To ask the Scottish Government whether it will set out how it measures economic growth, including what metrics it uses to assess success in economic growth. (S6O-03755)

The Scottish Government publishes monthly and quarterly gross domestic product figures for onshore Scotland. That is the headline measure for Scottish economic growth. The national performance framework also has indicators, some of which show whether growth is improving or worsening. However, following the unprecedented disruption to GDP during the Covid pandemic, recent trends are distorted and performance cannot meaningfully be compared to previous years. Therefore, that indicator was not reported for 2023.

Growing the economy is one of our four programme for government priorities. Since 2007, Scotland’s GDP per person has grown by 10.7 per cent, compared with only 5.6 per cent in the United Kingdom as a whole.

One measure of growth might be to ask what size the Scottish budget is and what it would have been had the Scottish Government made the same policy choices as the UK Government. When the Scottish Fiscal Commission did so, it pointed out that the Scottish National Party’s policy choices have cost the Scottish budget £624 million, something that the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government failed to mention in her recent statement.

Does the Minister think that Graeme Roy’s or Shona Robison’s analysis is correct? Does he accept that the SNP’s drastic spending cuts are the result of its policy choices?

This is Scottish devolution. We take decisions in line with the priorities in Scotland. We do not replicate UK policies and UK choices.

I point out to the member that today’s article from Ian McConnell in The Herald newspaper, which was just published in the past few hours, is entitled:

“Scottish economy grows as UK stagnates, new data reveal”.

That relates to the latest monthly figures for GDP. The Scottish economy is faring well under many indicators against a difficult backdrop, much of which was caused by UK Government policy.

If we look at what the business insights and conditions survey says about the optimism—or otherwise—of the business community, we see that the community’s highest concerns are inflation and energy prices, and then we have the cost of Brexit to add to that. Those relate to UK policy choices that we would not have made in Scotland. That is why it is important that we do what is best for Scotland. According to many different indicators for economic growth, Scotland is performing relatively well compared with the rest of the UK.

UK Government debt has risen to its highest level since the 1960s. The UK Chancellor of the exchequer has announced £22 billion-worth of cuts, and economists warned last week that the impact of Brexit is worsening. Will the Minister advise how we can grow Scotland’s economy in such a challenging UK environment, which leaves Scotland tied to a failing economy?

Our programme for government sets out the steps that we are taking to grow our economy, to create jobs, to support innovation—through, for instance, the Scottish National Investment Bank—and to attract investment in net zero, housing and infrastructure. Our economy is performing relatively well, as I indicated in my previous answer. For instance, last year, earnings in Scotland grew faster than they did in any other part of the UK.

However, there is a limit to the actions that we can take while many of the key powers on tax and the economy remain reserved to Westminster. That is why we want further powers for the Scottish Parliament and independence, which would give us the powers to build a greener, fairer and wealthier Scotland.

The information and communications sectors, for example, are performing particularly well and are contributing to the GDP figures that I have mentioned. Those are national strengths in this country that will help us achieve economic growth in the future, which is why we are focusing on many of those strong sectors.

It is vital that we close the £600 million performance gap, but cherry picking economic data does not help. The Government is right that, since 2007, performance based on GDP per head has been 11 per cent in Scotland compared with 6 per cent in the rest of the UK. However, since 2016—the point of income tax devolution—Scottish economic growth based on GDP per head has been 2.6 per cent, whereas it has been 4.4 per cent in the rest of the UK. In Manchester, since 2007, GDP per head has grown by 21.4 per cent. Likewise, with inward investment, although the Government is right to point to EY data, data from the Office for National Statistics shows that, in terms of value through the number of jobs created, Scotland is lagging behind both the West Midlands and the north-west of England, with fewer than half the number of jobs that have been created by inward investment in those areas.

Does the Minister agree that, if we are to close the performance gap, we need to use a broader set of measures? Most important—and I am interested in his answer to this—do we need a better view of how Scotland compares with the other nations and regions of the United Kingdom?

It was intriguing that Daniel Johnson mentioned 2016, because there was an event in 2016 that had a very detrimental impact on Scotland’s economy—it was called Brexit. All the evidence shows that Brexit has had a disproportionate impact on the Scottish economy compared with the impact on the rest of the UK, given our exports to the European Union and other factors.

I asked a serious question.

The member is shaking his head in frustration. Brexit has had an enormous impact on the Scottish economy, but his party has stuck to the Tory policy of supporting Brexit, which has compounded the damage to the Scottish economy. Indeed, just in the past week, a university published a report that shows that small businesses have been hit particularly hard as a result of our exports being curtailed due to Brexit.

I accept that we should always keep the measures under review. I think that we can all agree that that is an important point, but let us live in the real world and not turn a blind eye to the impact that Brexit and other factors—including budget cuts from Westminster—have had on the Scottish economy.