Analysis: The Programme for Government

Watching Nicola Sturgeon read out her plans for the coming parliamentary year, the contrast with the Queen’s Speech – the UK Government equivalent – was stark.

The Scottish Parliament has none of the pomp or ceremony associated with Westminster’s set piece events. There is none of the gold or the trappings of tradition. The two buildings themselves could hardly be more different.

But like the Queen’s Speech, Sturgeon’s was long and technical – a shopping list, containing policy plan after policy plan. MSPs listened quietly, or leafed through the details of the speech, as the FM outlined her programme.

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There would be eight new pieces of legislation. These included the Abusive Behaviour and Sexual Harm Bill, aimed at modernising criminal law to better reflect the nature of domestic abuse, the Scottish Fiscal Commission Bill, which will give the commission power to scrutinise Scottish Government fiscal projections, and the Scottish Elections (dates) Bill, making the next term a five-year one, so the Scottish Parliament and UK Government elections do not clash.

Parliament also heard plans for a Social Security Bill – arriving in the first year of the post-2016 parliament – which will allow Scotland to repeal the ‘bedroom tax’ and make delivery of Universal Credit more flexible.

In many ways it was a continuation of what had come before. Sturgeon talked about inequality – as she had in her first speech as the new leader of her party – while outlining what she called a “vision for the next decade”. The phrase showed a certain confidence, given there will be a Scottish parliamentary election in May.

The need to combat inequality formed the spine of the FM’s rhetoric. And many of the policies – action on rent control and the decision to scrap fees for employment tribunals – centred on the fight against austerity.

Still though, if this was Sturgeon’s chance to show she could govern for the “next decade”, it was the opposition’s chance to show how they intend to stop her.

And while the protocol involved may have been quite different to that of the Queen’s Speech, there was just as much controversy.

Much of the build-up had focused on educational attainment, following results from the 2014 Scottish Survey of Literacy and Numeracy, released in April, showing performance in reading had dropped across primary schools between 2012 and 2014, as well as in the second year of secondary school. 

Speaking beforehand, new Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale said: “Today the SNP Government has a chance to change the lives of hundreds of thousands of Scottish children. They should grasp it.

“Children who started high school this week have spent every year of their time at school under an SNP Government. What have we seen for it? 

“We see a 12 per cent attainment gap in reading between the rich and the poor, a 21 per cent gap in writing and a 24 per cent gap in numeracy. Almost half of the poorest kids leaving primary school are unable to write properly or to count properly.   

“Scotland can be better than that. By investing in these kids we are investing in the country’s most powerful and potent natural resource. We aren’t just cutting inequality but we are giving our future workforce the skills they need to make Scotland a fairer and more prosperous nation for the years that lie ahead.” 

Inequality in education has not gone away. Sturgeon, we were told, would finally have to confront it.

The SNP’s reaction was to promise new national standardised assessments for pupils in primaries 1, 4 and 7, and in the third year of secondary school, aimed at providing more information on the progress – or lack of progress – being made. 

Sturgeon said: “The new assessments will introduce greater consistency to Curriculum for Excellence. They will provide reliable evidence of a child’s performance or progress, but they will not be the sole measurement. This is not about narrowing the curriculum or forcing teachers to teach to a test. It is not a return to the national testing of old. The assessments will inform, not replace, teacher judgment. They will provide robust and consistent evidence to help teachers judge whether a child is achieving the required level of Curriculum for Excellence.”

Forestalling criticism, the FM continued: “I have no desire to see crude league tables that distort rather than enhance our understanding of children’s attainment and performance, but I am determined that we make available much more information about performance in primary and lower secondary school.

“Parents need meaningful information about the progress of their children. Teachers need to know which pupils are doing well and which ones need more support; governments – local and national – need to have reliable data to inform policy; and all of us need to know whether the twin aims of raising attainment overall and closing the attainment gap are being met. That is the key. Assessing and measuring attainment is not an end in itself – the purpose is to drive improvement.”

Beyond that, there was a promise of an additional £16m a year to extend eligibility for the education maintenance allowances, with Sturgeon claiming numbers would rise from 35,000 to 57,000. 

Next, she pledged: “We will right a longstanding wrong for kinship care families. I can announce today that we will fund local authorities to increase financial support for kinship carers to the same level as foster carers.”

Given the build-up, along with the parts of the programme released in advance, the measures aimed at closing the attainment gap were no great surprise. 
And the reactions were rapid. 

Save the Children welcomed the idea that attainment will be at the heart of the Government’s plans.

Neil Mathers, head of the organisation in Scotland, said: “Save the Children want to see greater investment in increasing the quality of early learning and childcare services. To close the attainment gap a child needs to start school not just equipped with a schoolbag and pencil case, but having benefited from rich early learning opportunities that will enable them to thrive in the classroom.

“The National Improvement Framework should focus on guiding schools, teachers and parents to identify issues early, act quickly and put the best provision in place to ensure that children find school a supportive environment. 

“A bold commitment to getting all children reading well by the end of primary school is further needed if the First Minister is to be successful in closing the attainment gap. We know that 1 in 5 children from poor families in Scotland leaves primary school unable to read well. This isn’t good enough for Scotland’s children – without strong reading skills, too many children fall behind and may never catch up.”

Scottish Labour, meanwhile, questioned if the Government could be doing more.

Part of the criticism stemmed from news the SNP intends to follow through on its plans to cut Air Passenger Duty by 50 per cent by the end of the next session of Parliament. 

Scottish Labour responded by accusing the SNP of putting tax cuts ahead of its fight against inequality, claiming the cuts would mean £250m in lost taxation – money the party said would be better spent on helping Scotland’s most vulnerable children.

Reacting the day after Sturgeon’s speech, Labour’s opportunity spokesperson, Iain Gray, said: “The SNP say that education is a priority but their spending decisions show that this just hasn’t been true. 

“After promising to make educational inequality her priority, Nicola Sturgeon set out a Programme for Government that re-announced an average of just £25 million a year to help poorer kids get a better education while at the same time, she committed to a tax cut on airline tickets that will cost £250 million a year.  

“When education spending is a lower priority than other areas it helps explain why half of all kids leaving primary school from the poorest backgrounds can’t read or write up to standard. 

“After eight years in government when the attainment gap between rich and poor pupils has barely moved, warm words are not enough. If tackling educational inequality is a political priority then it should be a spending priority.”

And while Labour questioned the SNP’s progressive credentials, environmental groups asked what a tax cut for airlines would mean for the party’s attempts to mitigate climate change.

Friends of the Earth Scotland’s director, Dr Richard Dixon, told Holyrood: “The Scottish Government should use any changes to APD to reduce carbon emissions from flying. A new levy focused on frequent flyers or on short-haul flights could see a reduction in the climate impact coming from this sector.  

“Sadly, this announcement from Government seems to shut down any discussion on more sophisticated approaches and their own figures show it will inevitably lead to an increase of tens of thousands of tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions.”

The Government’s environmental plans also featured heavily in Patrick Harvie’s response.

While the Green co-convener welcomed action to move towards a living wage and abolish fees for employment tribunals, he questioned where the FM’s priorities really lie.

Where, he asked, does the programme make clear the Scottish Government’s position on fracking? 

He said: “I was disappointed that there was not a single mention of climate change, or even the wider environmental agenda, in the First Minister’s statement, despite the serious challenge that exists not just globally, in getting agreement between governments in Paris this year, but here in Scotland, where the Scottish Government is yet to meet even one – I repeat ‘even one’ – of its annual climate change targets, more than five years after the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 was passed.

“Tackling climate change is mentioned in the full document, ‘A Stronger Scotland: the Government’s Programme for Scotland 2015-16’, but I need turn only one page to see a section that is headed, ‘Investing in the Oil and Gas Industry’. That brings us to the longstanding contradiction between the Scottish Government’s high-carbon and low-carbon economic and energy strategies. We cannot have it both ways.” 

And while Harvie highlighted the SNP’s perceived cognitive dissonance over the environment, the Lib Dems turned their criticism to the party’s plans for Police Scotland.
One of the headlines to emerge from Sturgeon’s speech was her decision to launch a review of Police Scotland’s national governance, following controversies over its handling of stop-and-search, armed police and the M9 crash.

Scottish Police Federation chairman Brian Docherty said the review should be welcomed, while also claiming, “no serious observer could genuinely argue against the fact that Scotland’s police service is now more accountable than it has ever been.”

But regardless of the review, Willie Rennie, was unimpressed with the SNP’s approach to justice. 

Taking to his feet, he said: “Since we last met in the chamber, the chairman of the Scottish Police Authority has resigned, the chief constable of Police Scotland has resigned and we have witnessed the unfolding terrible aftermath of the tragic incident on the M9 motorway.

“A police officer told the BBC last week that Police Scotland is ‘on its knees’. I know that to be true from almost daily contact from police officers and civilian staff. They cite low morale and serious problems such as the backfilling of civilian jobs by experienced but inappropriately trained police officers; excessive waiting times in call centres and control rooms; industrial-scale stop and search; top-down targets and controls; and more near misses because of errors at Bilston Glen.

“The list goes on. One person told me just yesterday that the reforms that the Government is putting through are putting the police and the public in danger. However, the Cabinet Secretary for Justice still thinks that it is appropriate to praise the soon-to-depart chief constable and tells us that he will leave a ‘lasting positive legacy’.”

It is fair to say the SNP reacted badly to this analysis, with Christine Grahame describing the idea Police Scotland is on its knees as “complete nonsense”. 

She said: “Police Scotland is not the talk of the steamie. The doom and gloom that Willie Rennie has expressed today and on previous occasions does a disservice in particular to our front-line officers, who have delivered drops in levels of knife crime and the fear of crime, with the perception of crime at an all-time low.” 

But as the reactions to SNP plans for justice, education, welfare and rent controls poured in, it was hard to escape the idea that, as much as setting out her Government’s plans, the First Minister had fired a starting gun on the 2016 Scottish Parliament campaign.

The programme was a fairly cautious one, perhaps suggesting the SNP believes the battles for seats at the 2016 elections will not be fought on domestic issues like justice or education, but – like the general election – on the constitution.

For opposition parties, shifting the focus to events closer to home will be key.  

As Ruth Davidson put it: “The Scottish Parliament has to turn its attention to the powers over which we have control – from the education of our children and the laws under which our justice system is run, to the state of our NHS.

“These powers are huge in scope – and over the next year this must become the clear centre of our politics in Scotland.

“In short, it is time this Scottish Government focused 100 per cent on the day job. The First Minister has already made it clear that she wants her administration to be judged on its educational record.

“I only wish that single-minded purpose had come about a little earlier than eight long years after the SNP took sole control over the Scottish Government.”

Eight years is a long time to be in government – as Jackson Carlaw pointed out, the SNP has now ruled for longer than the coalition of Asquith and Lloyd George, and longer than the governments of Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson and Edward Heath.

The programme announced by Sturgeon, and the way the opposition react over the coming months, will go some way to deciding whether she can deliver the so-called “vision for the next decade” that was promised.