Council cuts are Sturgeon’s

Last week the SNP government announced its draft budget.

If it goes through in its present form it will mean further substantial cuts to public spending and therefore jobs and services in North Lanarkshire.

And it gets worse. The cuts to North Lanarkshire Council’s budget are 20 per cent higher than the average Scottish local authority cut.

North Lanarkshire Council’s budget is being axed from £578 million this year to £559 million next year.

Even if the council tax was raised for the first time in a decade by three per cent, as the SNP government has suggested, total support for local services would still stand at £563 million, representing a cut of £15 million.

It is simply not good enough for the SNP to blame the Tory government at Westminster. The Scottish Parliament now has a substantial range of tax-varying powers, not least the power to vary income tax.

So these are Nicola Sturgeon’s cuts, not Theresa May’s. That’s why in a debate on taxation in the parliament last week I called for a new approach because we cannot turn our back on the homeless, on our old-aged pensioners, half of whom are living in fuel poverty this winter, or the rising number of unemployed people desperately seeking work.

And neither can we turn our back on the funding crisis in our National Health Service, which has led to cuts in services this year at Monklands Hospital, or on the urgent need to invest in our schools and colleges, which have seen cuts in teacher numbers and falling educational standards on the SNP’s watch.

It was Fidel Castro who said: “To fight for the future does not mean to avoid doing every day what must be done for the present.”

So we must fight for a better future but we must do the right thing today as a well and that means investing in local jobs and services, not cutting them.

In my view we need a renaissance of local government to build society up and to nourish the very roots of our democracy. That means properly funded, publicly run public services, delivered by a workforce freed from a decade of wage stagnation.

A couple of weeks ago I joined in a free toy giveway in Wishaw. Here was a magnificent example of local people coming together, working together and making lives better for those most in need. It was an honour to meet them.

This Christmas I will be thinking about those families in need, those NHS staff who need our support, workers who are being exploited right across Scotland.

And I will be thinking about how we must use the powers of the parliament, how we bring communities across Scotland together to work together using the parliament’s tax powers, through our trade unions, to deliver a better future for all, right across Scotland.

We need properly funded, publicly run public services