Meeting of the Parliament 17 June 2015
First, I congratulate and say well done to the Local Government and Regeneration Committee. I absolutely associate myself with all John Wilson’s comments. I would have liked what he said to have been one bit of my speech.
I want to focus on something a bit different. We need to move forward with the co-operation that we have seen in the passing of the bill. The bill will be no panacea for the unnecessary austerity that is now being imposed on public services across Scotland. We need to address that, but that is for another day.
I want to talk about how we will address local government finance in future. I welcomed it when the minister set up the commission on local tax reform. I sat on the commission for a period of time and I look forward to its conclusions. All political parties, including mine and that of the Government, need to give an absolute commitment that we will put party politics to one side so that we can find a solution to the problem of local government finance. If we try to outbid each other using council tax freezes, we will doom local government to another five-year freeze that will have a negative impact on the ability of local authorities to achieve sustainable long-term finance, especially if one party is frightened to move because the other one will make major political capital out of it or make it into an election issue. We have seen co-operation in the making of the bill and the parties need to give the same commitment to working together in the chamber to find a long-term and sustainable approach to local government finance.
On community planning, regardless of whether we are able to find a long-term sustainable approach to local government finance, the Christie report has highlighted the fact that we cannot continue to do things the way we did them in the past. We need to find new ways of working and think about a more preventative agenda. I believe that the bill and the moves that have been made within it to ensure that community planning is able to genuinely involve and engage with local communities will move that agenda forward.
We need to look at structures. For example, I absolutely support the health and social care partnerships. Only time will tell whether that is the end of the road or whether we want to bring the organisations together and govern them differently, but I believe that this bill is the next step with regard to community planning partners—the health service, local authorities and the voluntary sector. There must be a greater role for the third sector. I am a believer that community planning is absolutely the correct way to go forward. It is also right that people and communities are able to determine their local priorities and where local resources should be spent. The bill takes us in that direction.
I hope that, across Scotland, political parties and local government will see this bill as an opportunity to begin to work together in the interests of our communities and that parties in this Parliament can come together successfully to work together to tackle the difficult issues such as the future of local government funding.
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