Meeting of the Parliament 21 February 2018
Another day, another budget debate. Sadly, the narrative from the Scottish National Party Government remains exactly what it was yesterday and for weeks before that. It is a pay-more, get-less budget. It has been prepared against a backdrop of the UK block grant to Scotland increasing from this year to the next, a fact that was confirmed by the Scottish Parliament information centre and the Fraser of Allander institute and accepted by the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and the Constitution himself.
As we heard yesterday, the budget breaks a promise that the SNP made in its manifesto in 2016 not to increase the basic rate of income tax. As a consequence of that broken promise, more than 1 million Scots will pay more tax than equivalent workers south of the border, which sends a message that Scotland is the highest-taxed part of the United Kingdom.
While taxes are going up, services are being cut. Across Scotland this week, local authorities are meeting to set their budgets. The warnings from the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities are clear: despite the additional money that has been found by the Scottish Government as a result of its deal with the Greens, councils still have to make savings. Whether it is reducing the number of teachers, cutting classroom assistants, scrapping school crossing patrollers or closing recycling centres and libraries, people’s experience all across the country is that they are getting poorer-quality public services while, at the same time, they are being asked to pay more in taxation.
The budget delivers pay increases for public sector workers. Those employed by the Scottish Government and its agencies and those in the NHS will all benefit. However, there is nothing in the budget that will deliver higher salaries for local authority workers, who no doubt will have a similar expectation to those elsewhere in the public sector. Yet, if those sorts of settlements are to be made, they can be made only by local authorities cutting services elsewhere. Even if a local authority is maximising its council tax increase at 3 per cent, it will not raise enough money to pay the level of increases to staff that are being applied elsewhere in the public sector.
That point was made by Councillor Gail Macgregor, COSLA’s resources spokeswoman. I know that the finance secretary knows Councillor Macgregor as he was pictured all over Twitter last night cavorting with her at a glitzy Scotland Excel event. On Tuesday—I am sure that she would have repeated this to him when they were together last night—she said:
“Because quite simply with no money in the settlement from Scottish Government for pay, any pay rises for council workers can only come from cuts to services or council tax rises.”
I would be interested to hear from SNP speakers in this debate. [Interruption.] If Mr FitzPatrick would like to intervene on me, I am very happy to allow him to do so instead of just heckling from a sedentary position.