More power for the people of Scotland? Don’t hold your breath

With a £15 billion deficit revealed in the Scottish government’s own figures last week, it may seem a bit odd to argue that the problems public services face are not just about money.

Funding is of course critical but so is accountability.

Does anyone remember subsidiarity? Those of us campaigning for a Scottish Parliament in the 1990s certainly do.

We campaigned for a subsidiarity that would see services organised and governed as close to the people as possible because we feared a sucking up of locally controlled services — no matter which party won power in the first parliament — into a central monolith.

We wanted a real parliament, not a pan-Scotland local authority taking over local functions. We clearly didn’t succeed.

While the Scottish government seems reluctant to use substantial new powers to mitigate austerity, it is all too ready to use old powers to centralise local services.

The police service was taken out of local control in 2013.

Fire and rescue went the same way. Social care has gone to joint boards.

And now it looks like schools will be the next centralisation.

It could be argued, and will be, that Westminster cuts brought the need to centralise to save money and capitalise on the economies of scale.

But if that were the reason, why did the government reject Unison’s suggestion of a joint local government board if there had to be a central police service (which would have retained VAT exemption) as opposed to a government-appointed police authority they always knew would lose that exemption?

The £76 million going on VAT so far, instead of going on services, was apparently worth it to ensure central government control.
Meanwhile 2,000 police staff jobs have gone.

The artificial figure of 17,234 officers (dropped in April) was a sham with many of them backfilling those lost jobs.

The Scottish Police Federation recently claimed that the minimum 70 officers per shift in Edinburgh has dropped to 38 since 2011.
Police Scotland faces a 10-year £1.1bn austerity cut.

There are concerns about a west Central Scotland policing culture being imposed on other communities across the country, where it is neither appropriate nor effective.

As scandal follows scandal, Police Scotland has the appearance of a law unto itself.

The centralised fire and rescue service is having to cough up £10 million a year on VAT instead of on services and has shed 1,000 jobs, most of them firefighters.

Both services have seen local control centres close with the danger of overworked call handlers and the loss of key local knowledge in emergencies.

Health and social care joint boards have removed the direct relationship between local councillors and one of the biggest and costliest services they provide.

That direct line of accountability from councillor to citizen is now diffused by a corporate body.

Of course we need joined-up working but why does government always think you can only do that by joining things up at the top?

Why doesn’t it engage the people on the front line who day in, day out, find ways to work together for service users, despite internal bureaucracies, let alone cross-service bureaucracy?

This and the key issue of funding are the obstacles that should be addressed first before mass reorganisations.

Technically, such joint boards are democratically accountable since they are made up of the central government NHS and local government care services.

But a local council and councillor are far more accessible than the cabinet secretary for health.

It’s not just about democracy. Subsidiarity is about access to democracy and a fighting chance of being able to be involved in influencing and shaping services.

And there is another hoovering up on the way.

Next year, the Scottish government will be consulting on more centralisation by taking schools away from local councils into education regions with more direct central control.

We await the cunning plans on how staff will be employed and the VAT trap avoided.

And you have to marvel at the brass neck that will grab £100m raised locally in council tax away from councils to spread across the country.

Breaking the link between local taxation and local spending would be another nail in the coffin of local democracy.

It has been easy so far for central governments of all colours to cut funding, grab powers and blame the local councils.

Opinion polls appear to bear that out, with a recent Electoral Reform Society poll finding that 76 per cent of Scots feel they have little or no influence on council spending and services. Over half thought councils were “self-serving.”

But when it asked the question another way, it found that 78 per cent wanted more local councillors and many would be prepared to give their time to promote local democracy.

On the current government’s track record, I wouldn’t hold my breath for there being much local democracy left to get involved in.

The Scottish government has choices about where and how it spends and it has chosen to starve local government.

Of course it could legitimately blame Westminster cuts for the cash crisis, but not for the centralisations and erosion of local democracy and accountability.

Those are the political choices of a centralising ideology that has to be challenged.