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Unemployment

We want jobs in other ways. The money that is wasted on nuclear weapons would create many more jobs in the navy, the air force and the army that we would have as an independent country. We welcome the £120 million that is being brought forward in the affordable housing investment programme in Scotland. In comparison, in England, which is 10 times the size of our country, only £550 million is being provided, and it took three months longer to do it. That is disappointing, and I appeal to the Government to give the people of England as good a deal as people in Scotland are getting. The front-loading of European structural funds is welcome. Again, Scotland was well ahead with that compared with England. All parties agree that small businesses are important for jobs and the economy. In Scotland, they will get 100 per cent. rates relief from April if their rateable value is £7,000, whereas the relief is to be only 30 per cent. in England. Helping small businesses is a tremendous way of creating jobs and keep people in them. I recently met the Federation of Small Businesses in Scotland, and there is much anxiety among small businesses in Scotland that the Government are too concerned about the banks and the big car companies, and not concerned enough about small businesses. I welcome the commitments made by both the Scottish and the UK Government to pay suppliers more quickly. That is extremely good, but sometimes large contractors do not pay smaller contractors as quickly, and deliberately hold back money. I wonder whether Companies House or some other body needs to be more proactive in forcing larger companies to pass on the payments, especially if they receive money from the public sector. I have already mentioned the cut in VAT. Did that really create the jobs that it could have done? It is estimated that the £1 billion has created some 7,200 jobs in Scotland, but a similar capital investment programme of that amount could well have created 14,900. I have some ridiculous personal examples of buying an electric shaver in Boots and clothes in Marks and Spencer. I see the price on the items and I am happy to pay it—I am on an extremely good salary. However, I get to the till to find that there are a few pounds off because of the reduction in VAT. The VAT cut has been badly targeted if it includes people like us, who are relatively so well paid. The Government often criticise the Conservative party for doing nothing, but I sometimes wonder whether they go to the other extreme and act simply for the sake of doing something. Perhaps that is the reason for the VAT cut—the Government felt that they just had to do something. Surely taking any action even if it is bad cannot be the way out of the current crisis. Last July, I promised my constituents that I would keep asking what was happening to the gap between the rich and the poor. Clearly, people at the bottom are currently losing their jobs, but so are people who are better off. The harsh Welfare Reform Bill will further damage those who are struggling and losing their jobs. Rather than punish people who realise that jobs are not there or that they pay so poorly, we could do with fewer sticks and more carrots. One such carrot would be better minimum pay for people who seek jobs. That would incentivise people more than taking away limited benefits. Meanwhile, well-off people, such as us, save in VAT. There is something wrong if some people are benefiting from the recession. Members of Parliament are better off through the recession while others lose out. Surely the richer people should tighten their belts as well as those who are less well off. Cutting public expenditure is not right in a recession. In the United States, President Obama's stimulus package is boosting spending in individual states. Yet in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, we face cuts to our budgets.