bnion aethor prograng a the opportunities that this will provide for young people and employers in the area? Thank you, that ends the portfolio questions. We are now moving to the next item of business, which is, a debate on motion number 15522 in the name of John Swinney on the Budget Scotland number 5 bill. Members who wish to speak in the debate should press the request speak button now, and I call on John Swinney to speak to an move the motion. I introduced the Budget Scotland number 5 bill for 2016-17, which will implement the draft budget that is set out in December. I welcome the report of the French Committee and I will formally respond in advance of stage 3, as agreed with the committee. The budget that is before the Parliament today is a budget that promotes growth in the economy and reforms public services. It ensures that the maximum impact is generated from our expenditure and that decisions on revenues raised reflect our principles-based approach to taxation. Public spending in Scotland continues to face significant challenges, with another real-terms reduction applied to our total departmental expenditure limit in 2016-17. Looking ahead, the settlement that we received in the UK spending review will see the Scottish budget fall and continue to fall in real terms in every year until the end of this decade. The financial context is also set by the continued pressure on household incomes, and the Government has been determined since its election to protect household incomes, particularly for low earners. Our longer-term financial decisions are influenced by the expectation of further powers from the Scotland Act 2016. In December, I said that the Government would set out its longer-term intentions on the use of those new powers before Parliament rises for the election. To use those powers, we need a fiscal framework that delivers on the Smith commission. It must be a framework that is faithful to that agreement and fair to Scotland. I met the chief secretary to the Treasury again this week, and work is going on as we speak to try to reach an agreement. I must, however, be clear with the chamber that there is a long way to go, there is a significant difference between our respective views, and time is short to reach an agreement. On one point, I want to be absolutely definitive. I will only sign a deal that is fair to Scotland and consistent with the principles agreed by the Smith commission. I will not sign a deal that is harmful to the interests of the people of Scotland. The budget provides the resources necessary to deliver a strong and sustainable economy whilst tackling economic inequality. It delivers an extensive capital programme that will support our economy, enhance our social infrastructure and help address climate change. It takes forward a bold and ambitious programme of public sector reform, together with our delivery partners, to ensure the sustainability and the quality of our services. It delivers on our commitments to the people of Scotland at a time of continued pressure on household incomes. In the December budget statement, the Government proposed a Scottish rate of income tax for the first time. The limited nature of the income tax power currently available to the Scottish Parliament only allows for a single rate to be set and then applies to all three income tax bands. That means that any increase on the wealthiest would also apply to the lowest income tax pairs. Proposers from other parties to increase income tax by 1p next year will hit those tax pairs least able to pay. How does that comment match the comment from last month to the finance committee when he said, I view the Scottish rate of income tax as a progressive power. Clearly people on higher incomes pay comparatively more than people on lower incomes, so surely what he's just said is wrong. Order! What I've said, what I've said that Mr Renne has been listening, is that the proposals of increasing income tax by 1p next year will hit those tax pairs least able to pay. Of course it puts up tax for the lowest- heavy-paid people in our society. O Does aileron are newly qualified nietçers that will be hit by that rise, with the police officers, firefighters, postal staff, bus drivers, charity workers, shop workers and hotel workers, workers that the length and breadth of the land will see the income tax rise. Gweld fforddau'n gwybod am gyffredin, maen nhw'n meddwl ffoto cofein, gwybod y cwestrwyno a fyddai chynghyddau. Rwy'n gwybod i ddweud y cwestrwyno ac yn meddwl i'n meddwl i'n meddwlau am yr ystyried. that we have put in place that helps to protect those on the very lowest incomes? I want to say to the teachers and to the public service workers the length and breadth of this country who have had to endure pay constraints because of the austerity programme of the United Kingdom Government, that I value the sacrifices that they have made and the last thing that I'm going to do is put up their taxes. Jackie Baillie has just raised the issue of the rebate proposal to mitigate the effects of the tax rise, so the immediate conclusion to draw from that very announcement of a rebate proposal is the recognition that this tax rise is damaging to the incomes of low-paid workers. Then there are the legislative and practical issues that would need to be overcome and overcome quickly to make that concept a reality from April this year. Let's go through the detail. Labour will need to clearly demonstrate the legal basis under which it believes that such a payment can be made. Order. I'm only helpfully going to dismantle Labour's proposal so that it should be quiet. Listen, if it is a tax relief, it is outside the powers of the Scottish Parliament in relation to income tax as conferred by the Scotland Act 2012. If it is a social security payment, that is outside the competence of Parliament as defined in the original Scotland Act 1998. Further evidence that this proposal is not properly thought through is provided by the lack of clarity about how it would be administered and, in particular, how it could be done within the £75 million allocated to this proposal by Labour. An estimated £1 million taxpayers, workers and pensioners, could be eligible for the £100 rebate that would cost £100 million, more than Labour have bargained for the rebate that doesn't even meet the needs of individuals within our society. The second problem is that, on top of that, it would be the cost of setting up and operating administrative systems by 32 local authorities across Scotland. We do not know already that it costs local authorities many millions to administer help with council tax bills, where the authorities already have a lot of information about the circumstances of claimants. Thirdly, the rebate payment is likely to be counted as income tax for tax purposes, so those who receive it will be liable to pay tax on it. It does not seem too much to expect those who propose policies of this kind to have at least considered those issues, but there seems little evidence that has happened. The only conclusion that we can draw is that it is unlikely that anyone would receive this rebate on the basis that Labour has offered that proposition to the people of this country. Of course I will give you that. His speech is very reminiscent of what we heard from his backbenchers yesterday, which is all about detail, all fine aspects of detail, but let me ask him that this frankly is an excuse for not addressing the question of principle. I want to know what you think about the principle of what we are proposing, because that, politically, is important. That was a very revealing intervention. The detail matters, because on 1 April a citizen of this country who was going to have their tax raised by Labour and they will not have it raised by the SNP, they would have to, the right thing to expect that what has been promised by Labour can actually be delivered. What Jackie Baillie has got to do in her speech today is to explain why the legal, practical and operational issues that I have raised are somehow overcome by the back of the fag packet that Jackie Baillie has written this on. This Government will freeze income tax and we will deliver a pay rise to around 50,000 of the lowest-paid workers in Scotland. The upgrading of the living wage, its extension to social care workers and an uplift of £400 for those covered by public sector pay policy earning £22,000 or less will see tens of thousands better off because of this budget. That is the difference between the SNP and Labour. We want to give the lowest-paid a pay rise, Labour wants to give them a tax rise. I will give way to Mr McDonald. I understand that Mr Swinney was too busy to come out of the Parliament today to talk to the local government workers who were lobbying outside Parliament, but since he has reiterated that he has set his face against any increase in tax, what is his message to the 16,000 local government workers who are liable to lose their jobs as a result of £500 million of cuts in the coming months? What I will say to those individuals is that the SNP is determined to protect their incomes, not punish them with a tax rise that the Labour Party is coming out with. This budget reaffirms that no afternoon would be complete without Mr Swinney. Mr Swinney is fairly simple. How can you protect our income when they do not have a job? Last year, the Deputy First Minister— This is the Government that has given public safety a guarantee of no compulsory redundancies. That is what we have delivered to the people of this country. This budget reaffirms our commitment to deliver inclusive growth through investment in education and skills. Almost £5 billion is invested annually in delivering school education, with average expenditure per people higher in Scotland than in England. The health budget in Scotland will reach over £13 billion. We will protect the budget for colleges in Scotland and ensure that higher education spending is over £1 billion in 2016-17. The Scottish Government is investing £250 million in supporting the integration of health and social care services at local level, the biggest reform in the way in which we deliver health and social care services since 1948. When we put that money in, that money is designed to do something that I thought the Labour Party might have welcomed, which the local authority leaders might have embraced, might have thought was a good idea, to pay the living wage to social care workers in our country. However, what have we had? We have had obfuscation from the Labour Party. We have had all the complaints from the Labour Party about the SNP Government doing the right thing to protect people on low incomes in our society. We want to ensure that the reforms of health and social care bring together those important services to expand the social care that is available to members of the public, to deal with the financial pressures that are felt across the system and to ensure that workers are able to command the living wage. Those are the priorities of the SNP Government on health and social care. As well as doing that, we will maintain 1,000 additional police officers on the streets of Scotland. We will protect the front-line policing budget in real terms next year. With a further £55 million provided to support a new phase of change and transformation, we will ensure that police services meet the needs of the people of Scotland. At the time of austerity, we will also inject the resources to protect household incomes from the changes in welfare undertaken by the United Kingdom Government. The investment that we are making on the Scottish welfare fund is £38 million, £343 million on council tax reduction and £35 million to ensure that nobody pays the bedroom tax in Scotland. On top of the other commitments to free school meals for our youngest citizens, for free personal care for our most elderly citizens, that is a budget that meets the needs and expectations of the people of Scotland. It confronts austerity, protects people, protects their household incomes, stands in the face of a rise in people's tax for the Labour Party and delivers for the people of this country. I move the budget in my name. Jackie Baillie to speak to and move amendment number 15522.1. Miss Baillie, 10 minutes. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. Politics is all about choices. The SNP today has to make their choice. The budget before us today is an austerity budget, and so far John Swinney has chosen to pass on austerity rather than to break from austerity. It doesn't need to be this way. There is a real opportunity here, a chance to do things differently. The SNP can make different choices and our amendment shows the way. We have new powers now and new powers coming. I ask the SNP to work with us to use these new powers to invest in our children, invest in Scotland's future and keep the promise that you made to the Scottish people time after time, that more powers meant the chance to do things differently and to make fewer cuts. The SNP believed in that during the general election when they set out plans to end austerity that they wanted an incoming UK Government to adopt. What has changed since last May? You now have the power to do that for Scotland. You can deliver real change right now. This is about our future. I am ambitious for Scotland. I want to see a growing economy. I want to see our young people do better than the generation that went before them. They are better skilled for the jobs of tomorrow in the industries of the future. However, you do not get that without investing in your people and specifically in their education and skills. Investing in education is one of the most significant ways of growing our economy, and we have a lot of catching up to do. If you take a look at what has happened in education over the last nine years, 4,000 fewer teachers in our classrooms, 152,000 fewer students in our colleges, classroom assistants, gone, not enough young people achieving their potential, what a waste. I will take the intervention from Mark McDonald. Mark McDonald is a great bloke of the member for giving way. He asks what has changed since May in the finance committee report on the budget. Order. I will wait for it. The following line 27. The committee supports the Scottish Government's proposal to set SRIT at 10 pence for 2016-17. Jackie Baillie is a member of that committee. That recommendation was a good unanimously, so I ask her what has changed since Friday. Jackie Baillie. I am sure that Mark McDonald, if he had been paying attention, would have also recognised that I was not at that meeting on Friday. Order. Mark McDonald. Order. Let us hear Ms Baillie. Ms Baillie. Perhaps Mark McDonald might want to get his glasses tested. In fact, turning back to education, under the SNP's watch, spending on education has fallen by 8 per cent for preschool, 11 per cent for primary school, 4 per cent for secondary school. That is simply £561 less per head spent on our school children. That is not a picture of a Government investing in our economy or in our future. The SNP has also cut the central education budget by £130 million. The SNP also wants to cut the local government budget by at least £350 million. As education is local government's biggest budget, it is inevitable that there will be more cuts to come. Make no mistake that big losers in John Swinney's budget are local communities, local schools and the local public services that people value. The budget cut to local government is hundreds of millions of pounds. The UK Government has cut the Scottish Government budget, but John Swinney has taken that cut and doubled it before passing it on to local government. That is austerity on stealth, and it is John Swinney's choice to do that. Do not worry, as the First Minister told us, that is all simply reprofiling. When is a cut, not a cut, of course, when it is reprofiling. Expect to see that word used quite often in future. The share of local government spending is down to 30 per cent, as a further drop of 1.7 per cent compared to last year. Gone is the Concordat and mutual respect. Gone are the warm smiles and the handshakes. Now it is all threats and draconian sanctions and a complete disregard for local democracy. The temperature in relations is near freezing. I am told by John Swinney that he has been very generous and fair to local government. I point to the 40,000 fewer public sector workers, the GMB estimating 8,000 more to go, and COSLA suggesting that it could be 15,000. If this was a private sector closure, you would not have MSPs on their feet in this chamber demanding that task forces are set up. John Swinney, where is the task force to save local services and local jobs from your cuts? I would only point out to Jackie Baillie that employment in Scotland is at its highest level. Secondly, Jackie Baillie knows that there are three elements to the local government package that I have required them to sign up to—the council tax freeze, the integration of health and social care, and the protection of teacher numbers. Which one of those does Jackie Baillie object to? I say that John Swinney threatens the law, and I also say to him that I will if this island. Order! I did not hear a denial of the 40,000 public sector workers that have lost their jobs. The workers protesting for their jobs and their communities outside are looking to us in this chamber. Where were the SNP ministers or the backbenchers? John Swinney would not even meet with the trade unions to consider the impact of cuts. Let me touch on the living wage for care workers, something that Labour members have been demanding for some time now and that Labour councils like Renfrewshire have been delivering and leading the way on. In all honesty to John Swinney, is it fair to deliver a living wage for workers paid for by sacking thousands of their colleagues? Many of us join trade unionists from the GMB, Unite and Unison and councillors from across Scotland outside the Parliament today protesting against the cuts to local government, but they have done more than simply protest. They have been positive in offering alternatives, trying to find solutions. Unite have suggested a debt amnesty, Unison have suggested changing how councils borrow, both of which would realise savings. The GMB have worked alongside local councils to protect services. All of them care about the future of their communities and they know that the cuts to come in years 2 and 3 are potentially even worse than this year. No wonder John Swinney did not want to do a spending review and has hidden the cuts to come, but it is time for grown-up politics. It is time to choose. Rory Merr, the outgoing chief executive of COSLA, said that if you self-deny, the ability to raise more money and decide that the way to deal with debt amnesty is to cut. However you dress it up, that is an austerity budget and too true. Given the choice between using our powers or making cuts to our children's future and our country's future, we choose to use our powers. Scottish Labour would use the tax system in a fair way, raising the Scottish rate of income tax by a penny to avoid making cuts to local schools and local communities. Income tax is, by its very nature, progressive. An army of experts tell us this and even John Swinney clearly, people on higher incomes will pay comparatively more than people on lower incomes. His words, so there you go. By proposing a rebate of £100 to those tax payers earning between the £10,800 threshold and £20,000, we make it even fairer and even more progressive. I have heard SNP MSPs opposed to increasing tax in principle pretend that this is about detail and I heard it from the cabinet secretary as well, when it is really about the decision. We have done the detail. Leaders in councils happy. I am happy to share and discuss the detail with John Swinney. Leaders in councils across Scotland who already make payments have made clear that they are ready, willing and able to do this, so stop pretending that it is too difficult. Presiding Officer, it is not too late for the SNP. We could work together to end Tory austerity in Scotland. You used to want to do so, to invest in our children, to invest in our economy, to invest in our future. Let me say to John Swinney, do not persist with the cuts, for all his noise, he knows how painful those cuts are and he knows he does not have to do this. Let us use the powers that we have because faced with the choice of using our powers to invest in the future of Scotland or continuing Tory austerity, because that is exactly what he is doing. There is no contest. We choose to use our powers. I move the amendment in my name. Thank you. I now call on Kenneth Gibson to speak on behalf of the finance committee. Mr Gibson, you have 10 minutes. Thank you, Presiding Officer. It is with pleasure I speak on behalf of the finance committee in the stage 1 debate on the budget bill for 2016-17 and to a draft budget report published last Friday. Scrutiny of the draft budget always works to a tight and demanding schedule. This year's timetable is even more challenging than usual, as the Scottish Government had to await publication of the UK Government spending review in late November before introducing its own budgetary proposals. I thank all those who contributed to our scrutiny, particularly given those challenging circumstances. As most members are aware, we approach budget scrutiny on the basis of four principles, affordability, the wider picture of revenue and expenditure and whether they are appropriately balanced, prioritisation, a coherent and justifiable division between sectors and programmes, value for money, the extent to which public bodies spend their allocations well in achieving outcomes, and budget processes, integration between public service planning, performance and financial management. This year, we concentrated our scrutiny on affordability and budget processes. Historically, budget scrutiny focused almost entirely on Government spending plans, with little consideration of taxation. However, the devolution of some tax powers and the expectation of more to come fundamentally changed that process and caused us to reassess it. We considered the land and buildings transaction tax and landfill tax in detail last year, and this year a key element of our scrutiny has been on the Scottish rate of income tax. Subject committees considered Government spending plans in their areas, and we recommended that they examine the extent to which public bodies are adopting a priority-based budgeting approach to deliver those outcomes set out in the national performance framework. The committee welcomes the work of subject committees in making the shift towards a more outcomes-based approach. I thank them for their helpful contribution to our scrutiny process. To enable us to hit the ground running when the draft budget was published, we issued separate calls for written evidence in addition to taxation on the work of the Scottish Futures Trust and progress in delivering preventative spending. I thank all who submitted evidence. Given the new tax powers, for the first time we questioned the Deputy First Minister over two sessions, the first considered Government tax proposals in detail before we scrutinised its spending proposals at an external meeting in Pylochry. That worked well, and we will consider the need for further changes to budget scrutiny as part of our legacy report. In Pylochry, we also held workshops with representatives of local businesses, voluntary organisations and public bodies, hearing first hand about the impact of public spending on their community and how spending should be prioritised. Key issues raised included flood prevention, access to high-speed broadband, transport housing and community empowerment. Nevertheless, given the topicality and importance of issues relating to taxation, I intend to largely concentrate on those, although I will also briefly touch upon the work of the Scottish Futures Trust and on delivering prevention. Other members will wish to discuss the Government's spending priorities, and I look forward to hearing from them. Turning firstly to affordability, the committee considered the need for a balanced budget, with expenditure no greater than revenue. The draft budget proposes to apply a £10 rate of Scottish rate of income tax, meaning Scottish taxpayers will continue to pay the same rate of income tax as those in the rest of the UK. To inform our consideration of this issue, we held several or 11 sessions in the autumn. One or two witnesses favoured a reduced rate of SRIT on the basis that this would act as a stimulus to the wider economy, boosting jobs and growth. Others advocated an increased rate on the basis that higher revenues could be used to reduce inequalities. However, the clear majority of responses supported the maintenance of the 10p rate for 2016-17, citing factors such as complexity for employers, mobility of labour, the economy's on-going but incomplete recovery from recession, impact on a workforce that has endured below inflation pay rises in recent years and the blunt nature of the power. Having considered the matter in detail in our report, the committee unanimously supported the Government's proposal to set SRIT at 10p for 2016-17. Nevertheless, we heard some innovative proposals for changes to taxation going forward and recommended a wide-ranging debate across Scotland on taxation policy and anticipation of expected new financial powers from April 2017. To inform such a debate, one of our key recommendations is that future decisions on taxation policy must be informed by behavioural analysis. Expert witnesses explained how taxpayers could be expected to change their behaviour in response to tax changes. Evidence from around the world suggests that higher rates of income tax are likely to lead to behaviours that impact negatively on tax revenues, including reductions in labour supply, tax avoidance and migration. Those behavioural responses are particularly important in relation to high earners, who are more likely to have the means, mobility and motivation to change their behaviour in response to tax changes. Professor David Bell told us that the highest 10% of taxpayers pay more than half of income tax revenues while the top 1% contributes around a fifth. He estimated that there are around 11,000 additional rate taxpayers in Scotland. As such, a large proportion of tax revenue depends on a relatively small number of taxpayers, the committee was clear that it is imperative that the potential impact behavioural response on tax revenues is assessed for changes to taxation policy made. Ultimately, intention underlying of the devolution of tax powers at this Parliament will be responsible for raising more of the money that it spends and thus be more accountable to the electorate. Nevertheless, a large part of its income will continue to be dependent on the block grant, and as members know, the mechanism by which it will reduce to compensate for devolved tax powers is of supreme importance to Scotland's future financial wellbeing. We have consistently raised concerns about the impact of relative population growth on the indexation of the block grant adjustment. We therefore welcome the fact that the Deputy First Minister supports the index deduction for capital method, and we recommend that the method is agreed in the fiscal framework, which will underpin the devolution settlement. Members will not need reminding that time is of the essence in agreeing the framework if Parliament is to scrutinise it prior to dissolution. We look forward to questioning the Deputy First Minister and Chief Secretary to the Treasury on the framework in the coming weeks to consider if it meets criteria agreed by the Smith commission and, importantly, is fair to Scotland, the rest of the UK and no detriment principle. The finance committee has consistently raised concerns about the lack of transparency in relation to block grant adjustments arising from the devolution of financial powers, and we believe that full transparency is an essential element in securing public confidence in the process. It is therefore imperative that the fiscal framework contains detailed explanations of how the block grant will be adjusted in 2016-17 and beyond. Regarding taxes already devolved, we have closely followed developments in the first year of their operation, particularly regarding land and buildings transaction tax. Stakeholders raised concerns that LBTT had a negative effect on sales at the higher end of the property market. Although it is not possible to fully assess LBTT's impact before outturned figures for the full year are available, latest indications are that high-value sales are returning to previous levels, while, according to Uremove Acadata, the middle and lower tiers of the market have been given a new lease of life by the Government's approach. On this basis, we are supportive of the proposal to maintain the current rates and bans for residential LBTT. However, we also recommend that the Government conducts and publishes a review of LBTT once outturned figures for its first year of operation are available. That will, doubtless, assist Parliament in its scrutiny of next year's draft budget proposals regarding LBTT. Members will be aware that the committee takes a keen interest in the Scottish Fiscal Commission's work. Indeed, stage 2 proceedings on the bill which puts the commission on a statutory basis take place next week. I look forward to discussing issues raised in our stage 1 report then, and therefore I do not intend to discuss the commission at length today. However, I reiterate a recommendation that greater clarity is needed on the role of the commission and how it works in practice, particularly regarding whether it is asked to agree the forecasting methodology prior to publication of the official forecasts and what happens if it does not. Regarding the Scottish Futures Trust, we invited written evidence on how successful it is in achieving its stated aim to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of infrastructure investment and use in Scotland by working collaboratively with public bodies and industry leading to better value for money and improved public services. The overwhelming majority of responses were positive and indicated a high level of regard for the SFT's staff, the professionalism and collaborative approach. Suggestions on how the SFT could further improve its work were also made and we look forward to hearing the SFT's views on those in due course. Staying with capital investment, an issue around which on-going concerns have been raised relates to the impact of the European system of accounts, 2010 regulations that have led to certain non-profit distribution projects being reclassified as public sector spending. We note that £398 million was allocated from the capital departmental expenditure limit budget in 2016-17 to cover NPD projects and, believe it vital, at full transparency it is provided on the impact of reclassification, particularly where it resulted in delays to other planned capital investment projects. That is no doubt relevant to those fiscal framework negotiations relating to additional borrowing powers and we would welcome an update from the deputy First Minister. The committee continues to scrutinise the Government's commitment to a decisive shift towards prevention, a subject in which we have long taken an interest. Whilst there is evidence of progress, the committee remains frustrated by the lack of evidence of any large-scale shift towards prevention. We received over 40 responses to a call for evidence on the topic, with several highlighting perceived barriers, including a lack of shared ownership among public sector partners. It is clear that if the decisive shift towards prevention does not take place, public bodies will face growing demands for services against a backdrop of finite and possibly diminishing resources. The committee therefore agreed to take further evidence on prevention before reporting our conclusions by the end of this session. I said at the beginning that the committee's budget is currently focused on affordability and budget processes. Many other topics were also covered in our report and I am sure other members will raise these later in the debate. I hope to have given a flavour over the increasingly broad range of subjects that are considered by the finance committee as part of our draft budget scrutiny, and I look forward to hearing from other members. Deputy First Minister is fond of telling us the extent to which he is a victim of so-called Tory austerity from Westminster. I thought that it might be useful just to ask Spice where the total Scottish Government budget for 2016-17 stands in relation to previous years. What they told me is that the total budget for 2016-17 will be higher in real terms than in every year of devolution from 1999 to 2007. It will be higher in each of the years, 2011-12, 2012-13 and 2013-14, and in cash terms it will be nearly £400 million higher than in the current year. We know that the Scottish Government will always complain that it does not have enough money, and we know that it will always put the blame for this at Westminster's door. The difference in this budget is that the finance secretary could have made the choice, if he wished, to increase taxation, and he chose not to do so. Those of us with long memories in the chamber will remember the Scottish Parliament election in 1999, when a fresh face Mr Swinney was the architect of the Penny for Scotland campaign. Something on the irony is that we are here 17 years later, and that very campaign that I have been taking up by Labour and the Liberal Democrats is that Mr Swinney is holding the line against increases in income tax. He is right to do so. The Scottish Conservatives believe, as we have often said, that people in Scotland should not be more highly taxed than people in the rest of the United Kingdom. Sometimes that was a lonely message to put out, but no more. It gladdens my Tory heart to hear the self-proclaimed social democrats and political progressives on the SNP benches arguing so vigorously and so passionately against increases in taxation. We on these Conservative benches are happy to stand shoulder to shoulder with the SNP in holding the line against the tax grabbers on the Labour benches and the Liberal Democrat benches who would clabour Scottish families. To coin a phrase, we are happy to be better together with the SNP on this issue, but the SNP can hardly complain about Tory austerity when they have the choice to do otherwise. What that means is that, in the coming election, for those who are unionist voters and for those who voted no in the referendum, there is now only one party that will protect their pockets and their household incomes, and that is the Scottish Conservatives. In our approach to the budget, we have determined. I have studied the Conservative proposals for the budgets. They comprise £189 million in tax cuts and spending increases, but I can only see £50 million worth of cuts to the bus pass. Where is the rest of the money come from? How is he going to pay for that? Rennie had studied our proposal in detail. He will have seen that we challenge some of the assumptions made in Mr Swinney's budget about the revenue that he is likely to raise. For example, we know that in LBTT he is, according to the OBR, £42 million behind his projections, so we think that some of his sums are wrong. We also would make different choices. As Mr Rennie well knows, we would introduce a graduate contribution. For example, we have been very clear about that. If he studies in more detail, he will see that we have a package of proposals. I am just going to come to spell out in more detail why those are important, because we have determined that our priority should be the Scottish economy. A strong and vibrant economy is essential, not just for the economic and social benefit of the people of Scotland, but also for the means of generating the tax income that the Scottish Government requires. That will be particularly important in the coming year and in subsequent years, as a closer link between Scotland's economic performance and the Scottish Government's tax take is established. With that in mind, we have proposed a number of changes to the budget. I am glad that Mr Rennie was paying attention. First, we have concerns about the increase in non-domestic rates in the draft budget. First, we have a doubling of the large business supplement from 1.3 per cent to 2.6 per cent. Notwithstanding the title, that will hit many relatively modest businesses, applying to properties with a rateable value of £35,000 or more, representing what would be a relatively modest shop in many Scottish high streets. The First Minister told us that she wishes to see Scotland become the most competitive part of the UK in which to do business. Unfortunately, having a supplementary rate, double that payable south of the border flies in the face of that. Perhaps more worrying are the proposals to change empty property relief to end the exemption of industrial property. The view has been expressed very strongly by the business community that that will be extremely damaging, that it could bring to a halt speculative industrial development and may even lead to the demolition of 1 million square feet of empty factories. That is important because a vibrant dynamic economy needs a stock of empty properties to allow new and expanding businesses to move into. We share the concerns of the business community about the adverse impact that those changes will have on our potential for economic growth and our ability to attract inward investment. We have concerns about LBTT, which I have spelled out. We believe that there should be an increase in the threshold for the 10 per cent rate, and we maintain the opposition that we have had in recent years to the cuts in college funding, where we have seen a fall of 153,000 college places, particularly impacting on those trending it back into the workforce, such as women. Our package of proposals would put the Scottish economy first and foremost. Always conscious of the fact that a growing economy is necessary to widen the tax base and increase the tax take. Our intention is to abstain on the budget at stage 1 tonight to allow further discussions to take place. We are very clear that we in this party will not support proposals to increase taxation, and we should be more than happy to go into the coming election as the only party if necessary defending hard-pressed Scottish households who feel that they are already contributing quite enough to Government coffers. That is a distinctive Conservative message. Thank you. We now come to the open debate. It is speeches of six minutes at the moment, but that might have to change as we are very tight for time. Before I call the first speaker though, I remind everyone in the chamber that the code of conduct dictates that you do not turn your back on the chair. If members could please bear that in mind for the rest of this debate. I call Joan McAlpine to be followed by Willie Rennie. I would like to welcome the budget and in particular to highlight one particular aspect of it, which is the £250 million health and social care package. It bears particular scrutiny because it is the greatest shift in health spending that we have seen since 1948. It puts our talk about preventative agendas into practice. You would think that there should be a consensus in the chamber about the £250 million for health and social care, particularly since Mr Swinney has specifically said that it should go to provide a living wage for care workers. It is an issue that has been raised repeatedly in the chamber because it tackles not just a living wage for care workers. That in turn tackles delayed discharges in hospitals, delivers quality of care in the packages that speeds up the delivery of those care packages, increases the number of care packages and, of course, by increasing wages to care workers, you improve job satisfaction. There is less churn in the sector and there is less staff shortages. That, of course, leads to continuity in care packages, which is again an issue that has been raised repeatedly in the chamber so that people who are having care packages in the community see the same people. It is all very good news, but it has been rejected by Labour councils. Despite and backed up by their political allies in this chamber, it is absolutely astounding that they would walk away from this budget. Given the number of times that they have repeatedly raised the issue of health and social care and a living wage for the workers in that sector, and you go back two years—I will finish this point, Ms Bellie—you go back two years. Neil Findlay in the chamber raised a motion in favour of unison staff survey as time to care. His motion specifically said that we should provide resources to ensure the payment of the Scottish living wage, which we have done. In the economy committee recently completed anvestigation into low wages. In that investigation, Labour members of the committee repeatedly asked us to introduce the living wage in the care sector. Ms McAlpine, who are you giving way to? I'll give way to Mr Smith, sorry to speak. Presiding Officer and to Ms McAlpine for giving way. Given that she quoted unison in what they have had to say quite rightly about the living wage for social care workers, would she agree with what unison have also said about the scale of public sector cuts and job losses that will be as a result of this budget? Why is there no task force for the tens of thousands of public sector workers who are going to be put out of a job by this SNP budget? I think that when you look in detail at the budget, it is absolutely despicable that Labour councils around the country are threatening to sack workers. We are talking about a 12 per cent overall cut—a 12.5 per cent cut—to this Government's budget under the Tories, whereas councils have been relatively protected, as Mr Swinney says, compared to councils in England. That package is a 1 per cent cut. If the Labour bosses of councils do not have the imagination and the ability to manage that in the same way that Mr Swinney has managed the budget of the country, then I think that they are doing a disservice to the workers that they claim to represent. Yes, I will. Jackie Baillie. The member would tell us what SNP-controlled Dundee Council is doing, issuing notices to 6,000 employees, asking them whether they will take redundancy. I understand that that is completely misleading and misinterprets what is happening, but Labour has prind their principles to the mast on social care repeatedly in this chamber. They have raised the issue of the living wage for healthcare workers, they have raised the issue of delayed discharges, they have pinned the principles to the mast on this and now their principles are underwater because they have a chance to implement what they say that they want and they are walking away. As far as I can see, it is a last desperate attempt before the election to try to hurt the SNP, but they are not hurting the SNP. The people that they are really hurting are the long-term sick, the terminally ill, the frail elderly, the disabled, people who are stuck in hospital beds. They are the people that will be hurt if this 250 million social care package is not put in place because their Labour councils are walking away from it. To care workers themselves, the care workers that they are denying the living wage to, not only are they denying them the living wage, they are now threatening to tax them. Order, please. As well as threatening to tax them, they are offering these low-wage workers who are not going to get the living wage a rebate, which we do not even know the legal status of the rebate, but they then have to go back to these Labour councils as a means test to claim their rebate if it is legal and if it can be introduced, because, of course, Labour just loves means testing, does it not? Ms McAlpine, can I just remind them that the TUC found that real wages in Scotland under the Tories had fallen by a equivalent of £1,500? That is the amount of money that we have saved people in the council tax freeze, which, again, their councillors week after week continue to oppose. Ms McAlpine, you must close. Is protecting workers and the home care service in everywhere else, and it is a shame that Labour has lost what used to be in the time of the Workers' Party? Before we carry on, can I remind members that if they take over six minutes it is colleagues' time that they will be taking up? I will have to reduce the time later. Willie Rennie, please, to be followed by Mark McDonald. This is the budget of many firsts. The first budget with substantial tax powers, the first without a fixed income, the first where we can increase Government spending, the first where there are costed alternative tax proposals on the table, and the first where any pretense that councils have flexibility over their budgets has completely evaporated. It also means that this is the first year that John Swinney has been deprived of his well-worn and rather shabby songbook with the songs that he trots out on these occasions. We value the relationship with our local authority partners. He cannot say that any more. He has strong-armed them into submission with a triple whammy of fines worth £408 million. If each of Scotland's 32 councils were to increase the council tax by just £1 each, they would be facing fines totaling £408 million imposed by the SNP Government. The historic concordat is simply history. What else can't John Swinney sing? We have a fixed budget—he's got flexibility now. If only we had the powers, well, he's got the tax powers. This is a budget against austerity, not if he uses the powers and he can do something about it if he does. His favourite is gone, too. Those are Westminster cuts. With a triple lock on councils to deny any choice his refusal to use the powers of this Parliament, he is imposing the kind of budget that he has previously condemned. The people of Scotland will know that his refusal to act means that every single cut to public services in Scotland is a John Swinney cut. He cannot shuck and he must accept it. He cannot point anywhere else any more. The £500 million cut to schools and council services, John Swinney's cuts, the loss of 152,000 college places, John Swinney is responsible, the failure to invest to meet our climate change targets, the failure to invest to meet our fuel poverty targets, the cuts to police budgets, mental health services not treated on an equal footing. That is John Swinney's budget and he must accept the consequences of his decisions today. The Liberal Democrats' case is that the situation is so urgent that we must use the Kalman powers that we now have rather than wait for the Smith powers due in two years' time. We are recommending that we increase income tax by one penny to deliver £475 million of investment to repair the damage of SNP cuts to education and to make the transformational investment in education. If Mr Swinney is going to get to his feet, can he explain how he is going to protect the incomes? I will let him in when I let him in. How can he protect the incomes of the council workers across the country that he is about to sack as a result of this budget? I would be grateful if Mr Rennie would share with Parliament when he was so concerned about the issues when he was defending the cuts in our budget under the last five years of the Conservative Liberal coalition that took place in this country. I am afraid that that is in the old songbook, it is not in the news songbook, but Mr Swinney needs to understand that if it was not for the Liberal Democrats' cut in tax for those on low and middle incomes, the people in Scotland would be far worse off, far better protected than by the SNP. It will surprise no one that we proposed to spend more than the Tories at the last general election. We believed that the severe cuts that they are now delivering are unnecessary and would risk the economic recovery. What I am proposing today is consistent with our approach last May. Thanks to the Liberal Democrats and Government, those on low and middle incomes have seen reductions of more than £800 each year because of the personal allowance increase to more than £10,000. In fact, thousands of people have been taken out of tax altogether—a policy that I remember on the SNP benches opposing, not just now. Mr Rennie's approach this last minute. It means that we can increase taxes on higher incomes whilst protecting those on lower incomes. For instance, you would have to earn more than £19,000 to pay more tax next year compared with this year, thanks to the further rise in the tax threshold. Someone earning more than £100,000 a year will pay 30 times as much extra tax as someone on the median wage in Scotland of £21,000. That is a progressive measure that will invest in public service and have a transformational effect on our public services. An investment in a pupil premium, an investment in nursery education, an investment to stop the SNP cuts to our schools, and an investment to protect our colleges from further SNP cuts. That is the investment that we propose with a penny for education. The so-called progressives on the SNP benches are rejecting. Today, we will be supporting the Labour amendment this afternoon. Thank you very much. I now call Mark McDonald to be followed by Malcolm Chisholm. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I asked Jackie Baillie about the Finance Committee report on the budget. Jackie Baillie responded by saying that she was not at the meeting when we discussed our report. Her argument is somewhat undermined by the fact that the Labour Party was represented at that meeting and the Labour Party signed up to the recommendation on the Scottish rate of income tax contained within the Finance Committee report. However, there is one line in the Finance Committee report that the Labour Party did express dissent from. It is this. The committee therefore welcomes that the Deputy First Minister now supports index deduction per capita and recommends that this approach is agreed in the fiscal framework. That is the Labour Party opposing the very deal that would ensure that Scotland gets a fair settlement from the fiscal framework. I think that it would be unfortunate for Jackie Baillie to try to explain the thinking behind opposing something at a meeting that she was not present at. At this moment, I will move on, because we took evidence as a committee on the Scottish rate of income tax. Stephen Boyd from the STUC said that, at this particular moment in the economic cycle, having been through an historically unprecedented collapse in real wages over the past five years, 2016-17 is not the moment in which to increase taxes on the lower paid. We do not need to increase taxes to invest in prevention. Prevention is something that can be done with budgets now. I do not think that we should look towards the new tax powers as a panacea and as a way to bring extra money into prevention. We need to look at our budgets independently of the tax system. Another quote on the record at that very committee meeting, the yield that we would get from 1p on the Scottish rate of income tax is actually quite small. Is there not a better argument to be had about shifting the spend within the overall budget, which is substantially higher? That quote was from Jackie Baillie. I wonder what it is that has suddenly transformed the opinion of the Labour Party from the September meeting of the finance committee, where that evidence was on the record, to the signing off of the finance committee report just last week to today's debate. Perhaps Jackie Baillie can enlighten us all. I am grateful to the member for taking an intervention. He of course realises that the yield would be half a billion pounds. Failure to use the Scottish rate of income tax now will lead to a devastating £1 billion of cuts before any new powers come into this Parliament. Does he not regret that as a decision that his cabinet secretary is making? I can only apologise to Jackie Baillie for quoting her own words at her. The yield that we would get from 1p on the Scottish rate of income tax is quite small, and is there not a better argument to be had about shifting the spend within the overall budget? However, if she wants to change her own position, that is a matter for her. I am looking to develop my comments a little further. The importance of the budget and the point that was made by the cabinet secretary when he introduced the budget statement to Parliament was about the need for public sector reform, the need to reform in which we deliver services, because we are in a period of on-going Tory austerity at Westminster and we are in a position where simply doing things the same as we have always done them is not going to be sustainable in the longer term. We have seen reforms in relation to police and fire. We have seen reforms taking place now in relation to health and social care. It is now time that we look at how services are delivered at a local level and drive forward the shared services agenda, which has been taken forward very well in some areas of Scotland. I think that it would be remiss to suggest that some parts of Scotland have not taken a very strategic approach in relation to the shared services agenda, but it would be fair to say that a lot of local authorities are lagging far behind when it comes to looking at public sector reform and the shared services agenda. However, the interesting element of that is that Labour parties insistence that the only way that savings can be achieved is through cutting front-line services. Only last week in the press and journal, the finance convener of Aberdeen City Council, Labour councillor Willie Young, a man with whom I have my own special relationship, was in the paper boasting of the fact that the council had managed to identify £20 million worth of savings without a single saving coming from the front-line services that the Labour Party today says are the only things that are left to be tackled. The notion and the idea that there is not savings to be found within local government in different ways of delivering services that could be achieved by local authorities flies in the very face of what their own councillors are saying. I am grateful to Mr MacDonald. Since he is fond of quoting other members, Mr MacDonald said that on 23 April, we cannot sustain further austerity, which results in those with the least being hurt the most. My belief is that we need to see a commitment to public spending increases. Where does Mr MacDonald propose that we raise more money for public services? We put forward—I am always grateful when Labour members are a fan of my early work—the point that I would make to Mr Smith is that we put forward a comprehensive, costed package for how a Westminster Government could deliver an alternative to austerity. We did not get the result in the election that we were hoping for in relation to Westminster. Mr Smith's party certainly did not. That was what that related to. The point about SRIT and the point where I have always been consistent about SRIT is that I do not believe that it is right that the same increase on tax should take place on those on the basic rate as takes place on the higher rate. Will Labour Party disagree with me on that? I suspect that the public will disagree with the Labour Party on that. If members take interventions, they must take them within their own time. Malcolm Chisholm, to be followed by Chick Brody. Context is everything when it comes to decisions about tax. The context today is the biggest cut to local government budgets in my lifetime. The finance committee accepts the spice figure of 5.2 per cent cut to local authority budgets and makes a fairly sharp critique on pages 40 and 41 of its report of the nonsense that we have heard from the Government about the cut being only 2 per cent. That translates into £85 million worth of cuts for the coming financial year. I am sure that the 2,000 workers who are going to lose their jobs in Edinburgh are extremely grateful that John Swinney is going to protect their non-existent incomes. I would say to Joan McAlpine that we have a SNP Labour coalition in Edinburgh when she talks about shocking sackings. I think that it would pay her to look at the comments of the SNP leader of Edinburgh council and what he thinks of the Government's settlement for local government. That is the context in which Labour has made its choice. It is the same context of course in which John Swinney instead has sent an unprecedented letter to local government, threatening a further £408 million worth of cuts if it does not accept its whole package, including the council tax freeze. Just to be clear what that means in the past, if councils have not accepted the council tax freeze in a moment, they would lose the council tax support money. This year, if they do not accept the council tax freeze, they will lose the council tax support money, they will lose the social care money, they will lose the teachers' money. That, as the leader of Edinburgh City Council has said, is a democratic outrage. I give way to Joan McAlpine. You talk about a £400 million cut. That money includes money set aside for health and social care and money set aside for maintaining teacher numbers. Why should councils get £250 million for health and social care if they are not going to deliver it? It is not a peanut penalty. Joan McAlpine completely misunderstands the point that I made and misunderstands the significance of her cabinet secretary's letter, because she would lose all that money just by not doing one thing. For example, the council tax freeze would lose all the social care money, so that is a completely different point from the one that she makes. That is the wider context in which Labour has made its decision. I struggled for the last 24 hours to understand the SNP's response. That is the Government. That is the party that, in 1999, at the start of a massive increase in public expenditure from Labour—which, if all parties welcomed even the Tories at the time—the start of that process supported the penny Scotland, but the biggest cut that we have ever seen to local government, they do not. In a minute, it is also the party that very recently supported a local income tax, saying how fair and progressive it was. We do not need to go back very far, because at the finance committee last month—we have heard that quoted by two speakers already—John Swinney said that I have viewed the Scottish rate of income tax as progressive. All the rhetoric about a regressive income tax that we have heard in the last 24 hours is merely rhetoric. Why are the SNP not looking at the effect on people's actual incomes of the change that we are proposing? I will go on to deal with that with Mark McDonald Mark McDonald. I am grateful to Malcolm Chesner for giving way. The evidence from the STUC was that, because of the impact on wages in real terms, 2016-17 was not the year to increase the SRIT. Does he not accept that contention by the STUC? It is certainly not what Stephen Boyd was saying yesterday. I have heard many speakers from the trade unions in the rally outside a couple of hours ago who were certainly not saying that. I was making progressives before the intervention was to look at the effect on incomes. David Isden, I am sure that Mark McDonald respects him as a good economist that he has heard at the committee, said that, in assessing the progressives of an increase in SRIT, the Scottish rate of income tax, it is more relevant to consider the change in after-tax income, which is understandable, than the change in the amount of tax paid. A £12,000 income, and this is without the rebate, your income falls by 0.2 per cent—23,000, 0.6 per cent, 50,000 falls by 1 per cent, 100,000 falls by 1.5 per cent. As Willie Rennie said, on 100,000 you are paying 30 times more tax than someone on the medium income. If you add in the rebate, of course, that is even better for those earning up to £20,000. John Swinney said about our proposals, and that is exactly what he said when we were saying that local government could deal with this for the bedroom tax, and because of that, of course, the local authority administration systems are already in place. I have no time. I am in my last minute now, so I am still struggling to make sense of the Scottish Government's position on this, except that it is an electoral calculation. That is the top and bottom of it. What I say and what we say is that it is better to do what is right rather than to second-guess the electorate. Nothing is more important for the future of Scotland than education, and I would expect the SNP to agree with that, because clearly that is crucial to the growth of the economy as well as to individual opportunity. We are saying now, in the current context, in the current circumstances of unprecedented cuts on local government budgets, half of which are education, that the right thing to do is to raise more income. Of course, that is doing it in a progressive way. The choice before the people of Scotland today and next May is a penny for Scotland, or double austerity, with the Tories and the SNP. I am happy to participate in this debate today. I did so in the forlorn hope that we could have a clinical and analytical review of alternative proposals. I was not hopeful and I was right. With that reflection, let us try to understand the basis of this budget, why we are here at the present, what has happened in the recent past. If we do not do that, there is little hope for any meaningful alternative proposals in the future with powers to come. I have to credit the Deputy First Minister for facing the challenges, not just of this budget but for those that he produced over the last eight years. To understand the budget, why are we here? Willy Rennie did his pilot job of saying that he had nothing to do with me. He obviously does not understand the economic cycle, otherwise he would get on it. We are here because the UK has run up a mountainous debt of £1.6 trillion. We are here because the UK Chancellor said that he was committed to a large budget surplus by 2019-20. As a consequence of current fiscal arrangements, we are here because the Scottish Dail budget will fall by 4.2 per cent in real terms between 2015-16 and 2019-20, and has fallen by £2.7 billion in real terms since 2010-16. We are here because Scotland's capital budget is also—despite George Osborne's claim to increase capital spending, it will be £600 million less, 70 per cent lower than it was in 2010. That is why we are here because under the current fiscal arrangements, we are hitched to the application of a Tory austerity programme, a austerity of choice, not one of necessity and not one that has to be applied with the immediate haste that is doing so. It will get worse. The OBR forecast is put forward in the November budget. All of a sudden, six weeks later, it says that GVP will be now 2.2 per cent less than forecast in that budget. The balance of payments deficit in November was double that of the balance of payments deficit in November 2014, borrowing at the end of December was £69.3 billion, almost that being the total forecast for the whole of the financial year to March. That is why we are here, and yet we have a Scottish budget that recognises these factors, I believe, and then considers the balance priorities and also considers risk aversion. I will come to those in a minute, Presiding Officer. What are the alternatives? The Tories, if you hear them, will cut taxes or at least maintain them, and they will also cut benefits further, given that scenario that I have just painted in the face of crippling debt and a challenging global economy. Labour, as we have heard, will increase income tax rates by a penny in the pound. A sure sign that they will not be in a position to implement it, because it is regressive and it is unfair. The Tories should give us the details. Let me just ask some questions that I will give away. What is the impact on pensioners? What will be the percentage change on net disposal income for those on £20,000? That includes teachers, police officers, nurses and those who are on £100,000. What will it cost to administer? How much taxes have you paid, as the finance secretary said on rebate? How will he respond to Stephen Boyd? He may have changed his view, but the finance committee said that keeping the Scottish rate of income tax at £10 made sense. I will give way now to Lewis MacDonald. I am very grateful to Mr Brody. I am sure that he will recognise the SDEC said yesterday that Labour says that a serious proposal should be given serious consideration. I am sure that he also recognises what we have said about rebates for pensioners and those on the lowest incomes. Can Mr Brody tell us if he regards income tax as being a regressive tax? What does he regard as being progressive? Mr Brody, I do not know if you heard Mr MacDonald, because he turned away from his microphone, but if you did hear him then it is your opportunity to speak again. When I get questions like that, it reminds me that Labour and its associates are weapons or boomerangs. Finally, however the budget, you cannot deny additional investment. We have talked about the redirection of spending in care, delivering substantial investment in educational attainment in order of time, in continuing to pursue national security, all of that underpinned by a long-term economic growth platform supporting internationalisation, research, innovation, partnership, growing small businesses and social enterprise. If I may finish off by saying this to local authorities, I believe that this budget is realistic, but it is tight because of the circumstances, but it is not anti-austerity. If I may finally say this to local authorities, as Charles Getving said, if you are doing things the way you always did, then you are doing them wrong. The budget gives us the opportunity to address and create a productive Scotland by looking at how we share services, how we become lean and mean by disposing of underutilised assets that require maintenance by procurement through the entrepreneurial spirit of the third sector, social and community sector. Is it tough? Yes, it is tough, but when the going gets tough, the tough get going. Patrick Harvie, I can give you six minutes thereafter. I will need to reassess the time available. Thank you. That is quite an act to follow. As the Deputy First Minister knows, I like to give a fair bit of credit where it is due on those occasions. On that occasion, I want to say something positive about both the Government and the Labour position. The Government is due some credit for its position on ensuring that the living wage should be given to care workers, including those who do not work directly for local authorities. The Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee's inquiry into fair work was deeply concerned about and we heard evidence about the impact that poverty wages in the sector have. I disagree with some of the great deal of the context in which he is doing it, but the point is that those workers are due the living wage and we should be grateful that that can happen. I thank the member for giving way. The question is who is going to pay for the living wage. We are all agreed that it should be there, but we are being told that the voluntary organisations are going to have to meet 25 per cent of the costs after years of being strapped for cash. That is going to be very difficult and challenging for them. Patrick Harvie. Thank you. I agree with that point very strongly. All I am saying is that I like to say something nice to each side at the beginning of my speech. I will move on, I promise. The Labour Party and, to be fair, the Liberal Democrats are due credit as well for acknowledging a truth that has become increasingly unavoidable not just this year but over the past several years. If we want to protect public services, local and national public services, we are going to have to raise the revenue that is necessary to do it and simply managing cuts from Westminster and blaming a UK Government, which is to be fair culpable for the deeply wrong and damaging actions that it is taking. It is not enough simply to know who to blame. We have to know what to do about it and raising revenue is going to be an important part of the response. I do not share the specific proposal that is coming from Labour or the Liberal Democrats about how best to do that. The emphasis only on income is inadequate from my point of view. Wealth inequalities are even starker in Scotland than income inequalities. Wealth must become a bigger part of the taxation picture, not a smaller one. We have had many debates over the years on the role of central government versus local. That proposal would make local government more dependent, not less, on grants from central government. Over the coming weeks, the Scottish Greens will set out proposals for the longer-term approach, including with the most sophisticated tax powers that we hope will be devolved. That will include income tax as well as wealth tax but also critically local empowerment. In the shorter term, we have already proposed an end to the council tax freeze and an end to the financial penalties that the Scottish Government threatens local authorities with if they do not comply. I also proposed this morning in amendments to the land reform bill means of achieving something in excess of £300 million per annum additional revenue from taxing derelict land. The land reform minister did not agree with those proposals but has agreed to discuss the issue further. I hope that that discussion will be fruitful. I would also suggest that we could use in the shorter term the council tax multiplier so that those grossly undervalued luxury properties end up paying a bit more in the shorter term as well. I give way to Lewis MacDonald if he still wants to go. I am grateful and I acknowledge that he has now said that he recognises the need for action in the immediate term. Does he recognise that that is the central point of Labour's proposal today that the crisis in local government funding cannot wait if those services are to be protected and action has to be taken in the coming financial year? I agree completely that if we want to avoid the kind of crisis Lewis MacDonald is concerned about and we are all concerned about action needs to be taken and that must mean revenue raising. My proposal is that we do that at local level as well as ensuring that we properly address the balance between wealth and income taxes, which at the moment Labour's proposal, I am afraid, would push the balance too far in the direction of income when it should be going in the other direction. I have written to the cabinet secretary on a number of other issues that I hope will be addressed, not least the on-going shifts within the transport budget. Again, huge significant increases in road building when we should be emphasising a shift towards sustainable, active and public transport. That is a trend that seems to happen when budgets are going up and when budgets are going down. At a time when the world is apparently moving toward a greater degree of ambition on climate change in the wake of the Paris agreement, the savaging of the climate change budgets, the lack of any shift towards sustainable transport policies in the Scottish Government's budget and the dramatic reduction in funding for energy efficiency work are not something that the Greens can possibly support. I urge the cabinet secretary to give an indication that he is willing to reverse those changes during the scrutiny of the budget or at least willing to look at how those changes can be reduced in the severity of their impact. I do not say that with the great hope of hearing something positive for the cabinet secretary, but my ears will be open. I thank you, Presiding Officer. Many thanks. I now call Linda Fabiani to be followed by Ken Macintosh. You must keep your remarks less than six minutes, please. Okay, thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I would like to start off by putting some of this in context. Some of the context of it is, in fact, the Scottish Government's strong economic record, because it is there, the proof is there. The employment level in Scotland has reached a record high of Scots now and work. Scotland has the highest employment rate out of the four UK nations and out performs the UK as a whole. The youth unemployment level and rate fell to the lowest in September to November since 2006. Indeed, the number of registered businesses in Scotland has grown by 12% since 2007, along with Scotland's productivity rate from the same time. Not only that, our international exports have increased by 36% between 2007 and 2014. The Government has a strong economic record and has delivered balanced budgets over its time in office. You can contrast that to some of the stuff that has been going on with Labour recently, which I would say is largely a confusing position that they put forward. Instead of putting forward positive things for discussion at budget time that I am sure John Swinney would listen to very carefully, what we get is a scattergun approach with anything that will do for a headline in the paper. Even looking at what we have got just now, for example, it was only in December that Jackie Baillie herself, Labour's finance spokesperson, said on Scottish Television, agreed that it is a blunt instrument when she was talking about it. Yes, of course. Jackie Baillie. Perhaps the member would agree that we have sharpened that instrument by introducing a rebate to make it more progressive and more fair. Linda Fabiani. Well, that is an interesting one. I noticed that, earlier on, Jackie Baillie said that the detail would be provided, and I very, very much look forward to that detail, because that position has very much changed. Same as Mark McDonald pointed out, Labour's position changed even since Friday when Leslie Brennan and Jackie Baillie obviously did not agree any position whatsoever for the finance committee. We cannot even agree amongst their own group. Let's look at the context of where it came from, Labour's new policy. 2012 act following the Kalman commission, Labour, along with the Tories, agreed a single Scottish rate of income tax. No control over personal allowances, tax bans, tax reliefs or rebates, therefore not progressive. Now they are offering this £100 annual payment. How? I did hear said that we would have the detail, and I really look forward to seeing that. It is not a tax rebate, or a tax allowance, because that is not allowed. If it is through local authorities, it must be a benefit, generally a reserved matter, even if the next Scotland bill gets enacted. That is how paid next, how administered. Local authorities, again, how will they get the appropriate data? How will they check it? Do people have to apply? We all know that the low take-up of benefits is worse amongst those with the lowest income. Is this yet again a Labour push against universality? All of those issues, in many more, will perhaps be explained in detail by Labour in closing, along with the timeline to 1 April this year for implementation. It seems to me that Labour's plans are quite definitely all over the place. No, it is not. Linda Fabiani is talking about looking for extra detail. I wonder if she could give us detail on what the SNP is going to do to stop the swinging cuts effect in our communities. The SNP is very clear at what it put forward. The detail of John Swinney's budget has that, and it would do Labour better to work with that, recognise that it is the Tories that are the problem here, work with us to try to get a better deal and work with the councils to make it better for people all round, instead of coming up with crazy economics that have no backup whatsoever. There is a complete confusion here in what Labour is trying to do. I did say perhaps that clarification would be given, because I am not convinced it will. We have heard so many of the cuff announcements from Labour over the last while, full of that literature mentioned often sounding fury signifying nothing. Every time detail is requested, we move on to something else. I have not even heard APD mention today, yet that is supposed to be the answer to so many issues. That is why in terms of the current negotiated fiscal framework, which Labour cannot agree on, I have no doubt that the consistency and commitment of the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister will make the correct decision for Scotland. That is why, in terms of this year's budget, I have no doubt that when the confusion and the incompetent financial and operational forecasting of Labour's proposed policy is contrasted with the record in government and the sound financial management in the hardest of times from John Swinney and his team, it will be widely recognised that this Parliament should, in fact, agree to the general principles of the budget Scotland number five bill. John Swinney has enjoyed a remarkably long run as finance secretary, and he and his SNP colleagues have managed to escape the level of opprobrium and censure that some of his budget decisions have merited in that time. However, I believe that today his luck has finally run out. Today he has finally been found out. I acknowledge that, in the past, perhaps assisted by his own personable manner, Mr Swinney's political and financial conservatism has often been charitably or sympathetically interpreted as prudence. This time, most people in the media certainly have identified and named his approach for what it is—conservatism with a capital C. The Financial Times headline ran, Scottish budget follows George Osborne's example, and it went on. While denouncing Conservative austerity policies for squeezing the Westminster bloc grant for Scotland, Mr Swinney emulated the UK chancellor George Osborne. Or the Telegraph, John Swinney's Scottish budget, a Tory copycat. The finance minister pledges a Scottish alternative to austerity but refuses to raise taxes and copies a seize of George Osborne's policies. In what has been seen by many as a step too far, the finance secretary has put local government at the centre of his budget and decided to cut a whopping £500 million from locally delivered public services—£0.5 billion to come out of libraries and daycare centres, learning support for the young and care at home for the old. As the Guardian concisely summarised it, taking his cue from George Osborne's budget, the SNP's John Swinney slashed spending for councils. If SNP ministers or members do not want to hear it from the press, how about from one of their own? SNP councillor Sandy Howatt referred to earlier by Joan McAlpine. He is the deputy leader of the council of administrative council and he said, a cut of this scale would be very damaging for jobs and services within local government generally. The harsh reality is that this will translate to real job cuts that hit real families in real communities. Everyone will be hurt by this. In some ways, this should all come as no surprise to us. The SNP has been cutting support to our communities for years and passing the blame elsewhere. While Mr Swinney and his on-message backbenchers complain bitterly about cuts from the Conservative Government, the Scottish Parliament's information service has revealed that they have passed on double those cuts to our local authorities. If he thinks that John Swinney has been too generous to the health service and he would rather see some of the money moved from the health service to local government, Ken Macintosh knows full well that that is the alternative that we are proposing. We are proposing that he raise income tax by one pence, protect the low-paid and protect our public services. It is in addition not instead off. What should also come as no surprise is to see Mr Swinney try to deploy his full range of budget tricks and techniques. On housing, he talked proudly of the increase in the affordable housing budget, but a quick glance at the published figures revealed that the overall housing budget is virtually unchanged. In other words, in the middle of a housing crisis, with 150,000 people waiting for accommodation, he has not increased support for housing funding. He simply moved it from one column to another, but at least those figures were published. On fuel poverty, he tried publishing last year's draft figures rather than the normal outcome figures to hide the fact that he is cutting the budget by £15 million. When found out, the SNP came up with the most convoluted form of words in which apparently all the spending is down to them, but the cuts are someone else's responsibility. Or worst of all, not giving the figures at all. The SNP liked to boast about its commitment to the renewables industry, never way bemoaning any decisions taken at a UK level, despite the fact that the investment comes from UK consumers. However, what did we discover? Not in a budget book, but in the subsequent local government finance circular, Mr Swinney has decided to cut business rate relief for the Scottish renewables industry. He did not even have the guts to tell them. Why has he chosen to impose this additional penalty on the sector at the same time that he is accusing the UK Government of withdrawing support? How much will he raise by keeping the substantial additional cost on the sector when it is already withdrawing from Scotland at a rate of knots because of the withdrawal of the renewables obligation? There has long been a gap between SNP rhetoric and the reality of SNP ministerial spending decisions. In the past, they have managed incredible, as it may seem to us, to pass responsibility or blame either to George Osborne or on to our local authorities. When employment goes up, it is because of successful SNP policies. When unemployment goes up, it is because of Westminster. Today, Mr Swinney opened his remarks with, I thought, misplaced braggadocio, proposing to dismantle Labour's proposal. Well, he then proceeded to pursue and present two of the most feeble arguments that I have heard, that income tax is not progressive and that we need to look at the proposal in more detail. On the first, as several speakers have already highlighted, Mr Swinney should check the official report for his own remarks on income tax being progressive before trying to tell us his changes of mind. As for the second, everything that I have heard today, and I think that Chuck Brodie summed it all up, brings to mind the words of Edwin Morgan and his admonition to us all to avoid the droopy mantra, it was me, or in this case, we cannae do it. That poem said to this Parliament that we should avoid being a nest of fear-ties. That's what they do not want. A symposium of procrastinators, that's what we do not want. Well, Presiding Officer, I fear that's what this SNP has become. If only we had more powers, they say. Well, today we've called them out. Given the choice to be in using the powers we have or cutting Scotland's future, we choose to use our powers. Thank you very much. Now called George Adam to be followed by Jenny Marra. Thank you, Presiding Officer. It seems I've taken part in most of the budget debate since my election in 2011, and every one of them has been in the backdrop of the Westminster Tory austerity programme. The Scottish Government continues to deliver for our nation, and this time we find once again that the Scottish Government is mitigating against excessive impacts of Westminster spending cuts. This budget protects our most vulnerable inner society, protects them from the on-going Westminster austerity programme. However, I would like to discuss and address the Scottish Government's record in education. As we looked at it as we heard yesterday, with the passing of the Education Scotland bill, closing the education attainment gap has been a priority of the Scottish Government. Of course, for far too long it seemed that the progress of education depended on where you were born, where you lived. Now we have the £100 million attainment Scotland fund that quite rightly targets primary schools that serve our most deprived communities. 33 million of that investment is provided this year. That work on education attainment is happening this year. Let us not forget that, in the times of Westminster austerity, we have continued investment in 600 hours of free high-quality early learning childcare offered to all three and four-year-olds. That is moving to 1140 hours by the end of the next parliamentary session, if the Scottish National Party Government is re-elected. However, we still have £1 billion of investment in Scotland's very successful university sector, while ensuring that Scottish students continue to benefit from free tuition and the continued commitment on teacher numbers. That is in the form of the £88 million funding package, but that brings me to our local authorities. As someone who used to work as a local councillor, it is my opinion that local government has received a challenging but fair financial settlement. With my previous experience as a councillor, I would say that it has always been thus, Presiding Officer, but it is important that our local authorities look at what are innovative ways of delivering services, finding issues and finding ways to be able to deliver those. The integration of health and social care is an example of joint working and ensuring that there is no doubling up of delivery of service, but it is, at its very heart, an opportunity for our communities to get the service that suits their needs. That is the challenge for local government, Presiding Officer. Local government must leave the way innovation and delivery of that best practice. I mentioned yesterday during our debate that we had an education at COSLA, and other councillors came to the education committee, and they were asked by me what were their innovative plans for education, what was the way that we were going to work together to make that difference, but for them it appeared that it was business as usual—heading the sand attitude. That, Presiding Officer, in these challenging times is not good enough. We need to make sure that we work together to find new solutions and new ideas, while at the same time delivering service. We need to have a matured debate while we are having this, because this is what the public wants. I will take Mr Findlay now, if he wants. Neil Findlay, George Adam. We want him in, so fair enough. Mr Bibby, any more for any more? Neil Bibby. Was it a fair funding settlement for local authorities when you were a councillor, Mr Adam, between 2007 and 2012, when you voted to cut 200 teachers from schools in Renfrewshire? Interventions through the chair, please. George Adam. The whole point that we have to say here is that, Mr Bibby, it is time to move on and deal with the issue now. How are public, and how are constituents, and Mr Bibby, when him and I are meeting the hustings in Paisley, he will get his way over— Mr Adam, can you stop for a moment? Can I have order, please? George Adam. Well, Mr Bibby, I will get a chance during the debate in the election. I will defend our case, and he can defend his, and his is not a good one, because I know which one the public actually trusts. So, when you look at what we have actually had, the situation where the Scottish Government is continually trying— Mr Lamont, I do not think that the member has taken an intervention. … to partner organisations to try and ensure that we get what the public actually wants. But the Government is also, with the Westminster austerity programme, seeks to make the old, the weak and the disabled the ones who suffer the most. It seeks to make them suffer for others' excesses, but this budget seeks to help those that I have already mentioned. £35 million to fully mitigate against the bedroom tax, maintaining funding for prescription and eye checks, and free concessionary travel for older, disabled and young people. All of the above—the Opposition—quallishly call the free stuff, but those are things that are helping every man, woman and child in Scotland, and are valued by members of our community. In closing, Presiding Officer, I would say that, once again, the Scottish Government is standing up for all Scots during very difficult, challenging times, from a distant, uncaring Westminster Government that has no love for our communities. I know who my constituents believe and trust with our national finances and future, and I look forward, in the coming weeks of the campaign ahead, to see how the Opposition parties explain their part in all this. Dundee is facing £23 million of cuts to local services. That is the worst local government settlement in real terms across the whole of Scotland. The SNP tells us that there is no alternative. It says that those cuts are coming from Westminster. Now, the cut that is coming from George Osborne in real terms to Scotland is 4.7 per cent, but the cut coming from John Swinney to Dundee is 5.5 per cent. An enhanced package of cuts for Dundee and other deprived areas across Scotland, austerity plus. With the exception of teachers, every employee of Dundee City Council has received a voluntary redundancy notice. The SNP fought the last election, guaranteeing that there would be no public sector compulsory redundancies, which Mr Swinney reiterated today. He did not say that there would be politely and quietly asked to go by letter on their desks. In the member's own words, can she understand the difference between voluntary and compulsory? You have asked every council worker in Dundee, with the exception of teachers, to go quietly to take their redundancy. While council staff in Dundee read their voluntary redundancy letters, they see the services that they have worked so hard to maintain, slashed by the settlement from John Swinney. Where will the cuts fall? The SNP's finance convener in Dundee has said that he is happy to maintain the council tax freeze, so he must have prepared his budget and he must know where the local SNP planned the cuts to fall, but he has yet to come clean with the people of Dundee. Now, what we have as an SNP finance secretary in Edinburgh, he is happy to deliver a Tory budget in Scotland, and an SNP council in Dundee is happy to be good foot soldiers and visit that Tory budget on our local services. Stronger for Scotland? I do not think so. Kezia Dugdale was right yesterday to suggest that people who can afford it should pay a bit more tax, because it is all very well saying that you are stronger for Scotland, praising public services and those who deliver them while undermining them by delivering eye-watering cuts. Our was right to harness the powers of this Parliament. The SNP have been desperate for years for the power to put a penny on tax. They campaigned for a penny on tax in 1999 and again in 2003, and we were reminded of that on TV last night when we saw the First Minister herself campaigning for a penny for Scotland. She says every week that she wants consensus. Now she has it on the most important political issue. The Liberals said last week that they agree with a penny on tax. Kezia Dugdale made Labour's position clear yesterday, and the First Minister now has the power that she has campaigned for all her political life. So I would fully expect the Government to seize that power and initiative when it comes to the vote tonight. When I heard on the radio yesterday the SNP saying that they wanted to keep things in line with the rest of the UK, I nearly choked on my tea. What utter disarray. Let me go back to Dundee. Last week, the Scottish Government with the British Government announced a huge package of funding to support and diversify the oil and gas industry in Aberdeen and prepare it to seize the opportunities of decommissioning. This is very welcome. For two years, I have been raising the opportunities of decommissioning in this chamber. Oil platforms have been sailing down the east coast of Scotland past Aberdeen and Dundee on their way down to Hartlepool to be decommissioned there. This seems like a terrible loss of work and industry to Scotland and the north east. So I have written to the First Minister, to Amber Rudd, the UK Energy Secretary and to David Mundell to ask each of them for a meeting to see how the rest of the north east and Dundee can share in this investment. In Dundee, we need a working river, not just a waterfront, because we desperately need work. I think that John Swinney knows this, but to add insult to injury, Dundee has been dealt the worst local government settlement in the whole of Scotland—5.5 per cent—just behind Shetland and the Western Isles, but our levels of poverty and deprivation, as John Swinney knows, are eye-watering in comparison with those places. This insult was exemplified when Dundee's two MPs, Stuart Hosey and Chris Law, elected last year on an anti-austerity agenda, declined to comment on Mr Swinney's cuts to Dundee, saying that the issue was a matter for colleagues north of the border. The SNP at best is taking Dundee for granted, but in reality we are the SNP's sold-out city in Scotland. I seriously hope that, at decision time tonight and in his budget, John Swinney can redress this. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Sometimes it is preferable perhaps to speak at the start of a debate. I think that it can also be advantageous to speak nearer the end and have the opportunity to reflect on what others have said. The first area that I would like to touch on is taxation. As has already been stated, the finance committee focused largely on taxation during its budget study this year, and in particular on the Scottish rate of income tax, which is our significant new power from this April. Some 11 pages of our report were on this subject and we spent a considerable amount of time on it. I come from a position where, one, I would like to see improved public services paid for by increased taxation, and two, I consider the gap between the rich and the poor too wide and that we should try and rectify that by increasing both revenue taxation and capital taxation. Let me finish this bit and I will take interventions if I have time at the end. Just on Sunday night, I visited the lodging house mission in my constituency, which houses Glasgow's men winter night shelter, run in conjunction with Glasgow city mission. It has 40 mattresses on the floor and yet they have had to turn people away some nights as they are not allowed to take more than 40 on any one night. What kind of society are we in that allows this to happen? I would happily raise taxes to help redistribute income and wealth much more fairly. I said it once I finished this argument, which is some distance to go. We did look in finance committee as to whether we could raise SRIT and the first question was whether SRIT was progressive or not. Would it tax the better off more than those at the bottom? The answer to this is yes, it is progressive and we had some very useful evidence from Lucy Hunter Blackthorn. She showed in her evidence that comparing someone earning 25,000 per year with someone earning 125,000 per year, which means that their salaries are different by five times, but increasing SRIT by one and a half pence would mean that the richer person paid eight times as much in SRIT. That says to me that it is a progressive tax and I am glad to say that the cabinet secretary agreed with me, although I think that the convener of the committee at the time did not. The main argument against it is that if you put a penny on 20 pence, that is a 5 per cent increase in tax and if you put a penny on 40 pence, it is a two and a half per cent increase. From that point of view, I accept that it is not progressive. However, as I argue, it is progressive, but what it is certainly not, it is certainly not very progressive and a lot of people on lower incomes at this time could really do without a tax increase. Now, since this report was finalised, we have had the Labour proposal to raise income tax by one pence and on the surface that might seem attractive and I would love to have an extra £400 million to see spent on public services, but the idea does raise a lot of questions because it has been suggested so late in the day that we have not been able as a committee to examine the practicalities of how it would work. Would local authorities be able to handle a rebate system? What kind of cost would be involved for local authorities to do that? Would those who needed most be able to be properly targeted? Would there be a bureaucratic burden for those applying? Let's remember that when there was pension credit, one third of pensioners did not apply for what they were entitled to because of the hassle. Would such payments themselves be taxable? We know that Westminster is not co-operative on those kinds of issues. Now, there may be answers to those questions, but the reality is that they have not been looked at in any thorough way. We did have witnesses at committee advocating a tax increase and I was very impressed by NHS Health Scotland suggesting that the receipts be targeted at health spending for the most in need, but even the STUC suggested that this was a blunt instrument and that we would be better off waiting a year to get control of the bans and rates as well. I confess that I find this a difficult question as I do find raising tax for those who are well off very attractive, but in the end I'm afraid I fear that there are too many people on relatively low incomes who could be seriously hurt by this. I do consider that we would be better off waiting just one more year for fuller powers. I will take an intervention at this stage. I think—well, okay, Ms Lamont. I recommend the member for a very amazing speech, but I would ask him, do you think that people, like you talk about the homeless people in Glasgow, can wait another year? This is a serious matter and just because it's not the most progressive, would you ask your Government minister to go and test the arguments and find something better that works better if that's the argument? Don't settle for the detail, but the potential of this money to make a difference to people's lives right now. I think that it would have helped if the Labour Party had brought forward their proposal earlier in the process and we could have looked at it in a bit more detail. I see that Mr Rennie has joined us again and I really have to—he wouldn't let me in for an intervention, but I do want to make the point— Mr Mason sent his last minute. I do want to make the point that I seem to remember a Liberal Democrat minister from Westminster coming here and refusing to give us control when we got SRIT of the rates because they did not want us to make it more progressive. So I think that it is a bit rich for Mr Rennie to come in at this stage and say that we should be raising tax with this very blunt instrument which we have got. Finally, on expenditure, I think that one of the strengths of what this Government is doing is protecting health spending. If the Opposition parties—assuming that we cannot raise tax or we should not raise tax—if the Opposition parties want to say that there should be more for local government, they can say that, but that should come as a corollary that a health would have to be cut as well. I support this budget. Mr Mason must close. Thank you very much. I now call James Kelly. Five and a half minutes please. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. This is indeed a significant debate this afternoon because we have two proposals on the table to vote for as a Parliament. We can support the Labour amendment to put one penny on income tax, which will protect public services. It will protect the jobs, the many thousands of jobs of local council workers that are under threat and support investment in our schools and ensure that we can put forward a programme that will tackle the attainment gap and continue to promote talent and ultimately will help benefit the Scottish economy. Alternatively, we can support the Scottish Government budget, which slashes council spending by £500 million and will put that investment in schooling under severe threat and undermine help in the economy. It seems to me that when you examine Nicola Sturgeon and John Swinney, they have become not political leaders but managers. Mr Swinney, in particular, has become a budget manager and he has become imprisoned by the accountants at St Andrew's house. You want to intervene, Mr Swinney? Do you get something to say? I am very grateful to Mr Kelly for letting me into being. I will just say out loud what I was muttering to my colleagues around it. I am saying thank goodness that somebody does manage the budget carefully in this Parliament. It was worth waiting for, wasn't it? See if you had been outside earlier on and had the opportunity to speak to council representatives. You might have been able to explain to them why your budget is going to put thousands of council workers on the dole. Mr Kelly, through the chair please. I thank Mr Kelly for giving way. Does he not recognise that this morning, the cabinet secretary was at the local government committee and then the finance committee for the budget to be scrutinised, where at the local government committee only one Labour member turned up and asked only one question? Are they so bothered about all of that? You know, Deputy Presiding Officer, the problem with the SNP is in this debate. All the brave hearts, all the progressive voices that have all been silenced. Listen, look at them all. They are all meek now. Given the opportunity, given the power, given the power, sit down. I will request that members sit down. James Kelly, can we have audit please? Given the opportunity to take the power, to do something to protect council budgets, what John Swinney has done is he has followed George Osborne's route, he has followed the austerity route and he has followed the Tory party cuts. I was just wondering, Presiding Officer, why last year Labour MPs voted with the Tories to enact the spending cuts from public budgets, £30 billion? James Kelly? Maybe Ms Fabiani should get in the TARDIS and get into this time and place. We are debating the Scottish budget that is affecting Scottish communities, Scottish councils and why don't you as a Government take some responsibility instead of passing the buck? I will tell you something, Presiding Officer. It can be acceptable, as happens in my constituency, where teachers don't have the photocopying facilities to give kids the homework home to do, and they ask them to print it out at home, and some of them don't even have computer printers. That can't be acceptable. It can be acceptable. That kids are going to have to walk to school next year because of school transport cuts, because of the effect of the cuts from the SNP Government. It can be acceptable that we get into a position where we have less teachers and less classroom assistant. The choice is clear. The time for talking has got to stop. It's time to stand up and be counted for our communities, protect the budgets, protect the council workers' jobs and protect our local communities. We now turn to the winding-up speeches, and I call on Gavin Brown, Maximum Sixman. It has indeed been the most unique debate, because, for the first time in a couple of years, the Labour Party has come to the chamber with a policy. Yes, it might not be the same policy as last week, it might not be the same policy as next week, but, my goodness, it is a policy. It is extremely unfair of the Scottish Government to say that it has not taken any evidence on the policy, and it is all done on the back of a fagbacker, because, for months, through the Finance Committee and the Labour Party, we have taken evidence on the policy. We have heard from businesses, we have heard from councils, we have heard from the third sector, we have heard from trade unions, we have had the morass of evidence, but the Labour Party has just ignored all of the evidence, apart from one submission and adopted it as a policy. Presiding Officer, I have to say to the Scottish Government, I hope that they do not feel bowed by the Labour Party and their new friends and the Liberal Democrats. I hope that Mr Swinney stands true to his word and his opening statement today in refusing to implement an income tax increase for the hard-working population of Scotland, because the economic impact, as we saw in evidence and, again, for those of us who turned up to committee, we saw, Deputy Presiding Officer, that it would not be good for those workers, it would not be good for the economy of Scotland, and I urge once again the Finance Secretary to confirm in his closing speech that he will not be bowed by the proposal from the Labour Party. Our problem with the budget is a different one, Deputy Presiding Officer, as outlined by Murdo Fraser, both today in negotiations and in previous statements that he has made to the press. Our first concern is that this budget, in line with the last couple of budgets, just makes Scotland that little bit less competitive. On a year-to-year basis, some of those things are noticed less and less, but in the medium term, by chipping away at our competitive position, I think that we could store up problems for the future. We complained bitterly last year about the residential rates for the land and building transactions tax. We felt that, although it was right to give a break to first-time buyers, we were concerned about what would happen in other sectors of the market. We remain concerned today about what could happen there going forward. We are concerned about the residential market. In terms of the commercial part of land and buildings transaction tax, the top rate of tax may be only marginally higher than the rest of the UK, but sometimes being only marginally higher can count against you. I think that we need to try to have every advantage that we possibly can and erode or remove any disadvantages. We heard about the empty property charges. We fought hard against that legislation when it came in. At the time, the Scottish Government's position was that we still had a competitive advantage because it had an exemption for industrial property. In this budget, the plan is to remove that exemption for industrial property, again taking away one of the advantages that we might have had. We have big concerns with the large business supplement, a measure that was introduced without consultation, without any impact assessment and one that we are hearing from larger businesses could cause problems and could cause businesses to choose to invest in other parts of the UK instead of investing in Scotland. For example, does it apply to oil and gas businesses too? Businesses who have been hit hard over the last year or so, we hear about all sorts of forums going on in the north of Scotland and up in Aberdeen, but will they be hit specifically by the large business supplement? On my reading of it, they will, and we have just doubled the large business supplement for businesses who are severely struggling. Of course I will give you. I hear what Gavin Brennan is saying, and he has mentioned the evidence that we took at the finance committee. Would he also accept that the finance committee did not receive any evidence opposing the supplement? That is technically correct. Members in the individual, and I am sure that Mr McDonnell was one, did receive a number of submissions. He will recall that, when we tendered out for evidence, that was before the announcement of that. He is technically correct, but given that businesses at that point, when we went to consultation and did not know about the large business supplement, it would have been unusual for them to have complained about it, given that they have not heard about it yet. Our second problem is that the Government again attempts to hide some of the reality. Some of the bad news in the budget obfuscates, and they refuse to give clear and plain answers, and we are still asking questions and not getting the right answers. They say, for example, that housing is an absolute priority for this Government, yet, when we pointed out on budget day back in December, the housing budget appears to be cut by £1 million—a small cut, but it is cut nonetheless for a budget that is said to be an absolute priority. We are told on the day that affordable housing is up by £100 million, but they do not tell us what is being cut in order to fund that. We understand that the help to buy budget is being absolutely hammered, but when I asked the Scottish Government today at question time what is happening to the help to buy budget, I was just given a three-year figure. The number that sounds big is £195 million, but if that is over three years, that is a pretty big cut if you divide that by three. In closing, I just want to say this, in terms of oversight of the budget, we have issues too. The fiscal commission did sign off on this budget, and they did say that it was reasonable, but they admitted clearly to the finance committee that they did not examine any of the outputs whatsoever. They admitted that they would have no idea of what numbers would be unreasonable, and despite having increasing concerns about the lack of behavioural analysis on the revenue numbers, they still were prepared to pass it as reasonable. That was something that we will come to as that piece of legislation goes through, but I am content to leave it there, Presiding Officer. Thank you, Mr Brown. I now call Alex Rowley. Alex Rowley, you have eight minutes. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. In opening up today or closing today for Labour, I would first want to acknowledge all those council workers and the shop stewards and all the people who have travelled across Scotland to lobby this Parliament today, not to put the case for higher wages, not to put the case for more pay, but to put the case for their jobs, for their colleagues' jobs and for public services across Scotland. Can I say that in any budget and as an opposition party looking at a budget, of course there will be proposals in that budget and there will be moneys in that budget that are to be welcomed. I have already put on record the acknowledgement that £250 million that was going into health and social care was something to be welcomed. There is clearly still discussions to take place with local government who still seem unclear as to some of the detail of that and the conditions that are around it, but nevertheless given the major difficulties that we have right across Scotland in terms of social care that was welcomed. I have also said, whilst we would go further in terms of housing, and it is important that we now actually make the housing happen, but we do have a heightened crisis in Scotland that needs to be tackled and again the additional funding that was put place there. In terms of being in opposition, it is about weighing that budget up and weighing up the good things within the budget and deciding whether they outweigh the negatives in terms of whether or not you can support that budget. Sadly, for this time round, we found ourselves in a position where we cannot support Mr Swinney's budget. For all the bluster and the shouting that has taken place in this chamber today, for all the financial detail of the budget, we should never lose sight of the fact that what we are speaking about actually is people's lives. It is the impact of this budget on people's lives and it is the impact of this budget in terms of communities up and down Scotland. Last week, I visited a project that was set up— Kevin Stewart. It is right to speak about people's lives. What we have seen in terms of the Labour proposal is an omission, and that omission is how the rebate system would actually work. No one from the Labour benches has outlined that today. Could Mr Rowley please outline how that rebate system would work? If it does not work, that will have a major impact on people's lives. Alex Rowley? There is a clear choice in terms of this budget. There is a clear choice that you can cut Scotland's future or you can invest for Scotland's future. On this side of this chamber, we will invest in Scotland's future. I do not forget the fact that when we announced that we would reverse the tax credit cuts that were coming from the Tory chancellor, we were told that we couldn't do that. The Government and the supporters said that that could not be done, and then you had to move through that position. All we seem to be getting today is being told why the rebate cannot work. We are absolutely confident that the rebate can work, but we are absolutely happy to sit down with the Government and have that discussion as we are with local authorities, but we have talked to local authorities across Scotland and we are confident that it can work. If I can move back to where I was at, this budget is about real people at the end of the day. Last week, I visited a project that was set up that supports disabled people who want to be able to shop in our town centres, and they have been told by the local authority that their monies are going to be cut. In terms of early years investment, there are threats to budgets up and down the length and breadth of Scotland. If we were having a joined-up strategy and a joined-up budget in Scotland, we would not be cutting early years off the most needed in our communities, because we know that children by the age of three or four might already have had their path outlined for them. That is why there has been an emphasis by local government across Scotland to invest in early years. All those kinds of projects are in danger of being cut, and that impacts on real people's lives. I also said that I welcomed the fact that Joan McAlpine in her speech talked about the living wage. After one, I have campaigned and said that we need to introduce a living wage across the care sector. It cannot be right, and it is not right that the majority of care workers in the private sector get no more than the minimum wage. On that, we can agree, but when we talk about ill-considered, ill-thought-out proposals coming forward, I would have to say to you that, if the third sector is expected to pay 25 per cent of the living wage, I am not sure that that will actually work. Indeed, it was Mr Swinney himself a few years ago who paid the local authorities to increase the national rate in the private sector. Again, I am not sure that that will work, but the very principle of introducing a living wage across the care sector, of course, we will support that as we move forward. Another criticism that I have of the budget is that I would have to ask where is the strategic focus a joined-up strategy for moving Scotland forward and moving its futures forward. I would have to say that I am concerned, Presiding Officer, about the economy of Scotland right now. How many task force do we have up and running in Scotland? 65,000 jobs have gone on oil and gas, and we rightly have a task force trying to address that. We have had task force for the coal sector where the open-cast jobs have gone. In five, I sit on a task force along with Mr Swinney because of the job losses that went there. We have a task force for steel, we have a task force in Glenrothes for the electronics and semiconductor industry. Indeed, if you look right across Scotland, there is not much left of the electronics industry. Faced with those stark realities about where our economy in Scotland is now, I ask myself where in this budget is there any inclination that we are moving towards an investment strategy and a development strategy to put Scotland's economy back on track. I certainly cannot see it within the budget that is there. Mr Swinney in his comments talked about the reforms in public services. I welcomed when the Government brought forward the Christie report that said that we needed prevention, but it will not be able to create that type of investment in prevention if you are cutting public services. That is a backward step. That is not looking to the future of Scotland, it is looking backward. Let me also be clear, because the First Minister quite wrongly in this chamber earlier last week said that Labour was pushing for a deal on the fiscal framework at any cost. We are absolutely clear that, of course, it must be fair to Scotland, and absolutely it must be consistent with the principles of the Smith agreement, but the people of Scotland will never forgive us if we fail to get an agreement, and that is why we must work night and day to ensure that we get an agreement for Scotland. Presiding Officer, my time is up, but I want to say that none of us in this chamber should take our eye off the fact that what we are talking about here is real people. We are talking about real jobs and real communities, so let's work together to ensure that we invest in Scotland's future support labour amendment. I now call on John Swinney to wind up the debate. Let me begin first of all with the latter remarks of Mr Rowley about the fiscal framework, because I have heard a lot of things in the Labour Party that have criticised me for supposedly not putting body and soul into trying to resolve the fiscal framework agreement. I specifically refer to the stream of comments from Ian Murray, the Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland, which have essentially doubted the energy that I have put in to try to resolve the issue. The reason why we do not have a fiscal framework agreement just now is because there is no basis for it to be agreed that it is consistent with the Smith commission, and I will not sign up to any document that is not consistent with the Smith commission report. If the Labour Party and there are no games being played here, I take deadly seriously my responsibilities as the finance secretary in this country. If anybody believes that I would do anything other than try to get an agreement that A was consistent with Smith, B that was good for Scotland and C that enabled us to exercise the powers that we are supposed to be able to exercise under the Scotland Act 2016, where they doubt the whole purpose of my adult political life. Well, I am sure that that will be helpful. Neil Findlay I always try to be helpful to Mr Swinney. Why does he then expect council leaders to sign up to a deal that makes them considerably worse off? I will come on to that in a second, but let me just conclude the fiscal... Well, I will do. I am going to it plenty of time, but I am going to conclude my point in the fiscal framework, because it has to be understood the seriousness of the situation that we find ourselves in on this question. There are no party politics being played here. This is about the national interest of Scotland, and I encourage all parties to think that through as we go into a very difficult couple of weeks in trying to resolve these issues. Murdo Fraser has... Willie Rennie was raising some points about Murdo Fraser's not having some suggestions or explanations as to how his long list of spending commitments would be paid for. I have some simply with Mr Rennie, because Mr Fraser put a press release out on 31 January, with all the things that are wrong with the budget and all the extra spending the Conservatives are going to be out, and said that I was being sent a letter which would explain how it was all being paid for, and it's now Wednesday and I'm yet to receive the letter. If I could have the letter sent to me, it would be helpful. We'll have it at the end of the afternoon, thank you. I'll look at it in great detail so that I can address those points. On the larger business supplement that Mr Fraser and Mr Brown were talking about, the impact of the increase in the large business supplement is to put an annual increase on the business rates for companies that pay the large business supplement of 3.4 per cent in 2016-17. In 2011, the comparative number was 4.6 per cent, and in 2012-13 it was 5.8 per cent in much more difficult economic conditions than we find today. I would put the large business supplement into the context of that explanation, which demonstrates why it's appropriate and sustainable at this time. Patrick Harvie raised the issues around climate change, and we will of course engage on those questions as we go through the budget process. However, the principal difference between the budget this year and last year on issues in relation to climate change has been the removal of ring-fen funds from the United Kingdom Government that are specifically targeted at climate change measures, which I have been unable to replace because of spending cuts from the United Kingdom Government. I'll give way to Mr Harvie. Patrick Harvie is grateful to the First Minister for giving way. Perhaps he could tell us whether the dramatic increase in the road building budget is also the result of the UK Government's decisions, or is that a question of his own priorities? The decisions on capital projects are of course decisions that we take to improve the infrastructure of the country. As Mr Harvie will know, there are a whole range of different projects that are enhancing the real infrastructure of the country, and indeed just last week we announced additional funding to improve connectivity and journey towns between the north-east of Scotland and the central belt as part of the Aberdeen city deal that the United Kingdom Government and the Scottish Government brought forward. Mr Rennie was raising, obviously, setting out his arguments on the tax issue, and he has, of course, rather changed his political argument and agenda on this point. Mr Rennie, for five years, made absolutely no attempt in this Parliament to disassociate himself from the swinging reductions in public expenditure that were delivered by the United Kingdom Government for which we had to wrestle with the consequences. I take not at all seriously suddenly the Liberal Democrats' renewed connection and interest with increasing public spending after the damage that they associated themselves with in the Conservative Government over the past five years. Let me move to the issue of the local government budget and the issue that was raised by Mr Finlay and others in the debate. I want to make a number of points in relation to this debate. The first is that in the resource budget, the resource budget is proposed in granted aid to reduce by £350 million. There will be £150 million of capital funding removed from local authority budgets for 2016-17, but it will be put into local authority budgets later in the spending review period. We did that arrangement in the last Parliament, and local government, who got a lower capital budget at the start of the period, had a larger capital budget at the end of the period and all the commitments that I gave to local government on it. In addition to that, local government is going to get 26 per cent of the capital bill available to the Scottish Government, not just for the next three years but for the next four years as a consequence of the agreement that I have put to local government as a consequence. I cannot understand his position on that. If the deal for local government is so great, why has he had to impose this triple lock, this triple whammy on councils, with fines of £408 million? How could that make sense if it is so appropriate? I am simply applying that approach, because I want to make sure that the three things that matter—the integration of health and social care, the protection of teacher numbers, the delivery of the council tax freeze and, as part of the integration of health and social care, the payment of the living wage to care workers—I just want to make sure that those things happen, because I think that they are very important. So, whilst the local government resource budget is falling by £350 million, we are injecting £250 million into the integration of health and social care in which local authorities are key participants. What that £250 million will be able to do is that it will be able to afford more care packages that currently today are not able to be provided, so that directly addresses the financial pressures on local government. It also enables local authorities, as I have explained in my letter to the president of COSLA, issued to all local authority leaders, that it enables local authorities to find the financial support to pay the living wage that we have talked about for social care workers and to address pressures in the delivery of existing social care services. The reduction of £350 million in the local authority budget is tempered by the injection of £250 million. The difference of that is less than 1 per cent of the total expenditure of local government, so some of the rhetoric that we have heard about this being a catastrophic fall in local authority expenditure is utterly misplaced in this debate. We have invested heavily to afford our priorities on behalf of the people of Scotland. I am going to close on the issues in relation to income tax. I don't think that the Labour Party can moan about the amount of times I give way to the Labour Party in these debates. I agree with Mr Rowley that this is all about people's lives. It is about people's lives. The choice that we have made is that we have decided not to increase tax on the incomes of low-income households in Scotland. That is the choice that we have made. The Labour Party says that we have got this rebate mechanism. We have had two hours of 20 minutes of debate this afternoon and not one single piece of detail has been offered as to how this rebate could be paid to members of the public. If the Labour Party had wanted some clues about the difficulty of the issue, it would only have gone to the Finance Committee's official report on 13 January 2016. On that occasion, I can share with Parliament that Jackie Baillie was present for the Finance Committee's debate. She was there. She was an active participant in the discussion. I set out the reasons why I pay increasing the tax for low-income households and thinking that it could be tempered by a rebate of some mechanism to target it on those individuals who were unable to be delivered within the powers of this Parliament. Those arguments were set out clearly on the official report in a dam site. More detail than we have heard from the Labour Party about the arguments is why it is the case to inform Parliament about why I came to the conclusion that I came to. The conclusion that I came to was the right thing to do at this time is to protect the incomes of low-income households, to invest in integration of health and social care, to freeze the council tax, and I hope that Parliament will support that by report. That concludes the debate. Order. Mr Findlay, I am speaking. That concludes the debate on the Budget Scotland number 5 bill. The next item of business is consideration of business motion number 15565. In the name of Joe Fitzpatrick, on behalf of the Parliamentary Bureau, setting a revision to the business programme for Thursday 4 February, any member who wishes to speak against the motion should press the request speak button now, and I call on Joe Fitzpatrick to move motion number 15565. No member has asked to speak against the motion therefore I now put the question to the chamber. The question is that motion number 15565 in the name of Joe Fitzpatrick would be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The motion is there for agreed to. In the next item of business is consideration of business motion number 15543 in the name of Joe Fitzpatrick on behalf of the Parliamentary Bureau, setting out a business programme. Any member wishes to speak against the motion should press the request speak button now, and I call on Joe Fitzpatrick to move motion number 15543. No member has asked to speak against the motion therefore I now put the question to the chamber. The question is that motion number 15543 in the name of Joe Fitzpatrick would be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The motion is there for agreed to. In the next item of business is consideration of business motion number 15542 in the name of Joe Fitzpatrick on behalf of the Parliamentary Bureau, setting out a stage 2 timetable for the private housing tenancy Scotland bill. Any member who wishes to speak against the motion should press the request speak button now, and I call on Joe Fitzpatrick to move motion number 15542. No member has asked to speak against the motion therefore I now put the question to the chamber. The question is that motion number 15542 in the name of Joe Fitzpatrick would be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The motion is there for agreed to. The next item of business is consideration of business motion number 15546 in the name of Joe Fitzpatrick on behalf of the Parliamentary Bureau on the timetable for the stage 1 debate of the land and buildings transaction tax amendment Scotland bill. Any member who wishes to speak against the motion should press the request speak button now, and I call on Joe Fitzpatrick to move motion number 15546. No member has asked to speak against the motion therefore I now put the question to the chamber. The question is that motion number 15546 in the name of Joe Fitzpatrick would be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The motion is there for agreed to. The next item of business is consideration of six Parliamentary Bureau motions, and I ask Joe Fitzpatrick to move motion number 15547 to 15549 on approval of SSIs on block, and motion number 15550 and 15544 and 15545 on the suspension and variation of standing orders on the designation of a league committee on block. Thank you. The question is mostly we put the decision time to which we now come. There are four questions to be put as a result of today's business. The first question is amendment number 15522.1 in the name of Jackie Baillie, which seeks to amend motion number 15522 in the name of John Swinney. On the budget Scotland number five bill, we agreed to. Are we all agreed? If Parliament is not agreed, we move to vote. Members should cast their votes now. The result of the vote or amendment number 15522.1 in the name of Jackie Baillie is as follows. Yes, 43. No, 81. There were no abstentions. The amendment is therefore not agreed to. The next question. Order. The next question is motion number 15522 in the name of John Swinney. On the budget Scotland number five bill, we agreed to. Are we all agreed? If Parliament is not agreed, we move to vote. Members should cast their votes now. The result of the vote on motion number 15522 in the name of John Swinney is as follows. Yes, 63. No, 46. There were 15 abstentions. The motion is therefore agreed to. I propose to ask a single question on motions number 15547 to 15549 on approval of SSIs. If any member objects to a single question being put, please say so now. No member has objected to a single question being put there for I now put the question to the chamber. The question is that motions number 15547 to 15549 in the name of Joe Fitzpatrick on approval of SSIs be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The motions are therefore agreed to. I propose to ask a single question on motions number 15550, 15544 and 15545 on the suspension variation of standing orders in the designational blade committee. If any member objects to a single question being put, please say so now. No member has objected to a single question being put there for I now put the question to the chamber. The question is that motions number 15550, 15544 and 15545 in the name of Joe Fitzpatrick on the suspension variation of standing orders in the designational blade committee be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The motions are therefore agreed to. That concludes decision time. We now move to members' business. Members will leave the chamber, should leave quickly and quietly.