Exclusive:Scottish Budget: Greens reveal demands as SNP's negotiating 'trump card' taken away
The Greens are the most likely party to back the SNP minority government’s budget plans.
The Scottish Greens will demand £5bn of climate funding and call on SNP ministers to investigate kickstarting a mansion tax if they are to support this year’s crunch pre-election budget.
The SNP’s former government partners are likely to be the only opposition party to prop up the budget ahead of May’s election and have set out key demands Greens party co-leader Ross Greer has been making of Finance Secretary Shona Robison and junior minister Ivan McKee over the last few weeks.
Talks with all opposition parties are expected to continue ahead of Ms Robison’s draft budget being published on January 13. The minority Scottish Government will need the support of an opposition party to pass its budget.
The Greens will insist last year’s climate positive funding of £4.9bn will be matched, push for free bus travel to be extended to under 30s, an expansion of free school meals and for Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ mansion tax in England to be used to kickstart action to make Scotland’s council tax more of a progressive tax on wealth.
Mr Greer has also called on SNP ministers to stay clear of “the resurrection of the PFI” to fund capital projects, and has called for an investigation into using public pension pots to invest in housebuilding.
Speaking to The Scotsman, Mr Greer stressed that unlike the unionist opposition parties, “it’s not in our interest to tear chunks out of each other”.
He added: “Our voters seem to want us to push the government further and ensure the direction of travel that was there under Nicola Sturgeon is still the case.”
With May’s election looming large over the budget, Mr Greer suggested that opposition parties will hold more power over the government in discussions than usual.
“Ultimately, the government’s trump card in budget negotiations with opposition is usually that parties don’t want to force an early election”, he said.
“That’s irrelevant when you are setting a budget a couple months before the election is due to happen.
“The government’s negotiating position for the final budget before an election is always weaker than it was otherwise going to be.”
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Turning to his party’s demands, Mr Greer said “it is about ticking both boxes of cost of living and climate”.
He added: “We are rapidly running out of time on the climate emergency, everybody knows that. But at the same time as the warnings from the scientists become more dire, the Scottish Government is massively scaling back the action that it’s taken.
“In the last budget, making sure that climate and nature spending went up and hit a record level was one of our priorities and we achieved it.
“At the very least, when the government is rolling back on a whole range of other areas, we are going to make sure that if they want our votes for the budget, they cannot roll back on climate and nature spend.
“That no backward step on climate and nature spend, we don’t like the language of red lines, but that is the kind of area for us we would be unable to compromise on.”
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Mr Greer has tabled a proposal to extend the current free bus travel for under 22s to under 30s, stressing it would “save a lot of working age adults money”.
Boosting spending on peatland restoration is also likely to feature in the Greens’ budget asks.
Mr Greer said that “the next step” in tackling child poverty, which the Greens have played a key role in pushing forward in previous years, will also be key to talks with the Scottish Government.
He said: “We are keen to see something in that space around free school meals or something similar that helps families that really need it right now.
“The benefits of providing free school meals are pretty unquestionable. Nobody doubts it - everybody knows it is really good value for money.”
The Greens co-leader said that the Chancellor’s proposals to introduce a mansion tax on properties south of the Border with a value of more than £2m was “an unbelievably over-complicated way to achieve a progressive goal”.
He suggested that it could be a catalyst to use the higher bands for council tax for a short-term mansion tax in Scotland before a full overhaul of the charge takes place after the election.
Mr Greer said: “I think that opens up the space to have another conversation about council tax reform.
“We’re clearly not going to scrap and replace the whole thing in a single budget right before an election. But right now, we should be looking at options around what we do with council tax bands F, G and H and is there something more progressive that we can do there.”
He added: “Any money that we raise from that would go straight into local services like schools, social care, libraries, roads and pavements - the kinds of stuff people are seeing fail every day.
“There are short-term changes that we can make right now that could potentially be made for the 2026-27 financial year around bands F,G and H.”
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With the Scottish Government’s funding for capital projects being restricted by the UK government for several years and borrowing capped, SNP ministers have been flirting with seeking partnerships with the private sector to try and pay for infrastructure projects.
But Mr Greer has stressed there are “massive untapped opportunities for investment” the Scottish Government should explore.
He added: “The most obvious example is for housebuilding and it’s public sector pension funds.
“Our public sector pension funds have tens of billions of pounds, they have an ability to invest. What they need is a guaranteed return on that investment because if they don’t get that people’s pensions are in trouble.
“There are few areas as reliable for a return on your investment as housebuilding. I’ve been quite frustrated for a number of years that the Scottish Government has not pursued opportunities like the pension funds to get that kind of investment.”
A Scottish Government spokesperson said: “Ministers are committed to building as broad support as possible across parliament in order to deliver the forthcoming budget.
“Engagement with parties is ongoing ahead of the draft budget being set out in the Scottish Parliament on January 13.”
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