Protecting Public Services

As an amendment to motion S3M-07735 in the name of Patrick Harvie (Protecting Public Services), leave out from "calls" to end and insert "notes that, as a result of Labour’s financial mismanagement, the UK Government inherited the largest structural deficit in Europe, which has left it paying debt interest equivalent to the cost of building one primary school a day in Scotland; recognises that there are no easy choices in the current economic climate but that the UK Government is lifting 90,000 people in Scotland on low incomes out of paying income tax altogether and has restored the pensions link with earnings to the benefit of one million Scottish pensioners; further recognises that spending on frontline public services in Scotland will be reduced by less than in England, Wales or Northern Ireland; regrets that the Scottish Government has still not published detailed spending plans beyond 2011-12 and believes that, by introducing a surprise new tax on business and failing to tackle high pay in the public sector, the Scottish Government is not making the right choices to boost Scotland’s economic recovery and support frontline public services, but welcomes the fact that the Scottish Government has abandoned its ambitions to emulate the Republic of Ireland, where the Green Party has recently voted in support of the harshest austerity budget on record.”