Johann Lamont is 'saying the unsayable' about universal benefits. And the SNP needs to listen

Former Scottish Labour leader Johann Lamont seems like an unlikely prophet for our times. She is perhaps best remembered for her parting shot towards senior UK Labour figures when she resigned. They had, she claimed, treated the Scottish party "like a branch office of London”. It was a line much-repeated by the SNP.

While that may have been a misjudged remark, it perhaps showed a willingness to ‘say the unsayable’ – a quality that too many politicians suppress, if they possess it at all.

Now a member of Reform Scotland’s Commission on School Reform, Lamont still has plenty to say and her views on universal benefits – apparently popular in focus groups and the like – are well worth listening to.

Vacuous, maddening

In an article for The Scotsman, she reeled off a list of reasons why the Scottish Government’s approach to public spending is “as vacuous as it is maddening”. “...we can have baby boxes, with no analysis of their benefits, alongside a reduction in family support for vulnerable mothers and children,” she wrote.

“We can have free tuition for those who make it to university, alongside cuts to further education funding. We can have free bus travel and fewer bus routes in the communities most reliant on public transport. We can have free school meals of poorer nutritional quality alongside the virtual disappearance of support for vulnerable children in their own homes. We can freeze council tax and watch as services falter.”

Why Labour needs to compromise over winter fuel payments for pensioners

Everyone likes to get something for nothing. But ‘free stuff’ has a cost and, as Lamont emphasised, that comes at the expense of something else.

Means-testing

When public services are crumbling and the Scottish Government is having to cut £500 million in spending, ministers need to be brave enough to reconsider prized policies like free tuition fees and free prescriptions for all – both noble ideas which may no longer be affordable – and look at means-testing them instead, as Labour has done with winter fuel payments for pensioners.

Political leaders are usually keen to insist everything is well, or at least as good as it can be. Sometimes, however, they need to hand out bitter medicine – and we need to take it.