An end to the cuts which have plagued Scottish local government should be the price of any budget deal with the SNP, Scottish Green Party members have said.
Scottish Greens: stop the cuts, or not budget deal
At the party’s conference this weekend, Scottish Green Party members will vote on blocking any agreement with John Swinney’s government unless local authority budgets are fully protected for 2025/26.
Negotiations with the SNP come after the Scottish Greens were unceremoniously removed from government earlier this year, with ministers subsequently pulling support for various Green-backed policies. Scottish Green members were not given a vote on the party’s future in government.
Despite an end to the Bute House Agreement, negotiations between the two parties have continued – including as part of negotiations for the upcoming Scottish Budget. Both SNP ministers and the Scottish Greens have suggested that taxes on private jets and major supermarkets should be considered, but these plans would raise less than £100 million.
A proposal from Green activist and former co-chair of the party’s Executive, Ellie Gomersall, and Glasgow Councillor Anthony Carroll – the co-convener of the Association of Scottish Greens Councillors (ASGC) – is now seeking to protect council funding from further cuts in the upcoming budget.
If the vote were to pass in Greenock at the party’s conference then MSPs would be prevented from backing any budget deal that did not fully protect financial settlements for local authorities in the 2025/26 budget.
The proposal also underlines further plans to raise additional revenue, and opposes any repeat of last year’s disastrous Council Tax freeze.
The party must take a stance against SNP cuts
Ellie Gomersall, Scottish Greens by-election candidate for Maryhill and former Executive co-chair, said:
Local authorities are on their knees. Councils all across the country are being forced to make huge cuts to vital services, from recycling to education, libraries to recreation. These essential services are critical to lifting people out of poverty and tackling the climate emergency, and simply must be a priority for Greens.
The SNP’s failure to reform the regressive council tax more than 17 years since they first committed to doing so is one of the biggest betrayals of the devolution era, and their consistent cuts to council budgets year after year is kicking our councils when they’re down.
With Greens in a vitally powerful position this Scottish Budget following the end of the Bute House Agreement, our party must take a stance against austerity and refuse to vote for any budget which fails to give Scotland’s city chambers and town halls the vital funding they need.
Councillor Anthony Carroll, ASGC co-convener and representative for Dennistoun, added:
Local Government has been reduced to such a dangerous position, where over 14 years of austerity is seeing scores of Councils across the UK being threatened with effective bankruptcy.
We must forge a different path now in Scotland, if we are to see our essentially daily services continue to exist. As the SNP’s new CEO Carol Beattie said, ‘The regard for Local Government will surely have to return, or we will see the societal consequences for years to come.’
We as Greens must make that stand for Local Government in this budget, or see those consequences in our communities worsen.
Featured image via the Canary
