Brian Wilson: SNP should heed Lamont’s lament

THE mismatch between the Nats’ rhetoric on ‘universalism’ and the reality of how it is funded is blatant, writes Brian Wilson

Facts, as we say in the guid Scots tongue, are chiels that winna’ ding. So let’s start with three random, non-dinging chiels to demonstrate why Johann Lamont was 100 per cent right to kick off a debate about how public services are funded, and why most of the criticism she has received is nothing more than self-interest wrapped up in a Saltire.

Chiel number one: The SNP have just cut bursaries to students from the least well-off families in Scotland by 26.5 per cent – from £3,500 a year to £2,640. You may not have read this fact because they simply implemented it without announcing it. The propaganda wing of the Scottish Government, which formerly behaved under civil service guidelines, no longer deals in inconvenient news.

Chiel number two: Prior to the council tax freeze, 500,000 households in Scotland paid little or no council tax due to the virtuous application of means-testing. These people have not derived any benefit from the council tax freeze but now have to pay charges for all sorts of services as councils desperately try to make ends meet. Meanwhile, those who live in the most valuable houses have gained most. They tend to include the chattering classes who now proclaim “universalism” to be an indelible progressive principle. It is no such thing.

Chiel number three: Over the next 20 years, it is projected that the over-65 population in Scotland will rise by 50 per cent, with an even bigger increase among over-85s. The “free personal care” commitment is already creaking at the seams and money is being shuffled from one budget to another in order to maintain the political facade of meeting it. And, incidentally, “free personal care” already entails means-testing.

Put these three together and certain statements of the obvious emerge, principally that it is hypocritical and ridiculous to put individual policies of “universalism’ on a pedestal and define them as untouchable while the reality is that other equally, or more, important aspects of social provision are being attacked in order to pay for them. That is exactly what is happening in Scotland at present, and thank heaven that a politician of standing has had the courage to say so.

In response, Nicola Sturgeon has cackled that by setting up a review, Johann Lamont is “mimicking the Tories” and establishing a “cuts commission”. It saddens me that this is the intellectual level at which much of what passes for political debate in Scotland now operates. Put the words “Tory” and “cuts” into the same sound-bite and the need for further discussion is averted. Well, not this time, for the chiels do not ding and the mismatch between rhetoric and reality is blatant.

Anyway, I would have thought that if one was going in search of a caricature Tory policy, it would be difficult to find a better example than the cut in student bursaries. They only go to students who come from households with an income of under £34,000, with the maximum awards to those on under £17,000. In other words, they have been preserved until now as a crucial measure in encouraging the least well-off students, who are so cruelly under-represented in higher education, to believe that it is possible.

Now the SNP have inflicted a 25.6 per cent cut on these youngsters while telling them that they can borrow more (which is not funded via Holyrood). Yet the supposed rationale of “free” higher education is that even the wealthiest families might be deterred from sending their children to university if this involved paying tuition fees. It is a classic example of double-standards and why “universalism” is a joke in poor taste with the least well-off paying for the privileges of those who already have most. It is indeed Tartan Toryism.

But let us get back to Nicola Sturgeon and her “cuts commission” jibe. Just two years ago, the Nationalist administration set up a Commission on the Future of Public Services in Scotland under the chairmanship of Campbell Christie. Was this a “cuts commission”? On the contrary, it produced an extremely intelligent and thought-provoking report which rose far above Ms Sturgeon’s level of playground politics. I doubt if she has read it.

The Christie report’s basic premise was that a vast proportion of public expenditure in Scotland would be avoidable if money was invested in preventative policies and early intervention. They did not then shirk the hard questions about how such a transition of priorities would be funded. The report stated: “Contentious issues such as the continuation of universal entitlements must be considered openly and transparently, rather than in the current polarised terms.” And that is exactly the process that Johann Lamont has now initiated.

I wonder if Nicola Sturgeon would have been so brave in telling Campbell Christie, if he was still alive, that his reasoned call for a debate on the priority attached to universal entitlements was nothing more than “mimicking the Tories” or setting up a “cuts commission”? I wonder if she has visited Stewart Sutherland, the architect of “free personal care”, to tell him that he is now a Tory pariah because he has called into question the sustainability of the “universal” commitment that he fathered?

And I wonder if she has assailed Crawford Beveridge, a long-term nationalist, as a Tory in disguise for his own conclusion which was, in case she hasn’t read it: “The principle of universality in many of our public services is commendable but simply may no longer be affordable. A debate needs to be had on whether those who can afford to pay might be invited to do so, thus allowing better targeting of those in most need.”

Compare and contrast that measured statement with some of the responses to Johann Lamont’s initiation of precisely that debate. It would have been nice over the past week if some of the Nationalists who participated in the formulation of these conclusions had spoken up in support of them. For example, the Christie Commission had Martin Sime of SCVO as an “expert adviser” while the membership included Jim McColl and Ruth Wishart.

The news might not have reached Monaco, but Johann Lamont’s speech has been widely heard and discussed within Scotland. In the sad absence of Campbell Christie, one might expect his co-authors to risk political displeasure by defending the honour of his conclusions. In the months and years ahead, it will become increasingly apparent that choices have to be made about how public money is spent in order to deliver a fairer and better Scotland.

In one speech, Johann Lamont has given herself the space to come up with alternatives based on principles of equal opportunity and social justice. By locking themselves so belligerently into the status quo, the Nationalists have made a choice to which every cut they inflict will now be attributable.