Labour must ditch council coalitions with SNP and Tories – Bruce Whitehead

Last week I was dismayed to read that the Edinburgh Council Labour group, now in coalition with the SNP, had all voted to cut £9 million from the health and social care budget – services never more essential to the poor and vulnerable than now, in a global pandemic.

I was grateful to receive a briefing from my party colleague Ricky Henderson, who holds Labour’s seat on the Independent Joint Board, which directs where local health and social care budgets are spent – or cuts made. The cuts are called savings, as if this will make them less severe. It does not.

These are serious cuts in sexual healthcare support, in rehabilitation for drug and alcohol abuse, in support for independent living for disabled people and those with special needs.

As Ricky’s briefing showed, the total shortfall in funds needed to look after our elderly, very young, weak and vulnerable citizens is almost £22m. Already cuts have been made (sorry, savings) but more are needed for this year, and the latest amount to £8.95m.

Cuts are a choice imposed by those in control of the purse strings: since 2010, that is the Tories, who’ve cut Scotland’s grant by two per cent. The Scottish Government in turn decides how much to cut its own budget; you might have thought they would have reluctantly passed on the two per cent cuts to councils, perhaps softening them a little with the modest tax increase it announced recently.

But no. The SNP Government has tripled Tory cuts over the same period, to nearly seven per cent, according to Scottish Parliament figures.

They claim this is all beyond their control, blaming Tory austerity. But the SNP has repeatedly failed to complete its promised overhaul of council finances, which remain chronically underfunded. Its famous pledge to axe the council tax remains just a pledge.

As Labour’s council candidate for Almond ward, I argued before the 2017 Edinburgh elections that we should leave the coalition, since as the larger ruling group, we were getting all the blame for these cuts. Instead we stuck to the strategy – a Labour administration helping to apply SNP cuts for them.

The 2017 council election result? We became the junior partner. Voters saw our collusion in cuts, and punished us severely for it. And then we continued with our support for the SNP’s cuts as before. When will we learn?

I get the argument about trying to mitigate the cuts because the Tories would do far worse – I really do. But that plainly hasn’t worked. And I’m not the only one saying this; the former Labour finance co-convener, Bill Cook, has said it’s time to leave. The SNP might form a minority administration with Greens and Lib Dems. We could support it on a confidence-and-supply basis, while opposing non-socialist policies.

Labour is now part of the cuts mentality in eight Scottish council coalitions – including one with Tories in Aberdeen.

It’s time to come clean. Labour should leave the cuts coalitions, and pledge to stop the cuts, using taxation and sustainable growth to reverse them. Otherwise what’s the point of a Labour Party?

Bruce Whitehead is a former Labour council candidate

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