At the SNP conference in Aberdeen, Cllr Lesley Macinnes, the SNP group leader in Edinburgh, joined Cllr Ricky Bell from Glasgow City Council in an emergency motion to delegates about the need for unconditional local authority funding.
The motion which was passed by acclamation asked for Scottish cities to be treated the same as their English counterparts.
The two SNP leaders in the biggest councils in Scotland collaborated at conference to demand economic devolution with associated powers.
Cllr Macinnes pointed to the City Region Deals which are already in effect, and suggested that single-pot multi year funding – as there is in England – would be a more suitable solution than funding with conditions attached.
She said The Scottish Government is already exploring more devolution of powers to local authorities in a collaborative exercise, but that distant decision making can be harmful.
She said that local authorities such as those in Edinburgh and Glasgow have “enormous local expertise, capacity and have put enormous effort into intricate city region deals which actually deliver”.
She asserted that Edinburgh’s GDP per person has now surpassed London levels, “So we must be doing something right.”
In her opinion, there is no need for another layer of “imposed expertise”, but there is a need for funding “unconstrained by imposed expectations that we do things the Manchester way. So show us the money, Andy, and give us the same respect you have been giving to English local areas. Be serious about levelling the playing field between the devolved nations and the regions in England and let us see what we can do with it.”
She said: “Let’s continue to build a Scotland that looks in the future with energy, enthusiasm, skills, and enormous capacity.”
Cllr Bell who has recently taken over the leadership of The City of Glasgow Council asked Andy Burnham to come and have a sensible conversation with the First Minister and the government team. He said: “We are ready and willing to be part of an economic regeneration for Scotland.”
He would like the Prime Minister to come and talk about regional devolution which “has the power to change the economy of this country and to make us into the country that we know we can be”.
In Glasgow, Cllr Bell is chair of the City Region Deal has delivered major infrastructure projects in the past decade, including the Govan to Partick Bridge which two million people have crossed. He added that at the end of the programme the funding stopped, and he claimed monies were diverted to England instead.
He called for a “union of parity”, saying : “John Swinney has already committed to that in The Scottish Parliament election manifesto when he talked about the devolution of powers. But the UK government has to play their part in as well. It’s not good enough, and it’s not acceptable for them to be funding English cities to make them more competitive than their Scottish counterparts.”
