DOORSTEP ANSWER:

In practically every case cited by the Baroness, the performance of the Tories at Westminster is much worse than the SNP at Holyrood.

WHAT IS THE NEW STATESMAN?

Former Scottish Tory leader Baroness Davidson of Lundin Links writes regularly for the New Statesman (NS) magazine under her old, plebeian name of Ruth Davidson.

The NS is a weekly politics magazine founded originally by the playwright George Bernard Shaw. Originally it was left-wing and progressive. An NS supplement written by Shaw opposing Britain’s entry into WW1 sold tens of thousands of copies. In 1988, the NS founded Charter 88, a pressure group dedicated to creating a written constitution for Britain, radical devolution and the abolition of an hereditary House of Lords. But since the 1990s, the NS has wandered in its political allegiances. At the 2019 general election, for the first time in its history the NS refused to endorse Labour.

Writing in the NS on 13 September 2021, Baroness Davidson criticised Nicola Sturgeon for wanting to adopt “wellbeing” as a standard for measuring Scottish progress, claiming this was a deliberate attempt to cover up the SNP’s alleged economic failures. She went on to suggest that “whichever metric you use, the SNP’s record falls short.”

SCOTLAND’S ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE

Davidson claims that “until the start of the pandemic, Scotland’s GDP growth had lagged behind that of the UK for five straight years”. This is strictly true but what the Baroness does not say is that from 2015 onwards Scotland’s annual growth rate was increasing while that of the UK was decelerating. By the start of 2018, both growth rates had equalised.

Any devolved administration lacks the macroeconomic and tax powers of Westminster, so ScotGov has fought to maintain economic progress in the wake of Westminster’s ten-year round of austerity. However, even with limited economic management powers, the SNP Government exceeded UK growth in 2006; managed to hold Scotland’s fall in output in the years after the 2007 Bank Crisis to half that in the UK (thanks to John Swinney bringing forward capital expenditure); then rebooted growth before the UK did.

Davidson went on to claim that “Scottish government figures show that the [public] deficit is running at £36bn or 22.4 per cent of GDP, the highest in Europe.” By “Scottish government figures” Davidson means the latest annual GERS spending and income figures. But the GERS estimations arbitrarily combine Scottish government financing with the wholly separate Conservative government’s spending and tax income in Scotland. The devolved Scottish government is legally prohibited from running a fiscal deficit. Which means the £36bn deficit that Baroness Davidson refers to is not the result of ScotGov decisions but those of the Conservative government at Westminster, of which the Baroness is a supporter.

SCOTLAND’S CHILD POVERTY RECORD

The Baroness goes to enumerate other supposed failings of the Scottish government. She claims: “When the SNP took office in 2007, the rate of relative child poverty in Scotland was 23 per cent. In 2017, Sturgeon passed a child poverty bill aiming to cut the rate to 10 per cent by 2030. Three years later, it had risen to 26 per cent.”

Again, the Baroness is being selective with her statistics. According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (“Poverty in Scotland” report, 2019) overall poverty rates in Scotland are lower than at the start of devolution in 1999. They are also lower than in the UK as a whole. This is due principally to social rents being kept down in Scotland. True, child poverty rates have risen throughout the UK in recent years, but child poverty in Scotland is actually lower than in the UK. The upturn in poverty rates across the UK is directly due to the benefits freeze imposed by Baroness Davidson’s Conservative government – which she does not mention.

Expect the decision by the Conservative government to remove the £20 a week covid supplement from Universal Credit to further increase child poverty. Some 3.4 million children in the UK are living in households that claim Universal Credit. When this cut goes ahead in October, it will push 200,000 more children into poverty. However, in Scotland, the SNP government has introduced a £10 a week supplementary child benefit which it promises to increase to £20. Baroness Davidson does not mention this in her NS article.

OTHER AREAS OF SCOTGOV POLICY

The Baroness claims that police numbers are down by 800. The latest Police Scotland data says there were 17,289 full-time equivalent (FTE) officers in Scotland at 30 June 2021. This is an increase of 1,055 FTE officers (+6.5%) from the 16,234 FTE officers recorded at 31 March 2007 when the SNP first formed an administration. Note: The Tories under David Cameron slashed police numbers in England by over 20,000.

The Baroness says violent crime is increasing and that cases of domestic violence are at a 20-year high. The latest ScotGov recorded crime statistics (for between 2018-19 and 2019-20) show non-sexual crimes of violence increased by 16 per cent, from 8,008 to 9,316. But this increase is due to a change in recording practices. Some 1,681 offences were re-categorised as violent crimes under the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018, following its enactment on the 1 April 2019. All other non-sexual crimes of violence collectively decreased by 5 per cent. Sexual crimes decreased by 1 per cent, to 13,364.

The Baroness also attacks the health record of ScotGov. She claims that in December 2019, NHS Scotland recorded its worst ever Accident and Emergency waiting times. She also says the SNP has failed in its promise to cancer patients that 95 per cent would be treated within two months of referral.

It is true that A&E waiting times (pre-covid) were under pressure with “only” 90.6 per cent of patients in 2019 on average treated within four hours of arrival (though triage is immediate). This was against a target of 95 per cent. However, the Baroness fails to mention to her English NS readers that Scotland's A&E units were the best performing anywhere in the UK. She also fails to note that the reason why Scottish A&E units were under pressure was because of substantially increased demand.

It is also true that NHS Scotland has found it challenging to meet the benchmark of starting patient treatment for cancer within 62 days of initial GP referral. But it is also true that the NHS in England consistently failed to reach its (lower) 85 per cent treatment target from 2013 till the pandemic. This suggests a serious lack of resources being put into cancer treatment rather than political incompetence per se.

CONCLUSION

The Baroness’s NS article is a farrago of cherry-picked statistics ripped from context. She is also very careful never to compare the outcomes of the SNP government with those of the Conservative administrations at Westminster, less the latter look incompetent.

FACT CHECK RATING:

One out of ten. Perhaps the NS should stick to reprinting its earlier writers – George Orwell, John Maynard Keyes, J B Priestley and Virginia Woolf.