Government still maintains within this year's budget free higher education, maintaining funding for free prescriptions and eye checks, free concessionary travel for older, disabled and young people, and free personal nursing care that is maintained as a vital part of the reform, community-based health and social care services. That shows you a Government that, even in those difficult times, has managed to maintain and deliver more for the future. The Scottish Government budget has been slashed by Westminster, but it has been the SNP Government who has set out a clear alternative to the Tory austerity agenda. It is the Scottish Government that is proving that, even in those difficult times, it can find a better, more positive way forward for our nation. I believe that our vision purpose, the Deputy First Minister, has put forward for the budget. Who would you trust to stand up for Scotland's people during those difficult times? A proven Scottish Government that continues to deliver or the opposition parties who are currently arguing over who is going to get second place in the Scottish elections? Unlike them, I have the ambition for Scotland and, unlike them, I believe that our communities that we represent also have that ambition for the future and are supporting the Scottish Government and John Swinney in his budget. As we discuss and debate today's Scottish budget, it is important that we set the political and economic framework at the UK level to provide the backdrop and the context to those deliberations. The UK economy is weak and unbalanced. It is tied inextricably to the Tory economic plan, austerity, privatisation and the concentration of economic activity into the financial services industry. Growth is predicated on increasing personal debt. The very problems that compounded the economic crisis of 2008 have not been removed and have been entrenched. Steve Barwick of the Respected New Policy Institute concluded in a report early this year that another recession is inevitable. He said, if the UK economy can be likened to a four-cylinder car, then actually not one of its four cylinders is firing as smoothly as it should. Productivity is in the doldrums. Unemployment is artificially high due to self-employment. Household income growth has not been non-existent. Trade deficits are frighteningly high. Look beneath the bonnet and we find the UK economy both weak and unbalanced. 2016 has seen George Osborne pre-empt the next crisis by talking up what he refers to as the cocktail of threats to the UK economy. None of them to do with him, of course. The context of this Scottish budget is the failure political and economic of Westminster and the city. It underlines the need for us to pursue independence and a different past away from austerity and casino finance. The Smith commission, frankly, is not going to alter that. At the same time, there are things that we can do without the full powers that we need to transform the economy and we must agitate against austerity. The Labour Party penny increase in tax—I do not have any issue with that, but I wish that they would see that to ask for the full powers in order that we do not have to make some complicated rebate system then we could have that but you have to join the independence debate for that. Thus, there is both the need for us to have a long-term strategy and a short-term approach to immediate economic policy. With that in mind, I would like to raise two immediate areas for the budget. Firstly, it is good to see the high levels of investment into the health service. That place holds the NHS being central to developing a decent society for all. It is an institution that we must defend. However, analysis carried out by the Royal College of General Practitioners shows that, under the current plans, the proportion of the budget devoted directly to general practice in Scotland will fall. In my area, investment in hospitals and so on, but in a scattered, remote and rural area, general practice is so important. The decline in the budget is wrong, while I approve the general increase in the NHS. Another area where investment is needed now more than ever is the sectors that mitigate against the effect of catastrophic climate change. The WWF Scotland's director, Langbank, said that those new figures undermine the Scottish Government's claim to have embedded climate change in its draft budget. With the Paris Conference having demonstrated increased international commitment to tackling climate change, we should be stepping up our action and not pulling back. Scotland can and should lead the way on investment into tackling change. I recognise that we need more powers to do more, but I want to raise this to put it at the centre of agenda going forward. Austerity is the central dynamic around which this budget is built. Austerity is politically imposed by Westminster, but we have a choice. We have to not only be creative when it comes to managing the public. We need to politically oppose the Tories' route and branch, and that means supporting anti-cuts movements. It means making sure that the SNP and MSPs are agitational at Westminster, and it means that we in Scotland need to look towards creating needs budgets. Of course, it means that we must continue to campaign for independence. Thank you. We now move to the wind-up speeches. I call on Gavin Brown, Mr Brown, in six minutes. Thank you very much. I guess that there were no huge surprises in today's budget debate. There were two new measures from what I could gather, both of which, on this side of the chamber, we welcome. The increase in the attainment fund and the extension of the empty rates industrial period from three months to six months. It does not go far enough, but we welcome the change from three to six. It is a pity that, this year, the Scottish Government has been unable to convince a single other political party in this chamber to support its budget. I know that it has a majority, but I think that, for the sake of our politics, it is a pity. It is impossible to get everyone on board—it is not easy to get everyone on board, especially when they are coming from different places—but it is a matter of regret that the Scottish Government did not make it a priority to attempt to get at least one other political party to support what they want to do. I hope that, in future, a future Scottish Government will take a slightly different approach. I think that we have seen some of the best examples of double standards from the SNP today that I have seen in quite some time. After speaking on the SNP benches today, I said that the £371 million real terms cut to the Scottish budget was slashing the budget, deeply flawed, disgraceful, devastating and a whole load of other invective all the way through. That real terms cut, of course, is a cash terms increase, so the overall Scottish budget goes up in cash terms down in real terms by £371 million. In the same breath, speakers did not seem to note any irony at all in suggesting that a £500 million cash terms cut to local authorities would make any impact. They claimed that there would be minimal impact and almost no chub losses whatsoever with a £500 million cash terms cut, yet a real cash terms increase to their budget as a whole was deeply flawed, devastating and disgraceful. It is interesting to see that, in the same speeches, they were able to not get that point. I have to give way to Mr Crawford. I wonder if Gavin Brown would agree with the Conservative finance convener of Stirling Council, who said that the council is not in a bad financial state. We are able to move forward and, in this budget, there are some items of growth and good capital allocations. Is that not the reality facing Stirling Council? If that is correct, I simply say to Bruce Crawford on what basis does he and all of his colleagues say that a cash terms increase to the Scottish Government as a whole is devastating and the wrong way to go. It is as simple as that. We will not be supporting this budget today, and Murdo Fraser outlined why. We do not think that this Government genuinely prioritises the economy. Their big ideas in the last couple of years have been the business pledge, which has low investment and low take-up, and the Scottish Business Development Bank, which, three years since it was first announced, still is nowhere near happening, and we have no idea whether, in fact, it will actually happen. We have had hits to colleges, if we have heard about it. Tens of thousands of people in this country no longer have access to the part-time courses in colleges. That is unfair, because people who have challenges, people who are often vulnerable, rely upon part-term courses in order to get back into the labour market. It is no point just talking about full-term places, but part-term places are very important, too. We see cuts to the help-to-buy budget, despite the fact that minister after minister appeared on press releases with their hard hats looking at people getting their new houses. We have become less competitive on tax. At one point, when this Government took over as a majority, we probably were more competitive than the rest of the UK, but with successive budgets, they have done their level best to erode that. We have got LBTT residential rates that are stunningly high. We have got a slightly higher rate for commercial for LBTT, and we hear about the doubling of the large business supplement, which businesses had no idea that was coming. There was no manifesto commitment towards that. Some of the oil and gas businesses that the Scottish Government is determined to help will be hit hardest by that particular measure. For all those reasons, we do not think that there is a budget that helps the economy. However, let me close on a more positive note towards the Government, because, as Murdo Fraser said, we support its income tax proposal, but we voted on that just before recess, so we are not voting specifically on that today. I think that it is good that the Scottish Government held firm under political pressure, because I genuinely thought that it would fold. It has quite often folded in the past when the gentlest of political pressure has been applied, so I pay tribute to it for deciding not to increase income tax and to keep it at the same rate as the rest of the UK. It is quite right that people in Scotland should not pay a higher income tax than people in the rest of the UK. We stand shoulder to shoulder with the Scottish Government on that against the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats. Murdo Fraser, weeks ago, described us as the new better together. That was said slightly tongue-in-cheek, but not only will we better together then. We have acted together over the past couple of weeks as two different parties, and I noted that now they are using the language of better together. We used to say no thanks for better together, Presiding Officer. A Scottish National Party leaflet coming out just recently again is stealing the language of better together with no thanks, so on that I am happy to close. Oh, that was just fantastic, Presiding Officer. Despite the heat and noise of today's debate, one thing is clear. We have a choice today, a choice between cutting hundreds of millions of pounds from essential services and investing in the future of our economy and our country. We have been treated today to pantomime applause. We have even been treated to John Swinney being described as a wizard. A slightly older version of Harry Potter may be, but we have also been treated to single transferable insults around the chamber, treated to speakers being shouted down by Government ministers and backbenchers. Frankly, it has been an unedifying sight, but the louder they shout, the more we know they are losing the argument. Nicola Sturgeon's body language said it all in the stage 1 debate. She may turn her back on me, Presiding Officer, but she must not turn her back on the opportunity to stop the cuts to jobs and services in Scotland today. If she does that, she will be guilty of the most utter hypocrisy of saying one thing in public and the complete opposite in private. I remember Nicola Sturgeon telling us that more powers meant fewer cuts. I remember Nicola Sturgeon traipsing down to London to tell an incoming UK Government how they could end austerity. Yet now, in this Scottish Parliament, Nicola Sturgeon has the opportunity to practice what she preaches. Why is the SNP now so silent? Why do they prefer copying George Osborne instead of protecting the people of Scotland? I regret that what we are witnessing is SNP rhetoric triumphing over positive action. They want more powers, Presiding Officer, but they are not going to use them, passing on more than even George Osborne's cuts to the Scottish Government on to local government. Mark McDonald, in probably his most interesting intervention today, gave it away. It is okay for the SNP to tell Westminster to be anti-austerity, but when given the choice to be anti-austerity in this Parliament, the SNP turned their back on it. Believe me, the cuts to come are even worse. I take no comfort from that, but no wonder John Swinney did not want to publish a budget for years 2 and 3. He wants to keep you quite deliberately in the dark. Those will be John Swinney's hidden cuts, the cuts that are still to come. I want to see, as I am sure most in the chamber do, a growing economy. I want to see young people do better than the generation that went before them—better skilled for the jobs of tomorrow in the industries of the future. However, you do not get that without investing in your people. You do not get that without ensuring that jobs and the economy are at the heart of it. The SNP's record in education and skills is woeful. We now have 4,000 fewer teachers, 150,000 fewer students in our colleges, class sizes increasing and more to come, so I invite John Swinney to take off his rose-tinted spectacles, because that is the story that he is not telling you. Spice tells us that investment in education will result in an increase in economic activity and GDP in the order of £2 billion. That means jobs for people in my community. That means jobs for people across Scotland. It means a growing economy. What is not to like about that? Tonight, the SNP will set their face against that and will vote for cuts. Income taxes by its very nature are progressive tax. Experts have told us that, including Stirling University, the Resolution Foundation, IPPR and John Swinney acknowledge that. In his own words, clearly people on higher incomes will pay comparatively more than people on lower incomes. As Kezia Dugdale pointed out, for every pound, 92 pence would come from the top half of earners, two thirds from the very top 20 per cent of earners. I know that Mr Swinney likes to talk about percentages, but let me talk about cash, because people talk about the money in their pocket and not the percentage of income. No, I think that we have heard enough from Mark MacDonald today. On radio, John Swinney said, for an individual who is on the national living wage, earning £13,000, the amount of tax that they would pay would increase by 5 per cent, but somebody earning £200,000, their increase would be 2.6 per cent. What he doesn't tell you are the cash figures, Presiding Officer, because in the case of somebody earning £13,000, that would be £19, equivalent to 36 pence a week. Somebody alternatively on John Swinney's salary would be paying £48 a week. That's 132 times more than the low-income taxpayer would pay. I have to say, for anybody on a six-figure salary to tell low-paid workers that he is protecting their incomes when he is really protecting people like himself is simply wrong. I am very clear that, in this Parliament, if you want to do something, you can. It takes political will, it takes co-operation across the parties, it's something absent from the SNP when it comes to talking about low-paid workers. We would provide a payment of £100 through local authorities, made upfront to everyone paying tax and earning less than £20,000. Help for people earning the least which the SNP would deny them. I remind John Swinney about the bedroom tax. It took a year because he wanted to keep people hanging on the hook. We care about low-paid people, we intend to put measures in place that will improve life for them, unlike the SNP. At the end of the day, politics is all about choices. This is the last opportunity for the SNP to make the right choice. If this budget is passed tonight, then these will be Swinney's cuts. There will be no one to blame but the SNP. It will be down to each and every SNP MSP to defend. What you are voting for tonight is the SNP's choice, their choice to cut hundreds of millions of pounds from the services we all rely on, their choice to cut thousands of jobs. John Swinney is entirely wrong to minimise the impact of job losses. 40,000 jobs have already gone from local government under the SNP. Thousands more to go as a result of his budget. 350 in SNP-controlled clack manager, one small SNP council, 350 jobs to be cut. Is Mr Swinney going to tell each and every one of them that they are utterly exaggerating? No, I do not think so. The SNP choice tonight is short-sighted. What we need is bold and radical action to invest in skills, to grow our economy and to secure the future of the nation. Their choice is to pass on Tory austerity to Scotland. If you were ever in any doubt about that, just look at the evidence. The SNP applauded by the Tories. The SNP praised by the Tories in their new tax payers alliance. Indeed, the Deputy First Minister is happy to sit down with the Tories but will not meet the workers outside this Parliament who are about to lose their jobs. Faced with the choice of continuing Tory austerity or using the powers that we have to invest in the future of our country, we choose to use our powers. I now call on John Swinney to wind up with me, Deputy First Minister, until five o'clock. Let me begin first of all with the comments that Gavin Brown made about the fact that no other party was on board to support the Government's budget tonight. Obviously, that is regrettable that no other party has seen fit to support the Government in delivering the largest cash settlement that has ever been delivered in the history of Scotland to the health service. I would have thought that that might have attracted some support from somebody in the chamber or perhaps for the Conservatives to think about the possibility of supporting the continuation of the small business bonus scheme, but they are all going to vote against that when it comes to five o'clock. Let me get into my stride, Dr Simpson, and we will have a wee go later on. The Labour Party is voting against modern apprenticeships but, of course, the Labour Party has a habit of voting against modern apprenticeships because they voted against those provisions, despite asking for them in budgets that I previously put to Parliament on earlier occasions. Mr Brown also said that he was pleased that the Government had not folded on the issue of the Scottish rate of income tax. That was a comment that Mr Brown is a season contributor towards in-parliamentary debates. He said that he knew that that was a comment that really lacked—he said substantial things to Parliament—but that is a comment that Mr Brown should have known lacked substance. After yesterday, it is very obvious that this Government does not fold even to Her Majesty's treasury. Seven billion pounds, three and a half billion pounds, absolutely nothing. We do not fold to the treasury on this side of Parliament. I have to say that Mr Rennie's dispassionate contribution to the debate lecturing us about the importance of investing in public services in Scotland after the collaboration between the Tories and the Liberal Democrats for five years that wrecked public finances in this country. What a cheap Mr Rennie's got coming to Parliament saying that. Lily Rennie? If he really feels strongly about it, now that he's got the powers, why isn't he doing something about it? I'll come on to the explanation about that in a moment when I deal with the issues around tax. Really, Mr Rennie should think about how seriously he's taken in the country, when he complains about austerity when he was the harbinger of austerity on behalf of the Conservative Party. That's just beyond the issue. There's been a lot of discussion in the debate. I thought we were getting a wee intervention there from Mr Scott, but it was just business as usual from Mr Scott. A lot of talk today about the—I was almost about to give way there, actually. We're then going to the local government settlement. A lot of numbers have been banded around in Parliament today. There is a cash reduction in the local government budget of £500 million. I've gone through this before with Parliament. £150 million of that reduction is in capital expenditure, which will be put into the local government settlement with more assurance for a longer-term capital programme that I've given local authorities than they had before the settlement was put in place. That leads to a resource reduction of £350 million. Anyone looking at the correspondence that I've exchanged with local authority leaders will see that that £350 million is tempered by the investment of £250 million in the integration of health and social care, which is a vital service in which local authorities are partners. It is exactly the type of investment that the Labour Party called upon us to make, and we did that. Here we have the good old situation, where the Labour Party calls for something, I deliver it and they vote against it. It's just business as usual. Of course I'll take intervention. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Mr Swinney has asked us to look at the correspondence with local authorities. Can he cite one local authority leader who agrees with him on this matter? They're all signed up. 32, to be honest. I've got 32 letters saying yes from the local authorities, and I'm very grateful to them. What they recognise is that, with all the gloom and doom from the Labour Party, we've put £250 million into health and social care to meet the needs of the people of our country. That's what this Government has done. Yes, I'll give way to Mr Redden. Alex Rowley. Thank you, Presiding Officer. The Deputy First Minister has been dishonest, because the fact is that he knows that Labour councils, indeed council leaders across Scotland, had no choice, and most of them at Ropebacteam pointed that out. I can also point out that in terms of the health and social care, the additional monies that were going in had to go in, because those services were absolutely falling apart and in crisis, and that doesn't solve the £500 million cuts. Mr Rowley, I'm sure you didn't mean to use the word dishonest, could you withdraw it? Order. This is ingenious, the same meaning. Deputy First Minister. Let's just get on with finishing this off then. On the question then of tax, let's get on to tax, because the argument has been put forward that somehow the tax change proposed by the Labour Party would have no effect on people in low-income households. That's the pretense that the Labour Party is trying to put forward. One of the points that it took exception to what I said in the stage 1 debate was that I said that it was casually disregarding the financial impact, the cash impact of this, on individuals on low incomes. John Mason has tenaciously pursued this point during the budget debates, and I completely agree with Mr Mason on this point. This is where the Labour Party has lost touch with its roots, because Jackie Baillie, in her comments just a second ago, just said that it didn't really matter if you increased somebody's income if they're earning £13,000, because it's only £19. Do the Labour Party not realise how important sums of money like that are to people in low incomes? That's how they've lost touch with their roots. It's £19 a year, or no classroom assistance, no English and maths teachers, library shut, community centres closed. The very fabric of our society affected the most vulnerable and most disadvantaged. That's the choice that he's made today, and that's the one that he'll regret. The choice that Kezia Dugdale has opted for is to get the poor to pay for the Tory's austerity, and I'm having none of it. Ken Macintosh said that we had resorted to weasel words about the rebate. Weasel words would be an exaggeration of the detail that we've had about how this rebate can somehow be paid to people on low incomes in our country. There is absolutely nothing of credibility about this programme. Drew Smith said in his remarks that he couldn't understand why two progressive parties were going to be voting differently at 5 o'clock tonight. The Labour Party and the SNP are parties that believe in progressive agendas and have done for many, many years. However, in 2008-2009, the Labour Party courageously abstained on my budget and didn't vote with us. In 2009-2010, it voted against. The bill fell, and then on the emergency bill, which, after it made a total horlicks of the budget, became and voted for the budget. In 2010-2011, it voted against the budget. It only voted for it in 2013, when I was able to put in place a workable solution to the bedroom tax problem when it had been unable to come up with a solution to the bedroom tax. In 2014-15, it voted against. Mr Smith should not be a tall surprise that the SNP and the Labour Party vote in different ways on budget days, because all the Labour Party is interested in pursuing the narrow lines of grievance in a budget process when this Government is determined to invest in the priorities of the people. Bruce Smith Thank you, Presiding Officer. I am grateful to the Deputy First Minister. He was asked the question during the debate. We know that tens of thousands of workers and local government have already left. COSLA put their estimate that 15,000 would leave as a result of this budget. Does he have an estimate and will he share that figure with Parliament? What I will say to the chamber today is that I believe that the estimates that have been made by local government are exaggerated and they have been inflated by the Labour Party into the bargain. When it comes to voting at 5 o'clock, the members of Parliament have a choice. It is a choice about whether we take decisions this afternoon to invest in public services or whether we posture in this debate. The reason why nobody else is voted for the budget is because we have an election coming up in a few weeks time and people will have their choice. At 5 o'clock, it will not be the SNP voting the same way as the Tories as the Labour Party would love to create. It will be the Labour Party and the Conservatives back together again, voting together against this budget, which invests in the public services of our country. This is a budget to secure the future of the people of Scotland, to protect people in low-income households and to make sure that we invest for the future of our country. That concludes the debate on the budget Scotland number five bill. The next item of business is consideration of business motion number 15714. In the name of Joe Fitzpatrick, on behalf of the parliamentary bureau setting out a business programme, any member who wishes to speak against the motion should press a request speak button now. I call on Joe Fitzpatrick to move motion number 15714. The next item of business is consideration of nine parliamentary bureau motions. I would ask Joe Fitzpatrick to move motion number 15715 to 15722 on approval of SSIs on block. I would ask Joe Fitzpatrick to move motion number 15723 on the designation of a lead committee. The questions on these motions will be put to the time to which we now come. There are three questions to be put as a result of today's business. The first question is that motion number 15693, in the name of Don Swinney, on the budget Scotland number five bill, be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The Parliament is not agreed. We move to vote. Members should cast their votes now. The result of the vote on motion number 15693, in the name of Don Swinney, is as follows. Yes, 64. No, 57. There were no abstentions. The motion is therefore agreed to. The budget Scotland number five bill is passed. I propose to ask a single question on motions number 15715 to 15722. If any member objects a single question being put, please say so now. No member has objected to a single question being put. Therefore, the next question is that motion number 15715 to 15722, in the name of Joe Fitzpatrick, on approval of SSIs, be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The next question is that motion number 15723, in the name of Joe Fitzpatrick, on the designation of a lead committee, be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The motion is therefore agreed to. That concludes decision time. We now move to members' business. Members should leave the chamber, should do so quickly and quietly.