Report to the People
Banking on the Future
Last week saw one of the most important announcements of the Scottish Parliamentary calendar – The Spending Review Statement. In effect the Scottish Budget, it was the chance for Finance Minister, Andy Kerr, to set out how the Parliament intends to spend around £70 billion.
I suppose every Finance Minister always tries to deliver a Budget which has "something for everyone." This Budget, though, probably lays more claim to this accolade than most – certainly here in Greenock and Inverclyde.
In an area blighted with some of the worst heart disease and cancer rates in the country, I’m sure our local NHS will welcome the doubling of spending on health improvement.
For our local school children, whose education is being damaged every second they sit in a crumbling classroom, the largest ever school building programme can’t come soon enough. And our young people whose first choice after school is not college or university will doubtless look forward to the expansion of Modern Apprenticeships.
And our whole community will welcome the moves to improve our neighbourhoods – from extra investment in frontline policing to the action to clean rubbish from our streets and graffiti from our walls.
But, as I said when the Parliament came to debate the announcement, one issue will be of particular benefit to us. James Watt College will share in an extra £120 million for further education. This will give a record number of people the chance to reap the benefits of lifelong learning in Inverclyde each year.
More money on its own, of course, is not enough. If this investment is to deliver real change in our community, it must be matched by change. We need, to put it bluntly, to get a bigger bang for our buck.
To return to the topic of lifelong learning for an example, here there are a couple of areas where some reform and some co-operation could deliver real results.
In Greenock we have many contract workers who work intensively for, say, nine months of the year and then do nothing for the other three. Many want to use this downtime constructively, learning and improving their skills. Simply applying some flexibility to the traditional academic timetable could allow them to do this.
In the end, then, the success of this Budget will judged on one test alone – has it made a difference? I for one will be working to make sure the answer is "yes."
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