In Parliament

In my speech, I addressed the significant challenges faced by the Scottish Government due to budget cuts from successive UK Governments and the impact of Covid-19 on our services, especially the NHS. Despite these challenges, I expressed optimism about the Scottish Government's commitment to investing in public services, highlighting the £21.7 billion for health and social care and over £15 billion for councils in the draft Scottish budget for 2025-26.

Constituents in Glasgow Maryhill and Springburn want to see tangible improvements in services. The budget includes a real-terms increase of over £700 million for Scotland’s councils and aims to deliver an additional 150,000 NHS appointments and procedures in the coming year.

While there is more money from the current UK Government compared to its Conservative predecessor, it is crucial that appropriate budgets are maintained annually. I criticized the Labour national insurance tax, which will take £700 million from the Scottish public sector next year, impacting key partners like GPs and the voluntary sector.

As convener of the Parliament’s cross-party group for palliative care, I was keen to highlight my work with Scotland’s hospice sector and welcomed the draft budget’s support for hospices, including £4 million in additional funding and a guarantee to meet future hospice staff pay uplifts. However, UK Labour’s national insurance policy, will still drain £2.2 million from Scotland’s hospices. This approach by UK Labour is unacceptable and detrimental to our efforts to support vital services.

Full Speech

Full Text

Substantial cuts to Scotland’s budget from successive UK Governments over several years, along with the deliberate undermining of a welfare support system by the UK Government, has left many challenges for our Scottish Government and our public bodies to tackle. If we then layer on the devastating impact and legacy of Covid-19 on services across our communities, not least in our NHS, the extent of that challenge becomes clear.

However, there is a case for optimism. For instance, I am proud of the clear and unambiguous commitment by the Scottish Government to invest in public services through the draft Scottish budget; £21.7 billion for health and social care investment and more than £15 billion for councils is a strong offer for 2025-26 from the SNP. However, I must admit to many constituents that those are simply numbers. Constituents want to see services in Scotland improve. They do not want to hear the numbers—they want to see the results.

That is why I am also pleased to see that the Scottish budget will give real-terms increased spending power to Scotland’s councils of more than £700 million in the year ahead. That is real money to make a real difference across Scotland’s communities.

Our NHS will also deliver increased capacity to secure an additional 150,000 appointments and procedures in the year ahead—that is real action. Those are two concrete examples of this SNP budget being focused on making a real difference to the people whom we all want to serve.

Those increases suggest more money from the current UK Government compared with its Conservative predecessor. However, I am wary of placing too much emphasis on that, for several reasons. First, any UK Government must ensure that there are appropriate budgets for Scotland each and every year, and not think that an uplift in one year can fix the damaging UK cuts over many years to Scotland’s finances, as well as the on-going mitigations by the Scottish Government in relation to policies from successive UK Governments, including the Scottish child payment, mitigations against the bedroom tax, and soon the two-child cap and the winter heating payment for older people—more money from Scotland’s budget to fix the UK’s failures.

It is also not acceptable to be seen to be putting money back into the pockets of those in Scotland but then dipping into those same pockets by taxing the Scottish public sector to the tune of £700 million next year. That is what the Labour national insurance robbery seeks to do, and it is daylight robbery.

The national insurance tax grab will also impact on key partners that are delivering for Scotland; our GPs and our voluntary sector are just two examples.

I am convener of the Parliament’s cross-party group for palliative care. Working in that capacity, I have had extensive engagement with Scotland’s hospice sector, with Hospice UK and with the Scottish Government to seek to deliver a sustainable financial model for Scotland’s amazing hospices. I put on record the work of two of them—the Marie Curie hospice at Stobhill in my constituency and the St Margaret of Scotland hospice in Clydebank, which looked after my father with great dignity, love and respect in the last days of his life.

I have sought to always work collegiately and on a cross-party basis to support hospices, and I was delighted that Scotland’s draft budget had two key strands to support our hospice movement, with £4 million of additional resource funding to assist with the sector’s severe financial pressures and, significantly, a guarantee that the Scottish Government will meet future hospice staff uplifts, tied to our NHS agenda for change pay awards. That is vital.

I also commend my colleagues in the Liberal Democrats—which is not something that I do often—who have secured a further uplift of an additional £1 million for 2025-26. I know that that will please the Deputy Presiding Officer, too. That is £5 million of additional funds in total for Scotland’s hospices. However, thanks to UK Labour’s national insurance robbery, £2.2 million of that will in effect be drained away and grabbed by the UK Treasury. That is simply not acceptable.

UK Labour health secretary, Wes Streeting, has said of the English hospice movement that the UK Government will look to address that shortfall by taking the money from NHS England. Not one new penny for England’s hospices—that is the most wretched way of robbing Peter to pay Paul by the Labour Party.