I have trimmed my speech and have just trimmed that point out a wee bit, so I thank my hon. Friend for getting that on the record.
Let me return to energy. There is nothing in the Budget on pumped storage hydro—on which, again, the Scottish Tories have been silent—but hurray: tomorrow we get the Nuclear Energy (Financing) Bill. No doubt the Scottish Tories will troop through the Lobby to support that.
Let me turn to the levelling-up fund. Yet again, Scotland gets a cut of that, so let us get the Union Jacks out—“Hurray: we get a cut of the levelling-up fund!” The reality is that our cut is, in effect, based on the Barnett formula. When the Chancellor said last week that in the first round of funding Scotland is getting more than its Barnett share, all that means is that there is less money in the ringfenced pot for Scotland going forward, because it is all based on Barnett anyway. But as a Scottish Tory, I do not care, because I revel in the fact that the Scottish Government are being bypassed and there are small projects that we can put a Union Jack on.
As a Scottish Tory, I never acknowledge that the SNP has been in power for only 14 years. The Union has been in existence for more than 300 years, yet somehow every shortfall has happened only in the past 14 years. We must have quite a talent in reverse. The Budget still does not tell us what the shared prosperity fund will look like. It is supposed to replace the vital European funding streams that all the areas that have been overlooked by Westminster relied on to access vital funds for transport and infrastructure—and the Government talk about levelling up. We are currently losing out on funding and we do not know where the future shortfall is coming from, yet the Chancellor uses the phrase “levelling up”.
In conclusion, the Budget does nothing for Scotland. We have already seen, post Brexit, the damage that has been done to the fishing industry and to our farmers, despite the promises. More and more people can see that Westminster cannot be trusted, and it really is time that Scotland took full control of its own decision-making process.
5.19 pm