SNP's winter fuel payment is same 'government by stunt' that's been ruining Scotland for years

A year from now, regardless of means, every Scottish household containing a pensioner will receive £100. Long before then, due to the triple lock, most state pensions will increase by three or four times that amount.

More important, since means-testing winter fuel payments was announced, the least well-off pensioners who did not claim Pension Credit are getting round to doing so, which is a very good result. Pension Credit is worth £3,900 a year, which puts Shirley-Anne Somerville’s £100 in perspective.

Moving away from universal benefits

Since the Chancellor’s announcement, close on 200,000 have applied for Pension Credit which is about a quarter of those estimated to be eligible but not claiming. The focus – in Scotland at least as much as elsewhere – should be on increasing that number as far and as fast as possible.

Instead, we have been diverted into a bidding war. Scottish Labour, seeing a nationalist manoeuvre in the offing, got in first by distancing itself from the Chancellor’s break with universalism. The Scottish Government was then left to respond, rather than initiate.

It was a reflection of how Scottish politics is conducted, for as long as it reflects a competition between two governments. One hundred pounds all round, a year from now, makes no sense whatsoever in any progressive order of priorities, no matter who is suggesting it.

As I have previously argued, the decision to make a winter fuel payments “cut” was politically inept for an incoming Labour government. It could have waited to be part of a package. On the other hand, the move away from universalism is right in principle.

The fact this payment remained static for over 20 years confirms it was an outlier in the benefits system, ripe for reform. Now, in a roundabout way, a good outcome is emerging. Hundreds of thousands of pensioners who need it most will get a substantial uplift which will really make a difference, if only they claim Pension Credit.

Tackling poverty comes second

Meanwhile in Scotland, an extra £100 million in winter fuel payments for people who may not need it will have to be found somewhere. Ms Somerville said they had “always intended” to maintain the status quo until the Chancellor pulled the rug. If true, this was in the face of advice from their own Poverty and Inequality Commission which described the universal payment as “extraordinarily poorly targeted as regards to addressing poverty”.

In other words, if it’s a choice between reforming an “extraordinarily poorly targeted” benefit or scoring a political point by appearing more generous, there is no doubt where the SNP’s vote will go, while Scottish Labour feels obliged to pre-empt it. Actually “addressing poverty” comes a poor second in these calculations.

One of the basic problems with SNP rule is that there is so little belief in its own ability to do things differently, except as a tactical manoeuvre to put one over on “Westminster” and then boast about it. In this case, the paradox is that – in order to be different – they want to perpetuate an “extraordinarily poorly targeted” status quo.

Big ideas?

I sometimes wonder if they ever read Scottish history books, rather than colouring them in. If so, they would find that, for many decades or even centuries before Holyrood existed, Scotland did things differently without being in the least self-conscious about it or looking over its shoulder to Westminster.

We had a separate legal system; a significantly different education system; our own legislation governing the NHS and so on. Political devolution offered the opportunity to extend differences where desirable and increase accountability. Yet over huge areas of policy, creative Scottish political thinking of past generations has been replaced by small-minded tinkering for advantage.

Where are the big ideas? Take the crucial question of how to fund local government and extend the tax base. Is it not astonishing that after 17 years of SNP rule, our devolved parliament – with all the relevant powers – clings like a limpet to a regressive system which was hastily put in place by John Major’s government when it needed to get rid of the poll tax?

Incidentally, whatever one thought of the poll tax, there is no argument it was 100 per cent made in Scotland in response to Scottish circumstances – a mandatory revaluation which did not exist in England. OK, the “solution” the Tories came up with was bonkers but it was Scottish bonkers.

Small change

Is there nobody in today’s Scotland who can offer a sane alternative to the council tax which is fairer and will protect vital services? The SNP’s only dumb idea was a council tax freeze, which again benefited the better off. As for imaginative, radical, progressive reform...? Forget it. Their comfort zone is within a straitjacket designed by John Major.

Taxing land values is one obvious option, instead of driving them up by inviting in speculators in “natural capital”. But then look at the reactionary pronouncements from John Swinney and Kate Forbes in defence of the fiscal status quo and it is clear why that won’t happen. They are content to have inherited a system which enshrines inequality rather than challenge its fundamentals, as devolution enables.

There is a desperate need for a change of government at Holyrood but it is equally necessary that it should arrive armed with ideas, political creativity and confidence in itself to do things differently; not in order to score political points but because they can transform the Scotland we live in.

A hundred quid is small change compared to what devolution was supposed to be about.