THE Scottish Greens have set out the "very minimum" the party needs to support the forthcoming SNP Government Budget.
The powersharing deal between the SNP and the Greens at Holyrood ended earlier this year, which means First Minister John Swinney and his government need to find support from at least one of the opposition parties in the Scottish Parliament if the Budget is to pass.
To that end, negotiations between the two parties have taken place in the run up to the Budget, which will be unveiled by Finance Secretary Shona Robison on December 4.
And now, Scottish Greens MSP Ross Greer has said that the “very minimum” the party needs in the Budget is “no repeat of the Council Tax freeze debacle” as well as a “real-terms increase to council funding”.
The party’s finance spokesperson told The National that they were “key issues” for the party that would make agreement on a budget “impossible”.
Greer’s comments came after a motion – tabled by him and fellow Green MSP Gillian Mackay – was passed on Sunday at the party’s conference in Greenock which stipulated that the Greens would seek mechanisms to guarantee that a Scottish Budget they agreed to support would not later be altered by the Scottish Government.
But it was later amended to include a commitment that Green MSPs would vote against the Budget if ministers try to cut the cash provided to councils.
The amendment – brought forward by Green activist Ellie Gomersall and councillor Anthony Carroll – also further insisted that councils should be given new powers to raise additional funds.
“We’ve tried to approach the budget in good faith and constructively. Our proposals are all legally, fiscally deliverable,” Greer said after the vote.
“The SNP might find them politically impossible. That's a choice for them to make.”
The Green MSP added that many of the proposals that the party have made are “not red lines”.
“They're not designed to be a house of cards that would just keep building bigger and bigger and bigger, and for the SNP to pull one of them away and collapse the whole thing.”
But Greer added: “There are certain key issues for us that would make agreement on a budget impossible.
“Another council tax freeze is an obvious example of that. That is, for all intents and purposes, a red line. We generally try not to use the language of red lines, though, because what we're looking for is an overall package of measures of spending, a maintenance of tax policies that delivers the kind of fairer, greener society that we want.”
The Green MSP mentioned, for example, how he declared on Saturday that the party will not back a Budget that allocates any less than £4.7 billion to climate and nature causes.
“What we're not saying is that we need that money to be spent in exactly the same way as it was last year,” he said.
“That's about the overall scale of spending that we know is required to tackle the climate and nature emergency. We need to see a similar scale.
“The money could be spent in different ways. Government is learning all the time.”
Greer added that the “financial crisis” the Scottish Government finds itself in is “largely caused” by Westminster.
“Our job is to put forward proposals that are pretty bold, pretty radical, pretty progressive, but fundamentally are deliverable,” he said.
“Our priority is to lift as many Children out of poverty as we possibly can and to reduce emissions and protect the natural environment to the greatest extent possible.
“How we do that is a discussion that we are very happy to have. It's that overall scale of ambition, on child poverty and on the climate, that will ultimately decide how we vote on this Budget. [And] council spending does both of those things.
“Councils are absolutely key to the kind of policies that lift children out of poverty, whether it's about spending in schools or the fact that we use councils to mitigate Tory and Labour policies like the bedroom tax or the two-child benefit cap. Or the huge amount of work they do to deliver, for example, the active travel programme. And a lot of nature restoration projects that are delivered by and through local councils.
“So, funding for councils is not the end in and of itself. We just recognise that that's essential to deliver our end goals here, which are lifting children out of poverty and protecting the climate and nature.”
