Meeting of the Parliament 06 February 2014
Yesterday’s debate on the budget resulted in Labour and the Scottish National Party agreeing that we would bin the bedroom tax. I warmly welcome that. In the debate last year, I asked the SNP to work with us when we debated local government finance. The bedroom tax is a policy based on Tory ideology, with no understanding of the reality of the lives of the thousands of tenants who live in council and housing association properties. There are simply not enough affordable houses for people who need them. The policy ignores the realities of families—for example, children having needs because they are studying for exams, carers looking after a relative and people with disabilities. Last year, I knew from talking to Labour councils across the country that they were worried that the bedroom tax was pushing into debt tenants who had never been in debt and destabilising council and housing association budgets.
We can take pride from yesterday, when we worked as the Parliament that we were set up to be and used our powers to protect people. Today’s debate is about our councils’ capacity to do the same—to use the increasingly scarce resources that they are allocated, to work with the increasingly centralist policy framework that they have been given and to try to plan ahead to address challenges such as the care of older people and climate change. Those are no longer challenges for the future; they are with us now. We look to local government to deliver better-quality environments, well-planned housing for communities, local economic action to support local jobs and training, and the high-quality education and social care services that give us all not just the best start in life but the best support and care throughout our lives when we need it.
We do not see today as a complete cause for celebration because, although extra resource is being put in to tackle the bedroom tax, the overall financial settlement for local government is not good news. It is a story of cuts, of centralisation and of impacts on front-line services resulting from the SNP’s financial straitjacket. Every MSP will know of the tough decisions that our council colleagues are making. The SNP has broken local government finance, with nearly 35,000 jobs being cut from local government since 2008. As Audit Scotland rightly documents, the challenge of delivering health and social care under the budget settlement will add to the pressures on care workers and the families who rely on their services. We need committed care staff who are paid a decent wage and are well trained and motivated. The loss of local authority jobs is bad for local economies, too, especially in economically fragile areas, as it has a negative impact on local economic activity and businesses.
We believe that the Scottish National Party Government is on pause and is more concerned about independence than about the reality of people’s lives. More could be done. For example, we could create flexibility for councils to benefit financially from tourism and to build local renewables and heat and power infrastructure to keep people warm and keep energy affordable. At present, only a few councils are able to do that given their scale. My colleague Richard Baker will talk about the need to give businesses more support and to give local authorities the support that they need to do that.
Local government costs have risen by 10 per cent since 2007 but, with this budget, £637 million has been cut since 2008-09. The SNP’s white paper talks grandly about life post-2016, but it does not address the realities of the cost-of-living crisis for people now. The SNP is proud of its underfunded council tax freeze—we heard that again today—but it hits hardest those people on low and modest incomes, or the people whom the SNP says it is meant to help.