AFTER 14 years at the helm of the local government organization COSLA, its outgoing chief executive Rory Mair has painted a grim picture of the state of local government and public services. Councils are facing their biggest financial challenge in a generation, he says, with cuts to services, cuts to jobs, and no end to the crisis in sight.
However, just as worrying is Mr Mair’s assertion in his interview with The Herald that much of this grim picture of crisis and cuts is invisible. He points to the publicity over the 600 job cuts at Shell and compares it to the relative silence that has greeted 10,000 jobs that have gone from local government. He also points out that the cuts to council services have affected the poorest in society most, which means, in Mr Mair’s view, that the fairly well off in Scotland may not even have noticed the council cuts happening.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Mr Mair says the answer to the crisis is for local authorities to retain more control over public services, but his intervention could not be more timely. The profound effects of cuts to council services are being felt across the country by the most vulnerable in society and yet there is a lack of action by government, at Westminster and Holyrood, on some of the key policies that could help. It cannot go on like this.
The assertion by Mr Mair that councils should have control of services must be part of the solution. For seven years now, local authorities have been held in the vice of the council tax freeze, but the days of the policy are numbered. The Scottish Government’s own poverty tsar Naomi Eisenstadt has called for an end to the freeze and for good reasons: it hits poorer households harder than the most affluent by forcing councils to cut services while protecting the incomes of the better off. Councils should be allowed to set their own budgets at levels that reflect what they need to provide vital local services.
But an end to the council tax freeze is only one of the steps the Scottish Government should take. Just a few days ago, Ms Eisenstadt called for fuel poverty programmes to be targeted at helping the poor on the grounds that at a time of tight resources, it cannot be right to hand £300 a year to the better off, and yet the government has dismissed the idea straight away. Again, it cannot go on like this and we must ask whether universal benefits are sustainable when more than half a million Scots are living in severe poverty.
Of course, an end to the council tax freeze and reform of universal benefits are only two parts of the big picture. Progress on tackling poverty will always be slow as long the UK Government sticks to the worst excesses of its welfare reforms; there has also been a severe lack of progress on in-work poverty and low pay and the minimum wage must be raised to a level that reflects the true cost of living.
But the message from the likes of Rory Mair and Naomi Eisenstadt is now consistent and clear: the cuts to public services are hitting the most vulnerable in society and a lack of reform on taxation and benefits is making it worse. The Scottish Government cannot go on ignoring that fact at the same time as it says it is serious about tackling poverty.
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