Scotsman Bulletin Wednesday 12 February
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00:00Hello and welcome to the Scotsman's Daily Video Bulletin for this Wednesday.
00:11My name's Dale Miller.
00:12I'm Deputy Editor of the Scotsman.
00:15I'm joined by Rachel Amory, our political correspondent.
00:18Rachel, we'll get to talking about all things politics first, but just want to mention the
00:24front page of today's Scotsman.
00:27And we've led on a story from Callum Ross, there is a consultation that is being launched
00:33by the Scottish Government.
00:35And it covers a variety of things around the school sector or school set up, but as part
00:41of it, it will look at the rule around or the rules around toilets and gender specific
00:48toilets.
00:49Currently, there is legislation that exists around providing a certain percentage, roughly
00:5550-50, of specifically male and female toilets.
01:00That is up for consideration to update that bit of legislation.
01:06There are some campaign groups, including the Scottish Tories, that are concerned that
01:10there may be pressure around schools having more gender neutral school toilets introduced.
01:16It is a hot topic, as we know, and that leads the front of the Scotsman today.
01:22So, a picture there, farewell to the King, Dennis Law, who was said farewell to the Manchester
01:29United and Scottish football greats yesterday.
01:32Rachel, I know it's recess time, but it doesn't feel like it, there's plenty still happening.
01:41Council tax, firstly, reform's been bounced around a lot over recent years, but against
01:48the backdrop of some potentially sharp rises in council tax this April, it's back on the
01:54agenda again.
01:55Yeah, as you were saying, this has been talked about by the SNP for years now.
02:00It was discussed way back in 2007, when they first came to power in Hollywood.
02:04They proposed replacing it with a sort of a local income tax type thing.
02:09That, at the time, faced opposition in Hollywood and Westminster and therefore did not go ahead.
02:14It feels like every election cycle, we hear this coming up again, is there going to be
02:20reforms to council tax.
02:21In 2021, for example, the last Hollywood election, it was being mooted as well again, was shut
02:28down by the then public finance minister, Tom Arthur.
02:31We're now looking ahead to, obviously, next year, another Scottish Parliament election.
02:35And yet again, the SNP are saying that they want to try and reform council tax to make
02:40it fairer.
02:41So right now, ministers are looking at trying to speak to the public, trying to do some
02:44consultations on what to do here about council tax.
02:48But a lot of the opposition parties are not really paying much heed to it.
02:51They're basically saying, we've heard this before many times from the SNP and nothing
02:56has happened. And basically, the Lib Dems are saying that nothing's going to change
03:00here. So there's no point in even really listening to what the SNP have to say here.
03:05As you were saying, quite interesting, the timing of this, partly because we have the
03:09Scottish Parliament election next year coming up, which is when we tend to hear these
03:13kinds of announcements, but also because we're starting to see councils setting their
03:18council tax rises for the next financial year, which starts in April.
03:23Primarily, we're thinking of this because this week's Scottish borders are looking to
03:27discuss rising council taxes by 10 per cent.
03:30That's quite a big amount.
03:32And of course, hopefully all the viewers listened to our episode of the Steamy podcast
03:37where we interviewed the First Minister.
03:39In that interview, he said that he thought rises of more than 10 per cent were too much
03:43and they were unnecessary.
03:44He felt that enough money was coming the council's way from the Scottish government that
03:49that was not needed.
03:50So quite interesting to see that happening at this point as well.
03:54Yeah, and we're looking at a potential 8 per cent council tax rise in Edinburgh as well.
03:59And other councils are in the process of considering and voting on the level at which
04:05they'll set their council tax throughout this month.
04:08So it's one to watch, as you say, Rachel.
04:11Certainly the wording coming from John Swinney was rises of 10 per cent were too high and
04:18shouldn't be justified based on what councils are being given, at least to the Scottish
04:23borders. They seem to disagree with that assessment.
04:27Away from that, Rachel, there's still a lot of chat about Labor this week and specifically
04:33Scottish Labor. There's been an interesting run of promotions from the party around them
04:40keeping some policies that I guess have long been attached to the SNP government, like
04:45free prescriptions, free university tuition as well, making the point that they're not
04:51looking to remove those if they come into power.
04:54There was some interesting analysis from John Curtis that you have written up.
04:59Just talk us through that and where Anas Sarwar and the party's currently at.
05:04Yes, as I was saying, a whole year, more than a year until the Scottish Parliament election,
05:08but the party are really, really starting to ramp up their campaign, particularly Scottish
05:14Labor. Scottish Labor and its leader, Anas Sarwar, they've made no secret of the fact that they
05:18want to win this election.
05:20They want to be in the new house.
05:22Anas Sarwar wants to be first minister.
05:24If you go back to last summer, Scottish Labor were actually doing really well in the
05:29Holyrood polls. About neck and neck with the SNP, Anas Sarwar on the back of them doing so
05:35well in the general election, a lot of people thought perhaps this was possible.
05:41But as more unpopular decisions have been made in Westminster, more and more people have
05:46now started to drift away from Scottish Labor and back towards the SNP or to other parties.
05:51If you look at the polling now, Labour have fallen way back down to where they were in
05:562021 and the SNP look to be back up to around about where they were in 2021, albeit on
06:03slightly reduced numbers.
06:05So if you look at what Anas Sarwar has been doing in the past, he's been trying to put out
06:09some new policy points and some other things to keep in mind.
06:13So, for example, announcing that he would support nuclear energy last week and this week
06:18he's been announcing that he will keep a lot of policies introduced by the SNP, such as free
06:23prescriptions and free tuition fees.
06:25It might sound strange seeing as an SNP policy, but if you look at polling, these things are
06:29very, very popular with the public.
06:31So it would be very bad electorally for them to get over these issues here.
06:37Now, John Curtis says there's probably at this point one of two options, the first option
06:41being that the SNP once again win the majority of the constituency seats and the Greens,
06:47which they're predicted to do, will do well in the list votes and that creates a pro-independence
06:50majority and therefore Labour cannot win.
06:54The other option is that the SNP and the Greens just fall slightly short of that majority
07:00and therefore as a pro-unionist majority in Pollywood, that would be made up of many
07:04different parties who would have to work together on this.
07:08Given how many MSPs from reform are expected to win the seats, that could also prove very,
07:14very difficult for Labour to come together on those issues.
07:18So it's not great news for Labour at the moment.
07:20And as John Curtis was saying, it's a very difficult path for them.
07:24But it's not impossible, it's still possible, particularly if popularity with the UK
07:29government starts to go back up.
07:31So that's kind of the assessment of things right now.
07:34But it's going to be really interesting to see this battle between the SNP and Labour
07:38between now and the election in 2026.
07:40Can the SNP hold on to this newfound ground that they have and will Labour continue to
07:45fall down the polls or will they be able to clean up a couple of little bits?
07:49Thanks, Rachel. You can read the stories on Council Tax and what John Curtis had to say
07:55at Scotsman.com.
07:56If you can't find them readily, go to the politics tab, which is in the navigation bar,
08:01and you'll be able to access the stories from there.
08:04There's also some news this morning from Callum Ross about just the extent of what cuts
08:12may happen at Edinburgh University.
08:13We know more widely universities are under pressure and that Callum's written extensively
08:19about the financial support that's being considered from taxpayers' money for a Dundee
08:24University to get it out of a financial hole.
08:27So you can read that story at Scotsman.com as well.
08:29Rachel, thanks to you and thanks to everyone else for joining us.