11/02/2016 Politics Scotland

A warm welcome to the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood. Today MSP 's

will vote to set the Scottish rate of income tax from April this year.

There is the debate about the new part was due to come in next year.

Big new tax powers and what level should the grant the? Huge debate in

dispute with the UK Government. The devolution committee says they have

extended to moral's deadline. That could come up and questions to the

First Minister. It could be anything, only one way to find out

is to cross to the chamber. Parliament just welcoming to the's

guests. Kezia Dugdale. To ask the First Minister what engagement she

has planned for the rest of the day? I understand Jeremy Hunt will

shortly announce the UK Government intends to impose a new contract on

junior doctors and I therefore want to make it clear to this chamber

deaths will not apply in Scotland. This is not the way to treat health

professionals so we will not impose a contract but continue to work with

our doctors and other NHS staff in the best interests of patients. IPod

engagements to take forward the Government's programme for Scotland.

Labour will protect education spending in real terms for the whole

of the next Parliament. Will the First Minister do the same if she is

re-elected? We will set out our full plans for education and other

matters in our manifesto. Let me point out to Kezia Dugdale that the

record of this Government is so far. Average spending their primary

pupil, according to the most recent statistics, has increased by 11%,

?496, since 2006. Average spend per second at ?496, since 2006. Average

spend per secondary school that has increased by 10%. Total revenue

spending on schools has risen by ?208 million. That is director of

this Government and we will continue to act to protect the number of

teachers and schools and act to address the attainment gap. I am

happy to ask the people of Scotland in at two weeks' time to judge us on

that record. Here is director of the SNP. 4000 fewer teachers, 152,000

fewer college students and the gap with the new bridges and the rest as

wide as it has ever been. I listened very carefully to the First Minister

but there was no commitment to protect education spending in real

terms for the next five years. We can take from that response that

education spending will be cut again, with even more severe

consequences. This afternoon SNP controlled Perth and Penrhos Council

will hold a special budget meeting to discuss the cuts they are being

forced to make because of the choice this First Minister has made. That

is the SNP controlled council. Here are the planned cuts. 186 pages

worth of cuts. Cuts to child care, help for those with additional

support needs. Cuts took early year teachers, cuts to maths and English

teachers. Page after page contains a warning of SNP cuts that will harm

our children's future. That is the reality from one of the First

Minister's own councils. When will she stop pretending horror budget

won't harm our children's future? -- she stop pretending horror budget

oh budget. As Kezia Dugdale is where we have put forward a settlement for

local authorities that involves a 2% reduction on their total revenue

spending. That is a reduction of set by the ?250 million that we are

investing from the National Health Service into social care. In that

settlement which has now been accepted by all of the local

authorities in Scotland, enables us to protect households by freezing

the council tax, enables us to protect the number of teachers in

our schools, enables's to invest in and expand social care and enables

us from October of this year to ensure all social care workers are

paid a living wage. That is the reality. That is the reality of the

possession of this Government. Of course in the context of a budget

cut from Westminster imposed on this Government. A budget cuts that

Labour, when they campaigned so vigorously with the Conservatives,

were quite happy to see imposed on this Parliament. Athat ship sailed

the moment she stood side-by-side with the Tories last week to impose

cuts on our communities. Author! Let's be clear about what these cuts

really mean. This document, and SNP council, this document here is

cutting the entire budget for supply teachers. I will quote from the SNP

council paper about the consequences of that cup. It states, classes may

have to be sent home and possibly schools closed. That is the scale of

the cuts that she is imposing on schools and today is Parliament will

have two set the Scottish rate of income tax for the very first time.

The First Minister will have another chance to keep the anti-austerity

promise she made and to stop these cuts to schools and other vital

public services. For years she has argued more powers means fewer cuts.

Today she will have the chance to use these powers to stop these cuts.

Well she finally take it? In the interests of accuracy, the ship of

labour campaigning hand in hand with the Tories has not sealed. That

ship, Labour's ship has been sunk and some Scottish Labour completely.

Let's turn to Labour's policy of raising tax raising the basic rate

of income tax for every worker in our country earning ?11,000 and

above. Author! -- Order! Presiding Officer, we know how desperate

Labour are by the volume of the insults baseline. OurAPPLAUSE

There is a debate to be had in this country about tax but it should be a

proper grown-up debate about tax. Labour's policy is written on the

back of a cigarette packets. The lack of detail is embarrassing but

then it is a policy put forward by a party that knows it is 100 million

miles away from being a credible opposition, let alone a credible

alternative Government. It is a dishonest policy because they know

it well hit the low paid and that is why they are suggesting a rebate but

have not been able to answer a single question about how that works

in practice. It is a policy that is out of touch and Carlos. Kezia

Dugdale stands there as someone who, like me, and like all of us has a

decent salary. And yet she suggests increasing the tax bill of the low

paid by 5% somehow doesn't matter. I seem to Kezia Dugdale, tell that to

someone who is struggling to make ends meet, felt that to someone who

has suffered years of pay freezes and is counting every penny. It is

not fair or progressive to shift the burden of Tory austerity onto the

shoulders of the low paid and that is probably why less than one in

three voters back Labour's policy. APPLAUSE

One moment, Miss double bill. I already warned the chamber about

haggling the First Minister or anybody else speaking. There was a

remark that came across the Chamber that I didn't quite here but I think

from the reaction in the Chamber there was the use the one that is

clearly unparliamentary. I will review the official report

afterwards and if the member to that word was used to admit it and

withdraw it now that would be helpful, but if not I will take

action this afternoon. First Minister. Sorry, Kezia Dugdale.

Thank you, presiding officer. It is very clear from the evidence from

the resolution foundation, from Spice, the House of Commons library,

that Labour's proposals are fair and workable. That is why council leader

after council leader has backed them, white union leaders have said

it is fair. That is the truth that the First Minister cannot escape.

The First Minister and I have something in common here. We both

oppose George Osborne's austerity and both want the best for our

country. Where we part is Labour has a fair plan that will ask some of us

to pay a bit more and wealthiest few to a lot more. And in so doing we

can stop these cuts, cuts that would damage our economy and stop young

people achieving their potential. Cuts that would see councils slash

spending on other schools and cuts to childcare that are all working

families back. Faced with the choice between using the powers of this

Parliament to invest, cutting schools, why does the First Minister

choose cuts? Firstly, Kezia Dugdale and Labour don't oppose George

Osborne's austerity, they campaigned with the Tories to keep us subject

to his austerity. And what Labour want to do is not an austerity shift

the burden of that austerity on to the shoulders of low paid workers.

Kezia Dugdale mention the resolution foundation. Here is what they said,

there will be hard cases and poor families will lose out. That was on

Labour's policy. Here is what the professors from the University of

Starling said, as part of the proposal would require a

comprehensive data sharing arrangement between local

authorities and impose a substantial administrative burden on local

authorities. There are questions without such an arrangement would be

possible under the Scotland Act. Labour is perpetrating a con trick

on the lowest paid workers in our society. My tax bill will rise by

2.7% if Labour's proposal was implemented, the tax bill of the

teacher or a nurse would go up by 5%. That is not fair. I want to get

Kezia Dugdale the opportunity. This busy tax rise she wants to see

implemented in seven weeks' time. If she wants to be taken seriously

better answer these questions. How much will be rebate cost? How will

it be assessed and how many of the 500,000 pensioners will even get the

rebate? APPLAUSE

The First Minister the questions to you, you don't put them to the

opposition. Ruth Davidson. To ask the First Minister when she will

meet the Secretary of State for Scotland next? No immediate plans.

For the first time the SNP Government has taken over

responsibility for managing payments to farmers. Here is how they have

done so far. A botched ID system costing nearly have as much as this

Parliament building. Farmers thought they would receive payments by the

end of January when only one thought of them have. We know what the

response has been and it came in five pages of excuses that was

e-mailed by mistake from the SNP to everybody in Parliament. Can I ask

the First Minister, should party, instead of getting their excuses

and, be spending more time fixing the problem's my team, both in

Government and in the civil service, are working to make sure we get

payments to farmers as quickly as possible and the cabin is discussing

this issue on a weekly basis. We are firmly behind the farming community

and doing everything possible to get payments to them as quickly as

possible. It is through processing payments as taken longer than

intended due to the complexities of the new cap system and we have been

open with industry and with farmers about these complexities and what

we're doing to address them we started peeing the first instalment

to farmers by December and by the end of January around 30% had been

painted with fodder payments initiated. As of last week 35% of

payments had been committed. Offices are operating seven days a week.

Additional staff have been taken on an local offices. Richard Lochhead

is working hard on this and has been working with the banks to make sure

they take this into account in terms of the lives of farmers. We will get

on with the job making these payments as quickly as possible.

She might be quoting straight from that document of blaming complex at

it, but I will quote from the NFU president. He says Time and again,

the Scottish Government actions have not matched up to what has been

promised. NFU S have lost trust in the system to the extent that the

Cabinet Secretary's assertions cannot be taken as given. We also

see that Scotland is lodging its own investigation into this failure of

management, warning that" there is still significant risk to the

successful delivery of this programme". The First Minister has

lost the trust of rural Scotland. She has overseen yet another

government IT fiasco, and farmers no longer have confidence in her rural

affairs minister. What reassurance, if any, can she give to rural

workers today that this failure is getting the fullest priority of the

Scotch government? The reassurance I can give is that we will continue to

do what Richard Lochhead and all of us have been doing, which is

concentrating on wrecking sure we get payments to farmers as quickly

as possible. I have given the chamber and update on the statistics

so far, and this continues to change on a daily basis as more payments

are made. We continue to work as hard as possible to make sure that

as many of the first instalment payments are made by the end of

March and the balance of payments as soon as possible after that. We are

porting progress weekly to the relevant Parliamentary committee and

to industry, and we are in communication with area offices to

support faster processing and to unblock any issues. That is what we

will continue to do, work as hard as we can to make sure farmers get the

payments they are due. What issues will be discussed at the next

meeting of the Cabinet? Matters of importance to the people of

Scotland. We have heard that councils across Scotland are setting

their budgets with ?500 million worth of cuts. We have also heard

about Perth and Kinross. Right now, SNP run Aberdeenshire Council are in

their budget meeting. ?3 million worth of cuts to education are on

the table, but it is not too late for the First Minister to call a

halt. Will she be got the phone, or does she want her council to make

those cuts? If Willie Rennie had picked up the phone to his

conservative colleagues while he was propping them up in coalition, we

might not have suffered the cuts to our budget that were imposed on us

by Westminster. As I have said, we have put forward a settlement for

local authorities that reduces their total revenue expenditure by 2%,

offset by ?250 million of investment in social care. We want to work with

local authorities to make sure that settlement protects the things that

matter, teachers in our schools, social care investment, a living

wage for social care workers and protecting household budgets. It is

no surprise to me that the party that backed Iain Duncan Smith when

he wanted to impose the bedroom tax doesn't care about increasing taxes

on low-paid workers, but I do, so we will continue to take a fair

approach, and that will be one of the many differences between this

government and the Liberal Democrats. It is the same old

excuses. Order. I would have sympathy for the First Minister, if

she did not have the power to do something about it, but she does.

The buck stops in that seat over there. This afternoon, this

Parliament votes on the income tax resolution. 1p gives ?475 million

for education for Scotland's children. It is the power to stop

the cuts. She has the power. Why will she not use it? Is it pride? Is

it our finance secretary, or does she not care any more? As I have

said, it is no surprise to me that the leader of a party that spent

five years in coalition with the Conservatives doesn't care about

people on low wages. But I do care about people on low wages struggling

to make ends meet, spending every week counting every penny and pound.

Willie Rennie's policy of putting a penny on the basic rate of income

tax, he is not even pretending that he is going to try and compensate

low income workers the way Labour is. His policy would have everybody

earning above ?11,000 a year paying more in tax. I don't think that is

fair. I think that is transferring Tory austerity to the shoulders of

the low paid. He might want to do that. I am not prepared to do that.

Bestial number four, Claire Adamson -- questionable for. What is the

impact on Scotland of the planned UK reductions to housing benefits for

vulnerable people who stay in supported and women's aid refuge

accommodation? The UK Government proposed to set the housing element

of benefit claims to local housing allowance levels, as this is lower

than the cost of rent and service charges in refuges and supported

accommodation. This will have a catastrophic impact in some of the

most vulnerable people in our society who rely on such support for

survival. That includes women fleeing to Mr kerb use, disabled and

older people and some homeless people. The Scottish Government is

concerned about these proposals, which were outlined in the UK

Government spending review. The social Justice Secretary has written

to the UK minister for welfare reform to Express her grave concerns

and seek more clarification will be provided on protection for those in

supported accommodation. Thus the First Minister agree that the only

way to stop both tenants and providers from the worry and stress

being caused by these proposals is if the UK Government make clear now

that refuge and supported accommodation will be exempt from

the local housing allowance Cap? Yes, I agree. Tenants need to be

reassured that their accommodation will be exempt from the local

housing allowance rate so that they don't need to worry about the

future. Providers of supported and refuge accommodation also need the

security to know that they can continue to provide essential

services and be able to plan for the future. The UK Government's

proposals mean there is now uncertainty about the future

provision of refuge and other forms of supported accommodation not just

in Scotland, but across the UK, despite an announcement that changes

to funding arrangements would be cost neutral. UK ministers can put

an end to this worry now, and I call on them to announce an exception for

refuge and supported accommodation from the local housing allowance

Cap. What is the Scottish Government's policy on as Westwood's

forecast for North Sea decommissioning until 2040? This

report reinforces how important it is to support the sector at this

time. Our first aim is to avoid any premature cessation of production,

which is why the UK Government should ensure that the fiscal regime

is not a barrier to investment, as has been in the past. We must also

ensure that the decommissioning process is managed effectively.

Scotland can play a leading role in the development of the

decommissioning market. While some decommissioning activities to be

expected over the next decade, there are still substantial reserves to be

recovered in the North Sea, up to 22 billion barrels of oil and gas are

admitted to remain. New fields are expected to come on stream. She says

some decommissioning is to be expected, but 150 of our oil

platforms are to be scrapped over the next ten years, making

decommissioning an urgent priority if we are to anchor these industrial

jobs in Scotland. They are already sailing past our ports down to

Hartlepool. Dundee needs a working river, not just a waterfront. I have

met with Shell, and they have said that decommissioning can happen in

our city. We lost out on the 750 renewables jobs that the SNP

promised, but we have three factory closures over the last few weeks,

with lots of skilled people in our city looking for work. Can we get a

question? Can the First Minister pledge three things, that the oil

and gas technology centre will be established in Dundee, that she will

find economic development money like she did for Aberdeen, and that she

will come to Dundee, meet with our decommissioning companies and see

how we can scale up to a full-size industry in our city? I will give

consideration to that proposal, although I understand that a city

deal for Dundee is still under discussion. And as she will know

from the Scottish Government's position on the Inverclyde Valley,

we are supportive of city deals. It is important to say two things.

Firstly, we must avoid premature decommissioning. That is why the

announcements we have made around support for North Sea all and gas

are important. It is widely cited in investment is important. And it is

why having the right fiscal regime is important. Secondly, we need to

make sure that as decommissioning does start, which notwithstanding

what is happening to oil prices, is always going to be the case, we need

to make sure Scotland is playing a leading role. Decommissioning will

develop into a major business activity, and there is huge economic

benefit for us from that. We created the decommissioning trade body to

establish good practice. We support the planned to establish a single

decommissioning board so that we can drive forward innovation and

efficiency, and we are committed to investing in the necessary

infrastructure to support decommissioning activity, or just

inserted through the ?2.4 million funding from Scottish Government

enterprise to develop the key in Shetland, but there will be other

projects we want to support as well. I would ask Jenny Mara to engage

with that constructively. Scotland is going to be dramatically more

exposed to the risks from the inevitable decline in the fossil

fuel industry if we simply kid ourselves that it isn't happening

already. Isn't it clear that we face a simple choice - embrace the

opportunities from decommissioning and accelerate activity in that

regard as our principal focus, or see those jobs go to bidders from

other countries, which will gain an international reputation of being

world leaders in the industry? I noticed a Jenny Mara applauding a

call for accelerated decommissioning of the North Sea. That seems a

strange position to take. I would say to Patrick Harvie, I agree with

the first part of his question. I hope he heard me say we should

embrace the opportunities of decommissioning. We differ in that I

don't think we should be accelerating decommissioning, we

should seek to avoid a mature and commissioning. We should also do

what this government has consistently done, which is invest

in infrastructure and renewable generation. We will continue to

support the North Sea, while also supporting the transition to

renewable capacity. That is the right balance approach to take.

Could I ask the First Minister what is good government's response is to

the latest Bank of Scotland's purchasing management index? I

welcome the recent Bank of Scotland purchasing manager's index. It

signals the continued expansion of the private sector in Scotland at

the start of this year. It also highlights that the services and

manufacturing sectors continue to be affected by the challenges we have

been talking about in the oil and gas industry and by the global

economic environment. That is why in supporting the Scottish economy, we

recently pledged ?379 million of investment in Aberdeenshire. Last

week, if further ?12 million were provided to give support to those

who are retraining or undertaking new education. But despite the

positive gloss the First Minister puts on it, the report from the Bank

of Scotland is just one of a series of reports that have had worrying

news for the Scottish economy. Yesterday, the Scottish Government's

National accounts survey showed that Scottish GDP per capita is now 1%

lower than the rest of the UK, when two years ago, it was 6% higher. In

this draft budget, the Scottish Government announced a doubling of

the so-called large business supplement for nondomestic rates,

which will hit 26% of businesses in Edinburgh, 25% in Aberdeen, 24% in

Inverness and 20% in Perth. How will this ?60 million tax raid on

Scottish businesses help grow our economy? The increase in the large

business payment is lower than it was in 2011. This has been reflected

throughout our discussions. On one side, we have people wanting us to

put tax up on basic rate income tax payers. On the other side, we have

people wanting us to cut taxes for business. We will continue to take a

balanced approach to our budget, to growing our economy and ensuring

fairness for taxpayers. Murdo Fraser puts forward in characteristic style

the doom and gloom view of the Scottish economy. Of course there is

no room for complacency because of the global economic conditions, but

let's look at the reality in our economy. Our economy has grown to

three years continuously. We have a higher employment rate than the UK

as a whole. Employment is now 67,000 above its prerecession peak. We have

a higher youth implement rate than the UK. Our female employment rate

is the second highest in the UK. We are investing where investment is

required, and we are continuing to support our economy as it moves

forward. I would hope Murdo Fraser and the chamber will get behind this

government is it six to make sure we continue to see growth in the

Scottish economy. That ends First Minister's Questions. STUDIO: We

have come to the end of questions for the First Minister's Questions.

It was mainly about tax and spending, Nicola Sturgeon seeking to

project herself as steering a middle path. There was some rather

ungallant children coming from Murdo Fraser as a consequence, but

nonetheless, some good exchanges. Time to me to say goodbye and hand

you over to the Daily Politics. political transition is, but we have

to make all our efforts to get that transition and be thinking about

what happens after that. The conference last week was about that,

but this will only end, they will need help from the local Sunni

powers to do it.