Imogen Walker

I am going to make some more progress. I know the frustration that people feel after years of chaos and neglect by their Government—in the case of Scotland, by two Governments, as a matter of fact—but I would say to everyone who feels let down by 14 years of broken promises: what the last Government did, lurching from crisis to crisis or from drama to drama, is not the way to make people’s lives better. They dodged the difficult decisions, and we are not doing that. It has been just six months since we were elected, and we have already increased funding to the NHS, protected the pensions triple lock, invested in housing and delivered the biggest settlement to Scotland in the history of devolution. We have also set a Budget that funded all that, while protecting the pay packets of working people. Our manifesto said that we would stabilise the economy and rebuild public services, and that is what we are doing. The job is far from finished, but we will get there. I ask Opposition Members, what has happened to their party? The Tory party we once knew was the biggest winner in Britain’s electoral history, but its Members now sit here diminished and looking around—as they always do—for someone else to blame. But of course, blaming the voters is never the right thing to do. I am not going to criticise the people who signed this petition, because we all feel the frustration of the last decade and a half of people not being able to get what they need for themselves and their family.