Huge chasm between Scottish Government’s words and actions

IT is now less than a month until Glasgow City Council will set its budget for 2023/ 2024.

Last week, the council published an updated financial forecast after the Scottish Government’s announcements last month.

Glasgow was clear: we needed £ 120 million to avoid making any cuts next year.

It’s now clear that the Scottish Government has provided just £ 7.7m.

The consequences of that are dire. SNP politicians in Edinburgh have been warned about the impact. They’ve been shown what will happen to local services without extra cash. Even SNP councillors on Cosla have been demanding extra cash – publicly defying their own party’s leadership!

Between Glasgow City Council and the Glasgow Health and Social Care Partnership, we are still looking at savings of more than £ 100m. That will be devastating, and equivalent to about 10% being taken out of the system in a single year. That is completely unprecedented.

And it comes on top of a decade of more than £ 300m in savings. This simply cannot go on. The bleak reality is that the future of local government is on the line.

Earlier this month, Green councillor Jon Molyneux wrote that it is not too late for the city’s MSPs to help avert these coming cuts. I could not agree more. Among Glasgow’s MSPs, there are FOUR Scottish Government ministers – including both the health secretary and the First Minister.

They will, no doubt, be receiving the same emails from constituents as I am. Every day, concerns are raised about missed bin collections, unfilled potholes, delays in social care and dirty streets. They can do something about this crisis, and it means putting their money where their mouth is.

In the last decade, Glasgow City Council has lost almost a quarter of its workforce. Today, the single biggest expenditure is on wages and staff costs. There is, simply, no way to meet this huge gap without reducing the council’s workforce even further and placing even more pressure on the staff that are still there.

When I was first elected in 1999, it was in hope and expectation that I would be able to use the levers of the council to deliver for my communities. There are 35 new councillors in Glasgow, all of whom have the same hope and expectation. None of them sought elected office to manage decline, but that is the reality of the Scottish Government’s decisions.

And this year, decline is becoming even more unmanageable than before.

This is an important and serious moment for Glasgow and the future of this city. We are in the midst of the cost- of- living crisis, and our city’s recovery from the pandemic is still fragile. The role of government – especially local government – should be to invest in our communities and to help them grow.

The coming weeks will likely lay bare the huge chasm between the Scottish Government’s rhetoric and its funding decisions.

When the city’s MSPs come to make their decisions on the Scottish Government Budget, I’d urge all of them to think how best they can help local council services.