4. To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to the latest report by the Royal Bank of Scotland on private sector activity, which showed that employment growth in Scotland was faster than in any other United Kingdom nation or region. (S6O-03243)

The Presiding Officer:

Cabinet secretary, we did not hear all of that question, but I assume that you have picked up enough of it.

I have, Presiding Officer—I have a note of it in writing.

I welcome that data, which has shown that employment growth is faster in Scotland than in other parts of the United Kingdom. The Scottish Government is using all the powers at our disposal to grow a fair and green wellbeing economy, but the fact remains that Scotland is tied to a UK economic model that involves stagnating productivity, lessening living standards and a number of self-imposed challenges—chief among which is Brexit, alongside self-defeating migration policies.

We continue to pay the price for Westminster mismanagement and austerity. Independence is the route to higher living standards, better public services and a stronger, fairer economy.

I am sure that the cabinet secretary agrees that, although it is great to see positive reports about Scotland’s economy, we would be better off as that independent country—part of the European Union rather than the post-Brexit failed state that is the United Kingdom.

I absolutely agree. The UK Government’s reckless decision to take Scotland out of the EU single market against Scotland’s democratic will is damaging Scottish trade and the economy.

Modelling by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research shows that the UK economy is now 2.5 per cent smaller than it would have been in the EU—a gap that could increase to 5.7 per cent by 2035. That is before we even touch on what we have lost socially and how far the UK has fallen in terms of its international standing. Scotland’s future should be as an independent country back in the EU so that we can emulate the success of our comparator countries and seize the future prosperity that this Government is in no doubt awaits Scotland.

Although the growth in employment in the latest figures is very welcome, the cabinet secretary will know that the employment rate in Scotland still lags behind that of the UK as a whole. The latest Confederation of British Industry-Fraser of Allander Institute productivity index showed Scotland lagging the rest of the UK in 10 out of 13 productivity indicators, including business investment, exports, and research and development investment. Instead of moaning about the position in the UK, will the cabinet secretary explain why Scotland lags behind other parts of the UK and what she will do to turn the situation around?

Murdo Fraser comes to lecture me at a time when the UK has recently fallen into a technical recession, and, indeed, after his party has overseen 15 years—half of my life and all my adult life—of austerity, as well as a self-imposed Brexit that was pursued during a pandemic, tax cuts over public services and, ultimately, plummeting living standards, such that we now have a UK that analysis in the

Financial Times has described as

“a poor country with pockets of rich people.”

I will take no lectures from Murdo Fraser or the Tories.

The Presiding Officer:

Questions 5 and 6 have been withdrawn.