The SNP’s cuts are tearing at the fabric of our public services, writes Scottish Labour’s deputy leader

As politicians we often find ourselves talking about the latest international crisis, or the minutiae of a policy document, or historical acts of government.

But we must never lose sight of what voters really care about: their local services, such as roads, schools and hospitals.

When I was a councillor in Fife the biggest issue people came to see me about was housing or I should say the lack of houses and on the doorsteps more often than not it was potholes or dog fouling.

We all need to remind ourselves that, while we grapple with the big issues posed by Brexit or the recklessness of a second independence referendum, that the most immediate challenge to most people is care for an elderly relative, finding decent childcare so they can get back into the jobs market or ensuring that their children can get the best start in life through a decent education.

The fact is that council services impact on people’s daily lives and we should be making the case for good local services that meet local people and local communities’ needs. There is no better time to do that than in the run up to next year’s local government elections.

The SNP has been very successful posing as an anti- austerity party, but it is anything but. Nationalist ministers have slashed hundreds of millions of pounds from local councils in Scotland since they came to power with over 27,000 jobs being lost putting immense pressure on services and staff.

Last year the SNP government cut funding to local government by half a billion pounds. That was a decision made in Edinburgh by an SNP government – not a decision made in Westminster as they would like people to think.

It’s set to get worse – public spending watchdog the Accounts Commission forecast that local authorities across Scotland face a funding gap of £500m by 2019.
The Commission said that local authorities will need to make further savings and/or generate additional income to meet that gap.

That means less for money for services that people rely on. Speaking about the cuts being faced by local councils this week, David O’Neill, president of COSLA said; “The simple truth is that a cut to local government means a cut in teaching assistants, a cut in levels of care for all our elderly relatives, cuts for the homeless as a freezing winter starts to bite, and cuts to gritting of the roads at a time of freezing temperatures when trains and the wider transport network is struggling to cope”.

A recent expert report from the impartial Scottish Parliament information centre found that Scotland’s councils are doing their best to mitigate those cuts, as they try to make savings on services that the poorest rely on less. But that can only go so far.

There’s no muscle or fat for the SNP government to cut any more from our councils. The next set of cuts they make, in the Scottish budget on Thursday, look set to go straight to the bone.

The SNP government in Edinburgh wants to create a familiar image, one used by the Tories for decades, of wasteful town hall bureaucrats. But we know they reality is different. The SNP cuts are cuts to schools, to social care, and to housing.

It is SNP cuts which means that social care visits are set to a 15-minute stopwatch whilst the waiting times for assessments and care packages grows.

It is SNP cuts that mean our schools have 4,000 fewer teachers to teach our children with support services to assist teaching and learning cut to the bone.

It is SNP cuts that see 150,000 Scots on social housing waiting lists desperate to have decent, warm and safe housing.

That is why Labour will propose amendments to the Scottish budget, to use the new powers of the Scottish Parliament to stop the cuts. If SNP MSPs reject our amendments, if they carry on the cuts to services which our poorest rely on, then they are no better than the Tories.

Next May, there will be local government elections in Scotland. We will not let voters forget the SNP’s betrayal of our local communities. For a party that prides itself on identity, the SNP doesn’t care about individual communities. Devolution to Scotland is good, but what about devolution from Holyrood to Glasgow, Aberdeen or Stirling and across Scotland? The Nationalists aren’t interested, indeed the reverse is the case, they seem more and more determined to centralise all they can get their hands on.

Local communities deserve better than that. That’s why next May every single Labour candidate will fight against SNP cuts and the failure of the SNP government in Edinburgh to stand up for our local communities right across Scotland.

Alex Rowley is Scottish Labour deputy leader and campaign manager for the Scottish local government elections.