SNP-Green Scottish government unveils its “entrepreneurial”, “pro-business” agenda

By Matt Dobson

The de-facto Scottish SNP-Green coalition government launched their programme for government last week, titled “a fairer green Scotland”. 

Any worker or young person hoping the this would offer some kind of progressive alternative would have had their hopes dashed after listening to SNP Finance Minister Kate Forbes. 

Commenting in the Scottish parliament, Forbes blurted out: “We want to create a pro-prosperity, pro-business and pro-jobs environment, which fosters entrepreneurship and makes Scotland an even more attractive place for investors. 

“I’m in no doubt that an innovative and entrepreneurial private sector is essential to support a wellbeing economy, and is essential to delivering this Programme for Government.”

This kind of pro-big business language is indistinguishable from the Tories and capitalist right wing of the Labour party.

Not surprisingly, the Scottish Green’s election commitment for a £15 an hour minimum wage for care workers appears nowhere in the programme for government. 

In addition, an SNP promise from 2017 that the Scottish government would establish a public energy company has also been dumped.

The SNP minister responsible for Net Zero, Energy and Transport said: “The scope for a public energy company at some point in the future is still there…. the priority is now “not so much the supply of the service”, but instead “the coordination of the action that will be necessary to deliver on the decarbonisation”.

How leaving the hands of energy production, distribution and infrastructure in the hands of the energy giants will aid “decarbonisation” is not explained. 

There are promises for more investment in the NHS, a new national care service, a shorter working week, funding to prevent drug deaths – the highest in Europe – and a transition away from fossil fuels. 

But in the actual detail, it’s clear these policies are limited in the extreme, in many cases window dressing. The promised increases in funding pale in comparison with the last decade of austerity. 

The SNP has promised a “recovery” following the horror of the pandemic. Yet they will do little or nothing to protect working people from the attacks raining down on them from the Tory Westminster government. Cuts to universal credit,  the national insurance hike and the imminent removal of furlough will all have a devastating impact. 

The SNP and Greens offer little in the way of opposition to these assaults. Indeed SNP and Green councillors, along with their Labour and the Tory counterparts, make up the local government employers COSLA.

Thousands of local government workers who have rejected their insulting pay offer are now preparing for national selective industrial action 

It’s never been starker that workers and youth in Scotland need a mass party based on the organised power of the trade unions that fights for the socialist recovery we need.

NHS 

The SNP-Green government government have pledged to increase frontline health spending so that it is £10 billion higher by 2026/27. But this will go nowhere near the resources needed to rebuild an NHS in critical condition. 

Currently there are 100,000 patients on waiting lists for serious procedures. Ambulance waiting times have shot up with 10,000 more 999 calls a month than in the summer of 2020. Huge staff shortages arising from stress, overwork and illness, including Covid, has exposed decades of underfunding and the consequences of Tory, Labour and SNP austerity. 

The 4% pay rise for Scottish NHS workers has all but been eaten up by rising inflation and now the Tory National Insurance hike. 

The much talked about pledge for a ‘National Care Service’ is due to receive a parliamentary bill in 2022. Profiteering private care homes and the decisions to move Covid infected patients from hospital wards into care homes was a major cause of deaths when the pandemic broke out. 

Yet there is nothing from the SNP or Scottish Greens about bringing the sector under democratic public control. Nor any clear proposal for enforcing national pay and terms and conditions, including holiday and sick pay, for one of the most exploited sections of the working class. 

Nor is there any hint of using the considerable income tax powers the Scottish government has to raise funds for health and public services by taking wealth off the 1%. 

What the NHS and the care sector  in Scotland needs is much larger public investment, a reversal of the cuts over the last decade plus new funding to deal with the post pandemic situation. It’s hard pressed staff should get a pay rise of 15% along with all care workers.

Revenue could be raised by abolishing PFI and PPP and cancelling all existing debts. Socialists call for renationalisation of the entire care sector and privatised health services including supply and pharmaceuticals with reintegration back into the health service. 

Other elements of the programme which have made the headlines include the reform of the Gender Recognition Act and funding for services that protect women and girls from violence. 

Socialist Party Scotland fully supports gender self-ID and fully funded resources for violence against women projects, many of whom have seen funding cuts for years under the Scottish government. 

Indyref2 and climate change

On Scottish independence, the programme confirms that indyref2 will be delayed yet further until at least the end of 2023. This is invoking understandable frustration from large sections of the independence movement, particularly the more working-class layers. 

Nowhere does this ‘pro-independence’ government deal with the issue of the Boris Johnson Tory government’s refusal to allow the right to a second poll to take place.

In reality a mass working class movement will be needed to defy the Tories that links the fight for democratic rights to a struggle for the interests of working class and young people. 

In the run up to COP26 there are promises around a zero carbon transition. In effect subsidies to the energy sector to protect jobs and create “green” work  through transition deals. 

The SNP and Scottish Greens are incapable of answering the attempts of the Scottish Tories to whip up fears in working class communities dependent on the oil and gas industries. 

In reality Sturgeon et al would rather compromise with the bosses than introduce a socialist transition, taking polluters into public ownership and placing industries under workers’ control to ensure jobs and wages are protected. 

The only Scottish government policy based on public ownership is that of the railways. But with Scotrail announcing eye watering cuts to staffing and rail lines, it’s clear that capitalist public ownership cannot deliver. Moreover the SNP have shown their hostility to striking RMT workers on Scotrail by attacking them and their union for planning strike action during COP26. 

The timidity and gradualness of the government’s agenda is even revealed by the promise of 110,000 “affordable” homes by the 2030s and the policy of rent control, which has kicked down the road until the end of the parliament, in 2025. 

A mass program of job creation,  based on public works, is needed to deal with the looming crisis of unemployment and insecure housing.

four day weekOne key area of infrastructure could be building the 100,000 council homes that are needed now, retrofitted to meet the needs of green energy. 

Four day week

Another Scottish government policy which has received much publicity is the four day week work trial. Although workers taking part will get a 20% reduction in working hours without loss of pay, in reality this trial, with a tiny £10 million subsidy, is restricted to a few private companies in Scotland. 

Given the colossal levels of overwork, super exploitation, wastage and the mental health epidemic at the same time as underemployment and unemployment that is rising, this is a tokenistic proposal. 

Why couldn’t the Scottish government tax the rich in Scotland to help fund the programme ?  

The Scottish Government would be taken more seriously if they agreed to the PCS trade union’s campaign to apply such a policy to their own staff. 

The SNP say they need the trial to provide information on the broader implications for the economy. This shows they are more interested in the impact on big business that the workers. 

It’s clear that workers want a shorter week, even the IPRR survey says 88% of Scottish workers are in favour of such an arrangement.

The limits of the capitalist system and private ownership of the means of production mean the full  benefits of a shorter working week cannot be realised.

Out of this crisis the capitalists will fight to preserve profits and will not be persuaded by rational arguments even about increased productivity or moral arguments about workers welfare. 

Socialist Party Scotland calls for a maximum 32 hour week without loss of pay across the economy so work can be shared out, jobs created and workers have more time for leisure.

But this has to be linked with socialist nationalisation under democratic workers’ control of the top 100 major companies. 

With control of the main levers of the economy, workers could plan using the latest technology including automation, taking production onto a much higher level providing for the needs of the majority.

In such a society the working week would be reduced even further but with an even higher level of skills and technique. 

The SNP-Green programme for government will not deliver for the working class.

Capitalism is increasingly exposed in every aspect as a rotten outdated system structurally incapable of being ‘fair’ or ‘green’.

Socialist Party Scotland will be stepping up the fight for socialist alternative.