THERE’S no denying that Scotland’s public finances are in perhaps the most challenging state in the entire devolution era.
In the past couple of weeks, we’ve seen cut after cut after cut from the Scottish Government, which has rolled back a number of key schemes essential to supporting ordinary Scot.
From the elderly with the removal of universal Winter Fuel Payments, to students and workers with the reinstatement of classist peak-time rail fares, and to some of the most vulnerable in our society with the U-turn on its promise to provide free bus travel for asylum seekers.
These rollbacks come alongside cuts to other hugely important funds, including those reserved for arts and culture, and for nature restoration.
The impact of these cuts, U-turns and rollbacks will be devastating for so many across Scotland.
Naturally then, the blame game has already begun. The SNP have blamed Labour following significant cuts to public spending – and therefore devolved budgets – from the new UK Government, with John Swinney saying “our ability to serve the people of Scotland is under real threat by the sweeping spending cuts that the Labour Government are introducing”.
Labour have blamed the SNP, with chancellor Rachel Reeves claiming that “the SNP Government is as guilty as the Conservative Government of spending more than it was bringing in, and now the Scottish Government is having to make difficult decisions”.
The reality, of course, is that the blame for these cuts lies at the feet of both the SNP and Labour.
The SNP are right to criticise the new government in Westminster for the devastating impact its austerity approach will have on public services across the UK – not least on devolved finances thanks to the inadequate Barnett formula. Reeves and Starmer are playing straight from the playbook of George Osborne and David Cameron, and the rhetoric from the new chancellor and prime minister about “difficult choices” rings hollow when it’s always ordinary working people who have to suffer the consequences of “difficult choices” rather than the super wealthy who get to sit comfortably on their piles of unearned cash.
That said, the SNP simply cannot be absolved of blame themselves either, and while I fundamentally disagree with Rachel Reeves’s reasoning for her assessment – it is literally impossible for the Scottish Government to spend more than it brings in, and it’s frankly an embarrassment for the Chancellor of the Exchequer not to know that – she is right that these cuts are still “decisions” for the Scottish Government. And it is making all the wrong ones.
The Scottish Government has repeatedly failed to make use of the full revenue-raising powers of devolution to fund our public services properly, and this lack of ambition combined with foolish, regressive decisions such as that to freeze council tax last year (let alone the 17-year-old broken promise to replace the tax entirely) has only tightened the rope around its hands when it has had plenty of opportunity to loosen it.
It’s true that the Scottish Government operates a fixed budget and has limited in-year powers to amend a Budget once passed by parliament, but the situation the Scottish Government currently finds itself in has been predictable for quite some time.
I’m delighted that it has finally ended long-running public sector pay disputes such as that in Scotland’s colleges – but the long-running nature of these disputes leaves the Scottish Government with no excuses for having not made sustainable, long-term decisions when it had the opportunity beforehand.
The Scottish Government passed two budgets during the course of dispute in Scotland’s colleges, and could’ve utilised a wide range of revenue-raising powers, as proposed by the STUC’s Fairer Taxes paper, to raise billions of pounds to settle this and other disputes while also funding our public services properly.
While it made some steps towards more progressive income tax thanks to pressure from the Greens, it simply did not go far enough, and the strain that Humza Yousaf’s council tax freeze has put on the finances of Scotland’s local authorities has only exacerbated the problem.
The excuse that the SNP have no choice but to roll back key spending commitments which improve the lives of ordinary Scots doesn’t wash. They’ve had plenty of opportunities to choose a different path, and time and again chose not to. These are their decisions and they should own them.
Even so, I don’t dispute the challenges the Scottish Government faces thanks to the inadequacies of devolution. While I’m angry at the SNP for failing to utilise the full powers they do have, I also think the role of the Scottish Government should be so much more than just mitigating the worst of Westminster.
We will always suffer for as long as we’re tied to the never-ending fiscal conservatism of Westminster, and austerity will continue to destroy our communities whether the tie of the politician imposing it is red or blue. Starmer and Reeves hold the full powers of a nation state with none of the constraints of devolution, and yet are still choosing to keep horrendous Tory policies such as the rape clause while throttling our public services and devolved budgets through a policy of austerity.
So, I refuse to play the game of either Labour or the SNP, and exclusively blame one or the other for the sorry situation we now find ourselves in. Scotland cannot continue to use “better than England” as a binary metric for success – that the actions and policies of Labour are even more egregious does not absolve the SNP for their own bad decisions.
While an unfair union of unequals ties one hand of the Scottish Government behind its back, that simply cannot be an excuse for its failure to fully utilise the powers it does have to protect our public services. With both the SNP and Labour complicit in cuts rather than using their governments for good, it’s clear that the Scottish Greens continue to be the only party with the ambition to build an economy that will fund our public services properly, and work for the working classes.
