Scottish Budget: SNP has just answered the key question for the next two big elections – Jackie Baillie

An important question for voters at next year’s general election and the 2026 Scottish Parliament election will be ‘do you feel better off?’ after years of Tory and SNP rule

Usually it takes 24 hours for an SNP Budget to unravel, for the sleight of hand, the double-accounting and the small print to catch out the Finance Secretary. But the hole in this year’s Scottish Budget was so big it could be seen from space. The SNP’s waste, incompetence and failure on economic growth led to a forecast £1.5 billion deficit that had to be filled with tax rises and service cuts.

This was a Budget even an apprentice actuary would mark DOA: disaster on arrival. The old nationalist saw, blaming Westminster, just doesn’t work anymore. People can see ferries rusting in dock, uncounted millions poured into the Fort William smelter, the Prestwick Airport fiasco, the panicked freeze in council tax for what they are.

They can see the indulgences of ministers pretending to be international statesmen, flying miles abroad while it is going to take another 12 years to lay two-lane tarmac on the A9 to reach Inverness. This was the great unravelling, the nightmare before Christmas, the budget in which the SNP asked people to pay more to get less.

Work continues on the over-budget, much-delayed Glen Sannox and Glen Rosa ferries at the Ferguson Marine shipyard (Picture: Peter Summers/Getty Images)

Cuts to mental health, housing, education...

This was a Budget that doesn’t even touch the sides of local government finance. The respected Fraser of Allander Institute calculated it would take £300 million to make good the council tax freeze, so £144 million is less than half of what’s needed and throws councillors who make the decisions on cuts and their constituents who depend on services to the wolves. Tackling child poverty was supposed to be Humza Yousaf’s top priority, but the Budget told a different story, slashing funding from the Tackling Child Poverty and Social Justice budget.

The uplift to the NHS board budgets is less than the pay deals agreed with doctors, nurses and health care staff. Do ministers expect this money to come from elsewhere in service budgets? There was not a single word on next year’s pay policy, which the SNP have failed to publish yet again.

We will see devastating cuts in mental health budgets, cuts to housing, cuts to further education. Even the social housing and homeless budgets are cut to prioritise what Shona Robison described as “contractual obligations”, for which read ferries overspends. And there are further cuts to the transport budget which herald a second ferry crisis on inter-island routes.

A plan to grow the economy

There’s no easy way back from this disaster and there was no focus on solutions like actually growing the economy in Shona Robison’s robotic statement to parliament. There have to be hard questions about how the Scottish Budget is spent.

There needs to be an urgent, comprehensive review of Scottish Government spending and there needs to be a plan to grow Scotland’s economy and create jobs. All of this is beyond the SNP’s double flat-tyre administration which has two years left to run.

The question in the 2026 Scottish election will be the same as the question for voters in next year’s general election: do you feel better off after 14 years of the Tories and 17 years of the SNP?

We don’t have to wait months or years for the reply. Shona Robison gave us the answer on Tuesday – Scots are paying far more for far less. We are all worse off under the SNP.

Jackie Baillie MSP is Scottish Labour’s deputy leader