Cuts analysis: Rev Ian Galloway, Church of Scotland

Published on Friday 15 October 2010 22:05

IT IS in crisis moments that we learn most about who we are, individually and collectively. The spending review, dealing - as is argued - with a crisis, will be an opportunity to step back and ask some fundamental questions about how we see the collective wealth we call tax and how we understand our relationship both with it and with each other. The spending review will be about numbers but it will tell us something far deeper about where our society is being led.

In recent decades there has been a move towards our taxes being seen firstly as a burden and secondly as something which is taken from us for which we do not get a tangible return. Tax is resented because we do not see the outcome in the same way as we do when we go to the shop to buy a pint of milk or a new TV. This is, I suppose, a logical extension of individualism and consumerism, but I do not think it helps as a world view for the decisions we face about public spending.

Tax was once how rulers funded wars. Perhaps if we had not been at war recently we might not have had such a difficult set of challenges ahead. Certainly, if we chose not to create new weapons of mass destruction ourselves then the decisions we face would be very different.

Our nation comprises people who are bound up together in care. The tax system is the means by which we, as a nation, pool our resources to support the most vulnerable members of our society and ensure that everyone has access to adequate resources to live a dignified and healthy life. It is the neighbour and the stranger depending on each other and being better for it.

Dependency is not a sin. Interdependency is a fact of life, for us all; we depend on each other, rich and poor, disabled or able-bodied. Perpetuating the myth that only those in receipt of benefits are dependent - and using that as a basis for public spending policy whilst ignoring the capacity of the rich to help because tax is seen as a burden - is divisive and undermines the social cohesion which the government seeks to foster. Poverty is not a consequence of dependency but the way out of poverty will require us to allow some to depend on others for a time. Tax is an expression of our common humanity. It is how we make social justice a reality.

That is how we need to read the numbers that will be at the core of spending review. Not "will we win" but "how will those who are not winners be helped". Not "what will those who have need to give up" but "what will those in need have to help them".

The 2001 General Assembly of the Church of Scotland agreed that: "priority for the poorest and most marginalised is the gospel imperative facing the whole Church", and it has invested heavily in 58 priority area parishes hit by deprivation.In 2010, the Assembly agreed a seven-year Priority Areas Action Plan, reaffirming our commitment to the transformation of the poorest communities in Scotland.

When the Chancellor sits down and the spending review is laid out, I want, beyond the numbers, to be able to say I see the same bias to the poor in the choices those numbers will speak of.

Then I will know we are the nation I want us to be and we will come through the crisis in hope.

• The Rev Ian Galloway is Convener of the Church of Scotland's Church and Society Council