Ivan McKee was repeatedly challenged over the Scottish government’s ‘disruptive’ proposals
SNP councillors have criticised the party’s leadership over “hugely disruptive” plans to reform local government in Scotland.
Ivan McKee, the Public Service Reform Secretary, was repeatedly challenged over the proposals at the SNP conference in Aberdeen.
He was told a three-month engagement period was not credible, while wider reform targets seemed “fairly crudely drawn”.
But the minister hit back at critics, insisting he was “fed up” of hearing from those who are “against a thing that we haven’t said we’re going to do yet”.
It marked a comparatively rare moment of internal party divisions erupting into the open, and hints at a growing headache for the SNP.
Scotland’s current 32 council structure could be scrapped and replaced with a two-tier system of regional and local bodies under government plans.
A paper published last month suggested replacing the current structure with between six and 10 regional authorities and between 120 and 160 more local “community” authorities.
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But Graham Campbell, a councillor in Glasgow and a member of the SNP’s ruling national executive council, hit out at the way in which the proposals had been drawn up.
Speaking at a conference fringe meeting attended by McKee, he said: “The fact is that this discussion has been prompted by a policy paper which has not been discussed with us as councillors.
“It’s not right if you accept parity of esteem for SNP councillors that we should hear about what our policy is from some policy wonk that’s never met any of us or never met any of our constituents.
“Clearly, this has gone entirely the wrong way round. That’s the first thing - this needs to be reversed. We should be holding constituency citizens’ assemblies to ask our citizens how they want us to change local government.”
Louise McAllister, an SNP councillor in Aberdeenshire, said she and her colleagues do not know “whether we’re coming or going”.
She told the event: “My group leader was actually in a leaders’ meeting with our chief executive when the email came through to the chief executive [about the plans], and our group leader was completely caught on the back foot because they had no idea that this was even coming forward.
“So it comes back to that notion of consultation and whether it is proper consultation, whether it’s bona fide, because that three-month window, I’m afraid, and with the best will in the world, smacks of decisions being made.
“That’s the public perception - that we can’t possibly have meaningful consultation and conversation within three months, added to that we’ve got the local elections obviously coming in May ‘27. We as councillors don’t know whether we’re coming or going.
“Where am I going to be standing? Am I going to be standing? How is that all going to work? So that three-month timetable is hugely disruptive to our thought process and also the public perception, and that’s really where this falls down.”
Elsewhere, Gene Maxwell, a councillor in Stirling, said community councillors were being ignored, with no money and no powers.
He told the event: “£500 is what Stirling gives as an admin grant, and we then carp about whether they can spend £8 on a bit of software to do their minute taking. It’s pathetic. We need to get a grip of that.”
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Mr McKee said the government had decided to set community councils to one side until wider reforms are in place, leading to Mr Maxwell to heckle from the audience: “With respect Ivan, I just made the point we’re ignoring them - you’ve just done it again. Stop it.”
Simon Barrow, national secretary of the SNP trade union group, expressed his “profound concern” about the reform proposals, which he said represent a “generational crossroads”.
“The plan that Ivan has introduced here, the conversation that we’re having, is about what has been described as the most radical reshaping of public services since devolution,” he said. “And what’s the timetable for discussion about that?
“I agree it needs to move with some momentum, that’s important, but a three-month timescale for consulting and reaching agreement on the future of both local government and social care isn’t credible.
“It undermines the assurance of an open and transparent process.”
He added: “The targets at the moment not only lack detail but they seem fairly crudely drawn. There’s talk of £1.7 billion extracted from public services over three years and an estimated 20,000 job losses.
“That’s half a per cent of the workforce reducing annually for five years, and there aren’t any specifics about which public services would sustain these cuts.
“We can see no real assessment of the size of the workforce needed to deliver public services to meet current and projected demand.”
Mr McKee said criticisms of the government’s plans were contradictory, with some people accusing him of having a “secret plan” and others of making it up.
He said Cosla, the council umbrella body, had asked ministers to come forward with more details, and the subsequent government paper was not proscriptive but rather “an outline of a suggestion from government as to what the shape of this might look like to open up and start a discussion”.
He told the event: “People who are engaging in the process need to make a decision on whether they want to engage with the process or frankly, and I’ve heard it on the panel this morning and I’m fed up hearing it, people deciding that they know what it is that we think we’re going to do that we’re not telling them we’re going to do and then deciding why they’re against it, and then telling us why they’re against a thing that we haven’t said we’re going to do yet.
“So if people would stop doing that and actually grab the power and the opportunity that’s there, engage with the process, tell us what you think we should do, not why you’re opposed to what you think we think you think we think we’re doing, then we may be in a better place and be able to move forward with this.”
Mr McKee said the three-month timetable was simply “to seek to reach a shared direction on the future”, and no decisions had been made on the number of regions.
In response, Mr Barrow said he had not heard any contradictions, adding: “I heard a number of local councillors expressing concern that they had not even been engaged so far in this process, for which there’s just three months to engage.”