Leader: Spending flaws exposed – no thanks to opposition

IT IS an immutable rule of government that when it comes to budgets or spending reviews the devil is in the detail. What at first appears reasonable, potentially popular and coherent can often, on subsequent close examination, be revealed to be deeply unpalatable, certain to be unpopular and full of inconsistencies. This is certainly the case with the Spending Review announced to Holyrood on Wednesday by John Swinney, the finance secretary.

Some 24 hours on and the devilish detail had begun to be unpicked by the respected Centre for Public Policy for Regions (CPPR), a group that, along with Audit Scotland and a very few others, resolutely refuses to be cowed by the Scottish Government when it comes to telling it like it is, not as the Scottish National Party administration would wish it to be.

The CPPR findings raise serious concerns over several of the central tenets of the Spending Review. First, and potentially most immediately damaging, the fine print shows an extra £850 million is expected to come from business rates over the next three years to plug the huge hole left by a reduction in cash handed to local government from Holyrood. Given the Scottish Government has said only £100m will come from the “Tesco tax” on large supermarkets that sell alcohol and tobacco, and that ending the Empty Property Rate relief scheme will raise an unknown sum, this casts doubts on the SNP’s claim to be a business-friendly party.

The CPPR also found that the centrepiece of Alex Salmond’s economic policy – the so-called Plan MacB to bring forward investment in infrastructure to stave off the worst effects of the downturn – lacks credibility, noting dryly but tellingly that “the evidence does not appear to be there … to suggest that Scotland has outperformed the UK post-recession and even less so that this was due to a policy of ameliorating capital cuts”.

Furthermore, the CPPR says so-called efficiency savings are, in effect, cuts, especially as most of the easy savings have now been made; that a modest 2 per cent increase in public sector pay from 2013, after the likely end of the freeze, will cost an extra £600m over two years; and that the pledge to provide training for all over-16s is in doubt because of the significant cuts to colleges, something the institutions themselves made clear last night.

With all of this evidence that the review was riddled with problems, and vastly over-spun, one would have expected the opposition at Holyrood to leap on this report and use it at First Minister’s Questions yesterday to put Mr Salmond on the spot. That none raised the CPPR report, even though it was available, tells us all we need to know about the pathetic state of the main opposition parties. Instead of holding the executive to account, they are still mired in internal party reform and dispute. Our governance is poorly served by such a lamentable failure.