SNP: Bad Policies for Local Accountability and Services

It is my view that the policies of the SNP government are systematically reducing the effectiveness of local democracy across Scotland.  Let’s have a look at their policies.

1.      The Council Tax Freeze

The SNP have stated that they intend to freeze council tax for the entire five years of the current Holyrood term.  With inflation in the order of 4-5%, this is real cuts on the spending power of local authorities.  This means one of two things: either public-sector services are cut across the nation or local authorities have to go cap-in-hand to Holyrood for extra cash.  With councils not free to set council tax to meet local demands, power moves to central government.

In the last parliament, the Liberal Democrats suggested a local income tax to replace council tax but could not reach agreement with the SNP because they wanted to set the level from Holyrood and not leave it to locally accountable councillors.  Hence local funding would have become a central tax.

2.      The Police and Fire Bill

Not only have the SNP got their figures wrong on the savings involved in merging the eight locally-accountable police forces into a single force accountable only to ministers at Holyrood, their action should ring alarm bells for democracy in an hypothetical independent Scotland.  Most nations have their police forces divided up to stop abuse of power.  In Britain our police are divided upon geographical basis instead but for the same reason.  If Scotland were to go independent, the police would neither have the regional nor functional divisions judged desirable in most healthy democracies.

Unlike Labour and Tories, who supports this SNP policy, the Liberal Democrats campaigned fiercely against the centralisation of power.

3.      Free Prescriptions

Of course people who would be otherwise unable to pay or put under financial pressure should get their medicine for free but personally I am embarrassed not having to pay for my prescriptions at the local pharmacist and in doing so supporting our NHS.  Meanwhile across Scotland, SNP cuts to the NHS carry on with over 1800 nurses nationwide being lost in 2011.   At the Western General Hospital, health minister Nicola Sturgeon MSP has confirmed that there are plans to merge the oncology and general pharmaceutical dispensaries, cutting the numbers of highly-skilled technicians.  Many cancer drugs are extremely toxic and any loss in expertise will put cancer patients at increased risk.

It will not stop there.  During hustings for the Scottish Parliamentary elections last year, Kenny MacAskill MSP mentioned plans to take education out of the hands of local accountability and into central control, along the lines of police and fire services. 

  

If you want a party that takes local issues seriously and are committed to devolution of affairs to the level closest to local people, support the Liberal Democrats in the May Council elections.

To learn more about the Scottish Liberal Democrats, visit our site here.

Oil and Rhetoric

It has been a steep learning curve for me this week on the hustings trail.  From an nervous beginning at Portobello, through Craigentinny (with the en masse of socialist candidates) ending last night at Craigmillar; after which the Conservative spokesman Scott Douglas was kind enough to say “you are getting the hang of it.”  I have to pay tribute to all who have participated though; the organisers have worked hard and so far all the debates have taken place in a courteous manner: that is how politics should be. 

That is not to say though we agree with each other; far from it.   It was at Craigentinny that the SNP first laboured their point about oil, saying that throughout the past decades we have all been told that it has been running out but really there is just as much more oil there still to come than we have already pumped out.  Being fifteen years in the oil industry, this is an area in which I can claim some knowledge in so at the Craigmillar hustings I was able to treat the audience to the graph below.

Source: Department of Energy and Climate Change website

https://www.og.decc.gov.uk/information/bb_updates/chapters/production_projections.pdf

As you can see, production is steadily declining and is continuing to do so.  2010 shows oil to be about 55% down from peak and gas production has halved.  By itself though it does not disprove the SNP claims that there is still just as much more oil to come out than has already being produced.  That comes from figures for gas and oil. 

Using the DECC most optimistic figures, cumulative gas production by the end of 2009 is 2822 billion cubic metres (bcm).  Maximum estimated possible recovery is 3122 bcm.  In other words, over 90% of the UK’s gas has already been produced.

But the SNP never talk about gas, only oil.  These are the figures.  Cumulative oil production by the end of 2009 is 3383 million tonnes.  Again using the maximum estimate for recoverable oil (and that includes new exploration west of Shetland) the figure is 4494 million tonnes.  At best 75% of the oil is already out and by using the figures for proven and possible (4152 million tonnes) it is more likely that over 80% of the UK’s oil has already been produced.

When it comes to talking economics, it is about time that the SNP stops using the oil and gas industry as some kind of “get out of jail free card”.  The cry always goes up though of “what about Norway?”  Sadly with are not in Norway’s fortunate and wise position.  They have been saving from Day One for the time when the oil runs out.  I am not going to defend Westminster’s management of our energy industries.  Successive Conservative and Labour governments have been short-sighted and destructive with their demands for production and destabilising tax raids upon the industry.  

As a nation Scotland has to look to a rapidly-approaching future that is without oil.  The SNP ought to aware of that because to argue anything different is, being generous, to be in nothing less than a state of denial.