The choices already made by the SNP government have left them relatively few options: universal free prescriptions will come on stream in April, while their commitment to a new Forth Road Bridge would be hard to back out of at this stage.
One area that looks set to take a big hit is economic development. In the run-up to the last two Scottish parliament elections the SNP had made economic development a high-profile issue. Now, with their argument lying in tatters, they appear incapable, or perhaps it’s unwilling, to relate their rhetoric to their decisions in government.
Since taking office in 2007, the SNP have scrapped the 12 Local Enterprise Companies which oversaw regional development and have pushed this responsibility onto local authorities. Responsibility for the delivery of Business Gateway has also passed to local authorities, whilst responsibility for overseeing apprenticeships for young people has been hived off into a new organisation, Skills Development Scotland.
There are alternative points of view on these changes: it is possible to argue that bringing responsibility for delivery to a more local level enables a more responsive and nimble approach to economic development. However, it could also be argued that this approach increases duplication of effort and makes a joined-up approach to growing the economy much more challenging. At a time when Scotland is poised to harness the skills developed in the offshore energy industry and our natural resources (or rotten weather as it is otherwise known) to lead in the offshore renewables industry and when the possibilities for a life sciences and healthcare cluster in the Highlands and Islands could transform the region’s economy, the capacity to act strategically appears more important than ever.
So what was the thinking behind the SNP’s move? The changes look to have been adopted as a dressed-up way of cutting the economic development budget.
While the new approach makes it hard to compare budgets on a like-for-like basis, one estimate is that the Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise budgets have been cut by £100 million since the SNP took office. At a local level, estimates from Fife council show that roughly £4 million has been ‘lost in translation’.
Local authorities face difficult decisions and harsh spending pressures; meanwhile, there is no statutory obligation on local authorities to provide economic development services and they have been given no guidance on areas they should be getting involved in. Given these circumstances, it is perhaps unsurprising that economic development would not rank as highly on local authorities’ priorities as education or road maintenance.
The SNP have yet again devolved responsibility to the local authorities rather than choosing to govern. They have yet again chosen not to use the levers at their disposal whilst wringing their hands over the levers they do not control.
The economy, energy and tourism committee are currently conducting a review of economic development structures, but as they are not due to report until next year, this will come too late to impact on the SNP’s budgetary decisions.
To further downgrade the role of Scottish Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise, or to make further cuts to the economic development budget would be a false economy. Governing should be about making the right decisions for the country and growing our economy is vitally important at this time. Sadly, given their track record, it looks likely that the economic development budget will be treated, again, as an easy target by the SNP.