Today, the Scottish Government will unveil its final programme before the 2016 elections and there are both risks and opportunities for the First Minister and her team. Nicola Sturgeon says it will be a bold and ambitious final year, but by the end of the session, the SNP will have been in government for eight years. After two years in which the business of government was effectively put on hold as the party channelled all its energy towards the independence referendum, there can be no more procrastination. The government that says it is progressive and radical must prove it.
There are a number of areas that the Scottish Government should tackle straight away and the first is local government. Local authorities remain in the front line of spending cuts and the massive savings required of them will have an impact on the lives of hundreds of thousands of Scots, with those who have least likely to be hit most.
The main plank of the Scottish Government response has been the council tax freeze which was started with the best of intentions at the height of austerity but is now making matters worse by benefiting the better off disproportionately while limiting the ability of councils to spend more.
The freeze should now end immediately as part of a profound reform of local government funding that the Scottish Government says it wants, and has promised for years. There are no straightforward answers to the complicated problem of local government funding, but a new tax is needed and it must be a tax that is based both on property values and income.
The second area of priority should be health and here again the Scottish Government's record is mixed, with evidence of worsening problems within the NHS as it tries to cope with greater demand for its services. The Herald's NHS: Time for Action campaign has been highlighting these growing pressures and has argued for a national plan setting out the likely staffing and resources needed by the NHS in the years to come – a plan that is needed now more than ever. Plans to better integrate health and social care services so more patients are treated for longer in the community are welcome, but they are not happening quickly enough and reasonable voters will expect a plan of action from the Government and a timetable for implementing it.
On education too, the Scottish Government has been far too cautious and in some areas anything but progressive (especially in the case of cuts to college funding). There are also questions for Ms Sturgeon if, as expected, she presses ahead with testing in primary schools, and the expected consequence is the creation of more league tables.
The challenge now for the Scottish Government is how radical it should be it tackling these and other issues. To date, the Nationalists have been cautious in government, partly for fear of damaging their reputation ahead of the referendum, but, with the referendum been and gone, they should resist the temptation to play it safe again in the last year of this parliamentary session. Indeed, by taking on the challenges of health, education, and local government, Ms Sturgeon has more to gain than lose by attracting voters to a genuinely progressive agenda that would stand as an alternative to the UK Government's.
The new powers coming to Holyrood make it almost for the Scottish Government to duck that challenge. The new tax and welfare powers may well force Ms Sturgeon and John Swinney to take the difficult and unpopular decisions which they cannot put off forever. But in grasping the nettle, the Scottish Government also has an opportunity to further cement its reputation for competency but also demonstrate, in the face of the doubters, that it is the genuine radical force in politics it keeps saying it is.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel