Lib Dems claim Holyrood is ‘starving’ council of cash
South Lanarkshire Liberal Democrats are calling out government cuts to local councils.
The cuts to local authority budgets were announced by the Scottish Government in its spending review and have been condemned strongly by the local Liberal Democrats.
Leader of the South Lanarkshire Council’s Liberal Democrat group, Councillor Robert Brown, said local people will be significantly impacted as well as services, which could be reduced.
He said: “The SNP are wasting no less than £20million on an irrelevant independence referendum which everyone knows is not going to happen any time soon.
“The Finance Secretary Kate Forbes claimed in effect that this was a drop in the ocean compared to the size of the Scottish budget. Well, it may be a drop in the ocean to the SNP, but to most people it is a significant amount of money that should be spent on schools, town centres or local services.
“Under the SNP, huge amounts of money have been spent on other failed projects like the ferries, while the Scottish economy has been outpaced by the rest of the UK, meaning there’s less money to spend.
“Now they want to spend more millions of pounds stripping powers from local communities to create an expensive and bureaucratic centralised National Care Service.
“The effect of the unnecessary SNP cuts on councils – against a background of inflation predicted to hit 10 per cent – will be the worst austerity yet and real damage to the local services people rely on – schools to educate our children, leisure facilities like parks and libraries, roads and pavements to get around safely on.
“Let’s be very clear. The SNP Government don’t like local councils because they have a local democratic mandate of their own so they starve them – and local communities – of necessary funds.”
The Scottish Government resource spending review 2022 was launched last month and sets out a high level framework for resource spend within future Scottish Budgets up to 2026 to 2027.
A Scottish Government spokesperson said: “The Resource Spending Review sets out high level financial plans for the period 2023-24 to 2026-27, but does not replace the annual Scottish Budget process.
“Annual budgets for portfolios, local government and other public bodies may therefore vary from those set out or implied in the spending review, particularly once transfers to local government from other portfolios are taken into account.
“According to the Scottish Fiscal Commission (SFC), the overall Scottish Budget fell by 5.2 per cent in real terms between 2021-22 and 2022-23 with a further 1 per cent real-terms reduction forecast sustained until 2025-26. Once we have prioritised additional support through social security and welfare – including the £25 a week Scottish Child Payment to help families and lift children out of poverty – and funded the NHS, SFC analysis shows the funding available for all other portfolios shrinks by eight per cent in real terms in 2025-26.
“Under these most challenging of circumstances, we have maintained the Local Government revenue budget at current levels, with an additional £100m being added in 2026-27.
“The Scottish Government will work closely with COSLA over the coming months to agree a new deal for Local Government in Scotland, including the development of fiscal framework, to deliver greater flexibility over financial arrangements for local government with improved accountability for the delivery of national outcomes.”