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First Ministers Questions unpicked with Rachel and Dale
The Scotsman
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05/09/2024
Thursday September 05 2024 - First Ministers Questions unpicked with Rachel and Dale
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News
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00:00
Hello and welcome to a special edition of the Scotsman's Politics Show.
00:05
My name's Dale Miller, I'm Deputy Editor at the Scotsman,
00:08
and I'm joined by our political correspondent, Rachel Armory.
00:12
And Rachel, we're here to talk about the first FMQs back after recess.
00:17
It feels like we've been waiting forever to get back into it,
00:20
although politics seemed to rumble throughout the festival season,
00:23
throughout August.
00:25
A lot of chat about what the landscape in terms of spending cuts
00:29
would look like, and we got a good idea of that this week,
00:32
where the cuts were going to fall,
00:34
and then John Swinney set out his program for government yesterday,
00:37
and it seems as though that fed into everything that was discussed
00:41
at FMQs and the attack lines today.
00:44
Yes, unsurprisingly, the program for government,
00:46
which was announced yesterday by the First Minister,
00:49
really dominated First Minister's questions today,
00:51
particularly when it came to questions from Douglas Ross,
00:54
the Scottish Conservative leader.
00:56
He was very keen to go on eradicating child poverty
00:59
and free school meals.
01:01
That's because when we went into the program for government,
01:04
John Swinney said that the priority would be tackling child poverty,
01:07
and yet one of the headline announcements to come out of it
01:10
was that the universal free school meal pledge
01:13
to roll out free school meals to primary 6 to 7 children
01:16
is going to be shelved for the time being
01:18
because there's just not the money for it.
01:20
So that was quite interesting to see that the Conservatives went in on that
01:23
and the Scottish Greens went in on it too.
01:25
Quite a fiery exchange between Douglas Ross and John Swinney.
01:28
Of course, Douglas Ross only had a few FMQs left as Conservative leader,
01:32
so trying to get all of it out at once,
01:34
Swinney's still got the chance with John Swinney.
01:37
Quite interesting as well, the reaction.
01:39
It was quite an angry reaction that he got back from the First Minister as well.
01:42
I did overhear one of the Front Bench Ministers.
01:44
I think it was Shona Robison saying, unbelievable as well,
01:47
that the Conservatives are wanting to question the SNP on child poverty.
01:51
Lorna Slater from the Scottish Greens,
01:53
she also went in on free school meals and child poverty,
01:56
again, accusing the Government of abandoning all Green policy
01:59
as soon as the Greens were out of the room.
02:01
Let's not forget that it was only four months ago
02:03
that the Scottish Greens were part of the SNP Green Government
02:07
and Lorna Slater herself as Government Minister.
02:09
They are now no longer there and she says the SNP
02:13
are getting rid of all the Green policies now that they are no longer there.
02:16
So quite interesting debate there,
02:18
the two different sides of how it's going.
02:21
Rachel, on that, David Bowle, part of our politics team,
02:25
he spoke to Lorna Slater, a head of FMQs,
02:28
and she's pretty crystal clear, you can read that story
02:31
at Scotsman.com as we speak, that the Greens will not be voting
02:35
for the Budget when it comes to December.
02:38
Now, we know that the SNP in the past used the Greens vote as well
02:44
to have the numbers.
02:45
They don't have the numbers without the Greens' support,
02:49
which makes things a little bit sticky, a little bit tricky.
02:52
But do you see the Greens budging at all on their position,
02:57
given what was outlined this week?
03:00
They're still pretty annoyed at how the Bute House agreement ended.
03:03
So I can't see it getting better between now and the Budget
03:06
on 4 December.
03:07
There are plenty of Green policies that have now been either shelved
03:11
or paused or watered down.
03:13
So one being the free school meals, for example,
03:15
free bus travel, particularly free bus travel for asylum seekers,
03:19
the pledge to ban conversion therapy in Scotland.
03:22
All of those have sort of been watered down or paused, basically,
03:26
in this programme for government.
03:28
And also if we look at the Budget for energy and net zero,
03:31
I think it was about £23 million was cut from that department
03:35
on Tuesday, and a further £23 million was also cut
03:38
from active travel projects as well, another two things
03:41
that the Scottish Greens have championed in the past year or so.
03:44
So yes, they're very annoyed at all these things being cut
03:47
and being paused.
03:48
And when it comes to the arithmetic here in Parliament,
03:51
they kind of need the Greens' support here.
03:54
We can presume that Labour and the Conservatives will vote
03:56
against the Budget.
03:58
There's one Alba MSP, but unfortunately that's not enough
04:01
to make a difference on either side.
04:03
So you're then left with the Lib Dems and the Greens.
04:05
If the Greens are not going to vote for the Budget,
04:08
the SNP are then relying solely on the Lib Dems
04:10
to get their Budget through.
04:12
In the past, the Lib Dems have not backed the government
04:14
on their budgetary announcements.
04:16
So it's going to be very interesting to see exactly
04:18
what happens there.
04:20
There might have to be some political to-and-fro-ing
04:22
between all the different parties, between now and the Budget
04:24
at the start of December.
04:26
Horse trading, it's like back to the good old days, Rachel.
04:29
Just on the winter fuel payment, we know the UK government
04:34
has effectively, is means testing it.
04:37
We know that the Scottish Government have had to follow through
04:39
and replicate that, even though seemingly they didn't want
04:42
to take that step.
04:43
Am I right in thinking that came up at FMQs today as well?
04:46
Twice, actually, yes.
04:47
Two different MSPs brought up the winter fuel payments
04:50
when John's money was being questioned today.
04:53
Quite interesting, I think it was Kenneth Gibson
04:55
who brought this up.
04:56
He was questioning why this money has been cut
04:59
from winter fuel payments, and yet a similar amount
05:01
of money has been gone into the Scotland office,
05:04
and he was accusing the new Labour government in Westminster
05:07
of undermining devolution by doing this.
05:09
I'm pretty sure that's not the point.
05:11
What's happened here, there's two different pots of money
05:14
that can't really cross over there, so that's probably
05:16
not what has happened here.
05:18
Quite interesting, because it does play into the SNP's narrative
05:20
of having Westminster undermining their decisions that are being
05:24
made at Holyrood.
05:25
But as you were saying, winter fuel payments are being devolved
05:27
to Scotland this year.
05:29
This is the first time that the Scottish Government
05:30
is in charge of these payments.
05:32
When Labour did announce this earlier in the summer,
05:35
that they were wanting to mean test it because they had
05:37
no money left, the Scottish Government immediately said
05:40
we want to keep it universal, but straight away you can see
05:43
the money just wasn't there for that.
05:45
I think it's a case of both the free school meals
05:48
and the winter fuel payments are both governments not having
05:52
enough cash to go around, and so we're both having
05:54
to make difficult decisions there.
05:56
So quite interesting that both sides are blaming each other
05:59
for each thing, but both are having to make decisions
06:01
when it comes to policies such as this.
06:04
Look, you can read all of our coverage around what was announced
06:07
in the program for government, the shelving of the free school
06:11
meals, including our analysis of what took place,
06:15
as well as our coverage from First Minister's questions today
06:18
and that exclusive interview with Lorna Slater about just how angry
06:22
she and the Greens are about the policy decisions taken
06:26
by the government this week.
06:28
That's all at Scotsman.com.
06:29
Follow us on Facebook, Ext and Instagram, and please go
06:33
and support local journalists and buy a copy of a paper tomorrow
06:36
for all the very latest in Scottish news.
06:39
Rachel, thank you to you and thanks to all our viewers
06:42
for joining us.
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5:46
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