NEWS RELEASE – Scottish budget not fit for purpose

The Scottish Green MSPs today set out the party’s concerns with the SNP’s draft Budget ahead of Parliament’s first vote on it next Wednesday. The draft Budget, Greens argue, fails to deliver on a range of key economic and environmental issues, including jobs, transport and renewables, as well as home energy efficiency, the issue which led to the collapse of the last Budget process in January 2009.

Patrick Harvie MSP said:

“Last year we encouraged the Scottish Government to bring in a nationwide insulation programme, the most cost-effective way to tackle fuel poverty and climate change, cut people’s bills and simultaneously boost jobs. Unfortunately, SNP Ministers did not listen. As a result, many more people will have suffered through this bitter winter in damp, cold and unhealthy homes, homes they can’t afford to heat and can’t afford not to heat.

“It is not an exaggeration to say that this is a life and death issue. Earlier this week I met staff who run a helpline for people worried about their energy bills, and the number of calls they have taken during this winter has gone through the roof. I’d urge John Swinney to spend a day on the front line, listening to these calls. I’m sure that experience would be enough to bring him round on the issue.

“As it stands, this Budget continues with the SNP’s piecemeal, bureaucratic and means-tested approach to household energy costs, tinkering at the edges not tackling the problem. Ministers have left Scots facing an alphabet soup of inefficient schemes instead of a coherent and successful approach, using the expertise of business to deliver on the political priorities the SNP say they share with Parliament.

“This Budget looks like it was drafted before the recession and before Parliament passed the Climate Change Bill. It pays for transport projects which will make climate change worse, and neglects Scotland’s wider needs, like tackling poverty and unemployment, supporting public transport and renewables, and helping build the kind of successful low-carbon Scottish economy we need for the future.

“If Ministers again hold out against substantial change, this is a Budget which is not fit for purpose and a Budget we will oppose next week. However, it is still not too late for Ministers to make changes, and we have meetings scheduled with them and with other parties. If the SNP want our support on Wednesday, it would be best for them not to leave it to the last minute again. That approach cost Scotland dear last year.

“The other opposition parties, who represent the clear majority in this Parliament, would also be well advised not to let this flawed Budget go through on the nod. There must be a majority for a better Budget than this, whether it includes the SNP or not.”

Notes

1. The Stage 1 debate on the Budget (Scotland) Bill 2010 will take place on Wednesday 20 January.