I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, and I thank the House of Commons Library for some excellent work on GDP per capita and GDP per hours worked, including in relation to Ireland. I shall come on to that.
Where the UK stands in relation to Germany, France, Italy, the USA, Canada and so on provides some useful benchmarks for relative economic performance. The fact that the UK lags behind its peers on so many key indicators is another, all too sad, story. Last out of the recession, lowest productivity, and lowest GDP per capita growth rates—a record that does not tally with the UK Government’s “back in business” narrative.
Although the G7 provides a useful comparison for the UK, its relevance to Scotland is less apparent. We do not aspire to be one of the largest economies in the world, to strut faded imperial grandeur on the world stage or to maintain the pretence of exerting some kind of global influence, 100 years after the height of the British empire. Our ambitions are different—more modest, some would say; more enlightened, others would call it. In business there is a saying, “Turnover is vanity, profit is sanity.” To be big is not always to be beautiful. Scotland seeks fairness and prosperity for those who live there.