Why SNP need to stop shirking hard choices over free tuition and prescriptions

Labour has made a string of unpopular decisions with more to come in the Chancellor’s Spring Statement. The SNP needs to realise why, sometimes, such actions are in the national interest

Politics is all about making choices. For example, as Chancellor Rachel Reeves was preparing the Spring Statement, she found herself defending her choice to accept free tickets for a corporate box at a Sabrina Carpenter concert a few weeks ago.

Her explanation – she told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg that she had “security” now so “it’s not as easy as it would have been in the past to just sit in a concert” and these “weren’t tickets that you could pay for” – may satisfy Labour’s most blinkered supporters but I suspect a sizable majority of the general public would take a decidedly dim view.

Her Spring Statement will involve a number of rather more important choices, including bad news for large numbers of that same general public. Free concerts for ministers, unemployment for thousands of civil servants. It’s a bad look. Reeves should have learned the lesson of Labour’s last free gifts scandal but, apparently, did not.

However, unlike the SNP, Labour is at least facing up to hard choices in government.

John Swinney should learn from Keir Starmer's willingness to take unpopular decisions (Picture: Andy Buchanan/WPA pool) | Getty Images

Bold but unpopular decisions

Starmer and co have taken the bold decision to axe NHS England in an attempt to reduce spending on bureaucracy and improve frontline services. They have refused compensation for the Waspi women over the change to pensionable age, and taken hundreds of pounds a year away from pensioners by means-testing their winter fuel payments.

Labour has also cut international aid, a sad but necessary decision in order to increase defence spending prompted by the threat posed by Putin’s Russia and Donald Trump’s shaky commitment to Nato. Pro-Putin rhetoric from Washington – such as American special envoy Steve Witkoff’s recent remark that he “liked” the “super-smart” Russian president and his claim that this blood-soaked tyrant was not a “bad guy” – has helped shift billions of pounds from building a better world to preparing for war.

All of these are controversial decisions that will make Labour unpopular among one section of the population or another, so why on Earth would they do this? Do they not like votes? They are doing it because, sometimes, governments need to take unpopular decisions in the national interest.

SNP’s sacred commitments

This contrasts starkly with the SNP’s track record. As universities move ever closer to the brink of collapse, behaviour in schools becomes increasingly unacceptable and NHS waiting lists grow ever longer, the Scottish Government has largely continued to sit on its hands.

In January, John Swinney admitted there were “crises” within the health service in a speech that suggested he was taking things more seriously. But his comments were met with scepticism by doctors who have grown tired of fine talk from the SNP that is accompanied by a lack of real action.

Free prescriptions remain a near-sacred commitment, as do free tuition fees for Scottish students even though the SNP’s under-funding of universities is a major reason why many are in severe financial trouble.

Public ahead of SNP on free tuition

In this, they appear to be at odds with the Scottish public. According to one recent poll, 48 per cent supported charging university tuition fees based on the ability to pay, with 29 per cent against.

I benefited from free university tuition and it is a ‘good thing’, just like winter fuel payments for all pensioners. However, it must not be a shibboleth that is preserved even as universities teeter on the brink of financial collapse. Free prescriptions are also a good thing but should not be kept at the cost of the ongoing collapse of the NHS.

Politicians need to be willing to respond to changed circumstances, not ideologically wedded to a system that is failing. It might be that savings could be found in other ways to preserve these universal benefits, but unless and until that happens they are prime candidates for change to raise much-needed cash.

No government wants to be unpopular – particularly with a year to go until an election – but sooner or later the SNP will have to confront the hard choices that they have been avoiding. One reason why they have been able to put them off is the Union dividend – the extra public spending that Scotland receives compared to the rest of the UK.

Independence issue looms over all

A significant driving force behind the SNP’s commitment to universal benefits is their goal of demonstrating that Scotland is better and more moral than England and would be even more so if only independence was achieved. But while preserving flagship universal benefits may sound good in theory, the reality is that our public services are crumbling.

The SNP has also been calling on Reeves to introduce a UK-wide version of the Scottish Child Payment. However, they should be wary about such ‘suggestions’ – designed not to be constructive but rather to make a political point.

Westminster might eventually get fed up with receiving such flak from Holyrood and decide that changing the Barnett formula, which provides that extra funding, and cutting the Scottish Government’s block grant would be one way to raise funds to tackle child poverty.

Brave and radical, not cautious and timid

Politicians need to realise and accept that they cannot be popular all the time. Those that try to are prioritising their own grip on power over the national interest. This may work in the short term during a period of crisis but, the longer it goes on, the worse that unaddressed crisis will get.

This is precisely what Scotland has been experiencing over the past few years, starting with the NHS and, more recently, in education. Heaven help our universities and schools if the Scottish Government’s response to their troubles is as ineffective as their efforts to put the health service into “recovery”.

The SNP needs to be brave and radical to fix public services. Instead, fearful of doing anything to damage the cause of independence, they have been excessively cautious. Scotland is already paying the price for that timidity and it’s only going to get higher.