scottish-government

The In Tray

/ Dr Craig Dalzell / Leave a comment

“[The purpose of] clarification is not to clarify things. It is to put one’s self in the clear” – Jonathan Lynn & Anthony Jay, Yes Minister 

(This blog post previously appeared in Common Weal’s weekly newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter here.)

I was hoping for a bit more of a shakeup in John Swinney’s Ministerial reshuffle. As it was, it’s barely a wobble. Some space was carved out to give Kate Forbes a Cabinet Secretary position without much in the way of actual power. The changes are most notable in their absences. Just a day before the reshuffle I was in a Committee hearing that discussed, in part, the “signal” sent when the issue of, say, “Older People” is moved from the title of a Cabinet Secretary to the title of a more junior Minister, and then dropped from titles altogether and moved into the middle of the list of responsibilities of a Minister or dropped completely. As Dr Hannah Graham has pointed out on Twitter, the list of terms that no longer exist as Ministerial titles include:- Migration & Refugees, Europe and International Development, Planning, Fair Work, Community Wealth, Just Transition, Biodiversity, NHS Recovery, Active Travel, Innovation and Trade, and Independence. Journalists take note, when those lists are published – the Wayback Machine is your friend. Compare the new list of responsibilities to the old one to see what has been promoted and what has been demoted entirely as an issue of importance for the Swinney Government.

Nevertheless. Even though most of the faces haven’t changed and most of them haven’t even moved office, we do have a new Government and that is always an opportunity for new and returning Ministers to review their goals and objectives. I’d like to place into each of their In Trays at least one Common Weal policy paper relevant to their brief that we’d like them to take on in the coming months.

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How John Swinney Can Eradicate Child Poverty

/ Dr Craig Dalzell / 1 Comment

Is that trembling cry a song?
Can it be a song of joy?
And so many children poor?
It is a land of poverty!
– William Blake

(This blog post previously appeared in The National.)

a truck driving down a street next to tall buildings

John Swinney is now Scotland’s seventh First Minister. He is also the sixth First Minister to have been, at the time of his swearing in, one of the tranche of “99’ers” – the first generation of MSPs who have held unbroken service in Holyrood since the start of Devolution and the recommencement of the Scottish Parliament. This speaks to the relative youth of that Parliament as does the fact that, at present, we still do not have an elected MSP who is younger than the Devolution era (though we came close in 2021 with the election of then 23 year old Emma Roddick who was born just shortly before the devolution referendum in 1997).

We’re still living in fast-moving times and the period between me writing this column on Wednesday morning and you reading it on Thursday evening is a gaping chasm that none can see across clearly but I did want to take a moment to pick up a point made by Swinney during his speech on Monday when he accepted the mantle of leader of the SNP. It’s a point that I’m slightly surprised that no-one else picked up on because it was his sole tangible policy pledge that couldn’t be discounted as the mere background level of filler (No-one expects a politician to promise to build fewer houses, so a comment about building “more houses” without a tangible target or policy strategy isn’t much more solid).

John Swinney pledged to “eradicate child poverty in Scotland”. So I’d like to take a moment to ask him the hardest question anyone can ask any politician who has made a pledge of any kind.

“How?”

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