Speeches by Murray.

“The hon. Gentleman and his colleagues voted against the Budget. They voted against all the measures to raise revenue in the Budget, and they voted against the actual spending of it. From the second that this Labour Government took power just over a year ago, there was £14 billion extra going into the Scottish budget. T…”

“Going by the votes last week, the hon. Gentleman wants to keep the failed, broken welfare system that the Tories put in. What we have done as a Government is a pay rise for 200,000 Scots, day one rights for sick leave and parental leave and £150 off energy bills for more than half a million Scottish households, and we …”

“The industrial strategy is transformational for Scotland. A year ago, the Government inherited an industrial crisis after 14 years of no plan and a complete lack of interest on the part of the SNP and the Conservatives when it came to Scottish industry. However, I congratulate the SNP on its job creation programme: it …”

“My hon. Friend quite rightly speaks out against the cuts to Cumbernauld fire station, which sadly is just one example of the SNP’s dangerous mismanagement of Scotland’s fire services, as the Fire Brigades Union in Scotland told me just last month. There are 9.1 billion reasons why the SNP Government should choose to in…”

“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 …”

“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 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 …”

“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…”

“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…”

“There are great opportunities in terms of the rural communities in Scotland. Clean energy by 2030 is a massive opportunity. In fact, the opportunity will be so large that the infrastructure might not cope in terms of housing, connectivity, roads and so on. Those are the kinds of things we are working in partnership wit…”

“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. …”

“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—”

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

“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 …”

“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…”

“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?”

“There are a number of answers to that question, Ms Burke, in terms of the formal processes, the informal process, and then what happens in terms of the Budget processes. There is the Finance: Interministerial Standing Committee, the F:ISC, which the Chief Secretary to the Treasury chairs with the finance Ministers of a…”