'Rewiring of state' demanded to fix SNP's £5bn funding hole as John Swinney facing 'leadership crisis'
The Scottish Labour leader has accused John Swinney of facing a “crisis in leadership”.
Anas Sarwar has called for a “rewiring of the state” as he condemned John Swinney for his “complete economic incoherence” after a £5bn funding black hole emerged at Holyrood.
The Scottish Labour leader has warned the First Minister he is experiencing a “crisis in leadership” and devoting attention back to independence instead of fixing public services.
Mr Sarwar pointed to a need to overhaul how devolved government in Scotland is organised, but insisted it could be done without forcing public sector workers out of their jobs.
Finance Secretary Shona Robison has stressed compulsory redundancies may be needed to axe around 12,000 public sector jobs over the next five years. The measure is being tabled after the Scottish Government admitted that future funding commitments will leave a gaping £5bn hole in the public finances for day-to-day spending and capital projects up to 2030.
Speaking to The Scotsman, Mr Sarwar pointed to the “complete economic incoherence of the SNP” after the Labour UK government handed over a record settlement to Holyrood.
Mr Sarwar added: “How a government can get £5.2bn of additional money and be told they are getting an additional £9bn on top of that and their financial incompetence is so bad they still have a black hole of almost £5bn.
“They are now talking about compulsory redundancies and cutting back health board budgets by 12 per cent cumulatively over a number of years.
“It shows you the scale of the incompetence and why we have to get rid of them.”
The Scottish Labour leader repeated his call to “strip back the number of quangos” - bodies that spend public money.
He said: “We’ve got 131 public sector bodies when we only have 129 MSPs. That’s just the SNP creating layer after layer of bureaucracy in order to have someone else to point the blame at.”
Highlighting red tape in the NHS, Mr Sarwar stressed “we don’t need 50 boards, 15 territorial boards , specialist boards, 30 integration joint boards for a population of 5.5 billion”.
He added: “Strip that bureaucracy right back and spend the money instead, not on the chief executives and the managers, but on the doctors, the nurses and the treatments.
“The same principle applies to our public sector bodies.
“There does need to be a look at how we reorganise the government as well. We will stick to our fundamental Labour principles. I think there’s a way of doing this without compulsory redundancies, but it does require a rewiring of the state.”
Mr Sarwar said the SNP under Mr Swinney had “lost its way, has run out of ideas, run out of steam and frankly, is letting Scots down every single day”.
In an attack on Mr Swinney’s leadership, the Glasgow MSP claimed “the mask has slipped”, adding "everything is fundamentally broken”.
He added: “The NHS has got worse on John Swinney’s watch, the education system - he destroyed it - he was the education secretary.
“John Swinney, his response to that crisis in leadership that he has, is to hit the panic talk about independence button. It’s not to fix our NHS, not to improve our schools, it’s not to stop the waste. It’s not to take a different direction as a government - it is let’s hit the panic independence button and make it about the constitution. Frankly, I think Scots will see right through it.”
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