Scottish Budget is crucial test. Here's how to tell if SNP passes or fails

This week I was at a parents’ night and the maths feedback for my son was that he needed to show his workings more. I got told the same: even if you get the answer wrong, show us how you got there and we can work it out together. If this idea is true for our children, then why not governments too? Will the Scottish Government show us their workings in their upcoming Budget?

When the Cabinet Secretary for Finance announces the Budget on Wednesday, will her tax and spending choices shine a light on her administration’s priorities for the country and show us the workings on how they got there? Will it show the policy and investment trade-offs that we all know are necessary to make the sums add up? It looks unlikely, unless officials and ministers have changed their ways.

In a report published this autumn, the Scottish Parliament’s finance committee warned, not for the first time, that the links just aren’t clear enough between the government’s spending decisions and the country it is trying to build.

Or as they put it: “… the committee has repeatedly recommended that there needs to be a clearer link between spending decisions in the Scottish Budget and their impact on the delivery of national outcomes.” This follows their criticism of last year’s Budget when they said: “The committee is unclear how spending has been prioritised towards a fair, green and growing economy.”

And in his characteristically direct language Stephen Boyle, the Auditor General, said in November: “The reality is that we need a fundamental change to how public money is spent to ensure services can meet demand and remain affordable beyond the short-term.”

Carnegie UK is studying the Budget models of countries like Iceland where pioneering approaches designed to deliver long-term improvements to collective well-being have been adopted (Picture: Spencer Platt) | Getty Images

More light and less heat

This ‘must-try-harder’ assessment from parliamentarians and the spending watchdog suggests a change is necessary in our Budget design, both in terms of showing us why certain decisions are being made as well as tilting that process toward looking at the medium to long-term.

You might rightly ask why ministers should make such a move. It won’t put more cash into government coffers. And you can’t stick it on the back of a postcard and hand it to potential voters.

But by designing Scotland’s Budget better, we could create a public administration machine which supports better decision-making and enables public debate that’s more light and less heat. That in turn could help us make progress with the biggest challenges of our time like engrained poverty, addressing climate change and rising inequality.

Swinney’s four priorities

Last week First Minister John Swinney said: “I believe Scotland would best be served by a robust, resilient well-being economy. One that promotes economic and social equality and decarbonises our communities. One that values the health and the happiness of its people, as much as their productivity.”

He then went onto list his four priorities for the Scottish Government: eradicating child poverty; growing the economy; tackling the climate crisis; and improving public services. If Mr Swinney’s administration is serious about these goals, then they must run through the Budget documents like golden thread. They must be used to explain spending decisions and policy priorities.

Indeed, the proof of Mr Swinney’s statement – that he intends to throw the whole weight of his government behind these priorities – will only ring true if they’ve been used as a test for every tricky finance decision. Of which there will be many.

None of this is to say that our complex social and economic problems can be solved over a single Budget year or even parliamentary term. But if you say that you’re aiming for some long-term goal like gaining a new qualification, you’ve got to put together a plan.

You’ve got to sacrifice the nights out. You’ve got to spend the hours in front of the books. You don’t turn up at the exam and complain that the problems are too difficult after not putting in the effort.

Landmark 2011 report

Some might argue that running a country is nothing like studying for a test. It isn’t as simple as your own hard work because real progress is dependent on hundreds of organisations and millions of people. And while improved public services and lower levels of child poverty are noble goals and worth the candle, progress is unlikely to come steadily.

Helpfully, we can dust off our copy of the Christie Commission report to identify how better Scottish Budget design could help deliver a more successful country. This landmark 2011 document argued that Scotland must “prioritise expenditure on public services which prevent negative outcomes from arising”.

The argument goes that it is cheaper to build the fence to stop people falling into the river than sending people to fish them out; more affordable to the state to encourage people to live healthier lives than dealing with their acute health problems down the line; better to prevent knife crime than pay for prisons.

Pioneering approaches overseas

Thankfully we’re not the only country in the world trying to make this shift. At Carnegie UK, we’re looking at the Budget models of places like New Zealand, Iceland and Queensland, Australia, which have pioneered approaches designed to deliver long-term improvements to the collective well-being of their people. We'll look at how governments are using their money differently – spending a pound or dollar today to solve problems down the line.

This research – to be published next year – should provide inspiration for governments across these islands looking to ensure our best days are ahead of us. But an important element will be to ensure ministers show us their workings when grappling with our public finances.

This Scottish Government Budget is a crucial test. We should award high marks for evidence that ministers are working systematically in our long-term interests, rather than aiming for correct or easy answers.

Adam Lang is director at Carnegie UK, a foundation that works on well-being public policy