SNP squeezing councils dry as it thirsts for power
WHAT is it they say about power and its ability to corrupt? And what about absolute power? Well, you know the rest. Just keep that in mind while considering one of the greatest – and most dangerous – ironies of the SNP Government.
This is an administration which is desperate to grab all the power it can from Westminster, arguing with a holier-than-thou morality that power should be in the hands of those closest to where it has its greatest effect.
‘Decisions for Scotland should be made by Scots in Scotland,’ it claims.
And it sounds good, that slogan. Who could possibly object?
But here’s the rub. Nicola Sturgeon is desperate for Westminster to devolve power to Holyrood but she refuses to devolve power down to a local level in Scotland.
On the contrary, all the SNP administrations we have had since 2007 have actively – actively – pursued the opposite policy.
For nine years the Scottish Government has centralised as much power as it can, effectively neutering local government and every other regional body with any influence or resource.
Ms Sturgeon’s administration wants as much power as it can get – whether that is from the top, from Westminster, or from the bottom, from local councils.
But the most worrying aspect is that it hasn’t even got started yet: there’s a lot more to come.
Indeed, by the time this current parliamentary session has finished, the SNP will have centralised more power than any administration in this country’s history.
First to feel the pressure were local authorities. Ministers forced them to impose a council tax cap which meant that, every year, more and more money for services came from central government, weakening the link between local representatives and their electorates.
Now the Scottish Government wants to go further. This time it wants to break the vital link between local taxation and local services. Ministers are effectively going to take money from the wealthiest areas and give it to the poorest.
That may seem logical but, as soon as that precedent is established, it will spell the end for any local accountability, for any council. Local authorities have also been told they will be bypassed for crucial school funding and stripped of the central role they play in providing child care.
Then there’s the police. Scotland used to have eight regional forces. Now we have one, run and managed centrally, thanks to the SNP government.
Scotland’s health boards have so far escaped the axe but there are rumours along Holyrood’s corridors that they are next in line to be merged and scrapped soon by the ministry of centralisation – otherwise known as Ms Sturgeon’s Government.
The most bizarre part of all this is that SNP ministers either won’t – or can’t – see the irony.
Here is a party which argues for power to be devolved to Scotland so that those with a vested interest in the outcomes make the decisions. Yet, at the same time, the administration is practising the opposite when it comes to the layers of government below it, at a local level.
The acute difficulty the SNP has in wanting to centralise and devolve power all at the same time was exposed in the run-up to the 2014 independence referendum when it was suggested that the wealthy Shetland islands might want to declare independence from Scotland, taking their oil money with them
How, SNP managers cried, could they possibly think about doing that? The Shetlands are part of Scotland, they should be run from Edinburgh – not seeing the irony of deploying exactly the same arguments as the UK Government was using on them.
IF the SNP truly believed in power being exercised at its most appropriate, local level (an approach the Europeans like to call subsidiarity) then it would pass more power, more control and more money to local boards, forces and authorities. And if it really believed in local decision-making, it would give councils more financial control, not less, it would give health boards more autonomy, not threaten them with mergers and closures, and it would not have scrapped regional police forces.
Now, you could be forgiven for thinking that this really doesn’t matter, that this is all about structures and bureaucracies.
But this is important because this is actually about local democracy and accountability. If councils no longer have control over the money raised and spent locally, then you will have absolutely no comeback when your bins aren’t emptied, when standards in your local school slump or when the suspension on your car has to be fixed, yet again, because of the massive potholes in your local roads.
Ms Sturgeon wants to take money from Scotland’s wealthiest areas and redistribute it to the poorest areas. But, if she really wanted to do that, she would raise income tax – which she has the power to do.
She won’t, though, because that would be unpopular. So, instead, she is making councils do the dirty work, hoping the blame will be attached to them, not to her.
That is a cowardly approach but, more than that, it is showing a complete disregard for the principles of devolution and local decision-making which the SNP claims to hold dear.
We are living under the most centralising, power-grabbing administration in our history and unfortunately, nobody – least of all weakened and ineffectual local government – appears able, or willing, to stop it.