Murphy pledges £1 billion to help Scotland’s youth

Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy made a speech in London this morning to pledge a £1 billion investment in Scotland’s young people. Murphy spoke of  wanting to “fairly share our national wealth” in order that those in less well-off areas could be afforded the same opportunities – saying that “unequal life-chances are not just morally wrong, they are economically wasteful.”

He set out three areas where Labour would raise taxes to redistribute wealth and tackle inequality:

• A mansion tax to help the NHS tackle health inequality.

• A 50p top rate to help deal with educational inequality.

• A tax on the profits of payday lenders to offer cheaper credit to the poorest families.

When asked why he had chosen the City of London, the capital’s banking district, rather than somewhere in Scotland to make his announcement, he replied:

“I came here to announce it because this is where a lot of the wealth is going to come from. I believe in redistribution; that’s why I’m in the Labour Party.”

Murphy committed Scottish Labour to supporting free university tuition in Scotland, and pledged a £1,000 increase in bursaries for Scottish students, reversing cuts made by the SNP.

He also supported a Scottish Jobs Guarantee and a £1,600 ‘future fund’ for young people not in education, work or apprenticeships. He said this would be:

“Money for training, for that specialist course that unlocks a job opportunity, for a set of work tools, for driving lessons or to start your own business. 

“It will act as a powerful incentive for potential employers to offer the young people that are too often overlooked the opportunity to learn and to work.”

It was a speech that aimed to set dividing lines between Labour and the twin opposition of the SNP and Conservatives. Murphy described the election as “a debate where the gap between socialism and Toryism, between socialism and nationalism, is clear.”

He claimed that the SNP’s policy of scrapping the Barnett Formula and applying full fiscal devolution to Scotland, where spending would be paid for solely from Scottish tax revenue, would deny the country of the pledges Scottish Labour has made and saddle Scotland with “£7.6 billion of additional austerity”.

Through this, he argued that Scotland was more prosperous as part of the UK, where wealth can be more widely spread. However, he was reluctant to talk about the SNP when asked questions about them – possibly hoping to avoid accusations that he was going to that London to slag off Scottish politicians.