Meeting of the Parliament 28 February 2024
Not just now—I am sorry.
Do councillors in Glasgow City Council not care about education? Of course they care. It is because they have no money and are right up against it that they have had to make that decision. The Minister for Community Wealth and Public Finance and all other ministers carry on as if councillors are either stupid or do not care. Ministers need to change that attitude, because it is not the way for Government and local government to work together.
To repeat, the agreement talks about a “positive working relationship”, “mutual trust”, “respect”, “joint leadership” and “shared priorities”. That is all bunkum—it does not mean anything. The councils were duped from the very beginning, because the Government had no intention of working in that way. Any time that any pressure was put on, the Government was going to do the dirty on local government, and that is exactly what has happened.
I have never seen public services in local councils in such a bad state. I have been in politics for 18 years in various Parliaments and I have never seen things as bad as this. Housing, the roads and social work are all crumbling because the Government does not respect local authorities. The Government is making cuts to local government that are way more than it needs to do, and it has done so for years. We are now paying the price for that. The pressure-cooker atmosphere in schools is astonishing. I have never seen staff so depressed, and that is because of the way in which the Government ignores their fears about what is happening in classrooms. That is what the Government is reaping, because it sowed the seeds of this situation a long time ago.
As for any suggestion that we will reform the council tax, I do not know how many working groups I have been on, but the Greens, who are not here today—well, the Green back-bench members are not here; I presume that the Minister for Green Skills, Circular Economy and Biodiversity has been compelled to turn up—seem to believe that they have a new dawn and that somehow we are going to reform the council tax. Apparently, the citizens assembly will come up with an answer, and there is a new working group on top of all the other working groups that exist. Ministers are laughing at all of that. The reality is that they have no intention of doing anything on council tax reform; they are just stringing local government along and are doing exactly what they have done for years in treating it with contempt.
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