This week sees the end of the year at Holyrood, with parliament now in recess until September.
The SNP ended the session with their own credit crunch, dumping their commitment of grants of £2,000 for first-time house buyers. This makes it possible to award the SNP three out of three for abandoning policy pledges in this parliamentary session. In the space of one year, they have managed to dump all three of their main commitments at the last election, with grants for first-time buyers joining the scrapping of student debt and the cutting of class sizes to eighteen in primaries schools into the long, long grass of ‘long-term policies’.
In addition to abandoning their pledges to the electorate, the SNP look poised to cut or undermine some of the most important initiatives introduced by Labour in previous terms. Free bus travel for pensioners is perhaps the most popular policy since the creation of the Scottish parliament. The SNP have repeatedly refused to rule out the introduction of restrictions to the scheme, with limiting the number of journeys and restricting times of travel the most likely changes to be introduced.
The competence of the SNP is beginning to be seriously questioned, with the government defeated over their creative Scotland bill last week: they were unsure where the finance for the projects outlined in the bill would actually come from. This added to the questionable legality of their plans to introduce a local income tax and the proposed Scottish Futures Trust, which turns out to look an awfully similar to the system of public-private partnerships which the SNP are investing parliamentary time and public money in replacing.
Meanwhile, the Scottish Labour party has announced plans to bring together a series of member’s bills in an alternative programme of government to fill the vacuum left by the ‘legislation-lite’ SNP. The bills will range from giving council tax discounts for windmills and solar panels, to abolishing water charges for pensioners, to defending modern apprenticeships against cuts proposed by the SNP.
The minority status of the SNP government makes it possible that Scottish Labour can build coalitions pass these bills over the objections of the SNP.
The SNP have claimed that their reason for delaying a referendum on Scottish separation is to build up confidence in their competence in government. But at this rate, as their policies continue to hit the fan, their powers of persuasion are looking rather limited. Of course, Scots’ attitude towards the constitutional settlement is not necessarily determined by who is in power. A poorly performing SNP government is proof only of their incompetence and skewed priorities.
If the SNP have spent the year breaking promises and fudging figures, Scottish Labour has spent the year putting its own house in order, making significant changes within the party and facing up to the realities of opposition. Adjusting to being out of government was never going to be easy. But the party’s spring conference was something of a turning point. We are now facing firmly forwards.
This year has seen the true face of the SNP government beginning to emerge. In the year ahead it looks likely that – for pensioners, for school leavers seeking apprenticeships, for probationary teachers looking for their next job, for the voluntary groups who’ve had their budgets cut – that reality will really begin to bite.
Judtih Fisher