Meeting of the Parliament 19 January 2022
I would normally take as many interventions as members would like to make, but I have only five minutes.
Today the president of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities has said that tax rises are inevitable and that cuts are inevitable, unless, as the motion asks for, the Government delivers an improved financial settlement. Those are not choices; they are SNP cuts that have been forced on local government as part of a sustained campaign that has been going on for a decade and has cost services £937 million since 2013.
Were the European Charter of Local Self-Government (Incorporation) (Scotland) Bill to be enforced, the Government would clearly be in breach of it.
There are a couple of differences this year compared with what has happened in the previous decade. The minister’s and the cabinet secretary’s SNP council colleagues have finally said in public what they have been saying behind closed doors for a decade: they cannot cope with any more cuts.
We know that the Greens, who are in the Government, have signed off on the cuts, so the cabinet secretary has no chance to find that extra couple of hundred million pounds for a deal.
Most concerning of all is that we are in the grip of the biggest cost-of-living crisis in years. Inflation is at its highest level in five years, and the cabinet secretary took to the radio this morning to say that she could not inflation proof budgets, and that it is inflation’s doing that ring-fenced spending has increased, having jumped from 58 per cent to 62 per cent this year. That is what she said, but she could not say who caused the portion of the budget with which councils have maximum flexibility for delivering local priorities to fall. It is worth knowing that, in 2013, controlled spend was just 25 per cent. It is almost as if the SNP Government wants us to forget that local councils are democratically elected and are accountable to their voters.
The cabinet secretary also said that only 7 per cent of the budget is ring fenced for grants for SNP Government projects, but even by that count—which I dispute—the amount has, according to the Scottish Parliament information centre, grown from 0.1 per cent of the budget in 2013, or by 70 times.
We agree that local government needs a fiscal framework in order that it can make the decisions that are best for local communities, but we are alive to fears that that could bake in a decade of cuts. Our amendment seeks to qualify the percentage that the Conservative motion proposes, because we cannot accept continued pernicious ring fencing to take place within that set proportion of the Scottish budget.
Finally, the issue of local government staff pay must be heard. The budget is disastrous for the tireless army of local government workers. Not only do they have the task of implementing yet more cuts, but they are doing so in spite of the exhausting task of having kept the country moving through two years of the pandemic. Youth link community workers, carers, cleansing staff, teaching assistants, street cleaners and so many more have worked flat out to keep going the services that we have all relied on and clapped for. However, 55 per cent of them earn below £25,000 per annum. In the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee last week, Johanna Baxter of Unison told us how angry and frustrated they are, and that councils will see a “difficult industrial landscape ahead”.
I ask the Government to reconsider and to deliver a budget that can deliver a fair pay increase for staff and a fair settlement for local authorities.
I move, as amendment to motion S6M-02838, to insert at end:
“; believes that this set percentage of the Scottish Government budget each year should be for essential and non-ringfenced services to afford local councils maximum flexibility in delivering local priorities; notes that the 2022-23 offer comes on top of the damaging effects of a cumulative Scottish Government cut to local authority revenue budgets of £937 million between 2013-14 and 2021-22, and agrees that the heroic effort of local government workers to keep the country going during the COVID-19 pandemic must be recognised in the 2022-23 financial settlement from the Scottish Government, giving local authorities the opportunity to offer a fair pay settlement to their staff.”
15:51Motions, questions or amendments mentioned by their reference code.