Born in 1946 and brought up in Cupar, Fife, I was educated at the local school - Scottish Parliament
Thursday 12 February 2004
[THE PRESIDING OFFICER opened the meeting at 09:30]
... ... ...
Budget (Scotland) Bill: Stage 3
The Deputy Presiding Officer (Trish Godman): The next item of business is consideration of stage 3 of the Budget (Scotland) Bill. As there are no amendments to the bill, we will move to the general debate on motion S2M-902, in the name of Andy Kerr, that the Budget (Scotland) Bill be passed.
15:47
... ... ...
16:11
Stewart Stevenson (Banff and Buchan) (SNP): I thank Tavish Scott for his congratulations on my interest in FRS 17. That is perhaps because I am slightly closer to retirement than he is. He indicated to the Finance Committee this week that he could spend
"up to £50 million"
from his contingency fund
"without coming to Parliament first".—[Official Report, Finance Committee, 10 February 2004; c 973.]
Perhaps he could approach Granada television to try and do a deal to get some questions on the subject of FRS 17 in "University Challenge".
Mr Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD): Ha!
Stewart Stevenson: Thank you, Jamie.
In the same meeting, it was made clear that we have had continuing difficulties getting realistic trend data. Wendy Alexander said:
"we need to set a good example by ensuring that we have comprehensive statistics in Scotland."—[Official Report, Finance Committee, 10 February 2004; c 979.]
That neatly segues into the debate about GDP, and about the restatement and the baselining that have taken place recently. It also opens up the argument about how effective the new baseline is in giving us a real indication of what is happening in our economy. Interest rates are rising: we have a rate of 4.5 per cent, while the rate is down at around 2 per cent in the European Union. In the United States, it is 1 per cent. That makes things quite difficult for business.
Let us move beyond macroeconomics and consider how our budgets affect people in the real world. In a previous debate this afternoon, Allan Wilson said that Labour wishes to reward the many, not the few. However, parliamentary written answer S2W-5627 tells me that, under Labour, people earning over £40,000 will, between them, make about £5.6 billion or substantially more. Under the current Executive, people earning under £5,000 a year will make substantially less than £4 billion. The trend figures from 1996 suggest that the disparities in our society, as measured on the top and bottom levels of the table contained in the written answer to which I referred, have increased, with inequality growing by about 400 per cent. That is hardly a ringing endorsement of the Executive's policies and its stewardship of our money.
I received a parliamentary answer on the subject of bankruptcies in the past couple of weeks. It indicates that, between 1997 and 2003, there was a rise in the number of bankruptcies from 2,534 a year to 3,363—a rise of a third. Perhaps small businesses, which account for 98 per cent of all businesses and which are at the very heart of our economy, are doing well. In fact, the number of VAT registrations has been falling over the period since Labour came to power; the number of VAT deregistrations has been rising. Those are very serious issues for us all.
I will close by asking about a specific issue that relates to my parliamentary constituency and my own interests. In the Finance Committee this week, Tavish Scott referred to
"modernising the prison estate over the next five to 10 years."—[Official Report, Finance Committee, 10 February 2004; c 986.]
I welcome hearing from the minister that there will, in fact, be further proposals to assist the Scottish Prison Service to modernise within that time frame.
16:15
