Your readers are entitled to know why Robin Harper and I voted against the SNP's Budget, given reports suggesting that the programme being offered was exactly what the Greens had proposed ("Greens pay price for blocking Budget", The Herald, February 5. The truth is a little different. We have argued for four months that to get the job done we need a long-term programme of free insulation, going area-by-area and door-to-door. Specifically, our proposals were a reaction to the years of failed schemes which strive to target the fuel poor, and which have missed that target time and time again.
At no point in the Budget process did John Swinney commit to our approach. The question was only answered, and answered inadequately, in a letter passed to me from the First Minister halfway through the Stage 3 debate itself, and never even put on the record by Mr Swinney.
As a result, there was never an opportunity to see our proposals implemented, not last week and not this week. Much of the money now to be spent will be wasted on hotlines that few will ring, civil servants employed to work out who shouldn't get insulation, piles of forms to be filled in and wasted trips by installers, going back and forth to the same neighbourhoods to insulate the one in 25 households which might be allowed to benefit. As yesterday's National Audit Office report shows, many will fall at these bureaucratic hurdles, the financial disincentives will drive away many more, and Scots will be left in what John Swinney rightly described as "a scandalous waste of resources".
The Scottish people will face a clear choice in two years' time. On one side they can pick one of the many parties of the soggy consensus, huddled together around an agenda of radical inactivity. On the other, they can support the Greens, who will continue to fight for measures to rebuild our economy on a more sustainable basis, to cut the cost of living but improve its quality, to tackle climate change and boost social justice.
Patrick Harvie MSP, Green Group, Scottish Parliament, Edinburgh.
When almost one-quarter of families in Scotland now have to spend over 10% of their income to keep their homes warm, what an opportunity the SNP government passed up this week to raise these people out of fuel poverty by backing Green demands for a universal, free insulation program in the Scottish budget.
Instead, the government proposed a poorly funded means-tested approach, exactly the kind of scheme that has been shown by the National Audit Office this week as being ineffectual in tackling fuel poverty in England and Wales. However, we did witness the grand launch this week of an "energy-efficiency prize" by the Scottish Government - a fund amounting to a whopping 80p of investment for each person living in fuel poverty in this country.
The Scottish Building Federation warmly backed the Green Budget proposals - hardly surprising as the construction industry is crying out for a Green New Deal that would have invested in jobs, kept us warm and cut carbon emissions. Instead, the SNP plumped for political positioning around the Calman Commission to secure the Budget votes it needed. At the price of a postage stamp to the commission it was cheap, but hardly something that most ordinary Scots could care less about as the fuel bills hit their door mats.
Mark Ruskell, Deanston, Doune.
The Greens - the tail that tried to wag the dog.
Maggie Jamieson, West Lothian.
The horse-trading of the past two to three weeks follows two to three months of intensive parliamentary work in late 2008 during which the committees of the parliament debated the draft Budget and took evidence from expert witnesses. This was followed by an overview Finance Committee report and a full parliamentary debate on the reports.
It is clear from the finance report that only one of the committees proposed any change to the draft spending proposals - the Transport Committee proposed a modest rise in the astonishingly low sum budgeted by the SNP for walking and cycling infrastructure.
However, although this was an all-party recommendation, based on detailed scrutiny and advice from a range of experts, it was not a pet project of any of the parties at Holyrood.
Therefore, when it came to the crucial January vote, the SNP, whose primary interest is to get the Budget through, felt free to dismiss this evidence-based recommendation and look only to the deals demanded by each party.
There is a fascinating contrast with 2006, when evidence of a cut in funding for walking and cycling was used, not to inform parliamentary scrutiny, but to embarrass then LibDem Transport Minister Tavish Scott at his own party conference. As a result, he later announced a £4m increase for each of the next two years.
So the lesson from then and from now is that the parliamentary processes of scrutiny and of evidence-taking count for little. Only the politicking matters - the embarrassing of ministers and the trading of votes.
As far as investment in walking and cycling is concerned, however, it will not be difficult to embarrass SNP ministers. As if offering themselves up for sacrifice, they continue to make statements such as, "Copenhagen already enjoys a cycling modal share of 35% and has set itself a target of 50%. To reach our emissions target we must consider such a target here" Communities Minister, Stewart Maxwell, October 7.
This at the same time as freezing investment in cycling infrastructure at a miserable 1% of transport spending - laughable in Copenhagen, and flying against the evidence-based all-party recommendation of the Scottish Parliament's Transport Committee!
Dave du Feu, Spokes Cycle Campaign, 2 Greenpark Cottages, Edinburgh Road, Linlithgow.
