Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 24 February 2021
I am delighted to be given the opportunity to speak in this important debate and in support of the Scottish Conservatives’ motion.
Local government across Scotland is in crisis. The societal and economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic has undoubtedly placed significant pressure on the ability of local authorities to deliver essential public services. The severity of the challenge that local authorities face has been made clear by the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, which has issued a stark warning that councils are facing a combined budget shortfall of approximately £511 million going into 2021-22. It goes without saying that it is a deeply concerning situation for us all.
As the crisis dawned last year, local authorities across Scotland needed the Government in Edinburgh to have their back. They needed the Scottish National Party to equip them with the tools and funding that they required to lead our communities through the pandemic, to support our local businesses with a smooth administering of essential Covid financial support, to make sure that the roads and streets were properly gritted in anticipation of harsh weather, and to guarantee regular, timely bin collections.
An unprecedented crisis demands unprecedented support. Ambitious support in the present circumstances is necessary to deliver the bread-and-butter services that many of us have had to rely on more than usual during the past 12 months. Sadly, the support that local authorities have required has not been forthcoming. Indeed, the lacklustre support for our councils during the pandemic has been part of a larger pattern of the SNP’s long-standing behaviour towards local government in Scotland.
It is astonishing that, as local councils face new and existing challenges in responding to residents’ needs, the total amount of money that the SNP Government has given local authorities has fallen by £276 million in real terms during the past seven years. Let me be clear: long before Covid-19 crisis began, the SNP Government had been short changing Scotland’s councils, which has undoubtedly diminished their ability to respond to the diverse needs of local residents across Scotland.
With the most recent budget, which was drafted in extraordinary and difficult circumstances, the SNP Government still refuses to go that extra mile to support local government. As confirmed by COSLA, the SNP Government is offering Scotland’s councils a budget uplift of less than 1 per cent in 2021-22. That figure is truly shocking when compared with the Scottish Government’s own budget for 2021-22, which has increased by a whopping 9 per cent from last year to £44.1 billion, thanks to unprecedented support from the United Kingdom Treasury.
The SNP makes a lot of noise about needing more money and borrowing powers to respond to the pandemic, but while the UK Government has stepped up to the plate, the SNP Government, by contrast, has refused to extend the same support to Scotland’s struggling local authorities.
At a time when our local councils are facing the huge financial black hole that I mentioned, it is quite staggering that the SNP has set aside more than £0.5 million to prepare for another independence referendum this year. The persistent underfunding of Scotland’s councils by this Government is simply no longer acceptable. We must do better.
It is clear that Scotland’s councils get a rotten deal from the SNP Government, and that means that the Scottish people are getting a bad deal, too. That must change. It is clear that the current funding model is no longer fit for purpose, and that is why I support the Scottish Conservatives’ motion.
The goal of the model that we are proposing today is to urgently address the SNP’s unwillingness to properly fund our councils. The new model would create a permanent financial settlement for local government, legally mandating the Scottish Government in Edinburgh to deliver a ring-fenced percentage of the budget to local authorities. That would provide cash-strapped councils with the financial security, certainty and autonomy that they crave to play a leading role in helping our communities to rebuild and bounce back from the pandemic.
Our new fiscal framework would also be used to determine the allocation of capital and revenue funding that each council across Scotland received each year, meaning that councils would have the appropriate resources to respond to the biggest challenges and opportunities in their own areas. The proposed framework would put an end to the days of local councils being subject to the whims of the national Government in Edinburgh. Such behaviour has been made evident by the SNP Government, which has raided council budgets for years to pay for its own vanity projects. Instead, mirroring the way in which the block grant is provided to the Scottish Government by the UK, local councils would be secure in the knowledge that they were guaranteed to receive a set amount of the Scottish budget each year.
Our proposed new fiscal framework would give local authorities the vote of confidence that they deserve to fulfil their responsibilities to the Scottish people. Unhindered by constant financial woes and diktats from Edinburgh, Scotland’s councils would be able to plan ahead for the future and deliver the best local services as we all look to emerge brighter from the pandemic.
As countries around the world combat the coronavirus, the attention of the public largely falls, understandably, on how national Governments respond to crisis. The important role that local government plays in shaping people’s lives cannot be overstated, because for many people, local government is the first port of call, given that it is responsible for the essential services that they rely on.
Our party has a clear vision: we want to empower local councils with fair funding to fully support them in their efforts to deliver for their communities. With the new fiscal framework, we have a chance to achieve that vision and I urge Opposition parties to support the motion.
I move,
That the Parliament believes that local government should have its own fiscal framework that will automatically entitle it to a fixed proportion of the Scottish Budget each year, thereby enshrining fair funding in law.
16:10