Richard Leonard: Council leaders need extra £545m 'just to stand still'

The Scottish Labour leader has pressed Nicola Sturgeon to commit to boosting council funding by more than half a billion pounds in the forthcoming Scottish Budget to maintain public services.

Richard Leonard said council leaders told him they need more than £545 million additional funding in next month's Budget `just to stand still'.

He accused the Scottish Government of doubling down on Conservative austerity measures in passing cuts on to local authorities.

Speaking at First Minister's Questions, he said: `Scotland's councils need more than half a billion pounds to simply maintain current services - that is teaching our children in schools, providing care services to our elderly and keeping public libraries open.

`The First Minister talks about councils using council tax powers, she knows full well that increasing the council tax alone last year would not have closed the austerity gap which she imposed on Scottish local services.'

He said if all Scottish local authorities had imposed the maximum 3p increase in council tax last year it would have raised £70 million and claimed government cuts to local government services totalled £170 million.

Mr Leonard continued: `The reality is this - the Scottish Government has taken Tory austerity and doubled it for local councils across Scotland.'

The First Minister ridiculed his position, pointing out that eight Labour councils were the only local authorities in Scotland not to use new powers to increase council tax following the previous budget.

She said: `Right now there could be millions of pounds more going towards local services had Labour councils taken advantage of every opportunity they had to raise more revenue.'

She added: `Richard's Leonard's argument appears to be that because he thinks councils should have got more money then it was right for Labour councils to turn their back on the money they could have had.

`This is a ridiculous, incoherent argument that says Labour prefers politicking over delivering for the people across our country.'

Ms Sturgeon said her administration gave councils an extra £400 million in spending power in last year's budget.

She claimed Holyrood faces a real terms cut of more than £200 million to the revenue budget in UK Government funding, adding: `Within that challenging climate we have treated local government fairly and we will continue to do so.'