A Budget for Scotland’s People: We need longer term figures

Speaking in this morning's Scottish Labour debate on A Budget for Scotland's People, Derek Brownlee MSP, Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Finance & Sustainable Growth, said (check against delivery):

I said some weeks ago that we needed a longer term approach to budgets.

We didn't support other parties when they demanded publication of a Scottish Budget before the figures were confirmed. But now that the figures are clear, there is no excuse for the Scottish Government using them to give greater clarity on where – in the current Government's view – our funding should be prioritised in the years ahead.

The failure of the SNP to do this is not just a failure of leadership. It is an abdication of responsibility, and although this is their problem rather than mine, it is also politically inept. Labour is now off the hook. No Labour spokesman will have to answer in any detail what they would do for the next Parliament if they won the election.

The SNP's failure to produce longer term figures means an election about generalities when the public are entitled to a choice on the specifics.

The Scottish Government removes all funding support for Scottish Water for 2011/12; we do not know whether that is feasible for future years – unless of course this Government or its successor does as we have been suggesting since 2003 and remove Scottish Water from public control.

Longer term indicative figures would tell us whether that is a one year political stunt or a sustainable approach in the medium term. We all know the answer, but it would confirm it.

SNP members must be cursing the Cabinet Secretary for suppressing the budget line which would demonstrate the astonishingly large sums of money which the Government is relying upon flowing to the taxpayer when Scottish Water starts generating power.

We are told the Universities can have their funding cut and maintain numbers, but even if they can do it for one year, can they do it for longer, or will even this Government have to face up to difficult decisions on higher education funding? Are we not given future years figures for Universities because their funding will fall still further, or to suppress the detail of any income from fees the Government may introduce, or to hide the fact that the Cabinet Secretary for Education has no idea of what to do and no semblance of a long term plan?

NHS Spending has been protected for this year. Is this going to be maintained for future years in real terms? Can it be? We do not know.

Last week, I challenged Jackie Baillie for leading her Labour group to vote for a policy of Free Prescriptions when she by her own admission said she didn't know whether the policy was sustainable.

Leaving to one side why the Labour Party has decided to vote for policies without first finding out whether they are sustainable, the Cabinet Secretary for Health assured us that

"If the SNP is re-elected next year ... the policy will be fully funded for the future, too."

Well, it is perfectly possible to fully fund a policy costing less than £100m from a budget of over £11bn, but unless we know whether that budget is rising, falling or flat, and until we know what other decisions are projected, we cannot know whether the price of free prescriptions will be hospital closures, job losses, downgrading of existing services or anything else.

Last week the President of COSLA said in the relation to the budget that "Nobody is saying this is brilliant" – he obviously missed the contributions from the SNP backbenches – but that "Given the government's priorities on Health this is the best deal we could negotiate for Scottish Local Government".

Although he expressed disappointment that it was merely a one year deal he went on "COSLA's main objective was to retain our share of the public sector cake which we have done."

So if the SNP is re-elected, will Local Government retain its share of that public sector cake? We know after all they want another Council Tax Freeze for 2012/13, but we do not know what the Government intends to do about the 80% of funding not related to Council Tax.

Will the SNP cut funding, forcing schools to close and teachers to be made redundant? Who can tell?

I accept that the Parliament votes on one year budgets. No one is suggesting that should change; what we are suggesting is that every part of the public sector requires some indication, and our amendment suggested a legislative requirement to prevent a future government doing what the current one has done.

The SNP may say that indicative figures are irrelevant, because there may be a change of Government, but Governments do not only fall as a result of elections. The Scottish Government which published a 3 year spending review in November 2007 – and did it within 4 weeks of receiving the figures - could have fallen at any time during this Parliament.

An alternative argument put by the SNP is that indicative figures are only indicative and that there is such change afoot that they would provide no certainty at all.

But the reduction in capital spend is deeper than that in revenue, and the Government is content to announce new capital plans which will quite clearly last longer than one year.

And it is surely better to know what the Governing party has in store for the medium term than not to know what any party plans to do.

The final figleaf is that we cannot have a longer term budget without prejudicing public service reform.

If the Christie Commission is used as an excuse for why reform cannot start, then far from advancing reform of public services, the Commission will be delaying it. And the Independent Budget Review was clear that the Government had to start now, not next year, or the year after that.

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