Even SNP councillors in John Swinney’s backyard are rejecting his half-baked council reforms – Murdo Fraser
Councillors are raising concerns about the SNP’s vague plans for a massive upheaval of local government
Does anyone have any real idea what the SNP are up to with their plans for local government reform? We are now nearly a month on from the bombshell dropped in the Programme for Government – with the suggestion of as few as six regional super-councils, along with up to 160 local ones, to replace the current 32 unitary authorities – but still no detail has been forthcoming.
Interviewed on the BBC at the weekend, Deputy First Minister Jenny Gilruth was unable to elaborate on what the plans would entail, stressing that what the SNP proposed was simply an “opening proposition”. Nor was she able to say how job numbers would be affected, or what cost savings might be achieved – the principal purpose of the SNP’s programme of public service reform.
Already the clock is ticking. We are in a three-month consultation period, and nearly a third of that time has passed already without any clarity on the direction of travel. My Conservative colleague Alexander Burnett MSP was being generous in describing the SNP’s plans as ‘half-baked’. Like unfortunate contestants in The Great British Bake Off, they’ve forgotten to even turn the oven on.
Condemnation from Perth and Kinross
It’s not surprising there has been such opposition to the proposals. Local government umbrella body Cosla has said that the SNP’s plans leave more questions than answers, that it is vital the reforms are based on sound evidence and that meaningful engagement takes place. According to vice-president Steven Heddle, “this work seems to be being set aside for a mad dash to December to determine what would be radical changes for local government”.
That opposition cuts across party lines. Just last week, a joint Conservative and Labour motion was agreed at an emergency meeting of Perth and Kinross Council condemning the SNP proposals.
It is striking in its wording, arguing that local decisions should be made as close as possible to the residents they affect, and noting that the proposals put forward by the Scottish government mean that decisions on core services such as education, housing and social care would likely be made further away from the people affected by them. By putting Perth and Kinross in with the City of Dundee, these historic counties would be combined with an area with which it has little in common and no shared history.
The motion also criticises the current Scottish government for underfunding local authorities since it came to power in 2007, and Health and Social Care Partnerships over many years. It notes that local government reorganisation would cause huge disruption to services as well as significant costs without any evidence that it will improve service delivery or create significant savings.
Finally, there has been condemnation of the Scottish government for not engaging in a meaningful consultation, with three of the 12 weeks allocated for discussion already having passed since the original announcement was made. As the motion states, “to expect busy local authorities to be able to consult and engage meaningfully and agree a position on these levels of change within the remaining six to seven-week period is simply impracticable and disrespectful”.
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Deeply humiliating for Swinney
It could not be more clear or damning in its criticism of the government’s approach. And what is particularly striking about the motion is that it was agreed unanimously, without a single recorded note of dissent, meaning that each and every one of the SNP councillors, who form a minority administration on the council, backed it.
This is John Swinney’s backyard, the very part of the country he represents. The fact that even his own local SNP councillors, his usually loyal foot-soldiers, were prepared to use such strident language against a flagship policy is deeply humiliating for him.
It is not just in Perth and Kinross, where local communities do not want to go back to being run from Dundee, that there is concern. Right across Scotland, communities do want to be swallowed up in much larger units. There is a particular concern in rural areas such as the Borders that their interests will be forgotten if they simply become adjuncts of nearby cities.
And amongst more middle-class enclaves in places like Eastwood, there is a fear of being swallowed up by a Glasgow whose city leaders have long cast envious looks at the council taxes being collected from leafy streets.
Nor are we any clearer as to whether there would be any cost savings from these plans. The chief executive of Scottish Borders Council, David Robertson, told Holyrood’s Public Service Reform Committee last week that any management reorganisation or slimming down would not necessarily deliver savings. With a policy of no compulsory redundancies in place, individuals whose roles disappear can only be offered voluntary severance packages which they are under no obligation to take.
Unsold baked goods
As I wrote in this column last week, we know that this policy has led to a situation in which there are currently nine workers on the City of Edinburgh Council’s redeployment register, including five who have been on it for two years or more, at a cost to local tax payers of £447,000 a year.
Avoiding that scenario multiplying across the country means injecting sufficient cash to fund generous severance deals, and David Robertson was clear that that cannot be afforded within existing council budgets but requires new Scottish government funds.
Will this money be forthcoming to grease the wheel of local government reform? Have any costings been done around radical plans for structural change? On the basis of what we have learned so far, no one is any the wiser.
We have just two months of the three-month discussion period left to get some answers. For now, even his local SNP troops aren’t buying what John Swinney is baking.
Murdo Fraser is a Scottish Conservative MSP for Mid-Scotland and Fife
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