The Scottish Greens need a new approach to local government

Radical democracy means putting power as close to the people it affects as possible - or better yet, putting it in their hands directly.

That’s one of the four pillars of Green politics, recognised by Green parties across the world.

To deliver it in Scotland though, our party needs to get much, much more specific and grapple with the areas where our position in principle and the outcomes we actually want are two different things.

Scotland has the most centralised and disempowered form of local government of any democratic nation in Europe. The 32 councils we call ‘local government’ aren’t very local and can barely do any governing. 

They’d be more accurately described as regional service delivery bodies, given the huge areas they cover and the lack of ability to do much more than implement Scottish Government policies.

Total reorganisation is required, probably back to a two-tier system of regional and district councils similar to what we had before 1996. 

That kind of big picture, radical reform is something Greens are good at. We’ve got a clear and exciting vision of a very different kind of Scotland.

Being completely honest though, wholesale reorganisation of Scottish local government isn’t on the cards in the near-term. But something does need to change right now and we need to provide an answer to that challenge.

Ahead of next year’s election I’d like to see the Scottish Greens pull together a comprehensive package of specific proposals which would empower the 32 councils we’ve got and bring them closer to the communities they represent.

That wouldn’t be instead of the radical reform we know is necessary. It would go alongside it.

To be clear, this isn’t about winning votes. Most people care far more about whether their schools or social care packages are good enough than they do about whether councillors or MSPs are responsible.

But we know there is a widespread anger out there at the state of public services and, aside from the NHS, the frontline services almost everyone engages with day to day are delivered by local councils.

I want our MSPs to have a clear democratic mandate in the next Parliament to push for an immediate transfer of powers to local government, because we know that is key to improving the quality of services.

This package will probably make for a pretty dry read for anyone outside of Parliament and council chambers, but it is critical that we have a clear plan for Green MSPs to hit the ground running with on day one.

To take one small example, why on Earth do the Scottish Government and Parliament tell councils what rate they can set parking fines at, when enforcement and collection is entirely a matter for councils themselves? 

The same is true of fees for registering locally as a landlord and umpteen other examples of needless centralisation.

It’s not exactly sexy and I won’t be including it in my sixty second pitch on the doorsteps, but this stuff really matters once MSPs and councillors are actually elected. A key part of the job for Green MSPs should be working to disempower ourselves by decentralising as much as we can to our councillor colleagues.

Equally though, as I said at the start, we need to grapple with the situations where our position in principle and the specific outcome we want are mutually exclusive. 

The clearest example of that is in ringfencing, the process whereby the Scottish Government gives councils money that they can only use for a specific purpose i.e. to deliver on a Government policy.

In principle we oppose ringfencing. I’ve been told that our MSPs should oppose it in all instances. That sounds agreeable until you think of what would happen. 

Scotland mitigates the Tories’ (and now Labour’s) cruel ‘Bedroom Tax’ through ringfenced funding for councils to issue discretionary housing payments.

I have no doubt that Tory-led councils would end these payments and bring back the Bedroom Tax if given the chance. And frankly, my in-principle support for local decision making doesn’t stretch far enough to let them. 

So, we need to get specific about the ringfencing we think is genuinely unnecessary and the money we’d unlock right now for councils to spend however they want.

To pick another example, I sometimes struggle to square our support for local discretion on education with the urgent need to tackle teacher workloads. 

Greens would scrap standardised testing completely, but no other party supports that position, so we need to grapple with the realities of the system as it exists. 

That currently includes councils and schools bolting on all sorts of additional reporting requirements to the standardised testing system, drowning already overworked teachers in more bureaucratic work for very, very little gain.

I don’t think it's unreasonable for the Scottish Government, which insists these tests are undertaken, to specify that councils cannot add extra reporting requirements of their own.

Greens are good at policy-making, as our four hundred page policy compendium will attest. 

Quite rightly, that document focuses on how we want Scotland and the world to look. It would be ten times as long if we included every specific tweak and reform we want between now and the full realisation of that vision.

I’m not proposing that. What we need at this point is basically a crowdsourcing exercise, drawing on the knowledge and experience of party members, particularly our councillors and those who work in local government.

As our finance spokesperson and lead budget negotiator I’ve found the contribution of councillors like Kirsten Robb in South Lanarkshire and Jon Molyneux in Glasgow to be incredibly useful during negotiations with the Scottish Government. What I’m proposing now is a more comprehensive form of that kind of exercise, with a view to having a plan of action ready to go before the election.

Radical change and a huge downwards redistribution of power is desperately needed. While keeping our eye on that bigger picture, the Scottish Greens need to have a plan for the here and now, one which will get us closer to the kind of empowered communities and high quality local services we all want to see.

Cover photo used used Creative Commons license, credit to Michael D Beckwith