The main political party manifestos have now been issued in advance of May’s Scottish parliamentary elections.
Any manifesto watchers out there will be struck by the raft of promises, proposals and commitments which collectively amount to billions of pounds. All of it public money; our money. The SNP manifesto even has £250m set aside from ‘savings’ from a bridge that has yet to be financed or built.
Finding a way through this manifesto maze is something that few people manage (or even want) to do. But how robust are the party costings and calculations? Is any mention of a scheme costing, say £1.5bn, too large for the ordinary member of the public to contemplate? In any event, they will rarely get the chance to see and scrutinise these much talked about, but little seen, documents.
CIPFA has stepped back from the outbreak of manifestos and reflected on the fact that it is only one year since the Scottish government’s chief economic adviser said: '…resources available to fund general public services such as health, education, housing and transport will be reduced.' So less public money was the clear message, but the party manifestos do not seem to reflect this economic reality.
CIPFA has therefore issued a Call to the New Scottish Government (whatever party or parties that happens to be) to remember that the reality of the adverse financial climate is still with us. Paradoxically we think it actually provides a stimulus for change. This would come in the way we design, deliver and fund our public services in Scotland.
To do this we think that a new type of thinking, from both government and citizens is required. Our vision is expressed in three crucial but simple principles First, Scotland’s public services should be planned to achieve social outcomes; second, they should be sustainable; and third, they should be affordable.
But visions have to work in practice, so we have also set out what that would mean. Perhaps most radically, it means scrapping the existing but disparate formulae that provide funding to public services such as health and local government. A new mechanism would be introduced which ensures that funding is allocated in a way that supports integrated public service planning and the achievement of social outcomes. This would lead us away from inputs and from the budget protection culture which inhabits much of our public services.
We would expect greater responsibility from the political parties to test that their manifesto proposals are in fact affordable. But we go further. We think that each manifesto should be independently scrutinised before issue but with the responsibility for costing placed clearly with each party. Later, in parliament, where manifesto pledges become reality, there should then be stringent and transparent parliamentary tests on the affordability of any proposed legislation.
Our sustainable public services of the future would then be designed in a way which moves Scotland away from dependency on universally available public services to more targeted services – the reality of having less money available. This in turn would almost certainly mean that some public services would be available to less people in future. With that would come greater responsibility on the part of the citizen in Scotland.
So our principled path through the manifesto maze would take us on a different route. Public money would not be committed or pledged until it is clear that we can afford it. Are our prospective MSPs listening? Only time will tell.
Don Peebles is policy and technical manager for Cipfa in Scotland
