SNP budget still flawed

Following last week’s rejection of the SNP’s Budget, discussions continued between the Scottish Greens and Scottish Ministers over the Green proposals for a free and universal area-based insulation scheme, and a final response was received from Scottish Ministers late last night.

As has been confirmed by the Finance Secretary in today’s debate, the SNP have no intention of supporting such a scheme, and they have instead proposed additional money for the means-testing and targeting approach which has failed across the UK. Indeed, just today the National Audit Office published a report setting out the major failures of this approach as applied in England and Wales. (1)

Patrick Harvie MSP said:

“Last week, I argued that the SNP’s Budget was an inadequate response to the economic and ecological crisis we face. It still is. It continues to pile resources into projects which will aggravate climate change, leave our economic problems unsolved and worsen social injustice. The prospect of a green new deal to tackle these simultaneous problems has now receded by a year, a year we can ill afford to waste.

“With this in mind, we have spent months setting out the need for a simple and positive measure to counterbalance these schemes. Based on the successes of Green councillors in Kirklees, the proposal would have introduced an area-based home energy efficiency project, delivered free, area-by-area and door-to-door. Instead, Ministers have come back with the same tired and inadequate approach, wasting public money on means-testing, hotlines that no-one will ring, setting up bureaucratic hurdles and introducing financial disincentives.

“With no change to the Budget, there will be no change to our votes. The other opposition parties may be prepared to overlook the SNP’s failures today, but Greens will continue to stand up for the principles of the people who elected us, and for the aspirations of the wider environmental movement. Today we will not support business as usual politics and business as usual economics.”

Notes

1. http://www.nao.org.uk/publications/0809/the_warm_front_scheme.aspx