Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 27 April 2022
I know that Mr Mason asserts that this Government operates within a fixed budget envelope, but it has extensive revenue-generating powers that it has not innovated in the slightest because it is intellectually incurious about that. Therefore, the Government’s revenues are constrained by a lack of innovation on the revenue-generating side. I would suggest investigating options; annual ground rents would be one particular opportunity, and the former MSP Andy Wightman offers some interesting views on that. I would direct Mr Mason toward revenue rather than simply managing decline on an ever more constrained budgetary envelope.
We know that the cuts have been disproportionate. It is independently verified that, although the Scottish Government’s budget goes up in real terms, local authorities continue to feel real-terms constraints, and that is having a disproportionately difficult effect on our communities. Although we know that that is happening, we still have concerns about the UK Government’s approach to providing funding directly to local authorities and bypassing the Scottish Government entirely. There are concerns at all levels.
The Tories might not like it, but we have had a devolution settlement since 1999 for a reason. As we have found out in recent months and years, they are quite happy to disregard the devolution settlement whenever it suits them. Breaking the Sewel convention and legislating despite repeated refusals by this Parliament to agree to legislative consent motions is the most obvious and egregious example of their disdain for devolution.
We agree that the funds should be administered as close to communities as possible—the principle of subsidiarity. Ideally, we would like local authorities to be involved heavily in decisions about allocation of the funding, but we are clear that, if that is to happen, it cannot be used to mask further cuts to local authority budgets in the long run.
I will close on the issue of co-operation, as it is of fundamental importance. Who administers the fund might be important to us, but all that the majority of people of Scotland are concerned with is whether their communities are being adequately served and whether public investments are efficiently targeted.
There are undoubtedly differences of opinion between the Scottish and British Governments, but we need them to work collaboratively on this matter. A situation in which the two Governments argue incessantly about the process of administration rather than focus on the delivery of funds will be utterly intolerable and tedious. Let us be clear: communities across Scotland will also suffer as a result. Therefore, we need clarity on the delivery mechanisms for the funds.
As Citizens Advice Scotland points out, because of the current local and regional geography for implementing the funds, voluntary organisations with a national footprint will struggle to access funding and deliver the economies of scale and scope and social impact that are needed for transformative change in poverty and equality outcomes.
Ultimately, we all want the same thing, as the Conservative front bench spokesperson said: to improve the lives of people across Scotland and to use the funds to alleviate the hardship that millions of families face this year and for years to come, by improving living standards. It could not be more important that we get this right. Although Labour’s criticism of the Scottish and UK Governments is well documented, and both are guilty of power grabs at their respective levels, we will work constructively to ensure that the funds are impactful and achieve the outcomes that we all want to see.
I move amendment S6M-04159.2, in the name of Daniel Johnson, to leave out from “further believes” to end and insert
“recognises the importance of joint working between the Scottish and UK governments in order to achieve the common goal of strengthening Scotland’s communities; notes the benefits of previous EU funding, but also the concerns with the transparency in how it was administered and awarded in Scotland; further notes that cuts to the structural funding equivalent by the UK Government coincide with cuts to local government budgets by the SNP administration in cooperation with the Scottish Green Party to the detriment of communities across Scotland, and calls for the replacement for EU funding to fully match what has been available in the past and be administered as close to communities as possible.”
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