Fresh talent in Sturgeon's new Cabinet needs to deliver fresh ideas

The Scottish Government has a new fresh look this week after a cabinet reshuffle that was far more wide-ranging than anyone expected. Doubtless there will be high expectations of the new runners and riders – thankfully there has been little carnaptious online comment about the weel kent faces returning to the backbenchs.

Clearly new ministers bring fresh energy, diverse backgrounds, different life experiences and new contacts into government. Most came into politics as a result of the indyref – all owe their primary allegiance to Nicola Sturgeon rather than the old “King across the water”. And that’s fine.

READ MORE: Nicola Sturgeon unveils 'fresh talent' after Cabinet reshuffle

READ MORE: Nicola Sturgeon appoints new generation of SNP ministers

But this fresh intake needs a couple of things from the party hierarchy – room to manoeuvre to follow their own instincts and bring a diversity of opinion to the cabinet table, and a fresh determination to tackle structural problems in Scottish life rather than collecting the “low hanging fruit” of better systems.

In short, new faces don’t necessarily mean new policies. And with substantial achievements like the new Scottish social security system under their belt, new policies are what’s needed now from the Scottish Government.

I appreciate this may seem a touch curmudgeonly. Politicians who become government ministers basically hand their lives over, lock stock and barrel. It is a powerful but ultimately thankless task – and that’s why it’s so important tangible achievements emerge from all the effort. And they may not unless government uses its powers to sort the skewed power imbalances that have long bedevilled Scotland – between central and “local” government, communities and councils, landowners and local people, quangos and communities. I’m sure others could add to the list.

The Scottish Government has made tentative steps in redressing all these problematic structural issues, which were generally sorted in neighbouring European states decades, even centuries, ago. But now it’s time to be bolder.

Perhaps Nicola Sturgeon worries that the Scottish public is not as radical as campaigners would wish, and she must tread the fine line between modernising old, unfit-for-purpose hierarchies without scaring the horses and failing to get re-elected. The SNP will doubtless acknowledge that most of the 45 per cent have undergone a major, self-education process since 2014 and are up to speed with the way decentralised power structures make success in literacy, engagement, health, longevity and happiness apparently easy for our Northern Europe neighbours. But she may calculate that No voters are supporters of the establishment and measure success by very last old-fashioned standards of judgement. And she is First Minister for all of Scotland, not just impatient progressives.

That might be right.

There’s also the small matter of Brexit and a probable second independence referendum next year. I’m not suggesting anyone at Holyrood is twiddling their thumbs. But they are pushing ahead with the day job and churning out proposed new laws that largely miss the mark. That’s disappointing and it doesn’t need to be that way.

I think the Scottish Government underestimates the appetite for genuine change and the capacity of professionals and the public to embrace new thinking. Later this week, for example, I’ll be at a conference with other members of the Scottish Prisons Commission, marking 10 years since we recommended a community payback system on the Finnish model, to end the pointless “warehousing” of prisoners on short-term sentences. It was controversial then – it still is now. And aspects of the system need refining. But it’s been largely accepted – even by the more hysterical wings of the tabloid press. Meanwhile, south of the Border, privatisation and overcrowding mean prisons are in meltdown. This week also marks 25 years since the Assynt Crofters tore up the rule book and became the first crofters to buy their land from the Laird. Their actions have inspired many more communities to travel that same path, restarting their communities and hyper-boosting local confidence along the way. But can we hope to restore power to communities this way across Scotland – acre by acre and arduous community buyout by community buyout?

There is another way and I’d suggest the public is ready for it. The Scottish Land Commission is examining the case for Land Value Tax, but if they back such a long overdue measure, there will have to be legislation waiting to carry it into law before the next Holyrood election. That means preparing for another Land Reform Bill now.

That may seem strange when new rights created under 2016/17 land reform legislation only comes into force today. It provides for communities to acquire “abandoned, neglected or detrimental” land if it would benefit the community and these new rights can be triggered at any time – the community doesn’t need to wait for the landowner to sell. I know of one community ready to use this mechanism but suspect many will others feel daunted by having to openly accuse landowners of dereliction. Indeed the whole community buyout approach to fixing Scotland’s stultifying, archaic and appalling concentration of land ownership puts the onus on under-resourced communities. Serious consideration of a Land Tax would kick-start an alternative method, putting the onus on legislation and government.

But there are other easier wins. Scottish Greens housing spokesperson Andy Wightman MSP and veteran land reform campaigner wants the Scottish Government to bring Scotland’s 11,649 hectares of derelict land fully into the non-domestic rates system. “By our calculations, this could generate £200 million for vital public services and the creation of a programme of building truly affordable homes that would tackle the housing crisis.” The number of homeless people in Scotland has increased after an eight-year decline and 60% of Scotland’s most deprived communities live within 500 metres of vacant and derelict land. All of this calls for urgent action to clear up and use derelict land. But currently, house building mainly benefits developers, and produces homes that are largely unaffordable. A Green amendment to the Planning Bill would help end this by capturing land value for the benefit of people.

Put simply, it would mean that a plot currently for sale on the remote Applecross peninsula for £95k would cost £1k – its current use value.

It’s the same story with local democracy. Five hundred people gathered in Glasgow last weekend to launch a charter calling for genuinely local councils to be restored in Scotland, making decisions based on plans drawn up by institutionally entrenched community assemblies. This relates to planning because physical and social plans are currently totally separate. Councillors often have just half a day to decide on the future of land use – big companies spend much more time shaping our future. The Our Democracy campaign arose following research commissioned by ERS, which showed that 76 per cent of people in Scotland felt they had no or very little influence on council spending or services, a finding echoed by the BBC survey which found that independence and Remain-supporting Scots to be generally the cheeriest folk in Britain – except in their own local domain.

The Scottish Government announced a Local Democracy Bill in 2019 with the intention of decentralising power to a more local level so decision-making is delivered “not on behalf of a community, but by a community itself.”

That’s a noble intention. But it cannot be delivered by heaping more responsibility and stress on small groups of volunteers. There is no substitute for town and island councils, which volunteer effort can further democratise and energise. But anything less, means a long campaign will be waged to secure more. Why not reconsider this possibly transformational move now, with this new intake of ministers?

Finally Education Secretary, John Swinney is still pushing education reforms opposed by all other parties except the Tories, citing international evidence that self-run schools produce better educational results. Maybe they do. But international evidence also suggests that testing four and five-year-olds in primary one is pointless and even counter-productive. Even more fruitless is starting school for children at such an early age. The Scottish Government is making a big push to provide more childcare in the early years and to get more childcare outdoors. That’s really great. But it would be even better if we could rethink the whole of nursery/primary education and decide which setting is best for our children – then legislate.

And call the attainment gap for what it truly is: largely a result of the grinding inequality produced by Westminster economic and social policies and therefore something a devolved Scottish Government can only mitigate rather than resolve.

It’ll be a long, hot summer for the new Cabinet team – but hopefully a time genuinely new approaches to old problems start to blossom.