Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 24 February 2021
Thank you, Presiding Officer.
The SNP will continue to make headline announcements about increased funding to local councils, but the devil is always in the detail. Most of the additional funding is for the SNP’s own pet projects, not for the day-to-day core services that local communities rely on, such as roads, schools and social care. Those are the areas that suffer so drastically from underfunding. The truth is that, over fourteen years, the SNP has reduced local council funding as a percentage of Government spending. Scotland’s councils now face a budget shortfall of more than £0.5 billion.
That has serious consequences at a local level. For Highland Council to protect core services, it has told me that it would need an increase of between 3 and 4 per cent at least on its council tax—and that is just to achieve a standstill. Frankly, it is unacceptable that Highland Council should have to consider raising taxes during a pandemic. Businesses are struggling to survive and family budgets are being stretched like never before; I do not believe that now is the time to raise local taxes.
It is time, really, for the SNP to give councils a fairer funding deal. If it does not, we will continue to see Highland roads such as the A890 fall into disrepair. There is no ferry at Stromeferry—frankly, the Scottish Government could not deliver that—and no bypass either. Until funding is made available for that project, local communities will have no choice but to accept continued disruption from rockfalls from the crumbling cliffs. The SNP Government talks about improving connectivity, but it is failing in Stromeferry.
Years of underfunding have left our Highland schools in a disgraceful state. The Highlands and Moray have the highest proportion of schools in Scotland that are classed as being in poor condition. I visited Tain royal academy and was shocked at how bad the water leaks were. In the library, there were more buckets than there were books. That is not the environment in which our pupils should be learning; they deserve modern school buildings. I welcome and recognise the funding to build new schools in Tain and in Nairn, which is supported by the Scottish Government, but more schools in the Highlands need repair or a full rebuild.
The SNP’s underfunding of local councils has helped to run down our roads, schools and local services. There is a better way forward. The Scottish Conservatives would create a fairer financial settlement that would ring fence a percentage of the Government’s budget for local councils. The proposal will protect local services and is worth voting for today and in May.
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