NHS funding: Scottish Government ministers should tell the truth and civil servants should remember they're supposed to be impartial – Scotsman comment

Finance Secretary Shona Robison’s inaccurate social media post about NHS funding was then echoed by an official Scottish Government account

On Thursday, the SNP’s official Twitter/X account quoted Finance Secretary Shona Robison: “All the money coming from the UK Government for health amounts to £10.8m. That is enough for five hours capacity in the NHS.” Yesterday, the official Scottish Government account tweeted: “In the UK Government's Autumn Statement, only £10.8 million of extra funding was provided for NHS Scotland for the next year, a real-terms cut. This would fund just five hours of NHS Scotland activity in a year.”

As the Scottish Conservatives pointed out, these remarkably similar statements are “blatantly misleading”. The truth is that the UK Government provides a block grant covering all devolved spending, then the Scottish Government decides how much money to spend on the NHS.

Furthermore, thanks to the Barnett Formula, Scotland receives proportionately higher amounts of money for public spending than England and UK taxes are at an all-time high. Therefore, the argument that Scotland is being short-changed is hard to sustain, for all that it might be politically advantageous for the SNP, given the amount of flak they are likely to take after today’s Scottish Budget – expected to bring tax increases and public spending cuts.

It is so obvious that it almost seems ridiculous to say but ministers should not mislead the public. This was the moral error that, eventually, saw Tory MPs depose Boris Johnson as Prime Minister. We won’t hold our breath in anticipation of SNP politicians taking such a stand any time soon.

While similar, the Scottish Government tweet was actually worse than Robison’s because civil servants are supposed to be politically impartial. It is reasonable to send messages about government business, policies and actions, but inaccurate propaganda designed to make a political point crosses a fundamental line. And this is far from the first time that the politicisation of the civil service has been a concern.

If a unionist party forms the next government, will they accept an openly nationalist civil service? Will they insist on a unionist one? Scotland’s pool of civil service talent is too small to play such political games. Impartiality is a principle that must be defended.