Investing in our public services to ensure that they are effective and sustainable is central to delivering the Scottish Government’s priorities of eradicating child poverty, growing our economy and tackling the climate emergency. However, our ability to deliver that is choked by austerity, Brexit and the cost of living crisis—the simple ABC of Westminster holding Scotland back.

For the past 14 years, we have endured Westminster austerity, which has been an impediment to the delivery of effective public services by curtailing investment in our front-line services. We have seen Brexit forced on the people of Scotland expressly against their democratic will. Brexit has taken the legs out from under economic growth. That has meant that we must work even harder to help Scotland’s economy with the powers that we have, which means that business and our vital public services have had to work harder to fill vacancies and supplement local skills.

The cost of living crisis was created by the Tories and exacerbated by Liz Truss, with members on the Tory benches demanding that we follow her budget. Not content with that damage, the Conservatives’ current spending plans will see nearly £20 billion of cuts, and they want to go further—in their manifesto, they have another £17 billion of tax cuts.

By the looks of it, that is set to be continued by Labour, a party that boasts about sticking to the Tory spending plans, no matter the cost to people. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has clearly laid out the choice that Labour needs to make, with the IFS deputy director saying:

“Unless they get lucky on growth, they would either have to do more on tax rises that they haven’t told us about, or they would have to deliver cuts to the public services that have already been hit by the austerity of the 2010s.”