Executive Debate: Future of Scotland

Ms Wendy Alexander (Paisley North) (Lab): This has been an interesting debate. As it moves to a close, I invite members to consider the amendments that are before us.Unaccountably, the Tories’ amendment seems to have overlooked the big idea of their leader, David Cameron, for Scotland’s future ”that in future, all Scots who are elected to the Westminster Parliament to represent their fellow Scots should become second-class members of that Parliament. Little wonder that not one of the Holyrood Tories—the old Tories—is trumpeting the new Tories’ big idea for Scotland. I have a word of advice for our old Tories in Scotland: beware. They may be about to enjoy the irrelevance, ignominy and isolation that old Labour has enjoyed under Tony Blair.

At first, I thought that the summer sunshine had shone a ray of light into the SNP’s darkest passages, as there is nothing in its amendment that despairs of the performance of the Scottish economy. The Jeremiahs have gone to ground. It is certainly hard to argue against the highest-ever employment level, the lowest unemployment level and Scotland being a European leader.

However, there is always the question of growth, to which I now turn. We could not hope for the SNP to welcome the fact that Scottish standards of living are rising faster than standards in the rest of the UK or that Scotland has grown in every single year since devolution, or to admit that that record has been unmatched by all our principal competitors, such as France, Germany and the US.

Mr Swinney: Wendy Alexander was careful to say that there has been economic growth in every year, but she did not reinforce the statement on the Scottish Labour Party’s website that

“The Scottish economy has grown in every quarter over the past three years”.

As that statement is patent nonsense, will she withdraw it? Will she also explain why the Scottish growth rate is poorer than that of our European competitors?

Ms Alexander: I have the highest respect for the member and will deal with his point. We are quibbling about growth in one of 20 quarters. I am sure that the statisticians will resolve the matter, but I say to him that in the first years of devolution—from 1999 to 2003—Scotland’s standard of living rose faster than the OECD average, despite the tough times in electronics. Only pure prejudice could have led John Swinney to label such success as “appalling”.

I return to the argument that I was trying to make. The SNP’s amendment offers a return to an old song for the nationalists. It calls for more cash for child poverty and education, the wiping out of all past and present student debt and the cutting of council tax and rates bills for good measure. There are no prizes for guessing that the SNP’s old song—”Hey, Big Spender”—is back with a vengeance.

So far, so familiar. However, if some things never change, some things do. Let us consider the I-word—the raison d’être for every nationalist being in politics and the rationale that brought every nationalist into politics. Independence was mentioned in the opening line of Ms Sturgeon’s speech and at the coda, but there was precious little about it in between. The SNP’s Holyrood representatives have relegated independence to a mere mantra. This summer, they admitted that all they want is the next nine months to be about two horses—Jack and Alex. If there are only two in the race, I am not sure where that leaves Ms Sturgeon—perhaps stuck in the starting blocks.

As we heard from the First Minister, 3 May is not a race; it is a choice about our future. The SNP in Holyrood fights shy of a debate about competing visions for the common connections for the 2 million of us who have family in England, for the nearly 1 million of us who work in the rest of them.

UK and for all the economic networks that will nourish our future success. We on this side of the chamber have faith in those ties that bind, and the fear is all on the SNP’s side—the fear of spelling out the very idea that brought the SNP into politics.

The SNP’s Holyrood hopefuls—the independence-lite tendency—want this election to be about competing bribes over the Barnett billions. However, the people of Scotland are not so daft. They know that this is Salmond’s last stand; they know that it is not peelie-wallie independence-lite that he is about. When we read about the first 100 days, we see nothing on education, nothing on crime, nothing on the environment, but the I-word up there in lights.

The Scots do not want to break the link. They want to build, not to weaken; they want to create, not to divide. We on this side of the chamber will not let them down.