All SNP ‘freebies’ should be considered for the axe, new Scottish Tory leader argues

Russell Findlay wants items such as Nicola Sturgeon’s baby boxes to be re-examined to save taxpayers money

All Scotland’s “freebies” including prescriptions, university tuition and Nicola Sturgeon’s baby boxes should be considered for the axe to save money, the new Scottish Tory leader has argued.
Russell Findlay said that the cost of “everything” should be re-examined to see if it provided taxpayers with value for money in an attempt to create a “smaller state that better serves the public”.
He cited Ms Sturgeon’s flagship baby boxes, which are handed to all new parents and contain £160 of products for newborns, saying they have cost £50 million “without any hard evidence of their effectiveness”.
In his first major set-piece speech since becoming leader, he argued that “almost everyone, but especially the wealthiest” can afford to buy a 39p packet of paracetamol or Ibuprofen “instead of getting it free on prescription.”
Mr Findlay noted that the number of devolved civil servants had doubled and asked: “What do they all do?” He said that public spending now accounted for 51 per cent of Scotland’s GDP but had not resulted in better services.
Arguing that it was “time to go in a different direction on tax and spend” following years of SNP tax hikes, he called for “a complete overhaul of the architecture of government”.
The Scottish Government’s no compulsory redundancies policy should be reviewed, Mr Findlay said, along with dozens of public bodies, quangos and commissioners.
He said there were at least 131 such bodies with a collective annual budget of almost £20 billion, before asking: “Do we really need them all? I very much doubt it.”
For example, he argued that the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, the country’s environmental regulator, could be merged with nature agency NatureScot.
Mr Findlay said that the savings could be used to start closing the “tax gap” between Scotland and the rest of the UK, but noted that it “has grown over the course of the last six SNP budgets and can’t all be undone in one go”.
His speech comes ahead of Wednesday’s UK Budget, in which the Chancellor is expected to announce a series of tax hikes. He said Labour was “making exactly the same mistakes the SNP Government make at Holyrood”.
In a double whammy, John Swinney’s minority SNP government is considering a series of Green demands for further tax hikes in order to win their support for the Scottish Budget.
But the Scottish Tory leader pledged that his party would present an alternative to “the Left-wing consensus in the Scottish Parliament that favours a big-state approach, expanding both its size and reach into our lives”.
Calling for an end to the “student politics of gimmicks and cheap headlines”, he said: “Like the baby box. It has now cost £50 million, without any hard evidence of their effectiveness.
“Or the fact the Scottish Government spends £9 million a year on ‘foreign embassies’, despite international affairs being reserved.” He added: “Examples of unnecessary and wasteful spending could fill a book.”
Ms Sturgeon claimed the cardboard baby boxes, which can double as a makeshift crib, would “reduce infant mortality and improve child health” when she launched them in 2017.
But Naomi Eisenstadt, her poverty advisor at the time, said the scheme was a “gimmick” that would do little to help child health. A Glasgow University study published last year also found that it had failed to improve infant health.
Mr Findlay argued that the £50 million cost might appear “not a lot of money” but it could “do a lot of good in our public services”.
He said all options should be considered, including means testing the provision of baby boxes so that only poor families get them and scrapping the scheme altogether.
Pressed on other universal benefits, he argued that everything should be on the table but noted that the “vast majority” of prescriptions are free south of the Border.
To make public services more efficient, he argued that councils and NHS boards needed reform, with “bureaucracy streamlined to ensure every penny reaches the front line” in hospitals.
He said that the NHS treating 68,000 more patients a decade ago despite having 24,500 fewer staff should “serve as a wake-up call that reform is necessary”.
His opponents were “utterly wrong” that the Tories wanted to cut public services, he said, arguing that he instead wanted to “cut the cost of delivering services”. He added: “The Left-wing parties in the Scottish Parliament spend all their time on inputs, never on outcomes.”
The Scottish Government and the SNP were approached for comment.