:00:04. > :00:11.to be applied from each party's rank and file for them to be moved
:00:11. > :00:14.further apart. Tonight on Newsnight Scotland:
:00:14. > :00:17.Roll-up, roll-up for Mr Swinney's conjuring act. With a shrinking
:00:17. > :00:20.block grant and commitments already made on the NHS and capital
:00:20. > :00:25.spending, John Swinney will need a bit of magic to make tomorrow's
:00:25. > :00:28.Budget add up. Or, can he do what he's doing already and cut public
:00:28. > :00:37.sector pay? And, in the latest in our series on
:00:37. > :00:40.the cost of care, we look at the human price paid by carers.
:00:40. > :00:44.One thing is almost certain, when John Swinney unveils his Budget
:00:44. > :00:47.tomorrow, he will propose freezing public sector pay for at least
:00:47. > :00:52.another year. But for how long can a Scottish government in effect cut
:00:52. > :00:56.people's wages while blaming it all on London? And, if it can keep
:00:57. > :00:59.freezing pay, is there any need for fundamental reforms the government
:00:59. > :01:03.also talks about? He is Catriona Renton.
:01:03. > :01:07.It's a magic show that no Finance Secretary would really want to put
:01:07. > :01:12.on at the moment. How do you balance the books and keep the
:01:12. > :01:17.public on side? Well, that is the trick John Swinney has to pull off
:01:17. > :01:22.tomorrow while money is bashing from his budget. We are facing
:01:22. > :01:25.spending cuts in Scotland, across the whole of the UK, and that is a
:01:25. > :01:30.risk for all politicians. The challenge for John Swinney is to
:01:30. > :01:35.try and deflect the political grief from those spending cuts back on to
:01:35. > :01:39.the UK government. Therefore he will argue that the root of these
:01:39. > :01:43.cuts lows -- lies in a UK government constraint and comes
:01:43. > :01:49.upon spending, and the root of the economic problem. He has got this
:01:49. > :01:55.fixed budget and he has to deliver on a very ambitious expectations.
:01:55. > :01:58.The SNP got elected in May on the basis that they can protect public
:01:58. > :02:02.services and you can get better public services out of the Budget
:02:02. > :02:05.we are talking about. It is not just conjuring tricks that John
:02:05. > :02:15.Swinney needs. The writing is already on the wall. The budget for
:02:15. > :02:19.this financial year is �28 billion. By 2014 - 2015, it will have risen
:02:19. > :02:24.to �28.6 billion, up in cash terms, but down in real terms, and that
:02:24. > :02:31.means John Swinney faces an estimated 12% squeeze of savings of
:02:31. > :02:35.around �3.3 billion over that time because of inflation. In January,
:02:35. > :02:39.John Swinney already revealed much of his hand when he proposed all
:02:39. > :02:45.the main portfolio's budgets apart from health will be fixed until
:02:45. > :02:48.2015, a strategy like this is not without risk. Health is going to be
:02:48. > :02:51.ring-fenced to some extent. The more that to protect the health
:02:51. > :02:54.budget, that is one third of everything that is spent by
:02:54. > :03:02.Holyrood, the more you have to cut from the other budgets really quite
:03:02. > :03:05.painfully. And it is much more than an illusion of moving money around.
:03:05. > :03:11.John Swinney's plans will be scrutinised from all sides.
:03:11. > :03:15.Politicians are unlikely to be distracted. He will argue, I'm sure,
:03:15. > :03:19.that any financial secretary in his position would face this challenge.
:03:19. > :03:22.He will say that he is trying as far as possible to finesse these
:03:22. > :03:26.changes to the benefit of the Scottish economy, to try to enhance
:03:26. > :03:31.growth, rather than the necessary day-to-day spending. People turned
:03:31. > :03:35.his back on his opponents and say, what would you be doing in my
:03:35. > :03:38.position? And, of course he has to please the
:03:38. > :03:42.crowd. Difficult when it is on the cards that he will announce a
:03:42. > :03:47.continued freeze of public sector pay for those earning more than
:03:47. > :03:51.�21,000 a year. The pay freeze, I feel, is something that has been
:03:51. > :03:54.advocated by John Swinney, at least in the short to medium term, as a
:03:54. > :03:57.way of constraining the costs that he faces in the public sector
:03:57. > :04:00.because this pays such a large proportion of the public sector
:04:00. > :04:04.spending bill and spending accounts more generally. But it is true that
:04:04. > :04:09.you cannot sustain that for ever. People will not tolerate their
:04:09. > :04:13.wages being frozen, which in effect means a reduction.
:04:13. > :04:19.And, surely it will take more than clever tricks to deliver all those
:04:19. > :04:24.capital projects on the SNP's manifesto. The capital budget is
:04:24. > :04:28.being reduced very much faster than the revenue budgets - about 36%
:04:28. > :04:32.down over this whole period. There is a very expensive shopping list,
:04:32. > :04:38.starting with the new Forth Bridge. You have also got the Aberdeen
:04:38. > :04:42.relief road. You have also got expectations of housing. And the
:04:42. > :04:45.rail service between Edinburgh and Glasgow. People have expectations.
:04:45. > :04:49.John Swinney probably won't be pulling many rabbits out of that
:04:49. > :04:54.tomorrow, but keeping everyone happy will be a big enough feat in
:04:54. > :04:57.itself. I'm joint now from Adam fur by
:04:57. > :05:00.Professor Richard Kerley from Queen Margaret University, and Jo
:05:00. > :05:09.Armstrong from the Centre for Public Policy for the regions at
:05:09. > :05:15.University of Glasgow. Jo Armstrong, I am still slightly confused /
:05:15. > :05:18.sceptical about all of this. If you can just cut people's pay, which is
:05:18. > :05:28.in effect what they have been doing for the past year, and keep doing
:05:28. > :05:36.it, isn't that enough? Well, we have seen a pay freeze this year
:05:36. > :05:42.and that has certainly helped this year's cash cut, but for every...
:05:42. > :05:45.The wage bill is about �15 billion. A 1% increase in that is one
:05:45. > :05:49.Hutcheon �50 million. That is not going to cover the cut that we are
:05:49. > :05:55.facing across the whole block. Cutting wages is one part of the
:05:55. > :05:59.solution. It is pretty major. When I interviewed John Swinney a couple
:06:00. > :06:04.of months ago about this, he said everyone says I am not making the
:06:04. > :06:09.books add up and I have got to do something radical, and he said that
:06:09. > :06:15.he laid out in January but he intended to do and he has done it.
:06:15. > :06:25.And underpinning that is the pay freeze. Yes, and also significant
:06:25. > :06:26.
:06:26. > :06:30.amounts of savings. Within that, was 83% efficiency saving. We have
:06:30. > :06:34.seen efficiency programmes for the last three governments. To continue
:06:34. > :06:38.to say that you can do efficiency savings were that radical reform
:06:38. > :06:41.seems to me extremely difficult to justify and to guarantee. None of
:06:41. > :06:45.the efficiency programmes that we have seen to date have been
:06:45. > :06:50.independently audited. Even though there is an argument that says we
:06:50. > :06:55.have delivered two or 3% efficiency savings, you cannot guarantee that
:06:55. > :07:02.that is equivalent to cash cuts. It does look like if you are going to
:07:02. > :07:05.continue with efficiency savings, and the SNP's manifesto had many
:07:05. > :07:10.billions of a fish says savings, then we have to see radical changes
:07:10. > :07:14.to public services to deliver them. This business of efficiency savings,
:07:14. > :07:20.it is rather vexing. The Government today were claiming yet again they
:07:20. > :07:23.have exceeded their target. How are we ordinary mortals supposed to
:07:23. > :07:27.know whether they have really made efficiency savings in the sense
:07:27. > :07:31.that cash has been saved by all the people in the public sector
:07:31. > :07:38.becoming more productive, or whether they have just cut services
:07:38. > :07:41.and the efficiency savings is a new word for cuts? It is not clear
:07:41. > :07:46.whether ordinary mortals or even extraordinary mortals could verify
:07:46. > :07:51.the figures. They arc as yet not audited. They are claimed every
:07:52. > :07:56.year by government, and they vary in their form. They are sometimes
:07:56. > :08:01.with Ford -- -- referred to as Kashif isn't see savings, and other
:08:01. > :08:05.times time efficiency savings. Whether that is other people's time
:08:05. > :08:08.or the less the time of a greater number of people is reducing the
:08:09. > :08:15.expenditure on Pippa -- particular services. But this is not verify.
:08:15. > :08:19.As has been suggested, some are genuine technological improvements.
:08:19. > :08:23.Others are simply about stopping doing things or reducing the volume
:08:23. > :08:29.of activity involved in public service, and they are all captured
:08:29. > :08:33.under the umbrella of efficiency savings, which seems to me a bit of
:08:34. > :08:39.a Miss labouring in effect. But it sounds like a good one, it looks
:08:39. > :08:43.impressive. So in effect, the Government says it to a department,
:08:43. > :08:49.we are assuming you can make 3% efficiency savings this year, so we
:08:49. > :08:54.will cut your budget in cash terms by 3%. And they certainly have to
:08:54. > :08:58.get by. How they get by is the bit that is not clear. Whether they
:08:58. > :09:02.have stopped providing services. Indeed, and there is no monitoring
:09:02. > :09:07.of whether they have delivered them or not. There is not even any kind
:09:07. > :09:12.of sampling of the activities to see if they have delivered true
:09:12. > :09:16.efficiencies. Richard Kerley, I am curious about your take on this,
:09:16. > :09:21.whether you think that there is any need for the sort of fundamental
:09:21. > :09:27.reforms that Professor Beveridge, for example, talked-about, when
:09:27. > :09:31.John Swinney does seem to have balanced the books by a combination
:09:31. > :09:35.of the rather ambiguous efficiency savings we have been talked about
:09:35. > :09:41.and a public sector pay freeze. suggest that one of the things we
:09:41. > :09:45.saw in earlier reports from both the Christie Commission, Beveridge
:09:45. > :09:49.was outlining a range of options that the Government could choose to
:09:49. > :09:53.follow if it wanted to remove or charge for certain activities that
:09:53. > :09:56.it does not do at the moment. There was not a great deal of fine-
:09:56. > :10:00.grained work in terms of how things are actually done differently. I
:10:00. > :10:05.would be looking for a couple of things tomorrow. One of them is,
:10:05. > :10:12.given the emphasis that the Finance Secretary has laid on capital
:10:12. > :10:16.expenditure which, after all, is a means of using public service
:10:16. > :10:21.spending to support private trading companies, particularly in
:10:21. > :10:25.construction and procurement activities, I would be looking for
:10:25. > :10:29.a neat trick as to how he increases levels of capital spending. I am
:10:29. > :10:33.not sure how he will do it, but I suspect it will involve either
:10:33. > :10:36.incentives or encouragement to local government. In terms of the
:10:36. > :10:41.longer term, there are a lot of services that need to be changed in
:10:41. > :10:47.different ways. Some of those are so radical that governments shy
:10:47. > :10:53.away from them. He has already pretty much outlined the capital
:10:53. > :10:59.spending. In the documents he produced in January, going forward
:10:59. > :11:04.to 2015, he flatlined the cash spending. That released about �150
:11:04. > :11:08.million between now and 2015. That is the way you do it, isn't it?
:11:08. > :11:12.has certainly indicated that he is looking to use the non-profit
:11:12. > :11:16.distributing model for financing projects, and he is ring-fencing a
:11:16. > :11:23.proportion of the resource funding to effectively accelerate
:11:23. > :11:29.additional capital spend. I suspect that the other tricks up his sleeve,
:11:29. > :11:32.clearly today's report about selling off assets is one way of
:11:32. > :11:41.releasing under-utilised funding, and potentially using local
:11:41. > :11:45.government to increase debt to allow additional spending. Whether
:11:45. > :11:51.this is sufficient time to make this work, I don't know.
:11:51. > :11:55.problem, presumably, is that, take 1 �50 million until 2015, that
:11:55. > :12:02.money may be spent on capital projects which are very worthy in
:12:02. > :12:06.themselves. It is highly -- hardly a fiscal stimulus to the economy?
:12:07. > :12:11.No, but it allows capital spending to continue. We saw a hiatus when
:12:11. > :12:15.the were switching from the PFI it had arrangement to the non-profit
:12:15. > :12:19.distributing models, so at least it helps keep that stimulus going. But
:12:19. > :12:23.it is not a massive boost to the Budget. The budget at the end of
:12:23. > :12:27.his �30 billion, so it is not a significant addition. But it would
:12:27. > :12:32.help at the margin. Any evidence you look at coming out of
:12:32. > :12:42.recessions is that those who fail - - favour capital Revenue do get
:12:42. > :12:42.
:12:42. > :12:46.I suppose, intellectually, John Swinney would say we needed
:12:46. > :12:51.boosting the economy, but he is that no control over this when all
:12:51. > :12:55.of the figures around the world are going in the wrong direction.
:12:55. > :13:01.are a very small fish in a very large pond, with governments
:13:01. > :13:05.struggling everywhere with this. If you went to the limited powers that
:13:05. > :13:08.the secretary has, I am optimistic that he will find ways of at least
:13:08. > :13:14.pushing away at the capital expenditure, because that is the
:13:14. > :13:18.kind of area that you can, at the same time, as improving the quality
:13:18. > :13:22.of public services, because you have enhanced capital providing it
:13:22. > :13:27.is spent properly, you can generate employment in areas outside the
:13:27. > :13:31.public services. Briefly, you were sceptical about the claims the
:13:31. > :13:37.Government makes about bringing forward capital expenditure with
:13:37. > :13:42.dramatic effect in construction. Yes, I think the best information
:13:42. > :13:48.we have on employment output is that at best it has increased
:13:48. > :13:55.employment but has not increased output so there are additional jobs.
:13:55. > :13:58.You're talking about construction. Yes, it is difficult to understand
:13:58. > :14:04.the timing of the increase in employment and the acceleration of
:14:04. > :14:08.the capital spend, so there is lack of clarity around some of the basic
:14:08. > :14:13.information to understand if this stimulus has been real. We need to
:14:13. > :14:17.leave it there. Thank you. Now, the penultimate
:14:17. > :14:20.film in our series looking at the cost of care we have already looked
:14:20. > :14:25.at the ethics of care and he deserves it and to does not, as
:14:25. > :14:29.well as the burgeoning cost of all of these and the increasingly
:14:29. > :14:35.elderly population. But who cares for the carers? The figures are
:14:35. > :14:41.eye-opening, almost 650,000 people in Scotland look after people,
:14:41. > :14:50.almost full time. It is estimated that over the �7 billion in
:14:50. > :14:55.Scotland alone has spent on care. Claire and her partner have to care
:14:55. > :15:00.for their four-year-old daughter 24 hours a day and seven days a week.
:15:00. > :15:10.I am thick carer, the nurse, the doctor, the physiotherapist, and
:15:10. > :15:14.
:15:14. > :15:20.everything else except Clare. Clare Do you have enough room? As soon as
:15:20. > :15:25.the twins were born 12 weeks premature, Katie had a tough time
:15:25. > :15:31.from the start. We would just get your pump now. Get your feet are
:15:31. > :15:35.ready. There be Co, give you your milk. There is one of 700,000
:15:36. > :15:41.unpaid carers in Scotland, and without her, the whole system would
:15:41. > :15:50.collapse. But to cares for the carers? KT cannot walk or talk or
:15:50. > :15:58.swallow, so she is fed through her tummy. She cannot sleep, she has
:15:58. > :16:01.naps on and off. She is not a great sleeper. They have lost the little
:16:01. > :16:06.bit of support the use to get from the local council. I am not sure
:16:06. > :16:10.what is worse, the fact that I have had the time taken off me, or the
:16:10. > :16:17.fact I spent so long worrying about when it would happen. I think
:16:18. > :16:22.people would like a purple face. don't think they would! We want
:16:22. > :16:27.them to put their money where their mouth is. For people living in
:16:27. > :16:36.rural areas, it is not just about recognition. It is about getting
:16:36. > :16:40.access to services and being able to afford to pay for them. Chris
:16:40. > :16:45.had to suspend his career as a rural photographer to become his
:16:45. > :16:49.mother's care when she became seriously ill. You don't get out,
:16:49. > :16:54.you don't see people, you get as isolated as the people you care for.
:16:54. > :17:02.You get days when you don't care and you want to walk away. As a
:17:03. > :17:06.carer, who cares for the carers? truth, nobody, you're just a face
:17:06. > :17:10.as commodity to be used up, instead of taking money from the public
:17:10. > :17:15.purse to provide proper trained carers, I am looking for the next
:17:15. > :17:18.problem, trained to deal with it. It is like being hypervigilant,
:17:18. > :17:24.looking round corners, because you know that people are looking for
:17:24. > :17:30.you to be there, but they are not. Rural poverty is a big issue,
:17:30. > :17:35.people are asset rich but do not have a great deal of money,
:17:35. > :17:41.particularly if you're on benefits. For a carer to have a break in this
:17:41. > :17:45.situation, if you're isolated, this can be a problem. Dumfries is a
:17:45. > :17:50.centre of a large area with a growing elderly population and this
:17:50. > :17:55.can present a challenge as for carers. Bill is a forum in member
:17:55. > :18:00.of this carer centre in Dumfries. He has been an main carer of his
:18:00. > :18:04.wife for many years after she developed MS. Do people ask how
:18:04. > :18:09.you're getting on as well as asking how your wife is getting on? It is
:18:09. > :18:16.more how your wife is, very few people ask how you are? Does it
:18:16. > :18:23.hurt? Sometimes it does. Do you feel invisible sometimes? Yes, yes,
:18:23. > :18:32.yes. I put it face-up like a lot of carers do, they say everything is
:18:32. > :18:37.OK. A lot of people do walk away. A lot of people find they cannot cope
:18:37. > :18:43.and partnerships and marriages to break up and at the end of the day,
:18:43. > :18:48.that cost a lot more to the system. There is an awareness by government
:18:48. > :18:52.of the kind of care that Bill, Chris and care deliver. By this
:18:52. > :18:56.December, the Scottish government would produce a charter for carers
:18:56. > :19:02.in partnership with local authorities, of boards and the
:19:02. > :19:08.voluntary sector. We need to get better at thinking of things for
:19:08. > :19:17.the carers and the users has put back to have -- the user's
:19:17. > :19:24.perspective. They save us at least �7.6 billion a year here in
:19:24. > :19:28.Scotland. If we put to the individuals, that is the users of
:19:28. > :19:33.services, and the carers, which is what we're talking about in the
:19:33. > :19:38.middle, and think about what it is like for them, we belies they don't
:19:38. > :19:43.care if we are a social worker or a nurse or a physiotherapist or an
:19:43. > :19:50.occupational therapist. What they want to know is, can I get the
:19:50. > :19:54.information and services that I need? Clear and Derek could have
:19:54. > :20:00.many years of caring head of them. It is estimated by 2030 we could
:20:00. > :20:04.require as many as 1 million unpaid carers in Scotland. The chances are,
:20:04. > :20:09.most, if not all of us, we have a caring role at some stage in our
:20:09. > :20:13.lives. A quick look at the papers,
:20:13. > :20:19.starting with the Scotsman, they have taken what we were speaking
:20:19. > :20:22.about, the council is furious with about, the council is furious with
:20:22. > :20:26.the �220 million to man from John Swinney proposing that councils
:20:26. > :20:34.should borrow money to cover some of the spending that would be taken