Scotsman deputy editor Dale Miller speaks to deputy political editor David Bol
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00:00Hello and welcome to the Scotsman's Daily Video Bulletin for this Tuesday.
00:06My name's Dale Miller.
00:07I'm Deputy Editor of the Scotsman and I'm joined by our Deputy Political Editor, David
00:12Boll.
00:13David, a mouthful for our two titles there, but we got there.
00:17Let's fire away into the front page of today's Scotsman.
00:22And we lead on fixing the economy or leaving the next generation to suffer the effects.
00:29That's the message from Sir Tom Hunter.
00:31Sir Tom has spoken previously about plans that he thinks could help the economy.
00:39He's really doubled down in an exclusive piece written for the Scotsman today.
00:43We feature a report off that from Alistair Grant on the front page.
00:49He is talking about a 15% corporate tax rate, effectively, for certain types of industries
00:56that he thinks can regenerate the economy here.
01:00He does talk about tax quite extensively and his concerns that the current provision around
01:07tax is not encouraging more people to come to Scotland and is not going to as we move
01:13forward.
01:14It's a clear message from the Scottish Government.
01:16There was a response included in our coverage from Kate Forbes.
01:20You can read that full story at Scotsman.com.
01:23And we were also carrying the latest on Israel on the front of the paper today.
01:28David, I would love to say it's not grim news elsewhere in politics, but look, the price
01:34kept going up today, October the 1st, that will be on the minds of a lot of consumers.
01:40But there was a troubling report from the Accounts Commission and it was basically talking
01:45about councils who at the moment, as you reported recently, are looking at what they're doing
01:50around council tax in a few months' time.
01:53They're looking at what services they can cut.
01:55We know Falkirk Council, in particular, has come under great pressure and continues to
02:00and has been looking at things like cutting school hours, actually cutting so there may
02:05be no school on a Friday.
02:07This is all about saving costs and the message from this report was made for dire warning.
02:15Yeah, it's pretty bleak stuff, as you said.
02:20We've heard these warnings for some time that councils are under a lot of financial pressure
02:25for various reasons.
02:27And this report from the Accounts Commission, which is kind of Scotland's spending watchdog,
02:31is basically saying that the transformation that councils have promised and known they've
02:35needed to make is not going fast enough.
02:39A lot of it is down to some of their low-hanging fruit, sort of efficiency costs and things
02:45have all kind of been done in local government.
02:46There's not much more a lot of councils can kind of take out without really affecting
02:51those frontline services, like you said, and we found a warning in the report.
02:56As you mentioned, those sort of cuts that are very unpalatable with the public about
02:59sort of schools and things that people notice and kind of the backlash to that has kind
03:04of forced the councils to rethink it, but it doesn't help them balance the books, which
03:09is ultimately what they need to do.
03:11So there's lots of barriers that the councils are coming up against when they're looking
03:14to balance those books and things are looking pretty bleak.
03:17I mean, overall, I think councils are in Scotland having to cut about almost 600 million from
03:23their budgets next year and the following year that's going up to almost sort of seven
03:27or eight hundred million.
03:29So the picture is pretty bleak and the councils still don't really have an answer over council
03:33tax.
03:34Obviously, there was that controversial freeze last year.
03:38I did a piece for Scotland Sunday a couple of months ago, which was looking at councils
03:42already looking to put up their council tax next year.
03:46We don't know if that freeze will happen.
03:47It's very unlikely it will again, given the state of the Scottish government's own finances.
03:53But at the moment, that's going to be used as quite a big bridge to gap to sort of bridge
03:57that gap of funding, really, because they're going to need more money, essentially, and
04:02there aren't a lot of levers open to councils to bring in more cash.
04:08It was interesting, the Accounts Commission report, David, that talked a lot about the
04:12need to transform what the councils are doing.
04:16But when I read through the report myself, it's difficult to outline a clear pathway
04:21for councils about how to do that without cutting costs.
04:25Well, yeah, I think that is mostly the problem.
04:27There's been talk about transformation in local government for probably a decade at
04:31least, and they've been promised a new funding model from the Scottish government, a new
04:35fiscal framework, which doesn't sound particularly exciting, but it's basically how
04:40they get their money from the Scottish government in the same way the Scottish
04:43government does from Westminster.
04:46And it's basically going to have to take them being a lot efficient and clever with a
04:50small amount of money.
04:53The Scottish government is quite open to these sort of new funding levers like the
04:56tourist tax and things, but that and the workplace parking levy are only going to go so
05:01much. And for some councils, it's not going to work at all for them.
05:05So transformation essentially is code for basically doing more with less, and that is
05:12obviously very difficult when you're providing these frontline services that people
05:17notice and people care about.
05:19David, another area which is obviously net zero and making our homes more efficient as
05:26well, which a lot has been a focus on in recent years, there were some figures out
05:30published that you've written about today on heat pump installations last year being a
05:35record, now 5,000, 5,000 seems a decent amount, number, but when you think about all the
05:41homes across Scotland, that's probably a drop in the ocean, so to speak.
05:46But certainly there's a focus on accelerating this process, and we're probably going to
05:51continue to hear a lot more about technology like heat pumps.
05:55Is that fair to say?
05:57Yeah, so they're on course this year to have a record year of installations, but as you
06:01said, the progress up until now has been pretty bad, so the bar was pretty low to start
06:06with. And yeah, the plan is by sort of 2045, when Scotland is expected to be net zero,
06:13when our sort of contribution to climate change will be ended, for everyone to have a
06:19renewable heating system.
06:20And obviously heat pumps won't work for everyone.
06:23It's some of the sort of off-grid properties and a lot of rural properties, just there'll be
06:27there'll be other methods they'll need to use to get off fossil fuels.
06:31But the Scottish government's legislation is, well, we believe it was in the programme for
06:35government, so it should be upcoming quite soon.
06:38This has been controversial.
06:40It was led by Patrick Harvey when the Greens were still in government, and it was about
06:44that sort of that transformation to renewable heating systems.
06:47And he was very upfront that the Scottish government had been lagging behind like most of
06:51Europe in making this change.
06:54And there are fears about sort of costs, people having to pay thousands for new heating
06:59systems. To be fair to the Scottish government, they do offer like quite good grants
07:02compared to the rest of the UK for that.
07:04But it's still going to cost consumers at a time when there is no extra money for a lot of
07:09households. So we'll have to see and wait if that legislation that comes forward
07:16isn't watered down from when Patrick Harvey was in charge.
07:19We saw Kate Forbes when she came into government, one of the first things she did was
07:22kind of intervene in the sort of wood heaters route that people in rural areas were
07:30concerned about, that there was a ban on new homes being able to install these wood
07:34burners. So it'll be interesting to see whether Patrick Harvey's sort of initial plans,
07:39which was fairly ambitious, and the Climate Change Committee, the sort of body for all
07:47the UK's advisory on net zero, had said that his plan could be a good blueprint for the
07:53rest of the UK. So it'll be interesting to see whether pressure within the SNP and from
07:58consumers will water that down and whether this sort of record number of heat pumps can
08:04just be the sort of springboard for more progress or whether they'll have to take
08:08another look at it.
08:09You can read those stories from David at Scotsman.com if you're looking for any of our
08:14politics coverage, head to the navigation bar, there's a politics tab, you can read about
08:19those stories and more, including what's happening at the Tory conference over the next
08:25couple of days. Please follow us on Facebook X and Instagram and go out and support local
08:31journalism. Buy a copy of The Scotsman tomorrow.
08:33Thanks to you, David.
08:35Thanks, everyone else, for joining us.