Pre-Budget Report - "Investment Figures Show Brown Is Fraud"

Commenting on the pre-Budget report by the Chancellor in the House of Commons today [Tuesday], Scottish National Party Westminster Group Leader Mr Alex Salmond MP said:

"Stripped of the spin, all of Gordon Brown's Budgets and pre-Budget statements have been exposed as a fraud, and this one is no different.

"The reality is that public investment in the UK – on health, education, transport, and housing – has fallen under New Labour, just as it fell under the Tories. Gordon Brown has still not undone the enormous damage of sticking to Tory spending plans during the first years of New Labour.

"In 1975, total gross public investment in the UK was 8.9 per cent of GDP. By 2000, it had fallen to a miserable 1.7 per cent - a decline equivalent to 67 billion pounds. Even allowing for PFI would only increase the 2000 figure to 2.1 per cent - still just half the Tory 1985 level.

"And Gordon Brown's London-based economic policies have failed the Scottish economy. Annual growth in Scotland is running at a dismal 0.3 per cent – less than one-eighth the level of UK growth. And the Scottish manufacturing sector is stuck in recession.

"A great deal of Gordon Brown's statement today – for example on the health service – had little to do with Scotland. It was a statement for 'Middle England'.

"But the SNP support Gordon Brown's call for a publicly-funded health service – we are up for that. The SNP are part of the consensus for a properly funded NHS. The real question is: 'is Tony Blair, and is Jack McConnell?', given that they are both pushing for ever more privatisation.

"And on pensions – which does directly affect Scotland – what pensioners want is a restoration of the link with earnings, instead of endless means tests and complex credits.

"New Labour are mismanaging Scotland from London, which is why control of economic policy and the nation's resources should be transferred from Westminster to an independent Scottish Parliament."