📺 WATCH: Russell Findlay’s latest speech👇
Or read the full speech below:
The size of the state in Scotland has become vast.
We have now reached a point where it is no longer sustainable in its present form.
The deficit between revenue and expenditure is more than double what it is in the rest of the UK.
Politicians have a duty to tell the truth and to call this out.
We simply cannot afford to keep pretending that everything is okay.
Put most simply, we are living beyond our means.
During the devolution era, Labour and the SNP have increased the number and the reach of public sector agencies.
These left-wing parties embarked on deliberate mission creep.
They have supersized the Scottish state.
And they have done so at huge financial cost to taxpayers who already pay far too much.
There are around 550,000 devolved public sector workers in Scotland.
That’s more than at any point in devolution history.
The pay bill for the public sector is now £27 billion.
Much of this ever-growing state seems designed to serve itself … not to serve the public.
I ask: Do you feel the benefit of this burgeoning army of public servants?
Does it seem like there are more nurses and doctors, teachers and librarians, street cleaners and bin collectors?
Do you receive better delivery of essential everyday services?
The answer to these questions is ‘NO’.
Because while the number of devolved state workers is at the highest level on record …
Services keep getting worse, with declining satisfaction and trust.
How can this be so?
And why on earth should we just be expected to roll over and put up with it?
Many public sector jobs which give little or no benefit to the public.
Scotland’s public bodies spend around £1.3 billion every year on backroom corporate functions.
Departments like communications, commercial, digital and HR.
Yes, many do useful work.
But, let’s be honest, not all of them.
Certainly not one point three billion pounds worth.
Within the Scottish government alone, £75 million is spent on policy officers and managers.
£75 million every year — just to implement policy.
Does anybody in the real world think that’s good value, considering the SNP’s track record of policy disasters?
Here are some of the jobs that we all pay for:
- Senior Policy Advisor Ethical Digital Nation
- Deputy Director Human Rights and Mainstreaming
- Our Story Service Lead
- Play Senior Policy Officer
- And new last year (from a government whose only real interest is breaking up our country) a Head of Constitutional Policy Unit
What does this vast army of public workers, many with obscure job titles, actually do for the public?
Many appear to exist simply to feed the machinery of state.
Then there is the spending on government reports.
Since 2015, the SNP government has published 764 strategies and plans.
They churn them out at a rate of one every week.
You’ve got to listen to some of these titles:
- NHS Scotland Global Citizenship Framework: setting the direction for global citizenship in NHS Scotland
- Statistics Group strategic priorities, Taking a feminist approach to international relations
- Non-binary equality action plan
- Discovering meaning, purpose and hope through person-centred wellbeing and spiritual care: framework
But it’s not just bizarre job titles and a vast library of reports …
There are almost 300 working groups supposedly advising the Scottish Government.
One of them recently suggested that pet cats should be banned.
Even John Swinney was forced to concede this was plain daft.
Okay, some of their insights will be useful.
But 300? Really?
Let’s take a look at what some of them do.
- Democracy Matters – its purpose is to ‘meet every six weeks to consider different aspects of community decision-making model design, as well as how these can be tested with communities and partners in the public and third sector’.
- ‘Single-Use Disposable Cups Charge Advisory Group – which will provide expertise and advice on the implementation of a minimum charge on single-use disposable beverage cups in Scotland’.
- International development: Global South Panel – The Panel will enable the Scottish Government to access a wider and more diverse range of voices and experience and lend expertise to 2016 Global Citizenship: Scotland’s International Development Strategy.
We know the SNP benches at Holyrood have little depth of talent and even less real-world experience.
But for these career politicians to sub-contract thinking and decision-making to abstract talking shops is ridiculous.
This big-state circus needs to end.
The SNP have created a steroid state.
What do I mean by this?
Well, it has become much, much bigger.
But this is an illusion — because it has not got any stronger.
The SNP state has expanded rapidly and declined in delivery.
It sucks up record sums of cash without doing any better for families, workers and businesses.
Taxpayers pay for more but get less.
It doesn’t provide value.
It doesn’t effectively deliver public services.
Since the start of this year, I’ve been on a tour of Scottish businesses large and small … and held discussions with public sector organisations.
I’ve been listening to what people in the real world actually think.
A common observation is that Holyrood is disconnected from real-world reality.
But I want to be explicit on this point — the criticism I make today is not founded on political ideology.
I don’t want to take a wrecking ball to public sector infrastructure.
No, this is about delivering better public services and better value for taxpayers.
SNP politicians make lots of noise about inputs but are incapable of doing the hard work to deliver positive outcomes.
As the size of the SNP state keeps growing, Holyrood becomes increasingly detached from people’s real-world concerns.
The public feels the Scottish parliament and government are not doing what they should.
They waste too much time, money and energy on things that don’t really matter.
Just days ago, former First Minister Jack McConnell said about devolution: “25 years on, our country and our parliament have stagnated, that energy and creativity too often replaced by bitter partisan politics and government by slogan…
“Many view Holyrood with indifference, considering it to be concerned only with narrow interests and not with the everyday problems of the Scottish people.”
We may disagree about the solutions, but his assessment about the state of play in Scotland is bang on.
Change must happen. Things must be done differently.
I say that not as a Conservative or a Unionist but as a Scotsman who just wants our country to flourish.
That’s why I am doing this job.
I know that we are better than this.
I know that we can do better than this.
And I know that we deserve so much better than this.
If we remain stuck in this rut, this state of denial, then nothing will ever improve.
More daft jobs will be added to the public payroll.
More obscure agencies will be created.
More reports will be generated.
If the left-wing parties want to continue to act like ostriches with their heads in the sand, that’s on them.
But if they keep lavishing money on their well-padded client state, then things will only get even worse for everyone else.
Scots are already forced to pay more income tax, leaving them worse off than workers elsewhere in the UK.
Unless we end this tax injustice, this depression on incentive, those with aspiration will keep being held back.
Instead of unleashing the potential of small businesses and innovative entrepreneurs, we will be stuck with a lethargic economy.
An economy in which the only growth is the size of government is a recipe for impoverishment.
I’ll say it again — this cannot continue.
Public services that we all rely upon will remain on life support, only getting worse.
A clean break is needed.
No more going along with the same old nonsense.
Bold action is the only way to get our public services out of this mess.
That’s what my party can deliver.
John Swinney cannot be the solution because he’s been the problem.
As finance secretary and deputy first minister, he was in the SNP cabinet for 17 years.
He’s now trying to plead innocence – but we all know that he is bang to rights.
He is personally responsible for wasting taxpayers’ money on a colossal scale.
He was either the architect or the midwife of every one of the SNP’s catastrophic and costly decisions.
Anas Sarwar won’t provide the answers because he backs the SNP approach.
Yes, he might be the darling of the Holyrood bubble but that counts for nothing with real people out there.
They see just another template politician who won’t rock the boat or make unpopular decisions.
A politician who agrees with most of the SNP’s nonsense.
He backed Nicola Sturgeon’s gender self-ID madness.
He supported Humza Yousaf’s dangerous hate crime law.
He will abstain on John Swinney’s damaging budget.
Take away the constitutional issue and you take away the only difference between Labour and the SNP.
It is only my party that stands for change in Scotland – a new way forward.
We are willing to make the difficult calls that others find too hard.
We’ll represent everyone who just wants the government to do the essential things well, not everything badly.
The Scottish Conservatives are being honest with the public.
I will not shy away from telling hard truths, unlike John Swinney and Anas Sarwar.
They will never come clean … let alone roll up their sleeves and do anything about Scotland’s supersized state.
The Scottish Conservatives can do it.
Let’s do the simple stuff well.
No thrills, no hot air, no nonsense.
Just common-sense delivery.
Stick to what the government is there for.
Make public services efficient, affordable and effective.
Focus on the needs of the people using services, not the self-interest of those in charge.
Make promises that can be kept.
John Swinney’s government is too weak to tackle vested interests.
The Scottish Conservatives would take them on without hesitation.
Here’s where we would start –
We would introduce our own version of the Department of Government Efficiency.
A Scottish Agency of Value and Efficiency would be tasked with cutting waste, identifying savings and delivering better value for taxpayers.
SAVE for Scotland.
In addition, government by talking shop must end.
Let’s treat service delivery with the efficiency of business — not some chin-stroking debating society.
We would axe at least one-third of the SNP’s 300 working groups.
Instead, frontline delivery would be our primary focus.
Useless jobs with silly titles should be scrapped …
And replaced by roles that have a demonstrable benefit to the public.
At a time of dire NHS waiting times and sinking school performances, spending more on government spin doctors is a scandal.
To shift the balance, the Scottish Conservatives would introduce a new public spending rule – a frontline first guarantee.
This would ensure that the Scottish Government’s default requirement is to spend on the frontline of our NHS, police and schools rather than on bureaucrats in Edinburgh.
And because money is tight, every expense must be justified.
In the hard-nosed world of business, this is called zero-based accounting.
So that each year, the books are reset to zero.
This means that every pound of spend is subject to annual examination, assessment and justification.
We would introduce that same business principle to get spending under control.
And when government makes a policy decision, it should just get on with the job.
No more faffing about with reams of strategies and plans.
Stop producing plans that won’t happen. Start delivering.
Of course, my views on improving our public services will not enthral the chattering classes.
I won’t get the stamp of approval from those who do very nicely out of Scotland’s big state.
Good. Such reactions will simply confirm that we are right.
If these ideas are brought forward, our public services will be able to recover and thrive.
Every public pound will be treated with respect.
Government will be agile and focused on frontline needs.
We will be able to:
Invest in teachers to ensure they have a full-time job.
Invest in nurses so that they stay in Scotland’s NHS.
Invest in workers to fix roads and collect bins.
Our focus on delivery will mean that:
When children go to school, they’ll get a world class education, no matter their background.
When people go to A&E, they’ll be seen on time.
When a young person starts work, they’ll have opportunity to prosper, no matter which part of the country they’re from.
Only the Scottish Conservatives are putting forward a bold new vision.
We are the only party prepared to do things differently.
We don’t buy the SNP and Labour left-wing view that a big state is always best.
We know people just want some common sense for a change.
We get it — I get it.
We understand why people are sick fed up seeing their taxes being wasted by out-of-touch politicians.
Scotland’s political establishment has not yet grasped that the world is changing … it has changed.
John Swinney and Anas Sarwar think they can keep doing the same thing over again while expecting different outcomes …
The very definition of insanity.
This is why Holyrood has lost its way and the public have become jaded, thinking that change is impossible.
Whole communities feel left behind.
But I refuse to accept surrender to decline.
I’m determined to put up a fight.
To deliver change.
To show the people of Scotland that there is another way. A better way.
This is possible. This is achievable.
We can get Scotland’s public services working again.
Share this on:
🔵 X
