{"id":16539,"date":"2024-10-27T10:25:06","date_gmt":"2024-10-27T10:25:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/?p=16539"},"modified":"2026-04-18T19:34:30","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T19:34:30","slug":"strangled-by-the-purse-strings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/2024\/10\/strangled-by-the-purse-strings\/","title":{"rendered":"Strangled by the purse strings"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Eyes are on the UK Budget at the moment, and for good reason, but shortly after that we\u2019re going to see what the Scottish Government lays out in its own budget and, given the scope of devolution, that is likely to have much more of an impact on Scottish public services \u2013 especially at a local level.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This means that recent news from Shona Robison telling Local Authorities that there\u2019s \u201cno money left<\/a>\u201d for public sector pay deals should be taken as a threat to local democratic autonomy.<\/p>\n

Usually when I write an article like this I start by saying \u201cimagine if Westminster treated Holyrood like this\u201d but in this case I don\u2019t really need to as we have the example of the UK Government\u2019s cut to Winter Fuel Payments in England having a knock-on effect on the Block Grant which put Holyrood in the position of making the choice on whether to cut the equivalent Scottish allowance too. They didn\u2019t have to \u2013 the Block Grant is calculated based on how Westminster spends money in England but Scotland is free to spend that Grant as it likes, not just on equivalent policies. In this case though, they did indeed choose to cut the payments.<\/p>\n

Yes, the choice was somewhat of a Morton\u2019s Fork<\/a> in that the alternative was to increase a tax or cut spending elsewhere but, and this is the key difference between Holyrood and Scottish Local Authorities, they did have the power to introduce said tax and chose not to.<\/p>\n

Lack of control<\/h2>\n

The current argument is different in that while Local Authorities could make cuts to services to fund a pay rise \u2013 not that such cuts will be easy given that many Local Authorities have reduced their services to near their minimum statutory functions already after years of cuts-after-cuts \u2013 they do not have the power to introduce new taxes by themselves, not even new taxes covering only areas within their devolved control. The only control they have in that respect is to introduce things like service charges which is why the price of your local leisure centre is likely to go up and why my own South Lanarkshire Council is introducing an annual fee to uplift garden waste (instead, strangely, of providing better composting services or charging to uplift NON-compostable or recyclable waste).<\/p>\n

Instead, it is up to the Scottish Parliament to legislate to \u201callow\u201d Councils to bring in new taxes \u2013 which we are seeing in some small but not unimportant areas such as the new tourist tax and the proposed cruise ship levy (the latter of which isn\u2019t likely to be of much use to land-locked South Lanarkshire) so the precedent is there but there is still so much more that could be done. We often talk about the amount of financial and actual power that Westminster has over Scotland but if anything it\u2019s potentially worse looking at Scottish Local Authorities from Holyrood. Where the Westminster Block Grant to the devolved nations is decided by the Barnett Formula, the Scottish Local Authority Block Grant is decided purely by Holyrood and many political games have been played with it including reductions if Councils try to increase their own devolved taxes (like Council Tax) or threats of reprisals if they don\u2019t follow ill-conceived election manifesto promises<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Not that Local Authorities have much scope to adjust those taxes given that the two main ones \u2013 Council Tax and Non-Domestic Rates<\/a> \u2013 make up less than a quarter of total LA funding and less than half of what is received in the Block Grant (and this is before we consider things like Holyrood imposing ring-fencing on Council expenditure, again often to meet centralised election promises.<\/p>\n

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