The Scotsman Bulletin Tuesday October 08 2024 #Greens

The Scotsman

Transcript

00:00Hello and welcome to the Scotsman's daily video bulletin for this Tuesday.

00:04My name's Dale Miller.

00:05I'm Deputy Editor of the Scotsman and I'm joined by our Deputy Political Editor, David

00:11Boll.

00:12David, we'll throw over to you very shortly.

00:16We've got a wet, windy and very autumn day outside, but political season and political

00:23stories are thick and fast, as they always are.

00:28We'll look at the front page of the Scotsman firstly today.

00:31David, we splashed on one of your stories, which is the Greens hinting that tax rises

00:36may see them back the budget.

00:38They were referring to potential measures involving business, but they also want to

00:44see an air passenger duty and a tax within that effectively on private jets.

00:51I know they were picking out Donald Trump's visits and how much money could have been

00:55made if Trump was charged every time he flew into Scotland on private jets and just where

01:01that extra money could go towards at a time when the Scottish government is feeling the

01:06pinch and having to look at potentially more spending cuts for their budget come December.

01:11David, there's another story on the front page there as well from yourself.

01:15We'll get around to that firstly.

01:17I want to talk through this Greens stuff.

01:20There's a motion being debated on Wednesday tomorrow at Holyrood and the Greens are going

01:26to try and push forward their suggestions, I guess, of what they're looking for out of

01:30the budget process.

01:31How important is that?

01:33Yeah, I mean, these Holyrood motions are quite symbolic rather than binding, but it gives

01:39a good indication of where the Greens are in terms of the budget.

01:43John Swinney doesn't have a lot of options to get his budget through after, obviously,

01:47the Bute House agreement ended that gave the Scottish government a majority basically to

01:51get their budget passed.

01:53Worth saying, the Greens have supported the Scottish government budget as an opposition

01:58party before, but we've seen a lot of hostility from the Greens towards the SNP, particularly

02:03under John Swinney, warning it has kind of moved away from sort of their climate ambitions

02:08and some of the anti-poverty measures that have been scaled back.

02:11So it was a bit of a shock yesterday the Greens came out and said, like, we are ready to

02:16cooperate with you again, but we have this list of demands.

02:19And the motion that will be put forward tomorrow is a few sort of tax incentives, as you

02:24mentioned, sort of reviewing sort of business rates relief, having sort of bigger firms

02:29pay a bit more, and that air departure tax and private jet duty you mentioned.

02:37So these are some of the key things that the Greens are kind of asking for, and they'll

02:41put them forward as priorities to see what support they have at Holyrood.

02:45But it's really about the Greens setting out their demands to get this budget passed.

02:50So it's interesting because John Swinney is under a bit of internal pressure, there's

02:54some within his party that don't like the Greens, they've been public about that.

02:58We know Fergus Ewing, but there's others within SNP ranks that were never fans of the

03:03relationship. So if they were to not give in to, but if they were to support some of

03:10the Greens measures to get their back in the budget, it would create conflict.

03:13But let's put that to one side.

03:15If it's not the Greens, where do the votes actually come from to get the budget?

03:20Yeah, so he needs an opposition party to back him.

03:24If Ash Reagan backs him, it's not enough.

03:26He needs sort of two votes, basically, to get his budget over the line.

03:29So if you can't find a way to agree something with the Greens, it's pretty impossible

03:36that Labour or the Tories would back them.

03:39And the only other party then is the Lib Dems.

03:42And they have in the past managed to get a couple of their MSPs to abstain by being sort

03:49of offered local things.

03:51There was a ferries funding that was put forward for some of the sort of very rural

03:56areas and a couple of the Lib Dems kind of abstained and it was enough to let the budget

04:00pass. So we could see a repeat of that.

04:02They're really the only other party that is going to kind of prop up the SNP's budget.

04:08But if we look to the next election, the Lib Dems, who had a very good general election,

04:14but the next election, there'll be some seats where they'll be battling with the SNP for

04:18some of the constituencies, particularly the Highlands.

04:21And they did particularly well in the Highlands in the general election.

04:24And I'm pretty sure they'll be targeting quite a few SNP seats up there.

04:28So they wouldn't want to give the impression they were kind of in the pocket of the SNP.

04:31So that avenue really isn't that simple either.

04:35And without that, then we're looking at this sort of snap election that's been sort of

04:39hanging over us. So it's up to John Swinney to get either the Greens or Lib Dems to pass

04:44his budget.

04:45It does feel like there's a fair bit of power in the call to the Greens and the Lib Dems

04:49at the moment. So it will be one to watch over coming weeks.

04:52And that's why it's on the front page of the Scotsman today.

04:55Council tax reform, David, you've written in the past couple of months, sort of a bit

05:00of a warning about how much council tax may go up across a couple of key areas.

05:04It's early days around that.

05:06It looks like a freeze again is highly unlikely, given where the finances are at.

05:11But you've found there's a key committee around council tax that hasn't met since John

05:16Swinney became first minister.

05:18Yeah, so this was set up in 2022, which was supposed to investigate and push forward

05:24really the plans that the SNP promised back in 2007 to reform council tax.

05:29And this is supposed to look at sort of short term measures about how they could tweak it

05:33maybe to make it a bit fairer and a longer term, more sustainable system.

05:37And it just hasn't met since the change in government.

05:41And Katie Hagman from COSLA basically said this was due to the change in government.

05:46And it just hasn't really been dealt with a lot of urgency.

05:50So it's a bit worrying that two years into this group meeting, there aren't even any

05:56proposals ready. So the SNP have struggled.

05:59Obviously, it's not that simple about overhauling how councils are funded.

06:04There's a lack of money, essentially.

06:06And if you overhaul council tax to give councils more funding, that's basically

06:11probably going to be people probably from on higher incomes or in bigger houses paying

06:15more. So there's a lot of balance to do here.

06:18But the SNP, it doesn't help itself by not having these meetings and at least showing

06:25willing that it's looking to change.

06:27As I said, it's almost two years since this group was set up and we're not in a

06:31position where there's any sort of proposals.

06:33And it wasn't even mentioned in this programme for government, anything about council

06:37tax. You said that the freeze last year probably won't happen again.

06:41I can't see the money being there.

06:43But councils are already having to plan to hike their council tax quite significantly

06:48just to balance the books.

06:51And we'll find out what the council tax policy is as we go into that budget in

06:55December. Just lastly, David, this Friday, there's actually going to be a big meeting.

07:03It'll be the first of its kind taking place here in Scotland.

07:06Can you give us some details?

07:07Yeah, so this is Keir Starmer's first meeting of his council and regions.

07:12It was one of his kind of key devolution pledges, which was to have sort of the First

07:17Minister of Scotland, Wales and the Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, as well

07:22as some of those regional mayors that are quite high profile in England.

07:26Convene and to talk through ways of which they can work better.

07:30This one is the first one.

07:31It's going to take place in Edinburgh.

07:33It's going to focus very much on sort of economic growth, which seems to be a priority for

07:38every government.

07:39So it'd be interesting to see what comes out of that.

07:42Another quite interesting part of this is that Sue Gray, who obviously stepped down or

07:47left as Keir Starmer's Chief of Staff, her new job is to be heavily involved in this.

07:52So be interested to see if she plays a high profile role in any of the discussions or

07:56whether she just kind of sits back and tries to take the attention off her.

08:01She'll only have about a week to come up to speed before the meeting, David, so not a

08:06lot of prep time. We'll say it will be an interesting one to watch this week.

08:10No doubt there will be plenty of chat about it.

08:13You can follow all the latest on the politics front at Scotsman.com.

08:17You'll find both of David's stories that we've discussed there.

08:20If you ever want to get anything on politics, you can find a special tab in the

08:25navigation bar on the homepage.

08:27Follow us on Facebook and Instagram and please go out and buy a copy of the paper

08:32tomorrow. Thanks, David, and thanks, everyone, for joining us.

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