Speeches by Murray.

“I am not responsible for Scotland’s ongoing fiscal challenges. It is the decision of the Scottish Government to determine their own budgets. What I can do is make sure that Scotland gets its fair share and gets the investment that we all want to see, and you can see that through the spending review. Since we came into …”

“It is absolutely our role in the Scotland Office to do so, and in fact, it is the UK Government’s role too. We can split that into three parts. First, at the fiscal events we have—whether it be budgets or spending reviews—we are very much at the heart of them championing Scotland’s corner, as every MP in this room does…”

“The big question is about affordability and readiness. That is what this money is for: to get it to a stage where it can be looked at as a final investment decision. There is no doubt the Acorn project has many fantastic attributes: it has the St Fergus terminal, it has the pipelines, it has Grangemouth, it has the inf…”

“The key thing that businesses told us at the election is they want stability, they want credibility, and they want investment in the economy. That is what we have delivered. That takes money to do. I have yet to hear a proposal that suggests that we take that £25 billion out of the economy and suggests what we replace …”

“I do not recognise that because this is comparing estimates rather than actuals. If we look at the actuals, there is £4.9 billion—£1.5 billion in the previous financial part year and £3.4 billion extra in this financial year. There is £9.1 billion extra across the spending review period, which is the next three years. …”

“Well, wages are up more in the last 10 months than they have been in the last 10 years. Therefore, there is more money in people’s pockets. That is what we promised we would do at the election. The number one thing for businesses is to make sure that the public has more disposable income, and that is what we are determ…”

“There was £140 billion that went into the economy from the Budget and £330 billion more than was being projected by the previous Government that went into the spending review. That is an investment in our public services, it is ending the austerity that has damaged all our economies, and it is trying to put more money …”

“Viking has been funded in the same way for development funding and through the same pot. It was a £350 million pot. I will check the figure for you, but they are both being given the development funding to get to final investment decision. I would not want one project to be over the other; I am just highlighting the fa…”

“Again, it is not finger in the air because this Government have made a huge commitment to hydrogen both in the spending review and in the Budget. Again, I can give that 100% reassurance that the Government are working at pace to get to a position where we can fund these projects and get hydrogen up and running as quick…”

“Apart from that, everything is fine? The biggest challenge we have is in the supply chain—not just in terms of creating capacity in supply chains across Scotland and the whole of the UK, but also in providing a pipeline of projects so the supply chain can be robust and have that certainty in its order book. Sumitomo El…”

“At the election we inherited an economy that was in complete and utter chaos. Public finances were in chaos, with an industrial crisis across Scotland and the rest of the UK. We had to make some pretty tough decisions to stabilise that, by filling the £22 billion black hole, by stabilising the—”

“We had to raise taxes in order to be able to invest in our public services and the economy. The Budget in October put £40 billion extra into our public services because they were on their knees—whether it be the NHS, education, transport or infrastructure—and £100 billion is going into capital investment. That had to b…”

“We are working very hard to try to get all these projects over the line as quickly as possible. The spending review was part of that process, of course, and the hydrogen allocation round was part of that process. We were over the moon that so many projects came forward and at the disproportionately high level of Scotti…”

“Yes. A spending review process is not perfect because it is very much about the departmental budgets being set. Of course, the envelope was set in the Budget in October last year. Our role really in a very technocratic way would be that each individual Department looks after its own budget because it has its own progra…”

“It is nice to see the Committee again, and a warm welcome to Mr Doogan. This might be his first Committee appearance while we have been here, so welcome to him. The spending review was a great success for Scotland, and a great success for the whole of the United Kingdom. The Scotland Office worked very hard, and not ju…”

“I don’t think so. The challenge for us as a Scotland Office is to make sure that other Departments have in their spending reviews what we want in Scotland. For example—just for the benefit of the Committee—the £750 million for the supercomputer at the University of Edinburgh, which Minister McNeill launched on the day …”

“I am the Member of Parliament for Edinburgh South and Secretary of State for Scotland.”

“I am astonished that that is your second question and you have mentioned independence twice.”

“You can wish it away as much as you wish to do so, but the Government had to take responsibility— Q9 Harriet Cross: How have the NICs changes filled that black hole?”

“No.”