THE forthcoming UK and Scottish Budgets will be among the most important of the devolution era. After 14 years of Tory rule, far too many people have suffered for far too long and, at a local and national level, far too many of the services we all rely on have been stretched to breaking point.
I’ve got no illusions about Labour. Keir Starmer may have been elected by promising change and an end to austerity, but, if these first months are anything to go by, he will spend his time in Downing Street offering more of the same failed policies that have hurt so many communities and have damaged so many lives.
The clearest statement of his principles will come at the end of October, as Rachel Reeves gives her first Budget. Budgets are about priorities, and, so far, the noises coming out of the Treasury are doing little to fill me with hope. Labour appears intent on sticking to discredited Tory spending plans and the attacks on the Winter Fuel Payment go far beyond anything Rishi Sunak ever proposed.
With the Prime Minister and his Chancellor threatening further attacks on social security and some of the most marginalised people, it is a sign of things to come. Yet, at the same time, they have been quick to rule out tax rises on the most wealthy and pledged to freeze corporation tax on the biggest companies and polluters.
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There is no doubt the huge budget constraints we are experiencing in Scotland are being exacerbated by decisions made in Westminster, as they always have been.
Yet, despite these punishing limitations, our Scottish Parliament has always been at its best when we are following a different path, doing everything possible to demonstrate the full extent of what we can do with the powers we have, instead of wringing our hands about what we can’t do. It’s when we act with that ambition that we earn people’s confidence that Scotland can do more with full self-government.
That is how we have managed to avoid tuition fees for Scottish students, brought in free prescriptions, delivered free bus travel for everyone under 22 and introduced and raised the groundbreaking Scottish Child Payment which has proven to be one of the most successful anti-poverty measures in Europe.
Yet, having been in the thick of negotiations, both as part of government and in opposition, I know how much work it takes to deliver these kinds of changes and to overcome the institutional caution and reluctance that can be so prevalent.
I always tried to do it as a minister, and was proud to use emergency powers to introduce a rent freeze and protections from eviction. There was a lot of pressure on us to remove it, but we extended the powers for as long as we legally could, and supported thousands of tenants, households and families in the process.
My concern is that since the end of the cooperation agreement that put the Scottish Greens in government, we have seen a rightward shift from the SNP, and they have stepped away from the progressive policies that we were delivering, from cheaper public transport to restoring Scotland’s natural environment.
It’s not only Westminster which will be delivering a new budget though, with the First Minister set to present his first one this side of Christmas. What are his big vision and priorities? What will he and his Cabinet set out to protect and prioritise?
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Some of this will depend on events in Westminster, but there is also much further that our Parliament could go in terms of progressive taxation and wealth redistribution.
The Scottish Greens will be laying out our priorities in the weeks ahead, offering positive changes that we could make to build on the gains of devolution and push our parliament to its limits.
When I think back to previous negotiations, some of the differences we made are very clear. It’s because of the work of the Scottish Greens that we have a more progressive income tax in Scotland, which has given us an extra £1.5 billion in the Scottish budget every year. It’s because of the work of the Scottish Greens that we have been able to deliver greater local powers for our councils, whether that is the power to double council tax on second and empty homes, the introduction of the Transient Visitor Levy or the workplace parking levy as options for councils.
We need to go further in cementing these kinds of changes and, finally, we need to cut unsustainable investment in high-cost, high-carbon pieces of infrastructure and invest instead in what will cut emissions and cut the cost of living too, like energy-efficient homes and buildings that use renewables and not fossil fuels.
It is no coincidence that support for independence increased at a time when our governments were diverging from the previous tepid Labour and Tory consensus. We need to stick to that spirit of developing Scottish solutions and policies. What we absolutely cannot do is get to the end of a political term and regret the people we
didn’t protect or the changes we didn’t make.
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