SANDY KEITH: Central austerity hampers work of local councils
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THIS month I sat in the Council chamber as the Moray Council set its budget.
It had been 16 years since I last spoke in a budget setting meeting of the Moray Council. Well, how times have changed. Then we saw local government as a valued partner in delivering local services and budgets were accordingly available.
In the intervening years, we have seen the near-total decline of local government from a force for community good, to a vehicle for central government austerity. The Scottish Government should hold their heads in shame at the underfunding of Moray Council.
As a Council, we receive 80 per cent of our revenue from the Scottish Government, and for over 15 years we have had to endure revenue grants insufficient to meet current liabilities. The Scottish Government’s own budget has always increased by far more than grants to local government. This is a political choice on the part of successive SNP Finance Ministers.
Every year, the Scottish Government places greater and greater duties on local authorities, without providing the cash to adequately undertake those duties. These unfunded promises further erode budgets for existing services and, as the Council’s officers pointed out, “over the last 11 years this grant funding has increased marginally in cash terms and by considerably less than the cost of new duties required of local authorities”.
For 16 years, the Scottish Government has failed to properly reform local taxation. When they came to power, they were going to scrap Council Tax and replace it with a local income tax. They never did, but in an era of double-digit inflation it would provide a much more buoyant, and much fairer, way of raising local revenue. This is yet another SNP broken promise.
Whilst all this has been going on almost no progress has been made in tackling poverty and inequality in Scotland. Persistent poverty remains almost the same as it was a decade ago. It is the least well-off who consume the most by way of local services. Failure to tackle the causes of persistent poverty results in additional budgetary burdens on councils.
The SNP Government in Edinburgh bears the greatest culpability for the budgetary position councillors across Scotland find themselves in.
Despite the incredibly challenging backdrop, it was possible to achieve some modest gains for Moray in the budget. The Labour Group proposed six amendments. These included £500,000 for an education investment fund, a further £20,000 donation to Moray Food Plus, and an additional £50,000 for road safety measures. We also proposed a fund of £120,000 - £15,000 for each of the eight council wards, to be spent on local priorities as local councillors see fit.
We sought to win support for our proposals from the other political groups in the Council, and, as a result of this cross-party working, we were able to secure all six of our proposals. I am very grateful to independent Councillors Cowe and Ross, as well as Cllr Allan, for throwing their weight behind our proposals, and credit is due to the Council Leader for accepting our proposals in full. This just goes to show what can be achieved when political groups abandon the tribalism and work with each other to achieve positive outcomes for Moray. Let’s have more of it in the future.
