The Scotsman Bulletin Tuesday October 01 2024 #Politics

The Scotsman

Scotsman deputy editor Dale Miller speaks to deputy political editor David Bol

Transcript

00:00Hello and welcome to the Scotsman's Daily Video Bulletin for this Tuesday.

00:06My name's Dale Miller.

00:07I'm Deputy Editor of the Scotsman and I'm joined by our Deputy Political Editor, David

00:12Boll.

00:13David, a mouthful for our two titles there, but we got there.

00:17Let's fire away into the front page of today's Scotsman.

00:22And we lead on fixing the economy or leaving the next generation to suffer the effects.

00:29That's the message from Sir Tom Hunter.

00:31Sir Tom has spoken previously about plans that he thinks could help the economy.

00:39He's really doubled down in an exclusive piece written for the Scotsman today.

00:43We feature a report off that from Alistair Grant on the front page.

00:49He is talking about a 15% corporate tax rate, effectively, for certain types of industries

00:56that he thinks can regenerate the economy here.

01:00He does talk about tax quite extensively and his concerns that the current provision around

01:07tax is not encouraging more people to come to Scotland and is not going to as we move

01:13forward.

01:14It's a clear message from the Scottish Government.

01:16There was a response included in our coverage from Kate Forbes.

01:20You can read that full story at Scotsman.com.

01:23And we were also carrying the latest on Israel on the front of the paper today.

01:28David, I would love to say it's not grim news elsewhere in politics, but look, the price

01:34kept going up today, October the 1st, that will be on the minds of a lot of consumers.

01:40But there was a troubling report from the Accounts Commission and it was basically talking

01:45about councils who at the moment, as you reported recently, are looking at what they're doing

01:50around council tax in a few months' time.

01:53They're looking at what services they can cut.

01:55We know Falkirk Council, in particular, has come under great pressure and continues to

02:00and has been looking at things like cutting school hours, actually cutting so there may

02:05be no school on a Friday.

02:07This is all about saving costs and the message from this report was made for dire warning.

02:15Yeah, it's pretty bleak stuff, as you said.

02:20We've heard these warnings for some time that councils are under a lot of financial pressure

02:25for various reasons.

02:27And this report from the Accounts Commission, which is kind of Scotland's spending watchdog,

02:31is basically saying that the transformation that councils have promised and known they've

02:35needed to make is not going fast enough.

02:39A lot of it is down to some of their low-hanging fruit, sort of efficiency costs and things

02:45have all kind of been done in local government.

02:46There's not much more a lot of councils can kind of take out without really affecting

02:51those frontline services, like you said, and we found a warning in the report.

02:56As you mentioned, those sort of cuts that are very unpalatable with the public about

02:59sort of schools and things that people notice and kind of the backlash to that has kind

03:04of forced the councils to rethink it, but it doesn't help them balance the books, which

03:09is ultimately what they need to do.

03:11So there's lots of barriers that the councils are coming up against when they're looking

03:14to balance those books and things are looking pretty bleak.

03:17I mean, overall, I think councils are in Scotland having to cut about almost 600 million from

03:23their budgets next year and the following year that's going up to almost sort of seven

03:27or eight hundred million.

03:29So the picture is pretty bleak and the councils still don't really have an answer over council

03:33tax.

03:34Obviously, there was that controversial freeze last year.

03:38I did a piece for Scotland Sunday a couple of months ago, which was looking at councils

03:42already looking to put up their council tax next year.

03:46We don't know if that freeze will happen.

03:47It's very unlikely it will again, given the state of the Scottish government's own finances.

03:53But at the moment, that's going to be used as quite a big bridge to gap to sort of bridge

03:57that gap of funding, really, because they're going to need more money, essentially, and

04:02there aren't a lot of levers open to councils to bring in more cash.

04:08It was interesting, the Accounts Commission report, David, that talked a lot about the

04:12need to transform what the councils are doing.

04:16But when I read through the report myself, it's difficult to outline a clear pathway

04:21for councils about how to do that without cutting costs.

04:25Well, yeah, I think that is mostly the problem.

04:27There's been talk about transformation in local government for probably a decade at

04:31least, and they've been promised a new funding model from the Scottish government, a new

04:35fiscal framework, which doesn't sound particularly exciting, but it's basically how

04:40they get their money from the Scottish government in the same way the Scottish

04:43government does from Westminster.

04:46And it's basically going to have to take them being a lot efficient and clever with a

04:50small amount of money.

04:53The Scottish government is quite open to these sort of new funding levers like the

04:56tourist tax and things, but that and the workplace parking levy are only going to go so

05:01much. And for some councils, it's not going to work at all for them.

05:05So transformation essentially is code for basically doing more with less, and that is

05:12obviously very difficult when you're providing these frontline services that people

05:17notice and people care about.

05:19David, another area which is obviously net zero and making our homes more efficient as

05:26well, which a lot has been a focus on in recent years, there were some figures out

05:30published that you've written about today on heat pump installations last year being a

05:35record, now 5,000, 5,000 seems a decent amount, number, but when you think about all the

05:41homes across Scotland, that's probably a drop in the ocean, so to speak.

05:46But certainly there's a focus on accelerating this process, and we're probably going to

05:51continue to hear a lot more about technology like heat pumps.

05:55Is that fair to say?

05:57Yeah, so they're on course this year to have a record year of installations, but as you

06:01said, the progress up until now has been pretty bad, so the bar was pretty low to start

06:06with. And yeah, the plan is by sort of 2045, when Scotland is expected to be net zero,

06:13when our sort of contribution to climate change will be ended, for everyone to have a

06:19renewable heating system.

06:20And obviously heat pumps won't work for everyone.

06:23It's some of the sort of off-grid properties and a lot of rural properties, just there'll be

06:27there'll be other methods they'll need to use to get off fossil fuels.

06:31But the Scottish government's legislation is, well, we believe it was in the programme for

06:35government, so it should be upcoming quite soon.

06:38This has been controversial.

06:40It was led by Patrick Harvey when the Greens were still in government, and it was about

06:44that sort of that transformation to renewable heating systems.

06:47And he was very upfront that the Scottish government had been lagging behind like most of

06:51Europe in making this change.

06:54And there are fears about sort of costs, people having to pay thousands for new heating

06:59systems. To be fair to the Scottish government, they do offer like quite good grants

07:02compared to the rest of the UK for that.

07:04But it's still going to cost consumers at a time when there is no extra money for a lot of

07:09households. So we'll have to see and wait if that legislation that comes forward

07:16isn't watered down from when Patrick Harvey was in charge.

07:19We saw Kate Forbes when she came into government, one of the first things she did was

07:22kind of intervene in the sort of wood heaters route that people in rural areas were

07:30concerned about, that there was a ban on new homes being able to install these wood

07:34burners. So it'll be interesting to see whether Patrick Harvey's sort of initial plans,

07:39which was fairly ambitious, and the Climate Change Committee, the sort of body for all

07:47the UK's advisory on net zero, had said that his plan could be a good blueprint for the

07:53rest of the UK. So it'll be interesting to see whether pressure within the SNP and from

07:58consumers will water that down and whether this sort of record number of heat pumps can

08:04just be the sort of springboard for more progress or whether they'll have to take

08:08another look at it.

08:09You can read those stories from David at Scotsman.com if you're looking for any of our

08:14politics coverage, head to the navigation bar, there's a politics tab, you can read about

08:19those stories and more, including what's happening at the Tory conference over the next

08:25couple of days. Please follow us on Facebook X and Instagram and go out and support local

08:31journalism. Buy a copy of The Scotsman tomorrow.

08:33Thanks to you, David.

08:35Thanks, everyone else, for joining us.

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