Fight to defend Highland jobs and services
By Socialist Party Highland
Highland Region faces council cuts of up to £97 million in the coming financial year as a result of the Covid-19 crisis. In a revealing Highland council corporate resources committee meeting, it was stated by Ian Cockburn, SNP group leader on the council, that the Scottish Government will not provide extra resources to help protect services at the council. He sought to pin the blame for austerity on to the Westminster government, stating that:
“(The) Scottish Government only gets pocket money from Westminster and we have already heard they will not pay out (to) local government.”
Councillors voiced concerns that there would have to be a ‘slash and burn’ policy on council services so that the council could meet its statutory obligations.
Moray council area will also be hit hard by the crisis. Moray has been identified as potentially being one of the worst hit regions by the COVID-19 crisis with ten thousand jobs at risk according to the local press.
The situation is exacerbated by debts to the UK government’s Public Works Loan Board amounting to £700 million (Highland Council) and £140 Million (Moray Council).
On this debt alone, Highland council pays out £40 million per annum in interest payments to the UK treasury.
Last year the UK government increased interest rates on the debt by 1%. Much of this is historic debt, which was used to build council houses and infrastructure decades ago. In 2018, 10% of the Highland Council’s budget was used to service loans.
Death by a thousand cuts
The Highlands have faced hundreds of millions of pounds worth of austerity cuts over the past decades and services are already cut to the bone. Education, childcare provision, leisure, parks and the third sector have all been hit. Infrastructure is poorly maintained. Roads across the region are pocked with poorly repaired potholes.
The council has also tried to squeeze additional income from long suffering Highlanders. Council taxes have risen by nearly 5% this financial year alone, on top of the 3% rise last year. Parking charges, waste uplift and other council-provided services have seen price increases.
Moray council have made similar cuts and service charge increases.
These cuts, as well as leading to further service reductions, which will disproportionately hit those most in need in Highland and Moray, are likely to also lead to a jobs cull for council staff.
NHS Highland was already facing a multimillion pound budget deficit in the 2020 financial year. It is likely that this situation will worsen as a result of the current crisis leading to further cuts. In particular there is currently a serious crisis in mental health provision for young people.
The Covid care home crisis in Highland has already been highlighted by Socialist Party Scotland in previous articles. HC-One, which is the largest operator of private care homes in Scotland, was at the centre of a scandal in which many residents tragically died at the company’s Home Farm Facility on Skye.
NHS Highland has had to take over the running of the facility further adding to the financial burden of the crisis.
Other sectors are gearing up to make significant cuts too, blaming the financial pressure of the COVID crisis. Inverness College UHI is looking to save £800,000 which is likely to result in job losses through voluntary redundancy and ‘alternatives to redundancy’ schemes.
Private sector jobs bonfire
In the private sector, the picture isn’t any better. Leisure and tourism, which both Highland and Moray rely heavily upon, have been disproportionately hit by Covid-19 measures.
It has been announced that MacDonald Hotels plans to make up to 1800 hundred staff redundant. Previously we reported that staff at the Coylumbridge Hotel, near Aviemore, which is owned by the massive hotel corporation Britannia Hotels, were sacked. Around 110 people lost their jobs when Urqhuart’s Tour Group and Hart Hotels went under in May.
The Arnold Clark Skoda dealership in Inverness will not re-open after the crisis with the possible loss of up to 30 jobs.
These private sector jobs losses are just the tip of the iceberg, and unemployment across the region is expected to rise dramatically especially when the life support of Government funded furlough is removed later in the year.
No going back to ‘business as usual’
Since the 2008 financial crash the mantra from all northern local authorities is that we have to ‘tighten our belts’. The working class in Highland and Moray has been made to foot the bill for Tory Austerity while the capitalist class has been allowed to escape basically scot free.
Council tax and service charge increases and public sector cuts represent a financial attack on the Highland and Moray workers amounting to hundreds of millions of pounds. Yet the situation for the rich in Scotland couldn’t be better. The fact that here are 12 billionaires in Scotland, worth a combined £21.821bn, is indicative of gross and rampant wealth inequality.
Yet the claims of the SNP councillor Ian Cockburn, above, that the SNP can do nothing to prevent the cuts in our regions because it is merely given pocket money by Westminster doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.
Since the pandemic began Holyrood have held back £155 million in increased Barnett Formula consequential funding, while pressurising councils to use up reserves.
Furthermore, we have called, time and again, for councils and the SNP government in Holyrood to set legal ‘no cuts’ budgets. The SNP government at Holyrood and councillors in Highland and Moray should defy Tory austerity and should instead set budgets which protect jobs and services and meet the needs of our communities.
It’s vital that maximum unity is built around a fighting no-cuts strategy. That means not accepting the argument that councillors and MSPs have no power to defy the cuts. They do.
Legal no-cuts budgets could have a huge impact. Even one or two councils that were prepared to set no-cuts budgets by using their already existing powers would have a decisive effect.
There is no basis for the argument that councillors have no choice other than to vote for cuts. There is not even the excuse, sometimes falsely used by cuts politicians, that councillors or MSPs would face jail, fines or personal sequestration for setting no-cuts budgets.
Join the fightback
It is not the legal consequences of setting No cuts budgets, but a lack of political will from politicians of all mainstream parties that is the problem.
Therefore, we are now calling for the establishment of a broad, Highland and Moray-wide campaign, based on trade unions, socialist groups and community campaigners to defy all cuts in order to defend our vital public services and protect jobs.
Scotland and the UK as a whole, despite the current pandemic, are very rich countries with individuals and corporations such as Amazon controlling largely untaxed multi-billion pound hoards.
It is completely unfair, and unjustifiable, that the burden of the current crisis, like all previous crises of capitalism, will be shouldered by the poor and working class in Scotland, including the North of Scotland, in other words, by those least able to cope with the burden.
Socialist Party Scotland in Highland and Moray are campaigning for:
- Highland and Moray Councils to use all available powers to set legal no-cuts budgets and to appeal to trade unions and anti-cuts campaigners to support them by building region wide campaigns to fight for all money stolen from their budget by UK and Scottish Government austerity to be returned
- The UK and Scottish governments to provide any and all additional funding owed to Highland and Moray Councils, NHS Highland and NHS Grampian as a result of Barnett Consequentials
- The care sector in the Highlands and across Scotland to be taken into public ownership under key worker control
- Full funding for Higher education, to ensure all jobs, research and courses are protected
- The immediate forgiveness of all historic Public Works Loan Board debt in order to assist in the sustainability of the local authorities and public services
- The protection of all jobs in the public and private sectors in Highland and Moray. Trade unions must lead the struggle to defend workers jobs and incomes
If you, your trade union, organisation or campaign group would like to be involved in the fight back against cuts or austerity in the Highlands please get in touch at:
