Scott Macnab: Logic demands less multiple-level bureaucracy but who has the stomach for that fight

The planned creation of national police and fire services has met with widespread concerns in rural parts of the country particularly with regard to the loss of local accountability and fears they may end up with a second-class service.

The SNP Government insists the only real impact will be a streamlined bureaucracy and a dramatic fall in the substantial salaries being paid out to eight chief constables and all their deputies around the country.

But if the overhaul does prove a success for the police and fire service, is there any reason why it should not be extended across Scotland’s wider public sector? Do we really need 14 area health boards and all the sundry specialist boards with the hefty salaries that will be pumped into their varying tiers of management? The current set-up of 32 councils spread around a country of just 5 million was a hangover of the makeshift merger of the old district and regional councils a generation ago. Almost nobody in Scottish public life believes that this would be the ideal set-up if we were starting from scratch.

Any move to break up the cosy silos and power bases that have been built up, in councils particularly, are sure to be met with a backlash. But the SNP is expected to make significant gains in the council elections on 3 May. This may serve to alleviate any resistance the Government would suffer from undertaking a radical overhaul of the public sector – the long awaited “bonfire of the quangos”.

Budgets are continuing to fall across Scotland, with gloomier predictions indicating that public spending won’t get back to pre-recession levels until the middle of the next decade. John Swinney might be tempted by the long-term savings that could be brought about with greater rationalisation. Greater partnership working is already under way, but the case for more than 30 separate education departments and social work departments, at a time of swingeing austerity, is surely becoming increasingly difficult to justify. If nothing else, the hope must be that a cut in the multiple-levels of back- room bureaucracy would free up more resources for teachers in the classroom and social workers on the ground.

The concern is the impact of this creeping centralisation which has been a hallmark of the SNP regime. Everyone welcomes the council tax freeze, but let’s not pretend that has been down to decisions at local level. It’s been imposed by Edinburgh, with some council leaders having called for the freedom to increase it.

At least the current spread of councils and health boards across the country does guarantee a strong element of local accountability and avoids the prospect of these services becoming another arm of government run by ministers’ hand-picked mandarins.

And it may be with the historic campaign for Scottish independence looming large in the years ahead, this is one battle that Alex Salmond can do without.