S4M-05549 Local Government Finance (Scotland) Order 2013 [Draft]

The Deputy Presiding Officer (Elaine Smith): Good afternoon. The first item of business is a debate on motion S4M-05549, in the name of John Swinney, on approval of the draft Local Government Finance (Scotland) Order 2013.

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Stewart Stevenson (Banffshire and Buchan Coast) (SNP):

I congratulate the Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Employment and Sustainable Growth and local councils on what has, over the years, been an effective collaboration, despite the variety of political views and objectives held by all the councils and members in the chamber.

Scotland has the lowest number of elected politicians per 100,000 of population in any European country: it has 33.5, while south of the border has about 42 and Greece has about 660. I am certainly not advocating any change one way or the other, but that illustrates that we expect a great deal of our councils and councillors. Most councillors serve without thought of self-interest and work hours that would be hardly contemplatable if one were to look at the minimum wage. We are fortunate—in all political parties—in the broad sweep of the councillors that we have.

Willie Rennie—who is no longer in the chamber—talked about Aberdeen. I noted that he did not choose to talk about Aberdeenshire. Aberdeenshire Council, which is Tory led in partnership with the Lib Dems and an assorted group of independents—the word “group” is hardly appropriate; the phrase “ferrets in a sack” comes closer to it—has had a massive underspend of tens of millions of pounds in consecutive years. That fatally undermines any arguments for increases in resources. More fundamentally, because of that underspend the Liberals and Tories in administration are unnecessarily cutting services in relation to the funding that they have. The removal of wardens from many of our sheltered housing schemes is particularly resented by my constituents.

There are individual councillors who do not rise to the challenge, and I am going to take the opportunity of naming one in my constituency because of his long-running failure to earn his keep. Councillor Alan Buchan is a vice-convener in the council administration. He cannot even find it in his heart to stay with the pack when he is leading a delegation to meet people in the energetica corridor—the most important of our economic environments. It is time that that councillor in particular looked at his own performance and that the council leadership looked at it, too.

Interesting things have happened. We have seen councils agree to maintain teacher numbers in line with pupil numbers, which is entirely welcome.

As in the past, Lewis Macdonald has made reference to funding for different councils. I am slightly surprised that we have not had a reminder about that, so let me do so. Labour, in essence, controls COSLA. It can change the formula, and I encourage Labour to look at doing so.

I want to look at the numbers in the letter that the cabinet secretary has produced that relate to private finance initiative and loan charges. In Glasgow City Council, which has long been run by the Labour Party, such charges account for nearly 10 per cent of the updated service provision, which is quite out of line with any other mainland council. The island councils are in a different position because they have different circumstances. The Labour Party, in particular, needs to look a little closer to home in relation to effective administration.

In September 2012, I joined the Local Government and Regeneration Committee, which has responsibility for local authorities. I very much enjoy being there, and I expect that we will see more support for councils. That committee will work on behalf of councils—and with the Government—as we always do.

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