 The next item of business is a debate on motion 12096, in the name of Shona Robison, on budget Scotland number three bill at stage one. I'd be grateful if members who wish to speak in the debate were to press their request to speak buttons. I call on Shona Robison to speak to and move the motion up to nine minutes, Deputy First Minister. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I'm pleased to open today's stage one debate on the 2024-25 Scottish budget. Last week's committees' debate demonstrated the pivotal role of the Scottish budget, and I welcomed members' constructive contributions. I'll respond to the Finance and Public Administration Committee's budget report ahead of stage two. I do expect today we'll hear more about areas where we should spend more, and all members who call for additional spending are welcome, of course, to provide those propositions to me, but they also need to be clear on where funding would be reduced in order to make those funding changes. Before we begin, I also would like to reference the Institute of Fiscal Studies' question on how we present the Scottish budget and its prior year comparisons. The Scottish Government has been consistent in how we compare the new budget with past years. When your budgets do change and are still in flux and when we introduce the new budget each year, something that is recognised by the IFS, we're always transparent about this through our budget revision process. I do recognise the interest in this, which is why we published additional information at the end of January to offer comparisons between the most up-to-date current year total and the planned budget for next year. The report also recognises that, taken together, our plan changes to income tax and the council tax freeze will be progressive. The 2024-25 budget is introduced against a backdrop of a stagnating UK economy that has been seriously damaged by Brexit and a Tory Government that is failing to deliver the investment needed in public services and infrastructure. The price that Scotland has paid for years of Tory economic mismanagement is plain for everyone to see. A real-terms fall in our block grants since 2022-23, with a 10 per cent real-terms cut in our capital budget over five years. That's around £1.6 billion in total, equivalent to the cost of building a large hospital. The autumn statement prioritised tax cuts over public spending and will result in real-terms spending cuts for UK Government departments. Astonishingly, real-terms cuts from the Tories for NHS England are not a single penny for the cost of 2324 pay deals in the coming financial year. I'm grateful to the Deputy First Minister for Given Way. Can she give her opinion on the views of her former Cabinet colleague and SNP MSP Kate Forbes, who said that continually increasing taxes is counterproductive, it ultimately reduces public revenue? What does she think about those comments? As I'm about to go on to say, the additional revenues raised for the Scottish budget amount to about £1.5 billion of revenues that we have because of the tax decisions that we've made over a number of years, that we would not have had we followed UK Government Tory tax decisions. That's £1.5 billion that this Parliament would not have the availability to scrutinise and to demand additional spend in other areas would be £1.5 billion worse off. I think that those tax decisions that we have made have added to the revenues available for the budget and that is important for public services. I want to make some progress and then I'll let you in later on if I have time. The autumn statement prioritised tax cuts over public spending and that will result in real-term spending cuts for UK Government departments. The lack of investment in services in England impacts our funding through Barnett funding arrangements. The Labour Welsh Finance Minister Rebecca Evans said last month that, over the last 13 years, successive UK Governments have given us more than a decade of austerity, a botched Brexit, a disastrous mini-budget that almost crashed the economy. Despite our best efforts to shield public services, businesses and the Welsh population from the worst impacts of these policies, each has individually and collectively had a significant and lasting impact on Wales. As the Tory UK Government slides towards the exit of the Westminster election, it seems that it is again looking to cut taxes at the expense of services. I urge the Chancellor on 6 March to reverse his real-terms cuts to the NHS to fund pay deals and properly invest in our services and infrastructure. Unfortunately, I suspect that we may be disappointed. I'm very grateful to the Deputy First Minister for giving way. While the Deputy First Minister is making her representations to the UK Government on these important questions, will she be mindful that the last advice that we got from the Conservative benches over there was for us to follow the example of Liz Truss and look at the shambles that she's created? I totally agree with John Swinney and of course people are suffering the consequences of that in their pockets because of mortgage interest rates and the cost of living hikes that can be largely attributed to that disastrous mini-budget. Just last week, the IMF, they might not like to hear what the IMF has got to say but I'm going to say it anyway, they warned the UK Government against further tax cuts. The IMF calling for it to instead invest in cover. Deputy First Minister, it's becoming increasingly difficult to hear the Deputy First Minister. I'd be grateful if members could make sure that each and every one of us can hear clearly, Deputy First Minister. Last week, the IMF warned the UK Government against further tax cuts, calling for it to invest in public services and reduce debt. The Office for Budget Responsibility has also highlighted the lack of detail in these plans, suggesting that it would be generous to call them a work of fiction. That's pretty powerful words. We need to see my time. I will if I've got time. We're doing all that we can to mitigate the UK Government's damaging policies but so long as our funding is tied to UK Government spending plans, our freedom to take a different path is constrained. Despite this extremely challenging situation driven by a succession of poor decisions by the UK Government, this Scottish budget targets spending where it will have the most impact. Firstly, to help tackle poverty, to support the growth of a green fair economy and to protect our vital public services. This Government is determined to deliver a better approach for Scotland. We'll use our tax powers in a proportionate way to deliver additional funding for the Scottish budget, funding to support our frontline public services in the face of a real terms reduction in the block grant. The changes that we propose to Scottish income tax in this budget are targeted so that we are asking those with the broadest shoulders to pay a little more. That means that in 2024-25 we'll have an estimated £1.5 billion of additional revenues to support Scotland money that would not be available to support our health and local government services and our social security benefits if we had simply followed UK Government tax policies. This is funding our largest single investment of £6.3 billion in social security benefits, £1.1 billion more than we received from the UK Government for Social Security. This is an investment in Scotland's future and it takes forward our equality mission tackling poverty, protecting people from harm. We estimate that 90,000 fewer children will live in poverty this year as a result of our actions. That includes lifting an estimated 50,000 children out of relative poverty through our Scottish child payment. We all rely on local authorities for vital public services and this budget provides a record £14 billion for local government, including £144 million to fund the council tax freeze. That is a 6 per cent increase on the current year and, as the Accounts Commission has confirmed, our local government revenue funding is now 2.6 per cent higher in real terms than in 2013-14. We're also using this budget to deliver on our mission of opportunity to support our ambition of a fair, green and growing economy. The Deputy First Minister must begin to conclude. In my closing statement, I will. Offshore wind presents the massive opportunities for Scotland and we're investing nearly £67 million in 2024-25. We're also providing over £307 million to our enterprise agency to support job creation and business growth. I recognise, of course, the pressures faced by the hospitality sector in addition to the freezing of the poundage. We'll provide 100 per cent relief for hospitality businesses in our islands and we're committed to continuing to work with the sector on longer-term solutions. We heard today that for the first time global warming has exceeded 1.5 degrees for a whole year. More than ever, we're reminded of why it's important to tackle the climate emergency for future generations. That's why this Government is committing £4.7 billion in this budget to activities that will have a positive impact on our climate change goals. I must ask you to conclude now, Deputy First Minister. An investment is supported by the revenue from Scotland. I will come to the other areas in my conclusion. I urge all members for the reason that we're putting our investment into front-line services to support the budget bill today. I move that the Parliament agrees to the general principles of the budget, Scotland number 3 bill. I now call on Kenneth Gibson to speak on behalf of the Finance and Public Administration Committee. I'm pleased to be speaking in today's stage 1 debate on the Scottish budget 2425 on behalf of the Finance and Public Administration Committee. I'll highlight some key issues raised in the committee's report on the Scottish budget, published on 31 January. As members are aware, the backdrop to the budget is particularly challenging. The Deputy First Minister warned in May last year that tough and decisive action must be taken to ensure the sustainability of public finances and that future budgets can be balanced. The committee understands that significant pressures on Scotland's public finances have presented difficult decisions in relation to taxation and spending. Indeed, the Scottish Fiscal Commission, in its December 2023 forecasts, anticipates slow and fragile growth in GDP and real disposal income per person with numerous interest rates rises in recent months weighing heavily on householders and businesses, while inflation has stayed higher for longer than expected. While resource funding for the Scottish Government will increase my 0.9 per cent in real terms, as a result of an improved income tax net position, capital funding falls by £484 million in 2425, mainly due to the reduced UK Government capital allocation. According to the SFC, capital funding is expected to fall by 20 per cent in real terms between 2324 and 2829, at a time when Governments should be investing to grow the economy. In our forward to the Scottish budget 2425, the Deputy First Minister said that, and I quote, "...in setting this budget, the Scottish Government has adopted a values-based approach focused on our three missions for 2026 of equality, tackling poverty and protecting people from harm, opportunity, a fair, green and growing economy and community prioritising our public services." During our budget scrutiny, we therefore sought to establish how the Scottish Government ensured that its tax and spending plans align with its three missions. Based on evidence heard, the committee remains to be convinced that Scottish Government spending prioritisation has been carried out in a strategic, coherent and co-ordinated way. Our report highlights some individual decisions that appear to conflict with the three missions, such as the lack of progress with public service reform and cuts to the affordable housing budget, although the reduction in capital availability could only have had an adverse impact, further and higher education and employability. We have therefore recommended that more of an explanation is needed in future years on how the Scottish Government has prioritised and de-prioritised its spending and developed its tax plans. On taxation, the committee heard evidence that there remains much uncertainty around behavioural change arising from increased income tax for those earning £75,000 a year or more. Not much about people leaving Scotland or choosing not to come here, but whether the marginal rate of tax they would pay might deter them from undertaking that extra shift or accepting a promotion. We therefore welcome the analysis being undertaken by HMRC to identify any behavioural trends in labour market participation arising from income tax changes and we look forward to seeing how this analysis informs SSC forecasts and taxation policy in future. We have also raised with both Governments concerns regarding the serious anomaly that exists in how income tax and national insurance policies interact across the UK, which have raised often over the years. For example, tax payers earning between £43,663 to £50,270 in Scotland pay the higher rate of national insurance rather than 2 per cent, while those earning between £110,000 to £125,170 will pay a marginal rate of 69.5 per cent tax. Due to the UK Government's removal of the personal allowance, which Professor Bell told the committee, it is possible the highest in any OCD country. We have seen little evidence of either Governments seeking to avoid or resolve these anomalies and therefore Peter calls that they work together to mitigate these issues. The committee has a longstanding interest in improving labour market participation and productivity, reducing economic inactivity and growing the tax base. In our report, we welcomed the Scottish Government's plans for a labour market participation plan and asked that it includes proposals to reduce economic inactivity and involves business and further and higher education to ensure skills shortages are addressed now and in the future. In this context, we are unclear in light of spending cuts to further and higher education, enterprise agencies and employability, how the Scottish Government has prioritised spending towards supporting the delivery of a fair, green and growing economy as part of its three priority missions. It would be helpful to receive further detail from the Deputy First Minister on this in a closing speech. The committee again expressed a disappointment at continued reductions in the capital funding quantum available to the Scottish Government and we urge a change in policy in the UK spring budget to enable more investment in infrastructure to enable and stimulate economic growth. We have also asked the Scottish Government for more information on the steps it is taking to lever in private investment through what is described as, I quote, the strategic use of its limited capital spend. The Deputy First Minister committed to ensuring that the delayed, updated infrastructure pipeline will now be published alongside the Scottish Government's medium-term financial budget. We seek assurances that this will not be subject to any further delay, given its importance to Scotland's economy. The evidence heard suggests that the Scottish Government remains focused on plugging short-term funding gaps at the expense of medium and longer-term financial planning. We have highlighted a number of delays in publishing expected documents that would help support the medium and longer-term sustainability of Scotland's finances, with the impression given that the Scottish Government is procrastinating on important decision making. It is especially disappointing that the Scottish Government did not respond to the strong recommendation set out in a pre-budget report that the Scottish Government produces a full response to the SFC's fiscal sustainability report. This, we note, was a missed opportunity to demonstrate a long-term planning approach and begin addressing the significant challenges ahead. This is a priority and should address issues such as the demographic challenges ahead and how the Scottish Government is ensuring that its social security policies are sustainable and affordable in the long term. All outstanding was a comparison of the Scottish Government's spending plans with the latest estimates or out turns from the previous year's spend. The Scottish Government agreed to publish this information in January to support transparency and maximise opportunity for scrutiny. We welcome this approach, however the figures only arrived today. It is disappointing that this data was not available in time for committee scrutiny. In a pre-budget report, we set out a series of recommendations aimed at bringing impetus, focus and direction to the Scottish Government's public service reform programme. The Government's recent update to the committee provides some welcome principles and objectives for its reform programme, including recognising the importance of prioritising preventive spend. An area of the committee has long supported. However, we have noted few other signs of progress, which is disappointing given the current need for reform. We have asked the Government to look again at our earlier recommendations and publish a financial strategy accompanying reform programme, which it formed in March of last year. It is crucial that a coherent reform programme is in place, otherwise there is a significant risk that financial procedures will, and I quote, drive a series of uncoordinated cuts across the board rather than genuine reform aimed at enhancing the delivery of public services. Finally, I wanted to touch on the SPCB budget proposal for 24-25, which the committee considers and reports on within the context of our budget scrutiny. The Scottish Parliament must have the appropriate funding to be able to scrutinise effectively and hold the Scottish Government to account. The committee also recognises that the high proportion of the SPCB budget goes on staffing salaries and office-holder costs. Nevertheless, given the significant financial pressures faced by the public sector, we have asked to see more information in future budget bids and how the SPCB makes the most effective use of its funds, including setting out where savings have been identified and how projects have been prioritised, not least in terms of the Scottish commissioners. On behalf of the SPCB committee, we look forward to receiving a response to a wider report on the Scottish budget 24-25 and to discussing this further with the Deputy First Minister ahead of stage 2 on 20 February. I also look forward to hearing the rest of the contributions in today's debate. Stage 1 of any budget process is obviously about political parties setting out their alternative choices for tax and spending. I will come to that in just a minute. I begin by acknowledging that the backdrop to this budget is exceptionally challenging. Global inflationary effects remain with resulting impacts on supply chains and energy costs. Labour markets are still unsettled following Covid and Brexit. As I said in last week's debate, the cuts to the Scottish Government's capital budget, which has just been referenced by Kenny Gibson and several key witnesses at the finance committee, including Professor David Bell, have been an issue. There is no doubt about that in an issue that I hope can be addressed by the Chancellor in due course. The Scottish Fiscal Commission set out its usual very objective analysis, more optimistic about earnings growth and short-run tax revenue income, which has been backed up by several other independent analysts, but is still deeply concerned about the extent of the fiscal deficit and the potential for that to grow in the years ahead, given the commitments that the Scottish Government has made to increase health and social care, social security spending. The Fiscal Commission is also concerned about the fact that the Scottish economy has, for many years, been underperforming when it comes to economic growth. Because we know that if the Scottish economy had grown at the same rate as the UK economy since 2017, then we would have had around £6 billion more to spend. Maybe just one reason why Audit Scotland today is criticising the Scottish Government about its lack of leadership, which rather undermines the Scottish Government's assertion that everything wrong with the Scottish economy is the fault of Westminster. I won't just now, but if those statistics are not stark enough, so too has been the reaction to the Scottish Government's budget. Indeed, I don't think I have ever seen a worse reaction, almost on a daily basis, such as the near universal condemnation of this budget from a vast array of stakeholders, even some of the SNP's own backbenches. I'm not sure if they're all here today, but presumably they are now wondering whether they should be supporting this budget. As Kenny Gibson rightly pointed out, the Finance Committee has had very considerable concerns about the fiscal situation. I won't, if you don't mind, but let me start with economic growth because this is the key point, and I have heard several senior ministers say that growth is a priority. If it was, why on earth would you make substantial cuts to the economy portfolio of 8.3 per cent in real terms when the overall Scottish budget, according to the analyst, has increased by 2.2 per cent in real terms? Indeed, the economy portfolio alongside rural affairs and transport is one of the 83 of the 11 portfolios to have real-term cuts. Why would you strip funding to the Scottish Funding Council by £140 million in real terms when universities and colleges are the very institutions that can promote growth in terms of skills development, retraining and research? Why would you cut the affordable homes budget, including that in rural areas, where workforces are facing the greatest challenges? Why would you cut the employment budget and enterprise budget in real terms by 24.2 per cent and 16.7 per cent respectively and the tourism budget by 12.3 per cent and the Scottish National Investment Bank budget by 29.2 per cent? Yes, I will in a minute. For a large number of stakeholders who have given very strong quotes about this budget, I simply don't understand that. Will the cabinet secretary agree with David Bell when he said that it is not clear at all that this budget has been designed with growth as the primary objective? Thank you, Liz Smith, for giving way. Of course, I have made very clear that we have had to prioritise the funding of front-line services because of the real terms cut to our budget, so more money for health, policing, fire, local government. If she is saying that those were the wrong priorities and we should not have made those very difficult decisions that we have had to make, is that where she would take the funding from in order to fund those other priorities? At some point, Liz Smith needs to set out what her alternative priorities are and how they will be funded? Yes, we think that the SNP has made a very serious error of judgment when it comes to the priorities. I repeat again that we are absolutely appalled by the lack of concern that the Scottish Government has towards business, especially when it will not pass on the 75 per cent rates relief on business. The Scottish Government has made a huge amount of its public sector pay awards to support public services, but what it has not done is to live up to its promise that it would return the size of the public sector to pre-pandemic levels. Since 2016, the Scottish Government's own civil service has grown by just under 11,000 people. That partly explains why the Finance Committee, on its paragraph 186 of its report, is so concerned about this public sector reform. As the convener said, it is high time that the Scottish Government recognised the seriousness of our concern. Let me come to tax. SNP ministers have said on more than one occasion that there is a moral argument for middle to higher earners to pay more tax because it allows the Scottish Government to support public services. The trouble is that the public does not see that higher tax burden or the so-called social contract with the Scottish Government delivering better services in health or in education, transport, policing and housing. All they see at present is cuts, especially to local government and an unseemly standoff between central and local government, which is probably why some of them are not going to accept the council tax fees, because they have simply run out of money. I'm in my last minute, I think, Mr Swinney. But there is a wider issue here, and that relates to the behavioural change. Flagged up by Professor Graham Roy in his Herald article on 8 January and evidenced in recent surveys, plus the effects of the widening tax differentials between Scotland and the rest of the UK, and the resulting laffer curve effects. Sorry, if Liz Smith might seat for a second. Mr Swinney, I can hear you shouting down here, and I would be grateful if that were no longer the case. Can we just come to Kate Forbes' comments? She is quite right, and she quite clearly understands the laffer curve effects. We simply cannot have a tax system that creates disincentives and undermines confidence in the economy. Or the sort that the retail consortium is criticising about the proposals for a business surtax. Can I finish, Presiding Officer, on the fact that budgets, of course, are all about choices? I don't doubt that those choices are very tough. But the Scottish Conservatives will put forward our alternative proposals, which includes abolishing the national care service bill, which is not properly costed, not properly set out, and on that basis we will not be supporting this budget at stage 1. I now call on Michael Marra up to six minutes, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. This is a chaotic and incompetent budget, which will leave Scots paying much more and getting much less in return. It is the result of 17 years of incompetence, of waste and a long-term failure to grow our economy. On 19 December, I told this chamber that it was a budget of unfolding chaos, and two months on that chaos continues, and the crisis is reaching a crescendo. Key lifeline services across Scotland still in the dark as to how much money they will have to spend or how savings will be achieved. Our councils, our colleges, our universities are all looking on aghast at government ineptitude of the highest order. We have the preposterous situation where colleges and universities have already received applications for courses in the coming academic year, but have no certainty at all as to whether come August they will be able to actually run them. Senior college leaders have told me that the process has never been so confused and chaotic. They have described it as a shambles, a soul destroying. We are staring into the abyss. It is a struggle to see what the future is. No direction, no leadership, no clarity, no empathy, no solutions, no clue—not at the moment, sir. Universities are not knowing how many places they will be able to offer to Scottish students this year when those applications are already in. Why is the budget so especially chaotic this year? We do not have to look very far—approximately five metres—a weak First Minister and a competent finance secretary, leaving a void of leadership at the cabinet table, with cabinet secretaries scrapping over portfolios, briefing the press and spreading disarray. A First Minister, who was routed in a by-election and then announced unfunded spending commitments of £1 billion of taxpayers' money that he did not have, the result of this disastrous budget with massive, non-strategic cuts across the board. Let's be crystal clear, despite the rhetoric, that it does absolutely nothing for economic growth. Economists and academics, the Fraser of Allander Institute, certainly. Talking about doing things for economic growth, does he think that abandoning the £28 billion a year green investment pledge that the Labour Party has just done today helps economic growth in Scotland or anywhere else in these islands? I would say to the Deputy First Minister that Labour is absolutely committed to making sure that we can deliver projects in Scotland, delivering thousands of jobs and making the transformative change that we need. I have to say that we have to be focused, unlike this Government, on delivering outcomes for the people of Scotland. Let's be clear, and if I can say— Let's listen to the Fraser of Allander Institute. Perhaps Professor David Bell of the University of Stirling has been clear that this is not a budget for growth, and we will all pay the price for that. After 17 years of mismanagement of the public finances, people are paying more and getting less. Labour does not believe that people earning £28,850 have the broadest shoulders, as the finance secretary claims they do. The lesson for the SNP is this—you cannot use tax as a substitute for economic growth—no thank you—to plug the black hole in the finances with tax rises. If Scotland's growth had kept pace with the other UK regions over the past decade, our economy would be £8.5 billion larger and just think what that could mean for investment in our public services. Scotland needs a Government focused on economic growth and getting our public services back on their feet with Labour. Scrutiny of the budget has shown that it is entirely unworthy of support from the whole of the Parliament. Our finance committee has been damming in its criticism as set out by the convener just minutes ago, accusing the Scottish Government of procrastinating on important decision making. In fact, committees from across the Parliament, with members of all parties, many led by SNP MSPs, have lined up to criticise the budget. The Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee reported that the Government's late withdrawal of funds in year had considerably damaged and already fragile confidence within the culture sector. The Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee damming of the Scottish Government's silo working and a budget process that is difficult to navigate. In last week's debate, the convener of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee cited evidence of the housing emergency and I quote, it is an affordability crisis, an accessibility crisis, a crisis for children and a crisis of cost and all those crises have come together as an emergency and the finance secretary has decimated the housing budget. Committees of this Parliament speaking is one. Charities, businesses, trade unions, MSPs from the Government's own benches, nobody, nobody has confidence in this budget. We agree, Scottish Labour will not be supporting this budget either. A month of the UK Covid inquiry, the Institute for Fiscal Studies this week and Audit Scotland this very morning all laying bare the scale of waste, of cover-up and of shearing competence at the very heart of this SNP Government. Whether it be the industrial scale deletion of evidence or budgets with multimillion-pound typos is the Scottish people who suffer at the hands of this tired and competent Government with nearly one in six on NHS waiting lists, crumbling schools and a housing crisis. The finance secretary may well be wishing that this was a budget she could delete before bedtime. After 17 years, it is abundantly clear that the SNP are out of ideas and it is time for change. Day by day, further beset by crises of their own making, defending a record of failure, only a wholesale change in leadership. The Government's approach will bring the change that Scotland desperately needs. Presiding Officer, let us not be around the bush. This is a budget that slashes energy efficiency in the middle of a cost of living crisis. It carves a third out of the housing budget in the middle of a housing emergency. It cuts the drugs budget in the middle of a drugs death emergency. It removes £63 million from enterprise trade and investment when the economy is in desperate need of a kickstart. It is a star of schools, universities and colleges of funding when our global advantage is slipping away from us. It puts a red pen through initiatives that would create green jobs and reduce our emissions. These are the choices that the Scottish Government has made and I cannot and my party cannot abide any of them. I am going to make some progress, Mr Mason. We can add the contempt that is shown for councils to that list as well. As it stands, the Verity House agreement is now hardly worth the paper that it is written on. The European Charter of Local Self-Government is gathering dust on the shelf. Just like many other aspects of tax, there is no vision or long-term strategy from the SNP Green Coalition Government. That is embodied by Humza Yousif swinging wildly from a consultation on record council tax hikes to announcing a freeze entirely. Cozzler was not told by Fawr Hunter. It was not signed off by Cabinet. Even the Green Coalition ministers were not told until moments before he stepped on to that conference stage. Humza Yousif was deciding tax policy on a whim for the sake of a conference headline. Why should any other party vote for something that even Lorna Slater admits is bad policy? Why come to that? Are the Greens voting for it today when it is clear that councils are not being properly compensated? What happens if a council decides this year that it will not cave into the Scottish Government? Will it be penalised by ministers in perpetuity because that is what would happen if the cash is baked in as the Government of Torr Cozzler? The proportion of the block grant would remain 5 per cent lower than it would otherwise have been year after year. That is how it follows. All of this shows utter contempt for councils putting them in a bind. The volatility has made it impossible for local authorities to plan their finances. They need certainty to have any chance of safeguarding our libraries, our leisure centres and our roads. When education is half of what our councils do, I really fear what all of this could mean for our teachers, our schools and our pupils. Under the SNP Government, Scotland has slipped down the international rankings. The Scottish Government is miles away from closing that poverty-related attainment gap by 2026 because it has only just returned to pre-pandemic levels. People premium cash has also been devalued, and we could and should dedicate entire debates in this chamber to each of the promises made by the SNP at the last election on teacher numbers, stable teacher contracts, class contact time, free school meals, free laptops, refurbished playtarks. I am not holding my breath for debates on these in Government time. When Humza Yousaf launched his NHS recovery plan, one in five children were waiting too long for mental health treatment. Since then, things have gotten even worse. Right now, that target is being broken for one in four of our children. Humza Yousaf made a personal promise to clear those waiting lists, and when that was missed, in the very same month he came to power, there was a chance to finally take Scotland's mental health crisis seriously, to put the engines of his Government behind it. Instead, he has maintained the pattern of cuts. Last winter, £50 million cut. This winter, £30 million cut is a recipe for more missed targets, more vacancies, more overworked staff and more scandalous long waits that will be visited on our children. Scotland needs world-class mental health services. Only the Scottish Liberal Democrats have set out plans to treat people quicker, put more professionals close to you in schools and GP practices, and to increase the tax paid by the social media giants to help pay for that, to undo the damage that they are doing. That is a budget that will also mean more use of petrol cars, more use of oil and gas, and more sewage in our rivers. Green MSPs are deluding themselves if they think otherwise, because the axe has been taken to woodland planting, rail services, the future transport fund, the energy transition, energy efficiency, the carbon neutral islands initiative and Scottish water. I will give way to Shirley-Anne Somerville. I am grateful to the member to allow me to make this intervention. I am aware that he has not got that much time. I presume that he is getting from the long list of things that we should be spending more money on to telling us where he is going to cut the budgets to allow that to happen. How is Coulthamilton? I am grateful for Shirley-Anne Somerville's intervention. I have already talked about how we can fund particularly mental health. By tax, it is a realistic proposition to undo the harm that social media giants are doing and pay for much-needed intervention, something that your Government has neglected time and time again. We are not talking about small cuts. Just look at the just transition fund, designed to help communities during the necessary shift away from fossil fuels. Three quarters of that is gone. These are cuts that are completely disproportionate in the context of the budget. They blow a hole in what is left of this Government's standing on the climate. I am surprised that the Greens have gone along with that. Maybe I am not. If the SNP green ministers want to take credit for the extra funding being invested in pay deals and social security, so too must they take responsible for the painful cuts. Scottish Liberal Democrats will stand up for a growing and thriving economy, an economy that creates prosperity and lifts people out of poverty. An economy that generates the tax revenue that we need to invest in lifting up Scottish education, rescuing the NHS and building more warm homes. It is painfully clear that the Government is out of touch and out of ideas. We move to the open debate, and I call on John Mason to be followed by Graham Simpson. Money is clearly tight as we go into the 24-25 budget, and a number of sectors are telling us to need more money, be that local government, affordable housing, the farming sector, public transport, forestry or provision. At the same time, on the income side of the budget, we have the STUC and others asking us to raise more from tax, while hospitality and others want NDR or other taxes cut. I think that we all need to accept that we cannot get all that we would like, and I would also suggest that we should all accept the realities of a balanced budget our income has to match our expenditure. Therefore, if we want to spend more, then we need to raise more tax or cut somewhere else. If we want to cut taxes, then we need to cut expenditure. It is all very well claiming that growing... I thank the member for taking on intervention on that point. Does the member support the tax rises by the Green SNP council in Glasgow that are set to see disabled people paying 75 per cent more for their care in Glasgow as a result of decisions taken by the council? I do not think that that is a tax as such. I am not talking about the general tax rather than a specific charge or whatever. It is all very well claiming that growing the economy would raise more tax in the longer term. Will it might or it might not? Traditionally, growing the economy has meant the richest benefit most and the poorer get left behind. So, yes, we want to grow the economy, but how we distribute the income and wealth that we have is a distinct question and we need to focus on that as well. If we start on the income or taxation side, yes, we do need to take into account what happens across our only land border. Landfill tax probably has to match England's or we could see waste tourism on a big scale. On other taxes, we can push the boundaries a bit. A few pence on income tax here or there is not going to lead to massive behavioural change, especially when we consider that house prices in Scotland are generally considerably lower than in London. There are many other advantages of living here in Scotland, including a better environment, no student fees and a better NHS. When it comes to property taxes such as NDR or council tax, I think that we have more room for manoeuvre. Land and buildings cannot be moved. A supermarket in Glasgow is not competing with a supermarket in Birmingham. It is competing with another supermarket nearby in Glasgow. So, we do not need to be overly concerned about what England is doing on property taxes. Let's not forget that the UK, compared to other European countries, is a relatively low tax economy, with only some 38 per cent of GDP going to tax and public services, which is much lower than countries like France at 47 per cent or Belgium at 53 per cent. Specifically on NDR, the hospitality sector has been asking for more relief. There have been calls for us to copy England on hospitality and give greater relief to businesses across the board. But in the first place, we need to do what is best for Scotland, not just blindly copy France or England or America or anywhere else. We also know that some parts of hospitality are doing extremely well and do not need government support. On council tax, there clearly is a debate as to whether a freeze is a good idea or not. 144 million would not solve everyone's problems. On the other hand, we could boost the Scottish child payment or the housing budget. Against that, some council taxpayers are under real financial pressure and will appreciate this kind of relief. There is not a clear right and wrong answer to this. At this point, can I just mention comparisons to previous years figures? There is no single again, no single right answer to this. Should we compare last year's approved budget or last year's estimated outturn? My answer to that is we should compare with both if we are being transparent. There is no right answer, both are correct. On the expenditure side, I think that we do have to celebrate the tremendous increase for social security from £5 to £6 billion. This is exceptional in this year's budget and I think shows where the Scottish Government's priorities and the SNP's priorities lie. Targeting money at two groups who need it most, namely families in poverty and people with disabilities. Surely that has to be the right thing to do. Other areas of expenditure are less favourable and one particular topic has been the reduction to the budget for affordable housing. Many in the third sector and beyond are concerned about this and I would have to accept that I am concerned about it. I welcome the Deputy First Minister's commitment to send any extra funding that way. Housing is clearly part of a capital budget and I would just make the following points on that. Firstly, Westminster decides the vast majority of the capital budget and the UK as a whole would be doing better if Westminster invested more in housing and other capital projects. Secondly, however, even if Westminster does not want to spend on capital, it could have relaxed Scotland's borrowing ability for this. Instead, it has imposed an incredibly tight fiscal framework that takes no account of higher inflation in recent years for steel, concrete and many other components of construction projects. Finally, if I could touch on public service reform, which has been a continuing theme for the Finance Committee, I am interested in the question of how much we spend on administration as a proportion of delivering actual front-line services. For example, last week at the Social Justice Committee, Social Security Scotland told us that its admin costs are about 5.2 per cent of benefits paid out, whereas for the equivalent benefits in England, the DWP is paying something like 6.3 per cent, so that is good. At the Finance Committee this week, we looked at the Financial Memorandum for the Agriculture and Rural Communities Bill, which is a replacement for the common agricultural policy, and it is looking at admin costs of about 11 per cent. I am not saying that Social Security and agricultural payments are directly comparable, but it seems to me that we need to look at administrative costs. Of course, that links into the question of commissioners, which we have already mentioned. Overall, we face a difficult task in the setting of the 24-25 budget. I believe that we need to target actual front-line services, and we are right to target where the needs are greatest. I do not need to bother with any scene setting here, because Liz Smith has already done an excellent job at that. However, I will agree with her that the Scottish budget has gone up, although a lower capital allocation is regrettable. I can also agree that, in the words of the IFS, Scottish budget documentation gives a quote, quote, misleading impression of the funding available for the health service councils and many other services. They found that by omitting top-ups such as wage rises, spending on the health service would be cut by 0.7 per cent in real terms, while the budget states there would be a 1.3 per cent year-on-year increase. So Neil Gray must be delighted about that. Let me get straight. Does Graham Simpson recognise the irony when the UK Tory Government cut in real terms the NHS budget in England? All we got was £10.8 million for the health service, and we have put in the additional money to create that real terms increase. Is he not embarrassed trying to make a point when his own Government has cut the NHS budget in England in real terms? I would be embarrassed if I was the finance secretary, because she has not said that she disagrees with any of what I just said. So there is a real terms cut to the health budget. So let me get straight to it by talking about my own portfolio, and then I will touch on others. Last week, Marie McCallan was quizzed about the cuts to her own budget, which she admitted were challenging. If I were her, I would have been furious given that if we were to grow as a nation, there would need to invest in transport, net zero and just transition. Just as Neil Gray should have been angry at the cuts to his wellbeing economy, fair work and energy portfolio. But Ms McCallan did not give me the impression of being furious when she appeared at the net zero committee. I asked her about cuts to the capital budget of SPT. I say cuts, Presiding Officer. It has been obliterated to nothing, and that has consequences. Things like the Glasgow subway modernisation will be affected, projects like the East Kilbride rail enhancement will be hit through funding cuts to the park and ride element of that. The Lanark transport interchange will see a financial black hole. Marie McCallan says SPT should use reserves, but that shows a lack of understanding about SPT's budget. Reserves are accounted for. This budget will impact on our ability to improve public transport and get people onto it and out of their cars. There are other examples of this. The bus partnership fund is being cut again to zero. That's the fund that pays for infrastructure, allowing buses to move around easier and quicker. This is a Government that says it wants to cut the amount we travel in cars where you could have fooled me. The Scottish Government has cut the total rail services budget by £79.9 million in cash terms. It's cut the future transport fund by over 60 per cent in cash terms. It's cut the total ferry services budget by £5.5 million in cash terms. It's cut the total active travel, low-carbon budget by £40.8 million in cash terms. There were meant to be spending £320 million on active travel. It's now £100 million short of that. You would think Patrick Harvie might resign over that, but he hasn't. Now let me turn to local government. All councils, as they do every year under the SNP, are making cuts. Those in my own patch are shielded to some degree by the booming Strathclyde pension fund asking for less contributions. However, anyone claiming that the Government is putting in enough money to cover what's needed to freeze council tax is wrong. Services will be hit and things will close. COSLA argued that a fully funded freeze would require the Scottish Government to provide funding of £300 million, and that's £156 million more than is being offered. What's to stop any council increasing council tax, the threat of removing funding? I've heard that if one breaks ranks they will all be punished, so much for a new era of respect for our councils from local government. Going back to transport, if councils don't get the funding they need, the potholes get worse. It's becoming a lottery as to whether you'll make it to your destination if you drive in places like Edinburgh or Glasgow. Housing is also taking a hit. This is the second year in a row the affordable homes supply programme budget has been reduced. So we can kiss goodbye to any hope of hitting the Government's overambitious affordable homes target. I'm just about to close. Members, let's hear one another. Mr Simpson. Yes, exactly. We should treat each other with respect. My good friend Joe Fagan, Joe's the Labour leader of South Lanarkshire Council, called the budget, incoherent and inadequate, and the worst Scottish budget in the 25-year history of the Scottish Parliament. That is saying something, but he's right. I call Michelle Thomson to be followed by Pam Duncan-Glancy. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Budgets are about choices. This year, for completely understandable reasons, certain budget pots such as health have been afforded more protection than others. The price we pay is less support over the next year for business. I would be concerned if this was to become a trend, but would know if we're serious about more positive health outcomes then we need more well-paid jobs. Indeed, Public Health Scotland states in its website that multiple long-term studies have proven this causal relationship. That means that we have to have a balanced approach towards funding decisions. Similarly, there is a presently perfectly justifiable focus on making positive social security choices. However, the Scottish Fiscal Commission estimates that spending in this policy area in 24-25 will exceed the block grant adjustment by more than £1 billion. A positive impact on absolute and relative poverty in the long run will only be achieved if we significantly grow the number of well-paid jobs in the economy. I make those points to emphasise that, to serve both the health and the economic security of the Scottish people, we need a longer-term balance and strategic consideration of the budgetary process. For that reason, I personally agree with a call made by multiple agencies and the Scottish Fiscal Commission for a multi-year approach. My second substantive point is regarding uncertainty. As Nobel Prize winning Professor Deirdre McCloskey put it, I quote, the economy, like science or art, is more like an organism growing uncertainly towards the light than a steel machine repeating exactly today and tomorrow what it did yesterday. We need to avoid thinking that we know precisely what the future will bring. Our assumptions such as they are must use the best evidence available, we must remain curious in the face of uncertainty and plan as best we can. In this context, I note this morning's letter from the FBA committee to the Scottish Government on the approach being taken to the National Care Service Bill and its accompanying financial memorandum. I recognise the considerable work that has been done to address some of the concerns by the committee, and I note that the longer timescales for delivery lead to considerably more uncertainty over funding, evolving assumptions and ultimate delivery. There is, of course, a broader context here and one that is too often not considered by some MPs. I have put on the record before that I regret that the narrowness of devolution leads to a narrowness of thought. I have spoken often about the fundamental characteristics of the UK economy with which it affects budgets at both the UK and Scotland levels. I was therefore particularly interested in part of this month's report of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee, which includes an analysis of UK economic performance. Economic growth reflects a combination of labour supply and productivity. Prior to 2007, if you recall, a Labour Government were in power at that time, the major component of UK economic growth was productivity growth. However, the bank's analysis shows that it came to a shuddering halt in 2007 and has never recovered, basically because of a failure of overall investment and a collapse in total factor productivity, which speaks to failure to create effective conditions for an innovation-driven economy. What growth there has been at the UK level since 2010, when the Tories came back into power, has largely been from increased labour supply due to population growth. We know that Scotland is vulnerable in this respect due to our demographic challenges. Little wonder, then, that Professor St Anton Muscatelli has commented that we need to reboot productivity growth. He goes on to say that that will involve the need to address skilled labour shortages through skilled immigration. A critical issue that has not been addressed by the straight jacket of the Tory Brexit-ears were the same mood music from the born-again Brexit-ears in the Labour Party. If we are to reboot our economy and have a secure basis for funding the many desirable priorities that we have, it is extraordinarily difficult to achieve in Scotland under the current constraints of devolution. We lack the necessary borrowing powers to tackle under investment. Michael Marra I appreciate the member giving way. Does she not recognise that building a skilled labour base requires investment in our colleges and our universities? The university sector is declining performance and comparison to the rest of the UK. The level of cuts that the Government is imposing on them is actually cutting to the core of our argument that we are not providing the skilled labour force that we need. I think that he makes a fair point. I personally would always want to see more investment in that arena because we are in a highly competitive marketplace. The point that I am making is around the wider UK economy and reminding everyone in here that we live within that straight jacket specifically about productivity and our inability to control immigration. I look forward to him commenting on that in further remarks. To finish off, we lack the necessary borrowing powers to tackle under investment to partner an encouraged private sector investment at scale. Critically, we lack the necessary policy powers to encourage skilled immigration. It is not sustainable. One of the things that we can do to set a more positive culture, as the economic historian Joel Mocker put it, is that economic change in all periods depends more than most economists think on what people believe. We need to be more supportive of the innovators and the entrepreneurs and more focused on the development of excellence in our skills system. Frankly, we need a revolution in attitudes to match a revolution in investment and labour supply issues. Pam Duncan-Glancy, to be followed by Kevin Stewart. The SNP green budget is not just bad news for the people of Glasgow. It is bad news for the very fabric of our society, our education system and our collective futures. COSLA has said that it is not sufficient to keep current services running. For years now, council budgets have been cut to the bone as the SNP and Greens have compounded Tory austerity and siphoned money away from essential services. Their financial mismanagement has left councils having to make brutal decisions just to make ends meet. Now, their latest policy by pressure lease, the freeze on council tax, a tax that they promised to abolish long ago, has made it worse. Almost everything that can be stopped, stripped back or cut, already has been. The only decisions left to take are the impossible ones. Savings that councils have taken off the table in years past because of the impact their loss will have on local people are back on the table. It is no longer about just stripping back, it is a choice between which essential service can be scrapped. In Glasgow it is disabled people and the poorest people in our communities paying the price. The approach of the SNP run council is just as chaotic as the SNP government and non-strategic as their colleagues here in government are towards this budget. Because not only are disabled people paying the price, they are doing it via a charge that their party committed to scrapping. Far from getting rid of non-residential care charges, disabled people in Glasgow are facing eye-watering increases of up to 75 per cent for their care. In many cases that means more than three quarters of their income from benefits is eaten up and they are left wondering why once again the target is on their back. They do not have the broadest shoulders. That is the choice by the SNP and Greens at both levels of government facing people in Glasgow. When the going gets tough, it is always disabled people's support that has to get going. The proposed eradication of the capital budget of SPT is alarming for many reasons that we have heard, but particularly as it could put critical modernisation projects like making the Glasgow subway accessible in Jeopardy, which is why I agree with the SNP leader of SPT who wrote in a letter to the First Minister, it's an unacceptable position put forward without consultation and simply cannot be permitted to happen. Presiding Officer, the consequences of this budget on our constituents is devastating and education isn't safe either. As council budgets are cut to the bone, our schools are being stretched thin, being forced to do more with less. The Cabinet Secretary for Education doesn't seem to grasp the gravity of the situation, which makes things worse. During her appearance at committee, she spent the same money over and over again, handing local authorities more demands with one hand and taking their money away with the other. It's little wonder the SNP's failing to make progress on closing the attainment gap when it's leaving local authorities with little choice but to use attainment funding to plug holes in the education budget. Presiding Officer, our schools are struggling to keep the lights on and the doors open. Never mind tackle the challenges of violence and behaviour in school, trying to support the increasing numbers of pupils with additional support needs while resource and staff have failed to keep pace or deal with rack. That the cabinet secretary's answer is that she reserves the right to claw back £140 million allocated to maintain teacher numbers when some councils may have had to decide its additional resources in other areas of education they need, like support staff, shows just the lack of strategy or planning in this Government's budget. Does the cabinet secretary really think that it's fair to deny councils the flexibility when she's voting for a budget that leaves them with barely two pens to rub together? Presiding Officer, it's not just schools suffering to either. Our colleges and universities have been hammered with cuts of at least £100 million. Beyond the clear cut reductions in this year's budget, the cumulative impact of years of stagnation in the sector is clear for all to see. This year's universities will get 19 per cent less per student than they did in 2013, forcing them to cross-subsidise from a whole variety of places, including plugging gaps with high fees for international students. Meanwhile, colleges are facing a reduction equivalent to 8.4 per cent of their day-to-day spend. With a maintenance backlog of £321 million and huge pressures already on course and staff budgets, it's no wonder the head of colleges Scotland has warned that this year's budget will force colleges to make inescapably hard choices. I attended Kelvin College graduation service yesterday, an outstanding college nourishing talent and delivering the skilled workforce of the future, despite the challenges. Students, staff and families alike were joyous in the celebration of their achievements. They deserve better than a Government that fails to prioritise their future. Year-on-year budget movements in-year, such as Clonback, the promised £46 million for further and higher education, has left the sector on edge. How can we expect the sector, unions and employers to resolve disputes in our institutions or our institutions planned for the future when they can't trust the Government when they're negotiating them with them? I agree with the president of NUS who pointed out that, if the Government's priority was ever education, they have a funny way of showing it. Change is coming. Like pupils, students and staff across the sector, Scottish Labour knows that education is an investment in our collective prosperity. It holds the key to unlocking opportunity, unleashing potential and building a brighter tomorrow for generations to come. It's time to reject this anti-council, anti-community, anti-opportunity budget and say enough is enough. The change that Scotland needs is not more chaos and no plan. It's a Government that values communities, values education and values opportunity. That Government is a Labour Government and the people of Scotland know it. Let's look at the hand that Scotland has been dealt with. Every family in Scotland has been feeling the impact of inflation since the Westminster Government drove a nail into the coffin of an already precarious UK economy with a disastrous Liz Trust budget. Scottish Public Services is feeling the exact same squeeze as family budgets and what did Westminster do? It delivered an inflation-adjusted cut to Scotland's block grant, not a rise to protect public services, a cut, and it didn't need to be that way. Richard Hughes, the chairman of the Office of Budget Responsibility, the UK Government's very own bookkeeper, spoke here in this building and said that the chancellor opted to cut two taxes in his autumn statement rather than to try to protect the real spending power of public services. I'll give way to Mr Fraser. I wonder why he and his SNP colleagues never recognised the point that the Barnett formula delivers an additional £2,000 for every man, woman and child in Scotland to spend on public services above the UK average. The same Barnett formula that Mr Stewart and his colleagues would scrap tomorrow. Why didn't he recognise that point? That was a speech rather than an intervention. What I would say to Mr Fraser is that we have an inflation-adjusted cut to our revenue budget, to our block grant, and a 10 per cent cut to our capital budget. That has a major impact on the people of Scotland. Those are Tory cuts that we have to bear. Asterity is a choice. It is Westminster's choice, and that's what the Scottish Government has been dealing with year after year. Tory Westminster austerity. And Tory austerity, piled on top of Tory austerity, and all we have looked to look forward to is Labour austerity from Sir Keir Starmer. Hardly a day goes by without Labour promising to outdo the Tories, whether that's tax cuts for the wealthy, giving bankers free rein with bonuses, or cutting their £28 billion green transition pledge, and who knows what they will renegon tomorrow. But through it all, this Scottish Government has delivered for the people of Scotland. Yes, taxes are more progressive in Scotland, but let's look at what we get for that. I'll take Mr Hoy's intervention, if he wants, rather than I'm shouting. On that basis, he was talking about taxes for the wealthy. Does he believe that those earning £28,000, for example nurses and teachers, are they the kind of wealthy people he wants to tax more? Progressive taxation. What I would say is that the very people that Mr Hoy mentions are paid much more in Scotland, thanks to the Scottish National Party Government. We have delivered for the people of Scotland. Yes, taxes are more progressive here, but let's look at what we get for that. Free prescriptions here in Scotland, £9.65 under the Tories in England. The freedom to drive your car down any public road for free in Scotland, £7.60 for tow roads under the Tories in England. Free university tuition fees in Scotland, a £27,000 millstone around the necks of young people in Labour Wales, and £27,950 in Tory England. A free bus pass when you reach £60, but you'll wait until you get your pension in Tory England and they keep putting the age of that up as well. The list of benefits that folk get here in Scotland goes on. The baby box, 1140 hours of free childcare for three and four-year-olds, as well as eligible two-year-olds. Free bus travel for under 22s, free dental care until the age of 26. In England, you can't even get a dentist. Seven additional welfare payments from Social Security Scotland, including the Scottish child payment, publicly owned rail services and it doesn't stop there. We spend more on education, more on transport, more on police, more on housing, more on agriculture and fishing, more on economic development and more on the environment. That extra spending is why we have more police officers, more prison staff, more firefighters, more nurses, more GPs, more consultants and more dentists. It is why accident and emergency departments in our hospitals are so much better than the rest of the UK. The north-east is benefiting from the Scottish Government's £500 million Just Transition Fund. Westminster has refused to match that, even though the UK Treasury has benefited from hundreds of billions of oil money that has flowed from the north-east of Scotland to London. Another Westminster rip-off. This is a tough budget, but one that reflects our shared values is a nation where we are committed to tackling poverty and trying to protect people from the harm caused by Westminster austerity. However, we cannot mitigate every horror handed down by Westminster. Although the Scottish Government does its best with the powers that we have, what is required is for this place to hold all of the levers of power. It is time for Scotland to get out of broken Brexit Britain. It is time for independence. As a number of members have already mentioned, there has never been a more difficult context for setting a Scottish budget. We went into this process with a gap of £1.5 billion to fill. As the finance committee pointed out at the start of the debate, the cuts to our capital budget are 20 per cent according to the figures used by the Scottish Fiscal Commission. On top of that, we are having to do this in a process that is deeply dysfunctional, a mad dash between an increasingly late UK Government autumn statement to the publication of a Scottish Government budget that is expected before Christmas. However, we still do not know what decisions the UK Government will make in March of this year when it publishes its budget and it could all change again. Budgets should reflect priorities. They should make a Government's values clear. That is the first line of the Deputy First Minister's forward to this budget document. The Scottish Government's priorities are equality, opportunity and community. I have mentioned before that we are potentially too broad in those and that there is some focus that is needed. However, in the circumstances of this budget, there is a clear reflection of green values. This is a budget that puts people and planet first. The contrast this week could not be sharper. We have seen reports confirming that this planet has hit the catastrophic threshold of 1.5 degrees of global warming, but we have a UK Government ditching climate action and approving more oil and gas licences. We have a Labour Opposition ditching its £28 billion spending commitment on climate, which was not even enough in the first place. Compare that to the £4.7 billion in this Scottish Government budget for next year alone for climate and nature. That is securing Scotland's future and our planet's future. We are taking action now to tackle the climate crisis and to restore our natural world and we are creating jobs for the future. I will take less. To Mr Greer, he is a member of the Finance Committee, which has signed up in paragraph 201, that we feel as a committee that the priorities of the Scottish Government set by themselves are not being addressed sufficiently in this budget. Does he agree with that? I am grateful for the intervention and that is absolutely what I was referencing in the context of the three Scottish Government missions. I think that they are so broad as to create a challenge when it comes to focus. I am going to single out a couple of specific examples later on, as you would expect. I do have issues with the council tax freeze. On the point of focusing on the planet, you do not need to take my word for it and my party's planet for it. Francis Azuzka, who is the chief executive of NatureScot, was at the Finance Committee a few weeks ago and said, I see in the budget a shift towards recognising the long-term challenges of climate change. I mentioned last week, contrary to what was said about our party, there are lots of things that the Scottish Greens want to see grow. We want more high-quality, lasting jobs in green industries, preferably in Scottish-owned businesses, even more preferably in businesses owned by their workers as co-operatives, but we are proud to be part of a Government that is delivering that kind of growth. At the end of last year, we saw the Fraser of Allander report showing that, in 2021 alone, we went from 27,000 to 42,000 jobs in green energy. That budget includes £67 million for the offshore wind supply chain, doubling down on one of those key industries. We cannot prioritise everything, and I think that the Scottish Government needs to be more focused on its economic priorities and strategy. That is exactly one of the sectors that we can prioritise with confidence that it will result in a very positive return. I am proud that green tax policy will mean that, in the coming year, there will be £1.5 billion of additional spending available that would not otherwise have been the case. I am proud that we are redistributing wealth in Scotland from those who have the most to those who need it the most. I am stunned by the Labour Party's hostility to that redistribution of wealth. This year alone, the Scottish Government is lifting 90,000 children out of poverty. The budget will lift more children out of poverty next year. I will come back to the Labour Party in a moment and I am sure that Mr Johnson will want to respond to that. We have put £1 billion more for social security in this budget. Those on the highest incomes, the top 5 per cent, will be paying more, but good luck to those in opposition parties who are going door-to-door telling the other 95 per cent that you wanted to cut their public services to protect the incomes of those at the very top. We need to be honest. If we want a fairer society, we need to pay for it. The Opposition has demonstrated again this afternoon not just fantasy economics but fantasy mathematics. The numbers just do not add up. I will take Mr Johnson's intervention at this point. We will have to be brief because Mr Greer's time is coming to close soon. I am very grateful that a marginal tax rate for those in the middle of 60 per cent, which is higher than those on £70, 80 or 90,000, is at the inverse of progressive taxation. I am glad that Mr Johnson brought that up, because for start it is not the middle. We know that average household income in Scotland is around the £28,000 mark, which Michael Marra was referencing as if people on about £28,000 are paying a huge amount more. If you are on £28,000 you are paying pennies more in tax in Scotland and in return you get a range of public services that are not available elsewhere in the UK. I accept that we cannot put all our eggs in the basket of income tax though. We cannot create new national taxes because of the Scotland Act. That is why this Government is delivering a visitor levy, cruise ship levy, carbon emission land tax, doubling council tax on holiday homes and infrastructure levy and potentially a public health levy to empower local government. I clearly do not agree—my party does not agree—with the merits of the council tax freeze. I am pleased that it is adequately funded. It is not what the Greens would have chosen. We do not believe that it can happen again, but I am certainly not going to be voting down a budget with £4.7 billion for climate and nature and £6 billion for social security because I am unhappy with one policy. The Government has clearly demonstrated its values here. The contrast could not be clearer with a dysfunctional Tory Government and a Labour Opposition who, in the words of Sky News last week, are putting protecting bankers' bonuses ahead of lifting children out of poverty. This is a budget that puts people on planet first and that is why the Greens are proud to vote for it this afternoon. Aspiration is a powerful thing. It drives us to do better to seek out success. It pushes us to do great things and gives us a reason to get back up when we fall. It has helped so many Scots achieve great things in sport, in music, in science, in technology, in business and yes, even politics. There is no doubt in my mind that it is something that we should be fostering and encouraging in Scotland and with that creating an environment where that aspiration can flourish. Under the SNP, however, and never more so than in this budget, aspiration, ambition and entrepreneurship have all disappeared from the SNP Green vocabulary. A strong dynamic growing economy is the difference between a thriving nation and a stagnating one, and no economy can hope to thrive without a population who aspires to succeed and a Government who wants to help them do it. Throughout this budget, we see examples of cuts to the very things that contribute to the long-term health of the economy. In education, from early years to colleges and universities, engendering aspiration is vital. It is where it is discovered and nurtured, it is where young people are encouraged to find their talents and learn the skills they need to succeed. That resource has been cut by this Scottish Government. Once those young people have completed their education and set it into the working world to advance their careers or even build their own businesses, they need a Government to provide support and investment to grow a strong and healthy economy. Scotland has the tools to do that from our enterprise agencies to employability and skills schemes to the Scottish National Investment Bank. They have all been cut by the Scottish Government. The journey to a successful business often requires owners to leave a secure, well-paid job and take that leap into the unknown world of self-employment. Often they must invest savings or put their house up as collateral. They then have to work all the hours that God gives, employing people, being the last people to get paid at the end of the month. If indeed they do get paid, they strive and they work and they bite, they scratch to make their business succeed and after years of graft and worry maybe get to the point where they can start to get the benefit of their risk and bravery. Then they come up against a Scottish Government who vilify them and want to scoop more and more of their hard-earned income to pay for the services that the Scottish Government has consistently let down, a Scottish Government who has no understanding of what it takes to create and run a successful business. Will we talk about aspiration and ambition in the context of confident driven entrepreneurs setting out to make their mark in the universe? For many people, their ambition can be smaller but no less deserving of encouragement and support. For people, for example, suffering from physical and mental health problems, just having the confidence and the ability to go out and achieve something can feel like an impossible hurdle to clear. Community facilities, sports centres and third sector groups supported by council funding are every bit as critical to supporting those ambitions and aspirations as enterprises to support entrepreneurs. Thanks to the Scottish Government budget, that funding has been cut and those services are disappearing, but it is not just the cuts to this budget that will harm that aspiration. The Scottish Government's decisions on tax are just as unhelpful. I agree with those who say that the broadest shoulders should carry the greater share of the burden, Deputy Presiding Officer. The difference between us is that I accept the reality that continually adding to that burden to cover for its Scottish Government excessive spending and anemic growth is not sustainable. Last year, higher and top rate earners comprised of less than 12 per cent of the population, but accounted for 65 per cent of the tax revenue, and the addition of the advanced rate will see that second number rise even further. Speaking about behavioural change, we assume that that means very high earners leaving the country, but even greater risk comes from continually squeezing far more moderate earners to the point that they no longer have sufficient incentive to try and earn more stifling better. We have already seen the signs, Deputy Presiding Officer. Not just in the private sector, I spoke to banned seven nurses, paid just enough to end up in the higher-rate tax band, who are wondering if working extra shifts is really worth the extra money after tax. How many NHS staff will be thinking something similar, and how many much more pressure will that put on NHS boards already struggling to recruit? What does it say to business owners and entrepreneurs who work incredibly hard, often taking big financial risks when the Government keeps piling on the pressure with higher taxes while making it harder to help to grow? That is before we even mention those operating in the retail, hospitality and leisure sector, who the Scottish Government seem intent on leaving at a disadvantage to their competitors elsewhere in the UK. There is no question in my mind that Scotland needs to increase its tax take. However, while the Scottish National Party and Greens are going for the quick fix of squeezing more and more out of a relatively small pool of workers, despite the risks of diminishing returns, I believe that the only way to sustainably increase revenues is to have more people earning more. To do that, we need a Government and a budget that has its eyes on the horizon, not on the opinion polls. A Government that thinks and plans for the long term giving everyone a path outward, not one that cuts off the low shrungs of the ladder for short-term savings, which brings me back in closing to aspiration. Whether it is starting a new business, changing careers or taking a small step on the path towards better mental health is aspiration that drives us to make that leap and take that risk, but the SNP is making that leap wider, the risks are greater and leaving more and more people asking why bother. Aspiration is still alive in Scotland, Deputy Presiding Officer, but with this Government and this budget it is left on life support, Deputy Presiding Officer. I now call Mark Griffin to be followed by Stuart McMillan. I draw members' attention to my register of interest, which shows that I was an owner of a private entity property in the North Lanarkshire Council area up until July last year. This has been a chaotic budget from a Government now devoid of any economic strategy, actively planning to send a housing emergency spiralling. Not only will working people pay more and get less, but the 10,000 children trapped in temporary accommodation will continue to suffer that misery. It is a budget that started with our raid on people in council tax bans ETH and ended up with an unfunded council tax freeze. It is the £200 million cut from affordable house building, which has united all corners of the housing sector, private, public and voluntary, in anger and complete disbelief. Shelter says that, as lost confidence, the Government can deliver its plans. Homes for Scotland threatens Scotland's social wellbeing. SFHA and JRIF simply describe it as brutal. That is a budget that will make poverty worse and intensify Scotland's spiralling housing emergency. I am grateful for the intervention and I would not pretend that anybody in the Greens of the SNP would pretend that the affordable housing budget is in a good situation. It has already been mentioned that we are facing a £485 million overall cut to the capital budget. Is that a sincere question? What would the Labour Party reallocate? If we can reallocate from elsewhere in the capital budget into affordable housing, we should. I have not heard any proposals from the Labour Party yet. The capital budget has been cut. I acknowledge that, but I fail to understand why the capital cut has been multiplied by six times and then handed to the housing budget. It is a reasonable ask to see where money should be allocated to fund priorities, but I do not understand why the Government is asking Opposition Benches on how they fund their promises. It was the Government's promise to deliver 110,000 houses and it is a bit rich to ask the Opposition on how to find the money to fund them. Members, we listen to the member who has the floor. The finance secretary called this a values-led budget. Those values now include increasing homelessness. That is not my words, but the absolutely damning verdict of Shelter Scotland. I will give way to Mr Doris. Mr Griffin said that the Scottish Government's response will define the commitment for 110,000 new affordable homes and not the Opposition's. Does that mean that Labour does not support those new affordable homes? We absolutely support them. We will bring forward our spending plans when it comes to the next manifesto, but surely Mr Doris understands that it is his party in Government and that it is Opposition's job to hold Government to account to their promises to the people of Scotland on their promises to build 110,000 houses. Mr Griffin, please resume your seat a second. I am not really getting to hear Mr Griffin, because I have a whole series of noises involving most benches, as far as I can see. Please resume Mr Griffin. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I again say that it is the Opposition's job to scrutinise Government's promises to the people of Scotland. They promised to deliver 110,000 houses and now are absolutely reneging on that commitment and Shelter homes for Scotland. A whole range of other organisations are clear on what the impact of that will be. In the first months of this year, what we have seen is that already two builders creating the social homes that we desperately have gone bust in the weeks leading up to this budget. We have a housing minister, apparently, in listening mode, but failing to listen to public opinion, where you have researched today shows that 80 per cent of people think that we are in a housing crisis. We have a housing regulator projected around 4,500 fewer affordable homes to be built within the next five years, confirmation that the number of homes starting to be built fell by a quarter and council starts falling by a half. We have had homes for Scotland revealing a quarter of all people in Scotland, a quarter of sons, daughters, brothers and sisters, family and friends of everyone in this chamber who have some form of unmet housing needs. That is a Government and a budget planning for decline, for retrenchment, turning it back when the need is so great. It is a Government pulling the rug from under the housing sector, council, private and social landlords. They are forcing a downturn which will have dire, dire economic and social consequences. For all Mr Greer's interventions, the Greens, even though it is a key plank of the bute house agreement to hit that £110,000 home target, seem to ignore their reality and even fail to acknowledge that there is a housing emergency out there. Private and affordable housing is interlinked. We have to acknowledge that. For every private home built, that generates £30,000 in economic contributions towards building more social homes alongside the Government grant. The decisions made in that budget will further deter investment in homes across all tenures, sucking life out of the housing market. First-time buyers, children in temporary accommodation, workers who should be building the homes that we need, our friends and family overcrowded, unable to get out of a private list, stuck on waiting lists, every single one of them failed and given up on by this SNP budget. In a general election year, where housing will be front and centre, this is a grave miscalculation by a Government devoid of an economic strategy, actively planning to send a housing emergency spiralling and has clearly lost its way. At the outset, the Deputy First Minister, in her opening comments earlier, quoted Rebecca Evans, the Welsh Finance Minister. I generally think that it is worth quoting Ms Evans again because, after what we have heard this afternoon from colleagues from the Labour Party, they seem to just have one vision that everything is bad in Scotland, but everything in Wales is wonderful. Ms Evans said when she was delivering the draft budget on 19 December that, after 13 years of austerity, a botched Brexit deal and the on-going cost of learning crisis, this is the toughest financial situation Wales has faced since the start of devolution. Our funding settlement, which comes largely from the UK Government, is not enough to reflect the extreme pressures Wales faces. That is the exact same situation that Scotland faces. This has been a budget debate like most others that I can remember in my near 17 years in this Parliament. The opposition brings forward a list of areas where they want more money to be invested, but once again I have no answers as to where that money should just come from. Bob Doris just asked Mark Griffin a question a few moments ago, and once again Mark Griffin, representing the Scottish Labour Party or the Labour Party in Scotland, did not answer the question. One point that I agree with is that more money should be invested in our public services. The Scottish Fistle Commission estimated that, with the change of tax policy in Scotland, that will bring an extra £1.5 billion into the Scottish economy for next year. If the budget is not passed and that is not implemented, the opposition parties in this Parliament will be voting against that £1.5 billion in addition to the whole budget, so in effect they are actually wanting less money into Scotland's economy and less money into the public services in Scotland. I want more money to be invested in local authorities, health, transport, culture, sport and every other devolved area of competence. I also want more money to be invested in the reserve policy areas, but they are obviously outside the realms of this Parliament at the moment. However, our public services are under huge pressure after more than a decade of Westminster austerity. The challenge facing the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament is that the powers of this Parliament are limited and by law that our budget must balance. If additional resource is to be spent towards local government or health or any other policy area, it needs to come from another budget. To date, no opposition party has suggested which budgets need to be reduced to give to another. Instead, when I have highlighted why Inverclyde should receive further investment, I have engaged in good faith and frequently suggested where I think some of this money should come from. I am not against public sector reform. Local authorities have already undertaken a great deal of reform, which I welcome, but clearly more reform is required across the whole public sector landscape. The debate today is about next year's budget and the most challenging to date under devolution. With the Scottish budget from Westminster being cut yet again and inflation reducing its value in real terms. I regularly mention my Greenwick and Inverclyde constituency in the chamber as a local MSP. If I did not do it, I would be accused of not standing up for my constituents. I often raised issues that affect the whole of Inverclyde, as I did yesterday when I asked the local government minister about extra finance for Inverclyde council. I want to thank the minister for his helpful reply, confirming that Inverclyde council receives funding equivalent to £159 per head, which is 6.2 per cent more than the Scottish average, and equates to £12.3 million more overall than it would receive if funded at the Scottish average. I met the Deputy First Minister on 14 December last year, and I had three key asks for this budget—increased resources for Police Scotland, increased resources for the Scottish Fire and Rescue Services and the Inverclyde task force that is a specific request for funding to help deliver the extended Kelbourne Business Park in Port Glasgow due to the demand to go there and the specific training assistance to help tackle the long-term unemployed challenge. The Deputy First Minister will be well aware that I have also written separately on the Kelbourne Business Park request, and I have written to Neil Gray, the Economy Secretary regarding the Employment Assistance. The budget before us delivers on my first two requests, which I warmly welcome, and dialogue in the task force items will clearly continue. However, after today's bombshell announcement by the BT group announcing their intention to close the EE call centre in Greenock later this year and shifting 450 jobs to Glasgow, Inverclyde's situation now becomes even more acute. I want to thank the Presiding Officer for taking my first man's questions. How the BT group has handled the situation has been nothing short of appalling, and they must ensure that they properly look after the staff who have been loyal to them over the years. I have the opinion that they have misled their workforce and the Inverclyde community. Consistently, EE would wax lyrical about the future and the job flexibilities that it offers, including the wide range of part-time positions that has helped many women back into the labour market after having families. That will be an additional challenge in Inverclyde, no matter what happens with the budget that we pass in this Parliament. More will be said about EE and the Chamber, so I will go back to the budget specifically. However, the budget is set in turbulent circumstances at the global level, the impacts of inflation, the war on Ukraine and the after effects of the pandemic continue to create instability. The fiscal, in addition to the autumn statement, delivering the worst-case scenario for Scotland's finances, has failed to live up to the challenges posed by the cost of living and climate crises. The cost of living situation that we face is the most important issue that I face as a constituent of the MSP. In conclusion, this budget is important. No budget is perfect. Ultimately, it is important that the budget passes, but we also know that, without the full powers of independence, our hands are always going to be tied, one hand behind our back will of course be limited because of Westminster austerity. The crucial choices that the Scottish Government has had to make are a result of a fiscal framework that I warned about a few weeks ago in this chamber that is set up to fail Scotland. Are we really surprised any more by the callous actions of a UK Tory Government that is hostile to people that are struggling to survive with dignity but can find the money for election promises to keep themselves in power? Tax cuts used cynically and irresponsibly as a sugar rush in an election year, petulantly ignoring warnings of any detrimental consequences but a refusal to tax obscene wealth, to invest in long-term economic security and environmental responsibility through the reserved fiscal levers that only they have, has a direct and indirect impact on the people of Scotland. The people across the UK continue to suffer from the increasing strain in their cost of living, from the UK Government's irresponsible choices. Here, our Government is left holding the ball of delivering a pay more, get less budget to constituents across Scotland's communities. However, I think that people do not want more excuses. In fact, what they are looking for now is solutions. I sympathise with the Scottish Government's challenge of spreading and ever-thinning real-term budget across increasing demands, but while election promises are not delivered, it only further erodes public trust. I welcome the Government implementing my proposal for the very necessary short-term step to cancel school meal debts by allocating £1.5 million of funding to local authorities. However, despite the significant cost of living pressure on families, there remains no clarity on the delivery of the Government's again delayed commitment of universal access to free school meals for all of Scotland's primary school children. Access to enough and quality food for primary children is a key driver for their development and also for their education outcomes, and this promise must be delivered now without further delay. While the statutory inflationary uplift of £26.70 of the game-changing child payment is welcome, it does not go nearly far enough, despite the First Minister himself committing to an increase of £5 in his first budget whilst he was running for party leader. An open letter sent to the First Minister last year was signed by over 150 charities, faith groups, trade unions and civic organisations, urging him to deliver on his commitment as a first step and then to follow up with our Alba Party policy of £40 a week child payment. A must, if there is to be any hope at all, of the Government meeting its targets to tackle the scourge of child poverty in this land of abundant resources. Even such targeted mitigation is not enough, as the Scottish Government is still running to stand still to keep heads above water against the surging consequences of a UK Government choices that Scotland's 59 MPs have no electoral arithmetic to influence at Westminster. I welcome the short-term certainty for households of the council tax freeze, but we need to ensure that local taxation is both fair, affordable and secure, and we need to deliver quality local services that we all rely on. The Government must commit to their long-promised reform of local taxation and do so with real engagement to ensure a solution that works for all. Short-term thinking has got us into a position of cuts and compromise and only longer-term thinking beyond the walls of devolution can deliver security, confidence and ambition for Scotland. Until then, limited resources need to be stewarded very carefully and now is not the time to be introducing tax hikes during a cost of living crisis to backfill a budget shortfall. One of the purposes of tax is to create behaviour change and the behaviour change that these tax rises will usher in, I believe, will be detrimental in the long-term to Scotland. I urge the Government to end its short-term mindset of cuts and compromise and start to deliver not only on its own election promises but on the longer-term foundational changes needed to secure us a secure future. We now move to closing speeches and I call on Daniel Johnson to close on behalf of Scottish Labour up to six minutes please. Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. Let me attempt to salvage a note of consensus. I think that maybe one thing that we can all agree, maybe in line with Strip McMillan, that this debate has something of a deja vu feel. I think that we will probably all feel that we have all gone in and left with exactly the same positions that we left with. That is maybe a shame, but maybe just let me also reflect on this. If the Government wanted a more rational debate then it needs to be a little bit more transparent with its numbers. It is not a point that I make but one made by the Finance Committee because it has been a pain since the IFS report to stress the need to go budget to budget in its comparisons. If you were to do that, looking at the entire resource envelope available in the budget this year, you would have 2 per cent more in real terms. I do not think that that would be a fair thing to do because that is not how budgets work. There are changes that happen in year. Even on those terms there is not 0.9 per cent more to spend in this coming budget year than last. We need a sense of reality. Does that make the choices easy? No, it does not. That is a very small increase, but we need to be clear about the choices that have been made. Again, these are understandable. There has been significant pay claims because again to strike a note of consensus the cost of living crisis has to be front and centre. If you are not honest about the numbers to begin with, it is very hard to have those conversations. If you are not clear about the choices that have been made on pay settlements, you cannot have that discussion. What you are left with is a confused debate that happens at cross purposes. The Finance Committee is exactly right when it states that the budget analysis should include comparison without turn. A comparison in terms of what the budget proposes to spend with what was actually spent. Maybe we could have a grown-up conversation and maybe then we could have a grown-up budget. One that does not lead to cuts across so numerous service areas such as councils. Despite what the Government says, this is a real-terms cut. The council tax freeze is not fully funded. That is going to lead to £130 million less spent. That is why councils across the land are setting out proposals in their budgets to cut teaching assistants, playgrounds and other vital local services. It is why NHS Lothian is saying that this is now requiring cuts, cutting into the muscle of the services that they deliver. Why are there cancelling projects such as the I Pavilion, the National Treatment Centre in St John's and the Cancer Centre? Why is A&E running at 30 per cent above its design capacity in the infirmary? It is why Mark Griffin was absolutely right to point out the absurdity of what is happening in the housing budget well beyond the decrease to the Government's overall capital budget. It is going to see just in a moment a 26 per cent decrease in the housing budget, which will mean that we will have 1,400 less housing starts in the coming year, as compared to before. That is almost a 10 per cent decrease in the housing volume. I am grateful to Mr Johnson for giving way. I understand the aspiration for there to be more spending on the health service, but Mr Johnson, if he wants to engage in a substantive debate with Parliament, has got to explain to us now where the Labour Party is proposing to get the money to address the issues that he has just raised. This is not how the process works. The Government proofs forward a budget. We cannot even amend the budget built. It is for the Government to defend its budget. We are scrutinising. These are the consequences of your budget. It is for the Government to defend them. That is why the Government needs to defend why it is cutting £20 million from the university budget and why it would have to explain if it is not 3,900 places that that will cut, how much per place it is going to cut. Unless we can have that grown-up conversation, if you cannot even put a number of places to that university cut, how can we have a serious debate? That is a chaotic budget, as Michael Marra pointed out. A chaotic budget, which is not just about year on year but about 17 years of these incremental decisions without the long-term thinking, without the long-term plans. That is exactly why the Finance Committee has been excoriating in its description of the approach. There is a lack of long-term planning, affordability of spending decisions and the balance between the overall strategic purposes. Indeed, Kenny Gibson went further in his remark to say that it was lack of strategic coherence. I hope that everyone is okay at the back. Obviously, my speech is having more of an impact than I realised. I am happy to give way. He is right to say that the Finance Committee were excoriating so to have a chorus of businesses and colleges who have spoken out against the removal of the flexible workforce development fund, a decision that could crush upskilling needs of 2,000 employers, 45,000 people. Why should they pay the apprenticeship levy if the opportunities are not going to be forthcoming? I think that that is a very fair point. At a time when we ought to be looking about upskilling and reskilling, that is the component of the college's budget that gets cut. I think that it flies in the face of the economic realities and why we are absolutely committed to reform of the apprenticeship levy. Ultimately, we need growth. It is only through growth that we will be able to make different changes. Over the past five years, Scotland's growth has been almost half that of the UK. Over 10 years, it has been a third less. Until that point, that is why we are going to continue to get these marginal decisions that increasingly add the burden on those who can barely afford it. While we end up with marginal tax rates of over 60 per cent for people on salaries of £40,000, the people who we ask to work so hard in our public services, nurses, teachers and police officers, that is why Scottish Labour cannot support the budget this evening at decision time. Graham Simpson earlier in the debate was quoting a Labour council leader. Labour council leaders are not always wrong, nor, as you say, is Mr Simpson. In this case, he said that this was the worst budget in the history of devolution. He is right, because I cannot recall any budget over the years that I have been in this Parliament. Generating such a negative reaction to the one that we are debating today. It has been criticised on all sides. It has been criticised by COSLA, who described it as a major blow to communities that has put councils at financial risk. It has been criticised by the trade unions, universities, colleges and shelter, which describes itself as angered by the extreme cuts announced. It has been criticised by crisis by the national charity for people experiencing homelessness. It has been criticised by the Federation of Small Business, ICAS and the CBI in a second, by the Scottish Chambers of Commerce, by the Scottish Tourism Alliance, by the UK hospitality group, by the Scottish hospitality group, by the Scottish Licence Trade Association, by Scottish financial enterprise, by the Scottish retail consortium and so the list goes on. Now happily I give way to anybody on the SNP front bench who will give me a similar list of people who welcomed this budget. Let's hear that from the finance secretary. Murdo Fraser had to cheat to mention some of the housing organisations and their concerns about the affordable housing supply programme. Is he really saying that in the light of his Government's butchery of our capital budget? Is he really got the nerve to stand up and criticise our spending plans when his Government has butchered our capital budget? Murdo Fraser. Not one single name of any external body who supports this budget could come from the finance secretary because there isn't one. Every single stakeholder has condemned this budget. Mr Fraser, please resume me a second. I would say to the front bench to please not act like that. Please listen to the person who has the floor. Mr Fraser, please resume. I am still responding to the first intervention, Mr Mason. You will get your chance in a moment. The other point that I would make to the finance secretary is exactly the same point that I made to Mr Stewart. She and her colleagues never recognised the fact that under the Barnett formula Scotland gets £2,000 more to spend per head of population for every man, woman and child in Scotland compared to the UK average and she never accepts that point. I would be grateful for the amount of money that is coming for the UK Government far above the UK average. What do they want to do? They want to rip up the Barnett formula. Most damming of all the criticisms is that of the well-respected Institute for Fiscal Studies who have slammed the budget as giving a misleading impression of the Government's spending plans. The analysis showing that the NHS recovery health and social care portfolio is actually said to fall in real terms by 0.7 per cent, not increase, as has been presented by the Scottish Government. They say the same in relation to council funding. A purported 6.2 per cent real terms increase falls to 1.8 per cent once actual spending is considered. Overall, the budget is up in real terms and cash terms, but right across the portfolios are cuts, cuts and more cuts. The housing budget is cut, core funding to local government is cut, support for woodland creation is cut, support for climate change renewables is cut, the flexible workforce development fund, which is much prized by businesses, colleges and trade unions, is scrapped. Perhaps the most serious of all is the impact of the budget on business and the economy. Humza Yousaf and his administration set out to reset the relationship between the SNP and business. They launched a new deal for business group with that purpose, but the budget rips that to shreds. If reports are to be believed, Neil Gray has just been reshuffled away from the economy brief. I'll miss my engagement with Mr Gray. I thought he was very good at listening and listening to the opposition and very good at listening to business, but fundamentally he failed because all the asks that the business community had for this budget he couldn't deliver on. He lost the argument in Cabinet and he is left embarrassed in his role. We see the calls for the 75 per cent rates relief for retail, hospitality and leisure businesses applicable south of the border to be replicated here in Scotland as dismissed. Instead, we see plans for a new super tax on grocery stores being introduced, making them even less competitive compared to their counterparts down south. Every budget line that could support Scottish business has been cut. The economy, fair work and energy portfolio cut by £118 million or 8.7 per cent in real terms. The tourism budget cut 12.3 per cent. The Scottish National Investment Bank cut 29.2 per cent. Enterprise trade and investment cut 16.7 per cent. Employability cut 24.2 per cent. There's no surprise against that backdrop. In a survey conducted just within the last two weeks of more than 500 members by the Scottish Licence Trade Association, a staggering 96 per cent said that the Scottish Government did not understand business. I'm sure Neil Gray will be delighted to move away from this portfolio. John Swinney. I'm grateful to Mr Fraser for giving way. Does he consider that his comments might meet with some more credibility in Parliament if he hadn't been an enthusiastic advocate for the economics of Liz Truss? Mr Swinney has not been keeping up with the data. Perhaps he has deleted the information. If he looked at what happened to the UK economy, the UK economy has been the fastest growing of any major European economy since 2010. The UK economy is growing faster than Germany is growing faster than France is growing faster than Italy. Mr Swinney needs to look at the facts and see how the economy is performing. He was finance secretary under his watch since 2014. The Scottish economy has grown at precisely one-half the rate of the overall UK economy, one-half, Mr Swinney, and as Liz Smith reminded us, if the Scottish economy had grown even at the UK average, we'd have an extra £6 billion to spend on public services. I'm much more, I can say, but time is going to run out. People have asked us, what will we do differently? For a start, we'd make different choices. We wouldn't spend £2 billion on a national care service. The stakeholders don't walk. We wouldn't spend money on pointless papers on independence and nobody's going to read. We wouldn't have wasted £27.6 million on a census that's failed. Millions of pounds wasted on failed court cases. Millions wasted on civil servants to work on an independent referendum that's not going to happen. Millions paid out in compensation for wrongful prosecutions in the Rangers scandal. Millions spent propping up Prestwick airport and BiFab. And the hundreds of millions on two ferries that have never yet set sail. What we should have been seeing in this budget, Presiding Officer, is a budget to grow the economy and grow our tax revenues. This is the worst budget this Parliament has ever seen and for that reason we should reject it. Thank you, Mr Fraser. I now call on Shona Robison, Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary of Finance, to close on behalf of the Scottish Government. Update minutes please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Of course, the backdrop to this budget, as many members have said, is a UK autumn statement that has delivered the worst possible scenario for Scotland, a 1.2 per cent real terms cut, a 10 per cent capital. No, Murdo Fraser, we will not be grateful on these benches for cuts to our public services. Murdo Fraser was very keen to quote Labour council leaders. It's a little surprise given that the Tories are in coalition with half of them across our local authorities. Coming back to the point about public services, we have prioritised the funding that we do have to our front-line public services, providing over half a billion pounds extra for NHS Scotland, taking total funding for front-line health boards to £13.2 billion next year. A real terms increase despite a real terms cut to NHS England from the Tories of £1.3 billion pounds. I want to have Graham Simpson or any other Tory member coming here and criticising this Government for our real terms investment in our NHS in Scotland when his Government and the Tory Government is cutting their own health budget by £1.3 billion pounds. Of course, with only £10.8 million of consequentials derived from health in the autumn statement, we have had to go further in making sure that we have put as much money into our front-line health services as we can. Let me come on to education, where we are providing £2.4 billion to support our colleges and universities, including protecting free tuition, driving forward our commitment to widening access. For schools, this budget will deliver £200 million to tackle the poverty-related attainment gap and almost £390 million to protect teacher numbers and fund the teacher pay deal. There is an affordable housing mentioned by a number of people in the chamber. What is important to recognise about the reduction is that the financial transactions element of the reduction is because the financial transactions have gone off a cliff from the UK Government. In terms of our traditional capital funding available, as I have already said, it has been cut, it is the number one priority for me in terms of capital availability if we get more capital at the spring budget on 6 March. It was the number one ask that I made of the chief secretary to the treasury when I met her two weeks ago. I want to come back to the Tories, and let me just look at what Liz Smith and some of her members have said, because the incahearance on the Tory benches is quite astonishing. On the one hand, Liz Smith said that she would have given £260 million out of the £310 million consequentials for a 75 per cent cut for hospitality. That has gone from all the other public spending that could have been spent. Let us just log that for a minute. She then said, oh well, we are going to not spend money on a national care service. That saves £15.4 million in £24.25. Let us throw for generosity, let us throw the census into that, so that is £50 million. That means that if you take the £260 million and you are generous and say that there is another £50 million, there is still about £200 million to find. If you write tax out of that, because the Tories do not want to increase tax, then that is another £100 million. Before we start with all the spending demands from Graham Simpson, Murdo Fraser and the others, they have a £300 million gap to find from public services because they have already spent the money on tax cuts for business. So where is the £300 million going to come from, Liz Smith? I would like an answer of that. I have already set out some other aspects of that, and some of that is in the public sector reform, which the Scottish Government promised in 2016 that it would restore the pre-pandemic levels of things. That has not happened. The cabinet secretary agrees with her colleague Kate Forbes, who is very anxious about the taxation policies in this budget because she believes that it is going to lead to diminishing returns and therefore undermine the growth. It is exactly what she said. Does she agree with that? What I acknowledge is that, based on the analysis of the Scottish Fiscal Commission, over half of taxpayers will continue to pay less income tax in Scotland than if they lived in the rest of the UK. The £1.5 billion of additional tax revenues because of the decisions made by successive finance secretaries to make sure that we have money for public finances would also have to be taken out, presumably, of the Tory spending plans if, heaven forbid, they ever bring a budget proposal to this chamber. So now we have about a £2 billion gap in the Tory spending plans. If you take tax out and you take the spending on public services that would now go to NDR business taxes, I think that Liz Smith needs to tell us where that £2 billion of cuts in our front-line services presumably would fall. We should really get an answer from Liz Smith on that in due course, I hope. I want to turn to Labour briefly because what we heard from Labour was a litany of spending demands and yet their Welsh Labour colleagues in government, of course, have had to make the same very difficult decisions that we've had to the extent that really the only area of government they've increased the funding to is the NHS. Most other departments have had a cut to their funds. All the departments mentioned by Michael Marra and others have all seen cuts to their budget. So therein lies the difference between being in government and being in opposition where you're taking responsibility for nothing at all. And if you look at the decisions that Labour are making in opposition, the chaos of ditching policies like the £28 billion of green investment, like now in favour of bankers' bonuses, chaotic u-turns day after day after day, I have no idea what Labour stands for any more at all, not a clue, not one. Of course it was Daniel Johnson in a minute. It was Daniel Johnson at just last year called our tax measures. These measures are progressive. Tax is part of the social compact by where those who benefit from public services are asked to contribute and those who have the ability to pay more do so. What happened to Daniel Johnson? Well of course we now have Michael Marra who absolutely has given no idea of the principles that Labour adheres to, but if he wants to now. With the cabinet secretary recognising that it's her budget that is causing chaos for instance in the college sector, in the university sector, who are having applications coming in and still don't actually know what their budget is. Can she stand up now and tell these parts of the college sector what is their budget going to be for next year? I have already said that we are providing over £2.4 billion to support our colleges and our universities, protecting free tuition and driving forward our commitment to widening. I have been clear about our priorities. We have no idea from the Labour benches what your priorities are whatsoever on Alex Cole-Hamilton and the Liberal Democrats. This is where it gets to the nub when they actually do come up with ideas. The single proposition from Alex Cole-Hamilton was tax social media giants. That's really going to help with a budget for 2024-25. We don't even have the powers to tax social media giants. What a great idea! No, I'm afraid Mr Cole-Hamilton that the Deputy First Minister must conclude. That's a shame because I would really have liked to have heard the answer to that. Perhaps he can write me a wee message because I'm really curious to know what the answer to that is. It's a bit like Groundhog Day. Year after year, I have listened to the Opposition in this place, coming forward with criticisms about the spending priorities of others, with never-not-one jaw of ideas or principles or any suggestions of what they would do differently. That's why we're in government and they're in opposition. That concludes the debate on budget Scotland number 3 Bill at stage 1. It's now time to move on to the next item of business, which is consideration of three parliamentary bureau motions. I ask George Adam, on behalf of the parliamentary bureau, to move motions 12102 on committee meeting times, 12103 on committee membership and 12104 on substitution on committees. The question on these motions will be put at decision time and there are two questions to be put as a result of today's business. The first question is that motion 12096, in the name of Shona Robison, on budget Scotland number 3, Bill at stage 1, be agreed. Are we all agreed? The Parliament is not agreed, therefore we'll move to vote and there'll be a short suspension until our members to access the digital voting system.