Social and Economic Success

Part of the debate – in the Scottish Parliament at on 13 January 2016.

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Photo of Mark McDonald Mark McDonald Scottish National Party

I have been struck by a couple of things in the debate thus far, the first of which is how few Labour members have stayed in the chamber to participate in or listen to a Labour-led debate. One would almost think that something else—some list-ranking event that was taking place that they required to be out of the chamber to take part in—was preoccupying their time at the moment. Indeed, I say to members who are still in the chamber and have that list ranking in mind that others are out there stealing a march on them and they may wish to get out there and ensure that they can continue their campaign in that respect.

The other thing that I was struck by was what I felt during the course of Alex Rowley’s speech. I have a great deal of time for Alex Rowley. I have served on the Local Government and Regeneration Committee with him and I always find his contributions in the chamber to be interesting and thought provoking. He has come forward with some very interesting ideas in debates that have often deserved to be considered and challenged, although not always agreed with. Those ideas, particularly his views on fiscal autonomy, often challenge conventional thinking. However, there has been a danger of this becoming an almost entirely philosophical debate and discussion, as one of the difficulties that the Labour Party faces is that it does not yet have a coherent policy platform to outline and test against some of the very worthy sentiments and notions that were expressed during Mr Rowley’s speech.

We got some of that thinking in Malcolm Chisholm’s speech, and there are areas of that that merit some examination. One of the areas that exercised Mr Chisholm was the issue of local authority finance. I do not think that anybody would disagree; indeed the Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Constitution and Economy himself has said that it is a challenging settlement for local government.

The challenge is this. We have to look at how we can reform the delivery of public services to ensure that they can weather the storm of austerity. The storm of austerity is here to stay for the next five years, based on the projections from the UK Government, and possibly beyond that, depending on whether the collective UK Labour Party gets its act together. We have to be able to take the opportunity to reform public services in such a way that we either have more sharing of services or different ways of delivering services that enable that storm to be weathered.

If we look at my own local authority, Aberdeen City Council, I have seen the finance convener talking in the press about £10 million-worth of cuts having to be considered by the council. At present, Aberdeen City Council is sitting on uncommitted cash reserves of £116 million. Audit Scotland recommends that a buffer of around 2 to 3 per cent in revenue terms should be carried in uncommitted reserves. That £116 million equates to 27 per cent of the council’s budget.

The money is there, not necessarily to mitigate the cuts, because I do not think that we should operate on the basis of mitigating through the use of reserves, but the money exists that could enable the transformation of service delivery, should the council choose to do that. It becomes a question of political will and the ability of those councillors to put their shoulders to the wheel and ensure that the services are reformed.

I heard what Alex Rowley said when he welcomed the commitment to build 50,000 affordable houses with 35,000 of those for social rent. I have great difficulties when politicians stand up and say, “I welcome it but it is not enough.” We need some idea of what would qualify as enough. If all we are going to get is members of the Labour Party saying, “Ach, it’s no bad, but it’s no as good as we could have,” without actually demonstrating to us what would be enough, what they would consider to be their target and how they would then deliver that target within the financial envelope, it becomes not a debate of ideas but simply carping from the sidelines. That is the risk that the Labour Party has to shoulder—it runs the risk of that being the case.

Over the Christmas period, after watching my children perform in the local church nativity, I went out leafleting. It was not political leafleting. I live in the community of Dyce in Aberdeen, which most people would say was a reasonably prosperous middle-class suburb. However, the reality is that the local church is now operating a food bank, because it has identified individuals within our community who require the support of a food bank. As were a number of other members of the church, I was out delivering leaflets that told people that the food bank had been established and was seeking donations.

That drove home to me the very real situation that we cannot talk about simply identifying specific areas that we know suffer from entrenched poverty. We now have individuals living in areas, perhaps being lost within certain communities, because they would not be picked up in a kind of broad brush examination of income levels across those communities. There are individuals suffering from poverty in communities that would not necessarily be identified as likely to have such individuals. Some of that is a consequence of the uncertainties that have been created as a result of redundancies in the offshore sector; some of it is a result of the welfare changes that are taking place—of that I have no doubt.

We need to look very carefully at what powers are coming to us in the next session of Parliament, provided that the Scotland Bill fiscal framework can be agreed, and consider how we will use those powers. Some of that thinking is being outlined by the Scottish Government and I welcome some of the direction that is being given there, particularly the early introduction of a social security bill.

I have spoken at great length about how we should look at not just taking what exists at UK level and transplanting it into a Scottish context, but how we could improve on what is done at UK level and perhaps do it differently. We could certainly simplify some of the application and renewal processes, which would greatly enhance individuals’ ability to access that to which they are entitled.

The key point in all this has to be to move towards a situation in which those people who require jobs can access well-paid jobs. With regard to that journey, I think that there is much that unites the chamber. The question, therefore, is whether we have the political will to make that a reality. I recognise that the Scottish Government has that will and I would be interested to hear proposals on that from other parties.