By Keith Aitken in Edinburgh | 6 January 2012
Scottish local authorities with the highest unemployment rates face some of the toughest spending cuts, the Labour Party claimed today.
Shadow local government secretary Sarah Boyack said analysis by the party showed that North Ayrshire, West Dunbartonshire, Glasgow and North Lanarkshire would be among those hardest hit. These areas ‘have some of the highest levels of youth unemployment in the whole of Britain, never mind Scotland’, she said.On top of this, ‘there have been 13,000 job losses in local government in the last year, many of which are teachers, and 2012 looks set to be the hardest yet’, she added.
Labour argues that Finance Secretary John Swinney’s Budget means local authority revenue spending will be cut in real terms by £344.2m in the coming year, and by a total of more than £700m over the next three years.
Boyack’s figures were reached by setting spending cuts for each of Scotland’s 32 local authorities against the number of people claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance in each area.
North Ayrshire, which has the highest claimant rate at 6.2%, faces a £2.5m cut over the three years to 2014/15. The equivalent national JSA claimant rates are 4% for Scotland and 3.9% for the UK as a whole. Other Scottish councils highlighted are: West Dunbartonshire, with a 6.1% rate and cuts of £4.5m; Glasgow, 5.8% and £25m; and North Lanarkshire, 5.3% and £5m.
Boyack said: ‘Everyone understands that times are tight, but John Swinney chose to make big cuts to councils in the good years and that is coming back to bite him. With such significant cuts to local budgets there is a real risk that we will see a rise in poverty and a slowing down of local economies.’
Gordon Matheson, council leader in Glasgow – one of just two Labour-controlled Scottish councils – said it would be ‘a real struggle’ to reconcile citizens’ priorities with balancing the council budget.
Meanwhile, the new Scottish Conservative leader, Ruth Davidson, has announced ‘a wholesale review’ of her party’s policies in Scotland. In her first major speech since succeeding Annabel Goldie in November, Davidson insisted: ‘Nothing will be off the table for discussion; there will be no “no go areas”.’
Her pledge follows a bruising leadership contest, in which her principal rival, former deputy leader Murdo Fraser, argued that the Tory brand was now so toxic in Scotland that an entirely new party needed to be created.
