....or should that be lies?
There have been two SNP party political broadcastss in the last two weeks. One is an all-women presentation and another features a "what has the SNP ever done for us" skit based on the Monty Python "what have the Romans ever done for us" scene from The Life of Brian. In both of these broadcasts the claim is made that the SNP has built 330 new schools in the last four years.
Common sense tells us that cannot be true: in my own area, after having built five new schools between 2003 and 2007, there have been no schools built in the last four years.... Surely, if hundreds of schools were being built, we would have been allocated at least one... and surely if hundreds of new schools were being built we would not have the employment problems in construction that we do have?
From 2001-2007 Labour (and Lib Dems) at Holyrood provided matching funds to councils to build schools. Holyrood supplied 60% of capital costs of these projects, with councils raising the other 40% usually (I cannot swear for all of them) using PPP.
Under that dispensation, hundreds of schools were built and contracts for signed to design and build new schools .
In the 2007 manifesto Labour promised to build 100 more schools using the same mechanism. The SNP opposed PPP, but promised to match Labour's programme "brick for brick" using the Scottish Futures Trust (SFT). SFT is a proposed new mechanism that the SNP would create for funding and managing large capital projects. It is necessary because the SNP hates PPP, and refuses to use it to fund and manage new contracts.
However the SFT never materialised. There is no new funding mechansim for large capital projects. It never really existed other than an empty manifesto promise. So three years pass and, as the SNP refuses to use PPP and they have no SFT, no matching funds are available from Holyrood and therefore no new schools are commissioned from Holyrood. None. Not one. In all of Scotland.
Any schools "completed" since 2007 already had authorisation and/or funding and/or contracts in place before the SNP came to power, or some may be financed by councils out of their own capital funds. But none are due to the SNP at Holyrood.
In 2010 Holyrood says councils can put 14 secondary and 21 primary schools (approximately, I don't have the exact figures to hand) in their capital plans. That's a total of 30 odd schools for all of Scotland. The matching funding will only be 50% and will not include extraneuos items such as new road formation, school crossings etc that were typically included in the previous allocations.
In December 2010 councils which had been planning to start a school got a letter from the SNP administration saying that the money would no longer be in their capital budget, but instead would be allocated from revenues. And, btw, you have to use PPP to design, build and maintain them!!!!
Councils are still not clear what the switch means, what impact it will have on design and build timetables etc.
The result is that only one (that I know of) schoool has been started with Holyrood money authorised by the SNP administration (remember brick for brick?). And none will be completed before the May 2011 elections.
The question is: were the 330 schools that the SNP claim to have "completed" (weasel word) since 2007 all authorised before the SNP came to power? I.e. did the prevous administration authorise the schools, authorise the funding and the contract mechanism, have the project in place and started or ready to go before the SNP stopped all new PPP contracts? It seems likley that this is that case.
It is clear that none of the 330 schools that have been "completed" since 2007 have been due to anything the SNP at Holyrood did. There was no matching funding from Holyrood between 2007 and 2010, how can there have been new build?
The SNP might say that their claiming to have "completed" these schools is sort-of true. Some of them have been getting built while the SNP has been in Holyrod, but in claiming the credit for "building" these schools, it becomes, in my opinion, a direct lie.
Of course I might be barking up the wrong tree. Maybe the SNP has built 330 schools since 2007. Maybe the evidence is just not clear and they're too shy to put it into the public domain. Who knows?
So if anyone out there has a list of these projects, their timeline and funding, then maybe they could send it, or point us to the source. Then we could get to the bottom of the mystery of the mysterious "330 new schools completed" claim. That'd be nice.
Showing posts with label PPP. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PPP. Show all posts
Tuesday, 15 March 2011
Monday, 7 March 2011
SNP Demands Councils use PPP
I have been having a few comments published on the Universality of Cheese website. The subject being how wonderful the SNP has been for the people of Scotland.
I raised the question of why no new schools had been commissioned by Holyrood during most of the SNP's reign, but got the usual blank looks from the nat contributors. So I have decided to post a simple narrative.
Here it is;
Before they got elected, the SNP attacked PPP relentlessly making much of the costs of PPP contracts.
The SNP promised that, if elected, that they would abolish PPP.
The SNP said that, if they were in power, PPP would be replaced by a Scottish Futures Trust.
The SNP said that the Scottish Futures Trust would be a new method of financing capital projects such as schools.
The SNP also said it would use the Scottish Futures Trust to match Labour's school building programme "brick for brick".
The SNP gathered lots of protest votes against PPP. They also gathered votes on the promise to build many new schools (as Labour had done), matching Labour's school building programme "brick for brick".
When the SNP took power, it stopped all new school funding from Holyrood because it refused to use the hated PPP to fund new schools. The SNP wanted the new finnacing mecahnism, the SFT, to provide the funding mechanism for the programme to match Labour's school building programme "brick for brick".
Unfortunately, after 3 years of faffing around, the SFT was still not defined. It had no substance and no shape. It was a blob of fantasy: nobody knew what it was, what it meant, how it would be funded, how it would work.... It transired that, although the SNP had promised the SFT in its manifesto, nobody in the SNP had actually thought out how the SFT woud work! And all the effort over three desparate years had produced nothing. It was a mess.
In 2010 the Education Minister was sacked and a new one appointed. Some money was, at last, released from Holyrood funds to councils to help build schools (the SNP administration provided 50% matched funding rather than the 60% that Labour had, but it was something...).
14 new secondary schools were identified for the whole of Scotland. For comparison, 3 new secondaries were built in my own council area between 2003 and 2007, so 14 for the whole of Scotland was pretty miserable. Still it was something......
Meanwhile an organisation called the Scottish Futures Trust was established. It had no money in any "trust" nor any method of generating money. It was not a method of financing new projects. It was, in fact, that old chestnut, "free" money from pooling purchasing efforts and standardising requirements. It was, to be frank, two men and a Microsoft Project software package. Tried before, failed before.
Although, to give the so-called Scottish Futures Trust its due, it is Scottish....
Then it emerged that a condition of getting access to the funding from Holyrood was that SNP MInisters were insisting that a PPP method of funding had to be used to finance and run the new schoools projects.
So. The whole sorry saga..... the SNP builds PPP into some sort of ogre, getting protest votes on the basis that the SNP will scrap the hated PPP. Then, in power, SNP refuses for idealogical reasons to use PPP to fund new projects. Then the SNP fails to produce the promised Scottish Futres Trust, or any other financing mechanism for capital projects. Then , in desparation, the SNP ressurrects PPP and insists that councils use it!
Incompetence. Ideaological rigidity. Ignorance. And straightforward lies.
And the upshot is: no new government funded schools in 4 years.
A complete and utter fiasco and disgrace.
I raised the question of why no new schools had been commissioned by Holyrood during most of the SNP's reign, but got the usual blank looks from the nat contributors. So I have decided to post a simple narrative.
Here it is;
Before they got elected, the SNP attacked PPP relentlessly making much of the costs of PPP contracts.
The SNP promised that, if elected, that they would abolish PPP.
The SNP said that, if they were in power, PPP would be replaced by a Scottish Futures Trust.
The SNP said that the Scottish Futures Trust would be a new method of financing capital projects such as schools.
The SNP also said it would use the Scottish Futures Trust to match Labour's school building programme "brick for brick".
The SNP gathered lots of protest votes against PPP. They also gathered votes on the promise to build many new schools (as Labour had done), matching Labour's school building programme "brick for brick".
When the SNP took power, it stopped all new school funding from Holyrood because it refused to use the hated PPP to fund new schools. The SNP wanted the new finnacing mecahnism, the SFT, to provide the funding mechanism for the programme to match Labour's school building programme "brick for brick".
Unfortunately, after 3 years of faffing around, the SFT was still not defined. It had no substance and no shape. It was a blob of fantasy: nobody knew what it was, what it meant, how it would be funded, how it would work.... It transired that, although the SNP had promised the SFT in its manifesto, nobody in the SNP had actually thought out how the SFT woud work! And all the effort over three desparate years had produced nothing. It was a mess.
In 2010 the Education Minister was sacked and a new one appointed. Some money was, at last, released from Holyrood funds to councils to help build schools (the SNP administration provided 50% matched funding rather than the 60% that Labour had, but it was something...).
14 new secondary schools were identified for the whole of Scotland. For comparison, 3 new secondaries were built in my own council area between 2003 and 2007, so 14 for the whole of Scotland was pretty miserable. Still it was something......
Meanwhile an organisation called the Scottish Futures Trust was established. It had no money in any "trust" nor any method of generating money. It was not a method of financing new projects. It was, in fact, that old chestnut, "free" money from pooling purchasing efforts and standardising requirements. It was, to be frank, two men and a Microsoft Project software package. Tried before, failed before.
Although, to give the so-called Scottish Futures Trust its due, it is Scottish....
Then it emerged that a condition of getting access to the funding from Holyrood was that SNP MInisters were insisting that a PPP method of funding had to be used to finance and run the new schoools projects.
So. The whole sorry saga..... the SNP builds PPP into some sort of ogre, getting protest votes on the basis that the SNP will scrap the hated PPP. Then, in power, SNP refuses for idealogical reasons to use PPP to fund new projects. Then the SNP fails to produce the promised Scottish Futres Trust, or any other financing mechanism for capital projects. Then , in desparation, the SNP ressurrects PPP and insists that councils use it!
Incompetence. Ideaological rigidity. Ignorance. And straightforward lies.
And the upshot is: no new government funded schools in 4 years.
A complete and utter fiasco and disgrace.
Sunday, 25 April 2010
What's Worse, a Waste of Money or a Waste of Time.....?
Not strictly associated with the election campaign, but this report in today's Sunday Mail returns the spotlight to Scottish issues and particularly the failures of the so-called "Scottish Futures Trust" (SFT).
For new readers, the SNP promised to abolish the Public-Private-Partnerships (PPP) that previous administrations had used for the financing and contracting of capital projects such as new schools and hospitals. The SNP would replace the "hated" PPP with a "Trust" which would identify and gather the finance for these projects and manage the projects to completion.
Unfortunately, the SFT was not a real idea at all: it was back-of-an-envelope puff, dreamt up to put something, anything, in the SNP manifesto. The SFT did not really exist, with the result that it took three whole years before even the current SFT, a sort of hands on purchasing agency with no power or authority to raise money or spend much, could even be set up.
The result is that, whereas the previous Labour/LibDem coalition had been responsible for 237 new schools, the SNP administration at Holyrood has not yet built even one school. Not one brick has been laid in 3 years. In fact, even at the best estimate, the SNP at Holyrood has authorised the building of 37 new schools, and none of these has any chance of being completed before the 2011 Scottish elections. The educational legacy of the first ever SNP administration looks likely to be no new schools in a full administration, an unprecedented failure to deliver better facilities to our teachers and pupils.
The Sunday Mail story says that even now, almost a year after the SFT was officially set up, there has been £1.4million spent, but there is no sign of any concrete ( forgive the pun) progress on building new schools, hospitals or any other capital project.
Alex Salmond is fond of going on UK TV and boasting that his minority government is proof that a hung parliament can work. Maybes aye, maybes naw, but it depends what you mean by "working": if the measure of success of an administration is how well it provides for the future needs of its citizens, then the tale of the SFT is a tale of failure on an unprecedented scale.
The SFT is undoubtedly a waste of money, but worse than that, it has been a waste of time, of four wasted years in which no schools were commissioned from Holyrood.
Alex Salmond may think that his administration is a "success", and he may bask in the belief that being invited onto the BBC to say so at length is some sort of personal or political endorsement. But not building schools is a definition of failure in any sane world, and the SFT is the vehicle of that failure.
For new readers, the SNP promised to abolish the Public-Private-Partnerships (PPP) that previous administrations had used for the financing and contracting of capital projects such as new schools and hospitals. The SNP would replace the "hated" PPP with a "Trust" which would identify and gather the finance for these projects and manage the projects to completion.
Unfortunately, the SFT was not a real idea at all: it was back-of-an-envelope puff, dreamt up to put something, anything, in the SNP manifesto. The SFT did not really exist, with the result that it took three whole years before even the current SFT, a sort of hands on purchasing agency with no power or authority to raise money or spend much, could even be set up.
The result is that, whereas the previous Labour/LibDem coalition had been responsible for 237 new schools, the SNP administration at Holyrood has not yet built even one school. Not one brick has been laid in 3 years. In fact, even at the best estimate, the SNP at Holyrood has authorised the building of 37 new schools, and none of these has any chance of being completed before the 2011 Scottish elections. The educational legacy of the first ever SNP administration looks likely to be no new schools in a full administration, an unprecedented failure to deliver better facilities to our teachers and pupils.
The Sunday Mail story says that even now, almost a year after the SFT was officially set up, there has been £1.4million spent, but there is no sign of any concrete ( forgive the pun) progress on building new schools, hospitals or any other capital project.
Alex Salmond is fond of going on UK TV and boasting that his minority government is proof that a hung parliament can work. Maybes aye, maybes naw, but it depends what you mean by "working": if the measure of success of an administration is how well it provides for the future needs of its citizens, then the tale of the SFT is a tale of failure on an unprecedented scale.
The SFT is undoubtedly a waste of money, but worse than that, it has been a waste of time, of four wasted years in which no schools were commissioned from Holyrood.
Alex Salmond may think that his administration is a "success", and he may bask in the belief that being invited onto the BBC to say so at length is some sort of personal or political endorsement. But not building schools is a definition of failure in any sane world, and the SFT is the vehicle of that failure.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
