2 October 2013
Action needed on Scottish budget
Transform Scotland director Colin Howden reports on the Scottish Budget.
Cycle investment a step in the right direction...
During John Swinney’s statement on the 2014-15 Scottish Budget, the most prominent spending announcement on transport was the extra £20m (over two years) being made available for additional cycle infrastructure. It’s certainly welcome to see the Government take notice of the various campaigns for investment in active travel -- not least our own! -- carried out over the past few years.
£10m extra each year is a significant sum given that the existing active travel spend per year is around £20m. However, it’s small beer compared to the overall transport budget, which runs at over £2,000m per year. While these extra funds will bring a few key schemes to fruition (not least the Leith Walk scheme being promoted by The City of Edinburgh Council with the assistance of Sustrans Scotland), progressively increased levels of investment will be required if we hope to meet the 10% cycle share target that the Government has committed to in its Cycling Action Plan for Scotland.
To that end, we’re very happy to be involved in the Stop Climate Chaos Scotland campaign to ‘Reduce climate emissions, deliver climate justice’. This campaign is calling upon members of the public to ask their MSPs to urge John Swinney to double this £10m to £20m extra per annum. Given that Mr Swinney also proudly announced a significant underspend on the second Forth road bridge project, there’s certainly money in his budget to allow this to happen.
http://www.stopclimatechaos.org/campaigns/sccs-autumn2013
... but is it just at the expense of other areas of sustainable transport?
What is unclear from the Budget statement is whether the extra cycle monies are just actually being taken from other sustainable transport budget lines. This issue stems from the consistent failure of the Scottish Government to provide transparent information on its active travel expenditure. We go into this topic in some detail in our initial response to the Budget. [1]
http://www.transformscotland.org.uk/clarity-required-on-swinney-cycle-spend-statement.aspx It's very clear how much is spent on railways or aviation or ferries, and pretty clear how much is spent on buses or roads. So it’s baffling that the Government continues to refuse to make available clear figures on its expenditure on walking & cycling, despite even the Parliament’s ICI Committee calling for this clarity to be provided. What
is transparent is that the failure to provide clear information has reduced the trust that many organisations have in the Government’s intentions towards active travel investment.
The Scottish Budget has commenced its parliamentary process, with various committees taking written and oral evidence. The key one for us is the transport (ICI) committee’s deadline of 14 October. We’d encourage you all to make your views known to the ICI, and other, parliamentary committees. The Budget process won’t conclude until February next year -- but the sooner we can all make our views known the better.
http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/CurrentCommittees/65392.aspxIf there are issues that you’d like us to raise as part of our evidence then feel free to get in touch with your suggestions. As well as some of the issues above, we’ll also be raising concern over the overall balance of spending: with the Government’s expenditure on roads having increased by almost 40% over the past five years, while most sustainable transport budget lines have remained essentially static, it is clear that the Scottish Government’s priorities have moved
away from sustainable investment.
A delusional government?
What is perhaps most worrying is that the Scottish Government appears to think that it is moving in the right direction. The self-congratulatory speech by deputy first minister Nicola Sturgeon on 10 September was disturbing in so far as it regarded progress on transport as consisting of (i) abolishing bridge tolls, (ii) putting in place a vast road-building programme which will apparently “transform travel”
[I’ll think we’ll be the judge of that, thanks very much], and (iii) campaigning for reducing taxation on the most polluting -- and most lightly-taxed -- transport sector: aviation.
http://news.scotland.gov.uk/News/Transport-track-record-makes-impressive-reading-3ec.aspxSturgeon’s quote made no reference to public transport, walking, cycling, sea or rail freight, or indeed any other aspect of sustainable transport. Frankly, if this is what the Government sees as progress, then we do have a problem.
Some personal leadership from the Scottish Ministers would not go amiss. The finding from the Conservatives that the Ministers have trebled their spending on car use in the past three years perhaps explains this administration’s emphasis on road-building. If they themselves don’t use sustainable transport, perhaps we should not be surprised that they are not prepared to prioritise its investment?
http://jacksoncarlawmsp.wordpress.com/2013/09/20/snp-spending-on-private-car-hire-trebles/Notes:[1] Spokes have addressed these issues in more detail on their website. See for example:
http://www.spokes.org.uk/wordpress/2013/09/budget-bewilderment/ http://www.spokes.org.uk/wordpress/2013/09/new-scotland-money-new-leith-walk/