The government’s illustrative spending plans are normally outlined for three years, a formula particularly important to public bodies for planning purposes and the SNP’s failure to stick to the normal predictive funding cycle drew widespread criticism.
However, the new figures show every single departmental budget, with the exception of health, remaining unchanged for the next four years. With the ConDem cuts swinging into effect, the SNP have been accused of publishing deliberately disingenuous figures in order to improve their electoral chances. Swinney himself has admitted that these figures will ‘inevitably change’. A finance secretary who refuses to take responsibility, even for his own figures, typifies the Scottish experience under the SNP.
Labour abstained on the first round of the budget bill, but intends to oppose SNP spending plans for the next financial year unless a commitment is secured to introduce a new version of the Future Jobs Fund in Scotland and to offer an apprenticeship to every suitably qualified school leaver in Scotland. In Scotland there are currently 225,000 people unemployed, whilst the number of 16-24 year olds out of work for a year or more has increased by a massive 338 per cent. The Future Jobs Fund was launched by the last Labour Westminster government in 2009. The Fund is mainly aimed at 18-24 year-olds who have been out of work for six months and claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance. The ConDem cuts have led to funding for the scheme being withdrawn early, but Scottish Labour are fighting for it to continue in Scotland.
Scottish Labour are also pushing the SNP to reverse cuts to regeneration projects, for example, those linked to Glasgow’s 2014 Commonwealth Games to secure the economic legacy of the Games for the people of Glasgow. Glasgow is not alone in facing cuts: the Scottish government is planning to cut nearly half of its budget for employment programmes in Edinburgh. In this financial year this amounts to £2.3 million which is 43 per cent of Edinburgh’s Fairer Scotland Fund allocation for improving employability and getting people into work. The budget supports dedicated employment projects in the most disadvantaged areas of the city and also programmes for specific disadvantaged groups, for example the award-winning Passport project for people who are homeless, leaving prison or recovering from addictions. Unison Scotland estimates that this loss of £2.3 million next year will remove local services in the capital which would otherwise help 3,500 people.
SNP decisions on this budget, as in the past three years, are indicative of their cumulative failure to promote employment and growth in the economy. The SNP have made sweeping cuts to the bodies which drive economic growth, along with reductions in capital spending on infrastructure, education, housing and regeneration, which in turn undermines our employment and economic situation, in particular, in the construction industry.
Cynics would argue that it is in the political interests of the SNP to facilitate the ConDem cuts in having as severe an impact on the Scottish people as possible, in order to prop up their own case for a separate Scotland. Whether the outcome stems from a deliberate strategy at the expense of the electorate or of warped priorities and muddled management, the results are the same, the SNP are restricting the ability of Scots and Scotland to reach our full potential.
Scottish Labour will fight for opportunities for our young people, for jobs, for apprenticeships, for the future of Scotland.