No, I will not give way. How dare they say the £4 million annually that this UK Government are paying to mitigate their policy is wrong? That is absolutely scandalous, and armed forces personnel in Scotland will be viewing—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman keeps shouting. I think that is extremely—[Interruption.] He continues to shout, and it is extremely disrespectful to our armed forces personnel who have been supported in mitigating his party’s policies.
I do not have an awful lot of time left, but I want to mention the cuts commission, because it leads on from what I have just said about defence. The cuts commission —or the growth commission, as the SNP would try to call it—was many months in the making and the report was shoved out one Friday on a bank holiday. We all wondered why it was not published to great fanfare. It is because there is so much bad news for the SNP in its own cuts commission.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies mentions
“the Commission’s proposals for immediate cuts to defence”—
very interesting for my seat in Moray and others around Scotland—
“and other spending currently undertaken by the UK government.”
That is not me saying that; that is the IFS saying that the SNP’s cuts commission will lead to immediate cuts to defence. John McLaren of Scottish Trends made an apposite point when he said:
“Scotland will be moving from a deficit equivalent to nearly 6% of GDP towards a 3% target. It doesn’t take a mathematical genius to work out the implications.”
The implications for our constituents in Moray and across Scotland are that, under the SNP and its cuts commission, we will see more cuts to local authorities and more cuts to the NHS, and I will not accept that.