Meeting of the Parliament 06 March 2018
The cabinet secretary has taken the words right out of my mouth. It would still not be good enough, I am afraid, because the SNP always falls short of what is required.
However, I want to focus on a serious element of today’s statement. For the sixth year in a row, we have had the failure of the SNP Government to match a commitment from its 2011 manifesto—the manifesto that said, “Re-elect Alex Salmond”—which said:
“We will introduce a new Funding Floor to ensure that no Local Authority receives less than 85 per cent of the Scottish average in terms of Revenue Support. This will be funded by additional money from central government.”
In the Scottish Parliament information centre briefing—I admit that it is based on the draft budget, but, having looked at the figures today, I see that the percentages have not changed substantially—the figure for Edinburgh is not 85 per cent but 80.7 per cent, and the figure for Aberdeen is 81.5 per cent. That is well short of the funding floor that was promised.
Instead of fixing the funding for local government and providing more money for Edinburgh and Aberdeen—particularly for the latter, which has suffered a shortfall of nearly £20 million in each of the six years since 2011—the SNP has just fixed the formula. The Government now says that it includes council tax income, which miraculously takes the figure right up. That was not the commitment back in 2011.