“Taking out the Trash”

This week the political commentators have been focusing on the budget which was announced in Westminster, or rather was confirmed after being leaked throughout the week in the press. I will touch upon the impact of the budget on the people in the West of Scotland at the end but first I want to talk about the news that emerged from Holyrood this week.

Fans of the West Wing will be well aware of the term ‘taking out the trash.’ It is a technique used by those who wish to bury a bad story and it is mainly carried out when you know that either a) nobody will be reading or watching or b) there is a bigger news story that will drown it out.

With the budget taking up the first 5 or more pages in every national newspaper, in some cases even having its own pull out on top of that, and the first 10 minutes of every news and current affairs show, the SNP decided that Wednesday was the optimum time for them to ‘take out the trash.’

This is not the transparency that one would expect from a Government and these issues are important, effecting school children, the National Health Service and Parliament.

Their busy PR day started with a u-turn over the Curriculum for Excellence. East-Renfrewshire has already decided to postpone the introduction of the new curriculum by a year though Mike Russell was quick to declare this would be the exception and not the rule.

On Wednesday, however, he quietly let it slip out that schools out with the boundaries of East-Renfrewshire are now also being allowed the opportunity to postpone the introduction of the new curriculum which was due to be introduced for the 2013-2014 school year.

This could result in pupils across the country, indeed from two schools a street apart, sitting different exams from two different curriculums at the same time. Will one exam take precedence of the other? Will one child gain a benefit over the other? 54,000 pupils, currently in S2, have no idea what curriculum exam they will be sitting; their future does not deserve this uncertainty.

Next the SNP climbed down in their opposition to the Scottish Parliament gaining extra powers. Ever since Scottish Labour introduced the Calman Commission under the leadership of Wendy Alexander, which proposed the parliament gaining significant borrowing powers, the SNP have been vocal in their disproval, calling it a “poison pill which Scotland cannot afford to swallow”.

Yet swallow the pill they have as they have finally realised that the Bill offers significant changes in powers for Scotland which will result in a stronger Scottish Parliament.

Finally, and most worryingly of all, the SNP announced that an NHS health board in Scotland has fiddled with their figures regarding waiting times. There are fears that this may just be the tip of the iceberg and Scottish Labour has called on the Government to order an investigation carried out by Audit Scotland.

This independent audit will ensure that health boards around the country are not cutting corners and fiddling with times. We hope that the SNP will agree to the audit, as failure to do so will only result in people wondering what the SNP are trying to hide.

All this news, and important news at that, was buried underneath reports about the Budget. A budget for the rich at the expense of those who simply can’t afford any more cuts to their own personal budget.

One of the biggest losers after Wednesday will be the 500,000 Scottish pensioners that have been hit with what the papers are calling ‘the granny poll tax’. This cut to pensions will result in a cut of £80 on pensioners per year, whilst those retiring in the next 12 months face losing as much as £322. This cut will help recoup the money lost after Osborne dropped the 50p tax for earnings over £150,000 down to 45p.

Ed Miliband, who was in excellent form with his budget response, asked Osborne and the rest of the Conservative and Lib Dem Cabinet how many of them will benefit from the drop in the 50p tax rate. The silence and uncomfortable body langue spoke volumes.

Finally, in Parliament this week I submitted a series of questions on issues surrounding the children and families of those imprisoned. This is an important issue for myself as convenor of the Cross Party Group on Families Affected by Imprisonment and I await the Scottish Executive’s response.

Minimum Pricing

One of the big talking points in Holyrood this week is the Alcohol (Minimum Pricing)(Scotland) Bill which was introduced to the chamber. This bill would set a price at which a unit of alcohol cannot be sold below and is more commonly referred to as the minimum pricing bill. The bill passed its first stage on Wednesday and will now be debated at the relevant committee.

Scottish Labour abstained at the vote for the bill due to our belief that this measure alone will not be the ‘silver bullet’ that will cure Scotland’s ills with alcohol. Instead we have introduced a range of options that would tackle alcohol related problems in Scotland across both public health and criminal justice policy.

There is no denying that Scotland has its problems with alcohol, but the question one must ask is if minimum pricing is the cure? As it stands Scottish consumption of alcohol is 23% higher than in England, yet the price tends to broadly similar. This seems to indicate that it is not price or affordability that results in people in Scotland drinking more but is rather an attitudinal problem. In the Scandinavian countries, where, as a group,  the price of alcohol is considered high, they still experience significant alcohol related harms.

There is wide concern that minimum pricing will adversely impact those that enjoy a sensible drink, which is the vast majority of the drinking public in Scotland, and less effective on those who are classified as heavy drinkers. Research shows that those who would be classified as heavy drinkers tend to be, on the whole, less responsive to price. As such they will buy alcohol regardless and minimum pricing will only serve to line the pockets of supermarkets the length and breadth of Scotland.

The Scottish Health Survey 2010 found that those in the highest income groups are more likely to exceed guideline limits, the very people that can afford an increase in the price of alcohol. A report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies backs this up finding that a 45p minimum price would have a larger impact on poorer households than those in the highest income groups.

Alcoholism is an addiction, not an economic choice, and raising the price won’t stop those who suffer from it purchasing it. Instead the money to pay for the increased alcohol will be transferred from another part of their personal budget to supplement the change in price. This may negatively impact their family who still have to pay the bills and the food budget.

This is why Scottish Labour has proposed 14 measures that together could really work in changing the attitude and relationship Scots have with their drink. The main one you may have heard of is the ‘buckfast ban’ where we would introduce a legal limit of 150mg per litre of caffeine in pre-mixed alcoholic drinks. Evidence indicates that the link between caffeine and alcohol often leads to violent crime, especially amongst youngsters.

We want to evaluate and improve alcohol education and public information campaigns to ensure that people can understand the risks and harms caused by heavy drinking. We wish to clamp down on alcohol marketing in public places, such as on billboards or in the cinema where kids may be present, as we do not believe that children should be exposed to such heavy marketing at such a young age.

We would aim to give the public more say in licensing decisions through their local communities, we would roll out ‘bottle-tagging’ which has been successfully piloted in Dundee and Fife. We would also establish a National Licensing Forum to ensure constant review and offer advice on the law and tackling alcohol related problems, not just a ‘sunset clause’ for 5 years down the line.

At the end of the day alcoholism is an addiction and we want to help give those suffering from it the care and support that they need. This is why we are proposing to extend the successful Drug Treatment and Testing Orders, require GPs to be notified of any alcohol related conviction by one of their patients and introduce fast track treatment for individuals taken into custody who are perceived to suffer from an alcohol problem.

We abstained on the vote as we believe that more needs to be done than introducing a bill that will implement one change and one change only. That is why we, as a party, will, during the subsequent debates, be pushing for our measures to be adopted.

Alex Salmond, upon winning the election last year claimed that he and his government did not have ‘a monopoly of wisdom.’ With our 14 measures we are offering the SNP a get out of jail free card.