Tory autumn statement fails people and planet while attacking the most vulnerable
The Scottish Greens economy spokesperson, Maggie Chapman MSP, has accused Chancellor Jeremy Hunt of “fiddling at the edges while the world burns around us”.
The comments follow a “deeply unimpressive and unambitious” autumn statement that Ms Chapman has warned fails people and planet while attacking the most vulnerable.
Ms Chapman said: “Even by Tory standards this was a deeply unimpressive and unambitious autumn statement. We need radical change but this doesn’t come close to it. The Tories are continuing to fail people and planet, choosing instead to support their wealthy friends and punish the most vulnerable.
“Every day that they spend in Downing Street is another day of needless and avoidable pain for so many. Nothing makes the case for independence more clearly than 13 years of Tory budgets from governments that Scotland did not vote for and policies that we have rejected time and again.
“There was nothing in today’s statement that will give any meaningful help or hope to the millions of people who have struggled through the cost of living - or cost of greed - crisis. There is nothing to support them with energy costs as winter starts to bite.
“With COP 28 just around the corner, this is the time for a radical green industrial strategy but what they have offered is fiddling at the edges while the world burns around us. They are planning to give away even more of our north sea to polluters while utterly failing to live up to the urgency of the climate emergency.
“With mini-tax haven freeports and handouts to multinationals, this autumn statement played the same old Tory tunes and doubled down on the same policies that have done so much damage.
“They are planning to pay for it by attacking unemployed and vulnerable people with cruel and draconian new rules that will force them to pay the price for Tory incompetence. And they think they can buy Scotland off with a pittance.
“In Scotland we have mitigated the brutal bedroom tax and benefit cap and introduced the child payment that is lifting families all over Scotland out of poverty while the Tories are knowingly inflicting even greater pain and destitution.
“They have imposed years of economic punishment and chaos on households and families all across the UK. They crashed the economy and when they are finally kicked out of Downing Street they will be leaving behind a long and destructive legacy of failure and cruelty.”