Scotland: Economic Recovery and Renewal

Lord McNicol of West Kilbride Excerpts

Thursday 9th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNicol of West Kilbride (Lab)]

My Lords, it is nice to be back on the Front Bench. I start by congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Fraser of Craigmaddie, not just on securing this debate but on the way in which she opened it and, I presume and hope, will close it as well. I thank other noble Lords for their thoughts and contributions across your Lordships’ House.

My speech, like that of the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, will be a bit more political and I fear will drift into some of the comparisons and statistics that the noble Baroness, Lady Davidson, understandably warned against. I say “understandably” because I share many of her fears that if we are not careful, we will do the independents’ job for them—but I do think there is a way of balancing the criticism of many of those failures with a vision for the future of the United Kingdom.

Reciprocity has always been at the heart of my beliefs: not what you do to or for people but what you do with people. The fundamentals of that principle sit at the heart of how I believe Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the regions of England should fit together for all of our mutual benefit. It should never be just about what Westminster does to or for the devolved nations or regions, but what it does with them.

When the Scottish Government present their 2022-23 Budget, the focus must be on Scotland’s recovery from the Covid pandemic. A national recovery presents an unrivalled challenge and one that requires urgent, direct and bold action in order to address it. But to properly tackle Scotland’s pandemic recovery, this Budget must also confront many of the harms caused over the past 14 years, with underinvestment and underfunding by the SNP Government. The examples of the Scottish Government’s negligence are endless and it is worth spending a bit of time examining them before we look at some of the solutions.

Some 350,000 people in Scotland still earn poverty wages, more than one in four children in Scotland still live in poverty, and foodbank use in Scotland is up 75% since 2015, long before the pandemic even started. Despite this, the Scottish Government have twice delayed taking over control of the benefits system. They have rejected taking responsibility and only sit on the sidelines and complain.

For me, the worst example of the Scottish Government’s negligence is Scotland’s appalling drug death numbers. Scotland’s drug death numbers are three and a half times more than those of the other parts of the United Kingdom, with 1,339 people dying from drugs in Scotland in 2020. Drug death numbers are more than three and a half times higher than they were a decade ago, with this alarming upward trend accelerating since 2013. This high number of drug deaths does not occur in Portugal, the Netherlands, Norway or many other European countries. The Scottish Government have had more than enough time to deal with this issue but have repeatedly failed, and the numbers continue to rise. Those 1,339 drug deaths are not just statistics: they are someone’s son or daughter, sister or brother, mother or father. Those 1,339 people have been failed and paid with their lives. The solutions are not simple and they are not free, but they exist and could be delivered, if the will was there.

The SNP has also broken its own treatment time guarantee a staggering 380,000 times. The 62-day waiting time standard for urgent cancer referrals has not been met since 2012. Life expectancy has stalled in Scotland, and there is a 10-year gap between the richest and poorest areas. One in four young people are being rejected by CAMHS, almost three years after an external review called for rejections to end.

If Scotland’s recovery is to be long term—and let us be clear; everyone in your Lordships’ House wants it to be—it needs to be a green recovery. As the noble Baroness, Lady Fraser, said in her opening remarks, Scotland is well placed to deliver this green recovery. But, as we have heard, the Scottish Government’s record on the environment and climate change fills me with little hope that they will deliver on it. In 2016, the Scottish Government promised to have their first low-emissions zone in place by 2018, but their failure means that the earliest we will see this low-emissions zone is 2022—next year, four years after it was promised. The promise to create a publicly owned energy company has not gone beyond the business case stage, and the current rate at which the Scottish Government are buying low-emission buses means that it will take 65 years for all the buses to be replaced.

To pick up a theme that the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, and my noble friend Lord Foulkes touched on, when you look at the state of the public services, it makes you think sometimes that the current Scottish Government are comfortable with their failure. It gives them a grievance with which to rail against the current devolution settlement; if the situation in Scotland was better across education, health and the economy, their arguments for fuller independence would be weaker. With that in mind, why does the SNP continuously focus all its efforts on a second independence referendum? I believe it is because it does not want to talk about its record or the issues that affect the people of Scotland. Rather, it focuses on division and a divisive second referendum.

On these Benches—and we have heard from other Benches as well—there are plans and a vision for Scotland; there are ways that we can build and deliver a better future for Scotland. In understanding Scotland’s recovery, it must deal not only with the immediate impact of Covid and protect jobs, incomes, and our health service; it must also mark the start of a long- term recovery and make Scotland a fairer place to live. Although the Chancellor previously announced £170 million as part of a levelling-up fund to help Scottish communities, analysis by Citizens Advice Scotland revealed that more than 1.4 million people ran out of money before pay day during the pandemic. Can the Minister please outline exactly how the Government’s levelling-up fund will help Scottish communities?

We understand what is needed to get Scotland’s economy back on its feet. Introducing a skills for recovery fund would guarantee everyone who has struggled to find work a job for at least six months. We would introduce 50% relief on business rates in 2022 for retail, hospitality and leisure properties. We would introduce a high street voucher, where every adult would be provided with a £50 prepaid card to spend in non-grocery businesses in physical premises in Scotland to support local businesses. When it comes to health, Labour would plug the gap in social care and introduce a mental health recovery fund, as well as commit £100 million to tackle the workforce shortage in the NHS. Scottish Labour would also spend £500 million to tackle the backlog that the NHS in Scotland faces. No recovery will be long-lasting without education investment being at the heart of it. We would commit £30 million to install active ventilation in schools, along with £110 million towards targeted tuition—practical, physical and educational investments that are critically needed.

Scotland needs a recovery as bold and direct as the one we propose but, sadly, I fear that the Scottish Government will not take on board this offer. With the positive contributions in this debate from across your Lordships’ House, I believe we have shown what can be achieved. We cannot just devolve and forget.