11 Sep 2017

Banks loaned an extra £100 million to farmers across Scotland last year, as businesses struggled to cope with the SNP’s CAP payments crisis.

Official figures released today showed farm debt went up by five per cent from the previous year, a cash-terms rise of £113 million.

It means debt levels of £2.32 billion are now at their highest since records began in 1972, the Survey of Bank Advances to Scottish Agriculture confirmed.

It comes as the sector again faces challenges after the Scottish Government failed to process European payments on time.

Over the past two years, the rural community has been starved of hundreds of millions of pounds thanks to the botched IT system.

Shadow rural affairs secretary Peter Chapman said that fiasco, along with other challenges facing the industry, has forced more farming businesses to take out loans.

The statistics showed that the type of loans taken out by farmers were split roughly evenly between short and long-term liabilities.

Scottish Conservative rural affairs secretary Peter Chapman said:

“These figures show the financial state of farming businesses in Scotland has never been worse.

“Yet at a time you’d think the Scottish Government would step in to help, ministers have only made the situation worse.

“The SNP’s catastrophic management of CAP payments starved the rural community of hundreds of millions of pounds.

“Only now are we beginning to see the financial impact of that on businesses right across the country.

“The SNP must address these figures urgently and set out what it intends to do to help this vital sector recover.

“If it fails, the whole country will pay the price.”

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To see the full publication, visit:
http://www.gov.scot/Resource/0052/00524261.pdf

The SNP starved rural Scotland of hundreds of millions of pounds thanks to its CAP payments fiasco:
http://www.scottishconservatives.com/2017/05/snp-must-publish-secret-report-which-blasts-cap-payment-chaos/
http://www.scottishconservatives.com/2017/05/snp-must-publish-secret-report-which-blasts-cap-payment-chaos/
http://www.scottishconservatives.com/2017/07/snp-cap-slowdown-sees-1300-farmers-still-waiting-for-payments/

11 Sep 2017

Scotland is falling down a global league table of wellbeing because of falling education standards and poor life expectancy, experts have warned.

A new index out today sees Scotland drop four places to 20^th on a measure of social and economic wellbeing.

That’s significantly behind the UK average, and means countries including South Korea, Austria, France and New Zealand are all performing better.

Economic expert John McLaren said: “This fall was due to a worsening education performance, exacerbated by falling income levels associated with the decline in North Sea-related activity. Furthermore, Scotland’s very poor life expectancy performance failed to improve, in relative terms, over the decade.”

In the 2006 measure, Scotland had a score of 2.13, which was the 16^th best in the world.
However, after a decade of the SNP in government, that score has now fallen to 1.98, just ahead of Slovenia in 21^st place.

Scottish Conservative MSP Donald Cameron said:

“The evidence here could hardly be more stark.

“After a decade of SNP control, Scotland has tumbled down global measures of social and economic wellbeing.

“This is a damning indictment on policy areas the nationalists have had complete control over for 10 years, like education and health.

“The narrative we consistently hear from the SNP is how wonderful a place Scotland is to live.

“But now we can see, under SNP control, things are actually getting worse.

“Nicola Sturgeon cannot turn her fire on anyone else for this; the experts are clear that these matters are for the Scottish Government of the day to address.

“People will wonder what more evidence the First Minister needs to persuade her to get back to the day job.”

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For more information, visit:
http://scottishtrends.co.uk/index-of-social-and-economic-well-being-2006-2016