BUSINESS
BY BUSINESS Editor Colin Donald
Having never quite bought into the last Scottish Executive's "Smart Successful Scotland" strategy, by May 2007 Scotland's wealth creators were ready for change. How then does business view a year of SNP rule?
Very positively it seems. This is a lobby that reserves its rave reviews for figures on a balance sheet rather than political statements of intent. But there is immense approval of the direction the minority administration is giving to business and the economy.
Not only are Salmond, Swinney, Mather and co making the right noises about the primacy of economic growth, but they have convinced even diehard doubters in the corporate, SME and entrepreneurial worlds that they understand the environment needed for it to happen.
For the first time since devolution, Scottish business is prepared to accept it has a government intent on creating conditions that are attractive to companies that want to invest, grow and compete.
As our story on the new approach to red tape suggests (Business, page 94), the game is no longer one of trying not to damage business interests in pursuit of social justice, but about setting new standards that attract international attention and win competitive advantage for Scotland.
To the fury of the opposition, now reduced to feeble politicking, business seems to very much like the SNP's demand-led skills strategy. It loves the cut in small business rates and, in the main, approves of the reorganisation of the enterprise networks.
Not that normal cynicism has been suspended. To many, the SNP remains a Janus-faced party, whose belief in a lower tax, intervention-lite approach is combined with philosophical hostility to private sector delivery of public services. Business is also opposed to the local income tax, arguing its administration would be prohibitively costly.
Critics also note the SNP's selective deafness over energy policy. There is near-universal agreement within business and the trade unions that opposition to a balanced energy portfolio, - ie one that includes nuclear power - is ill-advised and potentially damaging to Scotland.
But would we recognise this country if business had nothing major to complain about?
JUSTICEBy Home Affairs Editor John Bynorth
ONE senior former Labour government minister told me that justice secretary Kenny MacAskill has "played a blinder" in his first year in office.
MacAskill has hit the ground running, promising to tackle our "national sport" of drinking, which statistics show is responsible for more than 70% of violent assaults. He has pumped money into tackling gang violence; called for the drink-driving limit to be lowered; called for airguns to be banned; cancelled a major private prison contract; and not been afraid to take on the British Transport Police over soaring numbers of stop-and-searches under anti-terrorism legislation.
However, the most serious criticism of MacAskill's regime has been that he broke the SNP election pledge to recruit 1000 extra police officers over the next four years, after he was forced to admit the figure is closer to 500 once re-deployment of existing positions is taken into consideration.
Elsewhere, MacAskill signalled his intention to tackle supermarkets which sell cheap alcohol, along with bars and nightclubs that tempt youths into the "boozing" culture using free drinks promotions and shopkeepers who allow youngsters to be served alcohol under the legal age limit.
The real test will come with the introduction of the Licensing Act next year, which aims to limit displays of alcohol to specific areas of stores.
Despite the criticisms, MacAskill is Scotland's highest-profile justice minister in nine years of devolution.
However, a timely reminder that political careers can be broken by scandals often outside their control came when MacAskill was forced to apologise before parliament on behalf of the government for the prison service failures which allowed Robert Foye, serving 10 years for the attempted murder of a policeman, to rape a 16-year-old schoolgirl after he absconded from Castle Huntley open prison in Tayside.
HEALTH
By Health Correspondent Judith Duffy
REVERSING unpopular decisions to close local accident and emergency departments, abolishing prescription charges and extending the opening hours of GP surgeries: the first year of the SNP's health policy has been characterised by moves that seem aimed at winning popularity with patients, but at times have put the government on collision course with others within the NHS.
One of the first manifesto pledges fulfilled by health secretary Nicola Sturgeon was to stop the downgrading of the casualty departments at Monklands Hospital, Lanarkshire, and Ayr Hospital - a Labour plan that had triggered protests. However, among the critics of this U-turn was Professor David Kerr - the cancer expert who drew up a blueprint for the future of the Scottish NHS three years ago - who attacked it as a "completely outmoded concept of health planning."
Other policies that have been implemented this year include cutting prescription charges by 25%, as part of the phased abolition of the "tax on ill-health". After an outcry by staff and patients against high charges in hospital car parks, health boards were ordered to impose a £3 maximum daily charge, however this did not immediately extend to car parks at two of Scotland's biggest hospitals, which are run by private operators.
The SNP moved to abolish "hidden" waiting lists, a system where patients could in certain circumstances lose their waiting time guarantee. More action has been promised, with a new target by December 2011 of a maximum 18 week wait for treatment following referral by a GP.
THE ENVIRONMENT
By Environment Editor Rob Edwards
The SNP grew up on oil, are wedded to economic expansion and always want to put Scotland first. However, they have never developed a coherent theoretical approach to the environment.
It comes as some surprise then, that after a year in power, the SNP have won warm plaudits from many environmentalists. There are still major reservations, but most observers outside political parties think the SNP are doing a better job than their predecessors.
Perhaps the green issues on which the SNP have won most praise are nuclear power and nuclear weapons. Ministers made very clear their opposition to any new nuclear power stations north of the Border, and quickly got their position accepted by Westminster.
A summit - then the establishment of a working party - to find ways of getting rid of the Trident nuclear weapons system on the Clyde was also a popular move.
The SNP's enthusiastic support for renewable energy is also regarded positively. That has not been marred by the rejection of the wind farm on Lewis.
SNP ministers have made impressive noises about combating the rise in wildlife crime, and have promised a marine bill to provide co-ordinated protection to Scotland's seas. Moves to make flood management more sustainable and to encourage fishermen to conserve cod stocks have also been welcomed.
The SNP's plan to tackle global warming by cutting climate pollution 80% by 2050 is ahead of most other countries.
The biggest flaw in the SNP's environmental thinking has been their transport policy. By abandoning tolls on the Forth and Tay bridges, pursuing plans for a new Forth road crossing and backing airport expansion, ministers have failed to join the climate change dots. Unless they radically change their approach, they will find their targets to cut climate pollution slipping - along with their environmental credibility.
THE ARTS
By Arts Editor Alan Morrison
IN the run-up to polling day, the SNP promised an artists' tax exemption scheme (for those earning less than £15,000) following an Irish model. Soon after the election, these tax breaks were shoved to the side.
The arts brief was then caught in a shuffle as Linda Fabiani was named the new minister for Europe, External Affairs and Culture. Unike her Labour predecessor, she wouldn't have a seat in the Cabinet, but would report directly to Salmond. The arts were shifted away from the education brief and linked to an international agenda. As a result, the cultural co-ordinator programme, operated by local authorities as a bridge between schools and the arts and funded via the Scottish Arts Council, is to be wound down by 2010. Meanwhile in March of this year, the government gave £600,000 to the New Arts Sponsorship Awards to encourage private sector investment in the arts for another two-year period. The new Creative Scotland Bill aims to bring into being a so-called "superquango" Creative Scotland, the controversial offspring of a merger between the Scottish Arts Council and Scottish Screen.
So what has made a bang since the Nats took office? The £2 million annual Edinburgh Festival Expo Fund, designed to support one or more Scottish productions premiering at any of the city's festivals, has enabled Scottish Opera to stage Smetana's The Two Widows in August and secured the status of the Imaginate children's theatre festival. The government also put £10 million towards the purchase of the Anthony D'Offay collection of contemporary art, to be shared between the National Galleries of Scotland and The Tate.
EDUCATION
By Education Correspondent Edd McCracken
Like a kid at a new school, the SNP arrived in office over-excited and bursting with ideas about Scotland's education. The sugar-rush of winning the election last May spilled over into pledges about reducing class sizes and eradicating student debt. But as Fiona Hyslop's first year as education secretary draws to a close, actual progress has been a lot more level-headed.
First of all, class sizes: the idea was to reduce classes to 18 pupils during the first three years of primary, but when MSPs quizzed the government on its progress last year, the only defence offered was that government takes "years not days".
On student debt however, the SNP provided a grandstand gesture. It abolished the graduate endowment tax, meaning students no longer have to pay the £2289 fee once they leave university. The ultimate goal, to cancel student debt altogether, remains a much trickier problem to solve, especially as students who work part time to fund their studies will have to pay the new local income tax, proposed to replace council tax. Previously students had been exempt.
Higher education students have also grumbled about being left out of one of the government's other big ideas: the clumsily titled Joint Higher Education Future Thinking Taskforce - a committee of university principals and the government chatting about how higher education might operate in the future. The taskforce is due to present its suggestions in the summer.
At secondary school level, Hyslop proposes to replace Standard Grades with a general Scottish certificate testing literacy and numeracy skills at S4 level.
She has also followed through with the SNP's pledge to cull quangos and initiatives by pulling the plug on Schools of Ambition. The scheme that pumped £15m into 52 schools deemed under-achieving will wind up in 2010. But the big education initiative the SNP inherited from the previous administration, the Curriculum for Excellence, has survived and will land on teachers' desks in August with full governmental backing. And as befits a nationalist government, more Scottish history and literature will be on the curriculum.
SPORT
By Sports Writer Alan Campbell
WHEN, at the recent Scottish Golf Union dinner in Glasgow, sports presenter Dougie Donnelly was called on to introduce the top table guests, an air of anticipation swept round the packed room. Sitting there, perhaps expecting a barbed welcome, was Stewart Maxwell.
In the event, Donnelly diffused a potentially awkward situation by thanking Scotland's sports minister for giving him more time to practise his golf. It was a joke that went down well.
Maxwell's decision to fire Donnelly, the part-time chairman of the Scottish Institute of Sport, as well as his counterpart at sportscotland, Julia Bracewell, was perhaps the major sporting talking point of the SNP's first year.
It was an SNP manifesto pledge to abolish sportscotland, but once in office and aware of the strength of support for the organisation that had to be ditched. Not that the minister was admitting it, saying that the merger with the Institute of Sport in effect made it a new organisation.
A much happier event for the SNP, of course, was Glasgow winning the 2014 Commonwealth Games. Alex Salmond, never one to miss an open goal, milked the opportunity for all it was worth.
The underlying concern of all those involved in running sport in Scotland is that the pledge to provide a minimum of two hours of physical education per week in Scottish schools is taking too long to be implemented - and there are even fears that it will be quietly shelved.
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