Scotland needs a Who

Since the Spending Review was announced last week, we have had the usual suspects and interest groups jockeying for position and headlines, generally crying foul.

COSLA pronounced in capital letters, no less, that it was “VERY DISAPPOINTED WITH LEVEL OF SPIN PUT ON FIGURES”.  It calculated that over the next three years, it was going to be down by 15% when cuts and new demand for services was taken into account.  “That can only mean one thing”, the local government body’s press release said in sonorous tones, “a significant reduction in local services and local spend”.  To hammer home its view, it put up Cllr Jim McCabe from North Lanarkshire council for the discussion panel on Newsnight Scotland on Wednesday night.  So armed was he with statistics that he not only managed to bamboozle the audience but flummox himself.  Fulminating against the council tax freeze, he was asked what he would put it up to.  He wouldn’t, he said, not in an election year.  Which gave the game away – it isn’t about economics, it’s about politics.  In fact, it’s not even that lofty:  it’s simply about getting elected.

We’ve also had business chipping in.  CBI Scotland considered it “alarming that the Scottish Government is proposing two business tax rises…”, referring to the public health levy and the review on empty property relief.  It also accused the SNP Government of being “in denial with regard to the dire state of the UK public finances.”  It then goes on to make a point in this regard which made little sense to me, so I won’t trouble you with it here.  The Federation of Small Business in Scotland was much more considered in its response, but even it felt compelled to warn that “public sector bodies must not use their local business communities as a pot from which to draw additional income”.

Then came the unions.  The PCS representative on Newsnight Scotland’s panel seemed to indicate that job losses would be fine but that a pay freeze would not.  Uh huh.  The union denounced the ongoing pay freeze as “an attack on Scottish workers”.  Apparently, the extension of the pay freeze “by our own government and employer will provoke anger as never seen before” and just to emphasise the point, “Scottish public servants will be very angry that they are facing this double whammy from Westminster and Holyrood”.  Perhaps we should point out to the PCS that their pay will only be frozen once not twice?

The STUC, meanwhile, tried to criticise nicely, but ingrained habits die-hard, and occasional slips allowed the rhetoric to ratchet up.  Thus, “transferring existing revenue spend to capital is less welcome – a ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’ exercise which will not add to aggregate demand and will further impact on public service provision” and “having praised public service workers yesterday for achieving £2.2 billion in ‘efficiency savings’, he has today imposed a similar requirement for the coming period but offered nothing in return”.  I would have thought a wage, albeit a frozen one, and a job for the foreseeable future might have been reward enough in the current climate?

Finally, the third sector got in on the act.  On the whole, the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (SCVO) was highly positive about the Review and in particular, the shift to preventative spending but it warned that “Scotland cannot afford to miss out on this opportunity of doing things differently by allowing the funds to be hijacked by acute services or local government structural reform.”

So pardon me for asking folks, but if not you, who?  If the Scottish Government is guilty of loading the impact of reduced money to spend on you, who is it you think should bear the pain?  For if not business, big and small, nor councils, nor workers, nor voluntary organisations, should it be pensioners, disabled people, low-income families or unemployed young people?

Oh I know you will all say that by hurting you, the Scottish Government is hurting them.  But a little less rhetoric and a little more reality.  Please.

For in her hour of need, Scotland and her people need a who.  Sectors, agencies and bodies who will accept that we are where we are.  And actually, it is not quite the meltdown that is being portrayed.

No one wants to see budgets going backwards.  But the overall decline in expenditure – in real terms – between this year and next?  1.5%.  The following year, it is 1% – that is a cumulative 2.5%.  Tough but hardly Armageddon.

Moreover, even though the amount of money we have to spend is less next year than this, it is still more than we had to spend five years ago (£28.67 billion) and much more than ten years ago (£20.08 billion).  We managed then, so what has changed now?

Sadly, we are all too Scottish for our own good.  This is a country where the glass is definitely half empty, where Rev I M Jolly embodied our outlook on life, where we never pass up an opportunity for a girn.  We are wedded to a deficit approach to life.  Yet, in these tough times, wouldn’t it be refreshing to hear from sectors, agencies and bodies about what they are going to do to get by, how they will use the money they are getting to make a difference?  Instead of focusing on the money being lost, couldn’t everyone focus on the money we have?  And what we might do with it?

There is no doubting we are heading for choppy waters.  But it could be worse.  And what Scotland needs right now is a Who.  People, leaders and organisations who will focus on what we have.  Who will accept the challenge ahead and put their shoulder to the wheel.  Who will find the ways to do better with less.  Who will vow to work together for the common weal.

How many police forces does Scotland need?

The previous SNP Scottish Government wasn’t overly fond of taking unpopular decisions;  the early signs from this administration are mixed, with many lamenting its failure to get a grip on public service reform and tell us which of the recommendations from its Beveridge report and Christie Commission it might be inclined to agree with.  But there is one area where the Scottish Government is spoiling for a fight – police force reform.

Already well trailed, we are likely to see it announced – the Burd would prefer in the Parliament and not through the media – that the Scottish Government is minded to cut the number of police forces in Scotland from eight to one.  This eight is slightly misleading because in recent years we have already seen the growth of single nationwide police bodies including the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency, the Scottish Police Services Authority and Forensic Services, as well as the Scottish Police College which has aye been.

No one will be surprised;  indeed, there might well be an outbreak of previously unknown co-operation between the SNP and Labour.  Only the Lib Dems are likely to stamp their foot in furious opposition.

But despite parliamentary approval, the SNP Government will have a fight on its hands, and the burd considers it legitimate to ask on whose mandate is it taking forward this proposal?

It does not come from the findings of its consultation on the Future of Policing in Scotland, conducted in February this year.  Of the 219 responses received, only 22 supported a single force (10%), 59 supported maintaining the existing eight forces but with increased collaboration, 45 supported a “rationalised regional model” (in plain language, fewer forces but no one willing to say how many).  However, 77 declined to give a view because of the lack of detailed evidence and information.  But in terms of those who did state a view, a clear majority of individuals and organisations (not all of them police forces and local authorities) favour more than one force.

It certainly does not come from local authorities, who through COSLA, have been vociferous in their opposition.  Part of this is motivated by their desire to keep policing local and by fear that a national police force will leave vast tracts of rural Scotland in particular, without adequate and appropriate policing.  Part of it frankly is motivated by their own role – councillors need to think about this less in terms of a threat to local government and actually produce a solution that could unite everyone concerned with this issue in opposition to the single force proposal.  The consultation shows that there are many out there waiting to be persuaded to get behind the “right model”.

The SNP might claim it has the mandate from this May and point to its overall majority of seats gained in the election.  But the SNP’s manifesto did not state that they would reduce the number of police forces from eight to one.  This is what was offered:

Scotland currently has eight police forces, each with their own bureaucracy, PR departments and management.  This is an unsustainable situation in the face of unprecedented Westminster cuts.  In order to maintain the increased visible police presence we will reduce the number of police forces in Scotland.  However, we will ensure that Scottish policing remains receptive and accountable to the varied and diverse communities they serve.

So, a commitment to reduce but also to maintain local policing.  Yet, few respondents to its own consultation believed that could be achieved with a single police force.  Folk might have voted for the SNP in May knowing that a reduction in the number of forces was coming but it would have been interesting to gauge the reaction if the SNP had been honest enough to state plainly what many suspected was its intention all along.

It is also not clear if it has a mandate from its members for this policy.  Shifting from local to national policing, for this is what is being proposed, is a fundamental reform which really rubs against the grain of the SNP’s approach to governance, that of making Scotland better and of localism.   As was stated in the manifesto, the shift to a national police force is not about making Scotland better – the evidence is split on that, at best – but about saving money.  And the direction of travel, of centralising power is utterly at odds with policies like the Concordat which devolves power and responsibility to local government.  Stephen Noon, the key policy supremo in the party, has made no secret of his commitment to community empowerment.

Considering all this, it would be right to expect that the SNP body politic has had a say in coming to this position?  Actually, no.  No motion to any conference or National Council and attempts to get it on to this autumn’s conference agenda were rebuffed.  For, it is fair to say, that not every SNP member supports this policy, many are in fact vehemently opposed, and we may well see SNP local government leaders standing up to their national government on this one.  Just as soon as they are all safely selected to stand again next May, you understand.

No mandate, then, from SNP members, from local government, from respondents to its own consultation, and only a general nod in the direction of some sort of reform from the population at large.  Police bodies, senior officers and the rank and file are split but frankly, they have all had far too much to say publicly about this political matter.  The increasing propensity for the police to try and shape public opinion on policy matters has to be curtailed, breaching as it does the fundamental principle of policing in Scotland, that of policing by the consent of the population.  In other words, they are supposed to do what we tell them to do.

Yet here we are, facing proposals for a single police force, that are likely to be voted through with a huge majority in the Scottish Parliament.  I can see arguments for and against all the proposals frankly and probably find myself in the category of those wanting more evidence about what works and what doesn’t.  I am struck by the Danish model while realising the limits of its application to a much larger land masse and sparser population.  It is such a fundamental shift though it behoves us all to take a position… eventually.  So here’s your chance:

I’m voting for COSLA

At last, we get some common sense, vision and straight talking in this election campaign but alas, none of it is coming from the yins standing for election. 

Ah, COSLA if only you were a political party with PatWatters4FM…

Positively Local, COSLA’s manifesto for public sector reform, comes complete with a route map to reform that the burd has cut out and put up on her wall.  I don’t agree with every proposal and contention in the manifesto – au naturelement - but by and large, this is the most sensible document to have been produced in this election.  And just to emphasise the message, gun slinger Watters came out with both pistols blazing this week, accusing the parties of feeding the electorate a political junk food diet, offering options that are “short term, unsatisfying and leave a bad taste”.  Not just the best manifesto, but the best soundbite so far too.

The parties are in a bidding war for votes, scattering big numbers around like confetti, and it is a game that BBC Scotland has taken up with gusto.  Plonk 25 random manifesto commitments before the electorate and ask which are the priority.  Come on down, folks, the input is right…

Thus, top of the poll, came Labour’s pledge to cut the time someone waits to see a specialist about suspected cancer from four weeks to two.  Okay, so it happens.  Then what?  You wait months for treatment only to find it isn’t the best treatment available because all the money has been spent at the initial stage.  And what about preventing people from getting cancer in the first place?  Who cares?  The state can fix it for you.

Next up, the SNP’s and the Conservatives’ pledge to keep more police on the streets.  What, even if it makes not a jot of difference to crime rates and does absolutely nothing to address the causes of crime?   No takers, then, for Superintendent John Carnochan’s contention (Violence Reduction Unit Scotland) that if we want to prevent crime and address its root causes in our communities, we should be investing in 1000 health visitors instead of 1000 police officers – that Tory pledge languishes way down the list of voter must-haves.

“The real question is what difference extra police or teachers or doctors make in terms of individuals’ lives.  We should be less focused on how quickly an ill person sees a consultant than on why so many people are becoming ill in the first place;  less interested in the number of police constables we have than in the type of policing they have to do.”  Oh, COSLA how many ways do I love thee?

And then we get a series of want more, pay less proposals – everything free at the point of need, or rather want.  Dear god, what planet are we all living on?  If we refuse to create a sustainable local tax base, if we keep the rotten system we have but even then, take significant parts of the population out of contributing to it, how on earth do people think we are going to pay for more apprenticeships, free higher education, prescriptions and bus passes? 

Despite what the politicians are suggesting at this election, there ain’t no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.  The Scottish budget has taken only its first cut – the next two are much more severe, with rock bottom being hit only by 2014.  The bottom line is that we can no longer afford to do what we have always done and no political party has been prepared to stand up and say this at any point in the campaign.  Shame on them all.

Our political masters will point to BBC Scotland’s poll and say, see our strategy is right, we are giving the masses what they want.  And where they lead, we follow. Which is enough to make the burd weep. 

COSLA is absolutely right:  “only an outcomes focused approach to reform will improve public service delivery in Scotland”.  But because politicians refuse to articulate what this actually means, because parties cannot be bovvered to do the hard work of leading this debate, of working out how to educate the public in ways they would understand, they have resorted to type.  It’s all about the inputs, big, shiny incomprehensible numbers that make people’s eyes glaze over but instinctively, they want.  

So, the parties continue to promise jam today and tomorrow, to be paid for by a little bit of fiddling round the fringes of public sector reform, while extracting yet more mysterious efficiencies from the existing system.  It is a mendacious approach that simply will not work.  As COSLA points out: “Public sector reform needs to be about whole systems; about funding arrangements and income;  about governance, duties and powers;  about the principles of democratic accountability;  and only then about boundaries and structures.”

The refusal by the parties to conduct the campaign in such terms is troubling.  It would appear that the concept of political leadership is deid;  in its place, we have a bread and circuses approach to politics that will result in us all – but most especially the most vulnerable in our society – paying a terrible price.  For there is no way that all they are promising can be delivered – either the parties know this and are hiding it from the electorate, or they really don’t know and think we can carry on spending.  I’m not sure which is the more worrying.

But whoever wins this election should beware:  no-one likes to be misled.  Being elected by saying one thing, and spending four years doing quite another, might result in a very high political price being paid indeed.