With only seven months to go before the campaign for the next Scottish elections starts, it is unrealistic to expect much from Nicola Sturgeon’s programme for government, but even so it looks terribly underwhelming.
The list of new Bills to be introduced in this final session of the 2011 parliament is hardly calculated to lift the hearts of reformers or romantics: the Abusive Behaviour and Sexual Harm Bill, the Bankruptcy Consolidation Bill, the Budget Bill, the Burial and Cremation Bill, the Lobbying Bill, the Private Tenancies Bill, the Scottish Fiscal Commission Bill and the Scottish Elections (Dates) Bill.
There is some worthy and necessary legislation in there, but the real political meat is being saved for the SNP manifesto next year. No hint from the First Minister about whether she will promise increases/decreases or no change in the Scottish rate of income tax. A promise to cut Air Passenger Duty, but not until 2018. A Scottish Social Security Bill to reform welfare provision and abolition of the Bedroom tax – but not until the next parliament.
In all this the SNP assumes it will form the next Scottish Government – and the opinion polls suggest that is a reasonably safe bet.
Ms Sturgeon has given herself five years to make her mark on Scotland by, again, prolonging the life of the next parliament. The pretext for this is to avoid having UK and Scottish elections in the same year, which would have happened had the parliamentary term reverted to its original four years.
She could have achieved the same result with a three-year parliament, but may need the extra time to rebuild the performance of public services. The programme claims:
“During our time in office we have undertaken a major programme of reform and improvement across our public services. We have done so against a backdrop of constrained public finances.”
Reform – often radical – there certainly has been, but the “improvement” boast is harder to justify.
The First Minister concentrated in her speech introducing the programme on education, promising a standardised system of national testing at key stages in primary and secondary schools. Tests may or may not be useful, but they will not by themselves reverse the decline in educational attainment and the few other measures announced do not amount to a convincing turnaround plan.
In reading, writing, listening and talking the trends have been either static or declining. Scotland’s schools still outperform the OECD average attainment, but the gap has been narrowing.
In health the Scottish Government is failing to meet its own targets. In important areas such as Cancer Waiting Times, Dementia Post Diagnostic Support, Treatment Time Guarantee, 18 Weeks Referral to Treatment (RTT), 12 Weeks First Outpatient Appointment, targets have not been met and in some the trend is worsening, rather than improving.
Its centralisation of police services into a single body has led to such widespread criticism that the chief constable is stepping down early. Under the euphemistic promise to “take stock of the lessons learned to date and ensure we have a police service which meets the needs of the people of Scotland” the programme for government offers a series of reviews and innovations, including a Statutory Code of Practice for Stop and Search, clearly intended to mitigate some of the unintended side effects of the reform.
In further education, the entire sector has been taken into Government control, with the loss of autonomy and local responsiveness. Again, there have been mergers, which have in some cases led to efficiencies with no loss of educational standards, but overall funding has been cut and effort directed at younger, full time students, to the detriment of older part-timers.
Now universities fear that the Scottish Government’s Higher Education Governance Bill threatens a similar fate, if they are reclassified by the Official of National Statistics as public bodies in the same way that colleges were.
On climate change the programme for government hubristically declares: “We have been clear that the international community must match Scotland’s high ambition,” without acknowledging that the Scottish Government’s emissions reduction targets have been missed for four years in a row.
The SNP can still probably rely on its hostility to the UK Government’s austerity cuts and on the weakness of the opposition parties to carry it into a third term in office, but if it is serious about making Scotland a better place it needs to make its delivery match its rhetoric.
This blog first appeared at the David Hume Institute site and is reproduced with permission
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