MP Michael Fallon reckons its time to give England a fair deal
More and more constituents are complaining to me about Scotland.
Not about the country or the people but about the very generous deal Scotland gets from the British taxpayer.
They note that public spending on schools and hospitals is much higher in Scotland than in England. Scottish schools get about 20% more per pupil. Is this fair?
No, it isn’t fair. Of course it’s true that there are special circumstances in Scotland – remote parts of the highlands and islands where fewer people live, so the cost of providing services is higher. But equally there are remote parts of England – the south-west, Cumbria, Northumberland – where exactly the same arguments apply.
What’s wrong is that average Scottish spending should be so much higher than England. And that my constituents should have to subsidise things like care home fees which are waived in Scotland.
I don’t think this is fair. Given that Scotland now has its own parliament and the right to raise income tax, if they want higher spending, why shouldn’t they raise the extra tax themselves ?
The latest discrimination comes with university fees. From next year tuition fees will be scrapped at Scottish universities – for Scottish students. In fact, they won’t apply to any students from the European Union. Swedish students, Slovakian students, Romanian students – all free.
Except English students – they’ll still have to pay. And of course it’s their English taxpayer parents who will have to pay the cost of exempting everybody except their own sons and daughters.
I raised this at Question Time three weeks in a row last summer. Ministers replied that this was the price of devolution. It’s up to parliament to change the system. But of course English MPs can’t vote on purely Scottish matters, yet Scottish MPs can vote on any English bill or grant affecting Kent. That’s not right either.
We need a fairer deal all round. And we need to look again at the way the south-east of England is treated. We’re the ones paying for everybody else.
Even within England there’s been a huge shift in local government grant from the south to the north over the last ten years. That’s why we’ve seen big increases in our council tax.
Let me give one stark example. Back in 1997, central government grant was £60 per head for Sevenoaks and £66 per head for Sedgefield, Tony Blair’s former constituency in County Durham. This year it’s £61 per head for Sevenoaks but £135 per head, more than twice as much, for Sedgefield.
Of course it’s political. The Labour Government depends on Scottish and Northern votes.
