Hansard

It was only yesterday that workers from councils across Scotland assembled in front of this Parliament to protest the cuts that are being visited on local government by John Swinney. They stood shoulder to shoulder with councillors and council leaders, and they did so because they know that those cuts are not council cuts—they are Scottish National Party cuts; they are John Swinney’s cuts. The SNP Government had a choice, but it decided yesterday that it would continue Tory austerity and cut hundreds of millions of pounds from essential public services rather than raise a penny on income tax. Those cuts, Presiding Officer, are entirely SNP cuts.

Mr Swinney had the bare-faced cheek to try to tell us that the impact of the cuts was minimal and that we were utterly exaggerating the scale of job losses. The SNP has form on that. Unions estimate that there have been 40,000 job losses in local government since the SNP came to power. The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities has said that there will be 15,000 job losses as a result of this budget, and the GMB estimates that there will be 8,000. Whichever figure it is, the scale of the jobs that will be cut from local government is not minimal or exaggerated.

SNP-controlled Clackmannanshire is a very small authority. Let me repeat: it is cutting 350 jobs over the next three years. Of course, the First Minister did not want to go into that much detail, so she gave us only the first-year figures. That is 15 per cent of the whole workforce of that local authority. What about the cuts that that local authority is making to the third sector? What about the cuts to Women’s Aid and Rape Crisis? Will there be no job losses as a consequence of those?

What about other areas? I understand—I am sure that the Deputy First Minister will correct me if I am wrong—that 170 jobs were lost in Angus last week, and 282 posts might well go in Highland. Unison tells us that almost 2,000 jobs were lost in Edinburgh, where the SNP is in coalition with Labour. That is seven times the number of job losses at Tata Steel. If the SNP is so sure of its ground, let us have an impact assessment of the underfunding of local government, the cuts to services and the loss of jobs, because it is not minimal and it is not exaggerated.

In Mr Swinney’s backyard, Perth and Kinross is cutting learning materials and support staff and increasing class sizes in English and maths. I do not think that he believes that that is good for the children in his area.

Local councils are struggling with the cuts. Jobs are not being replaced when they become vacant. Staff are being asked to do more with less. In some areas, absence rates have gone up, which indicates the stress that staff such as teachers and care workers are under. People are losing their jobs, and they are under increasing stress. Are they simply collateral damage for the cabinet secretary? Is the impact on them and their families minimal or in some way exaggerated?

I repeat a point that we have made consistently. If this was the private sector, members of the Scottish Parliament across the chamber would be clamouring for a task force to alleviate the impact. When will the cabinet secretary do something to help those who are now out of work?

The cabinet secretary says that he has agreement from all 32 local authorities. Yes, he has letters that accept the budget allocation that was made to the local authorities, because they had no choice. They accepted it under duress. They faced draconian sanctions that would have stripped even more money from their budgets than was already being taken out. How could they not accept the settlement when the cabinet secretary effectively had a gun to their heads?

You might doubt this, Presiding Officer, but I am old enough to remember the days of the concordat with local government, of which John Swinney was the architect. The cabinet secretary talked about mutual respect and parity of esteem, and there were handshakes, back-slapping and smiles all round. Those sunlit uplands are but a distant memory. Relations are now in deep freeze. There is no respect and local government is not valued by a centralising Government. Meetings are being declined and budgets are being slashed. It is so bad that even SNP councillors, including the SNP’s lead member in Edinburgh and the council leader in North Ayrshire, are complaining.

The cuts are brutal. According to the Scottish Parliament information centre, they are of the order of £600 million. The budget was £10,756.7 million for last year and it is £10,152 million for this year coming, although I acknowledge that the cabinet secretary has added some in. I am sure that we will be treated to an explanation of capital reprofiling but, in my book, £600 million is £600 million.

The local government share of the Scottish budget is now even lower at 30 per cent. I know that John Swinney likes to claim that it is higher—he always says that to me—but he is engaged in nothing more than smoke and mirrors. He is adding contributions for the fire and police services that he stripped out years ago.

Local government is not some abstract thing. It is all about services that civilise our society, such as home care for older people, adaptations for disabled people, support for children who have special needs, education, care services, emptying our bins, cleaning our roads, libraries, housing and so much more. Those services are for everyone.