Without higher rates of growth, we risk a corrosive culture where people come to think of the world as a zero-sum game – where we fight to claim our share of a diminishing pie; where we reach the view that in order for us to win, somebody else must lose. It is a path we must not choose.
This long-term plan for growth must become the priority for all our political parties. Because we are nearing the point where, without it, our public services are becoming unsustainable. Economic growth is not a luxury for Scotland over the coming decades: it will decide whether or not the social contract maintained by government to provide people with dignity and material comfort can continue. Low growth is already costing our public services dear; in 2022-23, slow growth in Scotland’s underlying tax base more than offset the money raised from additional tax revenues collected due to Scotland’s higher rates. In other words, even though Scottish taxpayers paid more of their income to fund public services than workers elsewhere in the UK, it did not feed through to higher revenues because of the weakness in the underlying economy.