If Scotland abolishes Council Tax, it should receive the £400m - or a comparable sum - of Council Tax Benefit. That is not - thanks to the bizarre constitutional setup we have - to say that it will.
Council Tax Benefit is a
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If Council Tax is abolished in Scotland, Council Tax becomes The problem, increasingly I think, is that the convention is not worth the paper it isn't written on. First it was Attendance Allowance. Then it was the Olympics. Now it's Council Tax benefit.
It was bad enough when Westminster decided that Scotland deserved to be punished for voting SNP, and gave a 0.5% real terms increase in funding so that its pals in the Labour group in the Scottish Parliament could protest endlessly about 'cuts'. Iain Gray may be making unfunded pledges left, right and centre (but mostly right, to be honest), but it strikes me that vindictive little Gordon might just have given a third Labour Executive a bit more cash to try to buy off the natives.
This is no way for government to run. It is the politics of the begging bowl. In Spain there are much firmer statutes of autonomy that also regulate finance, and which create genuine lines of responsibility and accountability. Obviously independence will win any referendum where it is on the ballot, but as insurance the Calman recommendations have to propose writing financial safeguards into the Scotland Act. It's not ideal, but even a legal battle to the Law Lords is preferable to the financial lifeblood of Scotland's entire public sector being decided by the partisan expediency of whichever bunch of numpties are occupying the Cabinet Room of 10 Downing Street.
8 comments:
Ooft! That's the bullseye...
You've summed up so many constitutional issues and cracks in Labour 'attacks' with that post.
Every time I hear Labour people mention "cuts" I start listing reasons why it's their doing. From now on, i'll just refer back to this post for the reasons as it's got them all...
Can we all have a competition on who we think "Scottish Unionist" (aka AM2) is?
1. Re: “Scottish Unionist has now become my muse”. That’s very gratifying, although I note you didn’t link to the post which presumably sparked your cogitations!
2. Quick point of information: CTB isn’t UK-wide. It’s GB-wide. NI has rates.
3. On a moral level, I would probably agree with your remark that if Scotland no longer needs the £400m, we should no longer pay it in. But that’s where the SNP went wrong. They went hammer-and-tongs for a battle on this one. Right from the beginning, they were on the wrong side of the legal issue. They tried to lord it over the Treasury, with a devil-may-care attitude to the legality. And they met a brick wall. Quite right too.
4. What do you mean by “the convention is not worth the paper it isn't written on”? Is this the prevailing attitude now? In May, in a spat over the CFP, the Minister for Europe was prompted to say: “This is yet another example of the Scottish Executive trying to pick and choose the elements of the devolved settlement it adheres to according to political expediency rather than fact.” Now we have the Norway electricity connector row. The SNP seems neither to respect nor intend to attempt to work within the terms of Scotland Act. Their funeral. It will put them back on the fringes. I looks as though John Swinney has forgotten the tactical advantage he once had over Bill Wilson!
5. Your “0.5% real terms increase” remark is pure spin. Firstly, the SNP government claimed that they were receiving 0.5% in 2008-09, 1.6% in 2009-10 and 2.3% in 2010-11. Typical that you focus on the lowest of those three figures. And secondly, may I suggest that you Google this phrase: “the Scottish Government had anticipated the drop in the baseline”.
6. The SNP clearly wants this to be seen as the “politics of the begging bowl”. It’s part of the whole “grudge and grievance” agenda to make us feel like second-class citizens in Britain. But what to my mind the SNP really need to explain is why they even wanted to backtrack on the “1000 more police” pledge, why after making it a key policy they aren’t really “dumping” student debt, why the promised £2,000 homebuyers’ grant has been kicked into the long grass, and so on. Why were election pledges made which were always going to cost well in excess of the funds which they were expecting?
7. You said: “Obviously independence will win any referendum where it is on the ballot”. Yet in another recent post you lambast Labour for supposedly “taking voters for granted”. Quick reminder: single-option polls conducted thus far in 2008 show 33% support for independence. Multi-option polls taken during the same period, which give people a more appropriate range of options, show only 22% for separation.
That should be enough for now!
Anonymous.
I know. What's my prize?
1. Oversight. I was doing it on the train and almost ran out of time.
2. Oops.
7. That was intended to be deliberate bravado and purely to insulate me against people like you saying I was accepting that independence might lose. Damned if you do...
3-5. Internet arguments. See terms and conditions. I blog mostly as catharsis.
Haha! Fair enough. I fancy a brain-dead evening of telly anyway.
Cheers.
Don't get too excited, Scottish Unionist. Remember, Wendy Alexander was my muse. Fat lot of good it did her...
"Can we all have a competition on who we think "Scottish Unionist" (aka AM2) is?"
Alexander Mackay of Edinburgh.
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