MALCOLM BURNS reports on the SNP's decision to ditch local income tax.
DUMPING the local income tax was the smartest thing SNP Finance Secretary John Swinney did last week. As the tide of opposition to his flawed local income tax proposal lapped around Swinney's feet in the Scottish Parliament on Wednesday, he finally abandoned the Canute-like attempt to command it and accepted the inevitable.
Without parliamentary support to proceed and with most of civic Scotland including unions and business hostile to the plan, replacement of the "hated" council tax by a "fairer" local income tax was jettisoned.
Swinney's promise to reintroduce the plan in the next parliament is a meaningless gesture. The policy is dead.
Although the announcement was unexpected - it was made during a statement on the current local government funding allocation - it perhaps should not have come as a total surprise.
The SNP local income tax plan was bad policy. Neither local nor fair, in fact it would have been a centrally imposed tax cut which would have cost hundreds of millions of pounds and many thousands of jobs. In a word, disastrous, particularly as we head into a deep recession.
Reform of local government finance is always a political minefield. Famously, it was the poll tax as replacement for the rates which did for Margaret Thatcher.
In much the same way, the local income tax which was designed to capitalise on the unpopularity of council tax had become a self-inflicted policy disaster which the SNP could really only drop sooner or later.
* The abandonment of LIT followed the budget crisis of the previous weeks, when Swinney lost and then eventually won votes on his budget in Holyrood. I should think the finance secretary will be glad to be away from the parliament on its half-term break this week.
IN RESPONSE to the dropping of the local income tax, Labour leader Iain Gray ripped up the SNP manifesto, saying it was the day that the credibility of Alex Salmond's government had died.
Gray had a reasonable point as he reeled off the list of key election promises which have been broken - paying off student debt, a grant for first-time buyers, smaller class sizes, nursery teachers for every child and a replacement for private finance initiative/public-private partnership.
With the scrapping of the "hated" council tax now gone, all that remains of the SNP's key manifesto pledges is the referendum on independence, which is still planned for 2011.
A bit of political knockabout is fair enough - and Gray is doing better at this as Labour leader than some may have expected - but Labour should perhaps be a little circumspect.
Voters have not forgotten which party was the author of student debt. Meanwhile, Gray's shadow finance spokesman Andy Kerr perversely remains a vocal champion of the costly and unpopular PFI schemes he prosecuted enthusiastically while in office and which did so much damage to Labour's credibility.
Not only that but Labour too lacks a coherent alternative to the council tax.
THE actual financial settlement for Scotland's local authorities announced - or, rather, imposed - in the same speech by Finance Secretary John Swinney was all but hidden beneath the smoke, flames and debris of the local income tax crash.
Local government union UNISON warns the deal will inevitably mean staffing cuts and that services to the public will be lost this year, with even more damaging threats for next year.
A large chunk of the money from the Scottish government has been ringfenced to pay for the continuing council tax freeze and can't be used to deliver services. This is somewhat ironic, given that the SNP had claimed to have removed ring-fencing in its concordat with local government.
Meanwhile, the SNP budget deal with the Tories to cut business rates will mean less money for local councils.
With the council tax freeze effectively mandated by central government, there is now virtually no autonomous source of revenue for local councils. This means there is precious little local democratic control or accountability either.
Will reshuffle get the national conversation started?
ALEX Salmond's first government reshuffle since coming to power in May 2007 was announced last week.
It only involved deputy ministers and not the cabinet but included preferment for some of the SNP's best known names - Alex Neil, Roseanna Cunningham and Mike Russell.
Promoted from his environment minister job, former SNP chief executive Russell takes on a new role as constitution minister and is charged with strategic planning for an independence referendum in 2011.
Russell will also be expected to spark up the SNP's dismal "national conversation" and to lead the government's challenge to the Calman Commission on Scottish devolution.
Calman has been doing serious, almost literally sterling, work on the future funding and powers of the Scottish Parliament and has engaged with many civic partners as well as all the opposition parties, while the national conversation has languished ever since it was launched with a fanfare in August 2007.
Stew not worth heating
IN ADDITION to his constitution and referendum role, new SNP Constitution Minister Mike Russell inherits the culture brief from Linda Fabiani, who had the misfortune of letting the Creative Scotland Bill slip through her fingers and crash to the floor of the parliament last year.
That was a cock-up for sure, but it is unfair to blame Fabiani for the whole Creative Scotland mess. The costly and misconceived munging together of the Scottish Arts Council and Scottish Screen was promoted by the previous Labour-led administration and has been the subject of criticism ever since.
Following these years of chaos and criticism, a five-page "high-level document looking at articulating roles and responsibilities," also known as a "core script" - I'm not kidding - for Creative Scotland was published by the government on February 5.
Fag packets have often been put to better use. It essentially rehashes the decade-old Department for Culture, Media and Sport "creative industries" policy that was once but no longer punted by new Labour culture ministers down south.
When Russell picks up the cold Creative Scotland stew from the floor, he will have to decide whether it really is worth heating up again.
Doing our bit for Palestine
IT IS good to be able to report that people around Scotland are mobilising to support the people of Gaza.
The Scottish government is to give over £400,000 to aid projects in Gaza through its International Development Fund. This cash will be channelled through agencies like Oxfam and Medical Aid for Palestinians.
As the Star reported last week, Scottish students have been involved in occupations to get universities, including Glasgow, Edinburgh and Strathclyde, to boycott Israeli firms and support Palestinian universities.
Strathclyde University promised to end a contract for water with Israeli-owned company Eden Spring.
A Scottish Convoy to Gaza lorry with provisions including essential medical supplies headed for Heathrow last week after send-offs from Glasgow City Council and by MSPs at the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh - visit www.edinburghdirectaid.org for more information.
And Palestine will be one of the major themes of the Stop the War Scottish Coalition conference, which takes place this Saturday at Glasgow University, details at www.stopwar.org.uk.
Subscribe to the Morning Star online
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment