In precisely that vein, the First Minister tried this week to present the Scottish National Party as the only party that is committed to ending the cuts and reversing austerity. Apart from changes to income tax, which have already been done in Scotland, thanks to pressure from the Greens, the only actual change that he proposed was to devolve taxes and not increase them. Scotland should have control over oil and gas windfall taxes, other corporate taxes, national insurance, fuel duty and VAT, but only if we use those powers to raise revenue. The only change that the First Minister proposed was a VAT cut. Does he agree with the Greens that reversing the cuts and providing the investment that the country so clearly needs can be done only by raising significant revenue from the super-rich, who are hoarding the country’s wealth?

There are two aspects to answering that question. The first is the actions of the Scottish Government, and Mr Harvie will be familiar with these points. We have taken a range of decisions to vary the tax position in Scotland and, in some circumstances, to ask higher earners to pay more in taxation where that is appropriate. The Government has set out its position and its fiscal approach to enable that to be the case.

There is then the debate about the forthcoming United Kingdom election. I set out my party’s position yesterday, and if the Presiding Officer will forgive me, I refer Mr Harvie to the contents of our manifesto, which sets out a number of tax and spending changes that we would make to enable the priorities that we set out to be afforded within the financial envelope that is available to us.

Before I call Mr Harvie, I remind members that the chamber is not the place to campaign for a UK general election.

Indeed, Presiding Officer.

The First Minister is right about the additional revenue from income tax as a result of the work that the Greens did to show how that could be done, but he presented no plans at all for a wealth tax. As I said, the Greens worked out the detail on progressive income tax for Scotland, so maybe the First Minister is relying on us once again to do the work for him. He supports our proposals for a wealth tax on the richest 1 per cent, which would raise at least £70 billion. The real problem for the First Minister is that, whichever party forms the next UK Government, it will still be committed to Tory fiscal rules and will still refuse to rejoin the European Union, which will cut off both sources of extra revenue that the First Minister is relying on.

When a new Labour chancellor inevitably imposes more austerity to keep Labour’s new billionaire backers happy, what will the First Minister do with the taxes that he does control? Will he go further to raise the funds that we need to stop more cuts in Scotland, and will he finally scrap the broken council tax system to let our councils raise the revenue that they need to protect their services?

There are obviously a lot of fiscal choices involved in Mr Harvie’s question. He knows me well enough to know that the budget does not get written from here randomly during question time on a Thursday afternoon. There will be a process of engagement across the parliamentary spectrum to enable that to be undertaken.

However, I agree with Mr Harvie that the conspiracy of silence that exists between the Conservative Party and the Labour Party to hide the £18 billion of cuts from the public is reprehensible. The one thing that must happen after the election that we face is an end to austerity. Our public services cannot cope with any more austerity and, unfortunately, the outcome of the United Kingdom general election—the election of either a Conservative or a Labour Government—will deliver more austerity. We need to use our votes effectively in the election to prevent that from happening.