Greater clarity needed about Shona Robison's 'salami slicing' approach to Scottish Government cuts

The Finance Secretary presented a pre-Budget fiscal update to parliament this afternoon, to formally set out the challenges the Scottish Government faces in balancing their budget for 2024-25. This formal statement will be welcomed, given the information that dribbled out in a slightly messy way over the summer.

What would have been ideal was clarity about what led to the projected 2024-25 overspend, what was being reallocated/cut, and how the decisions had been made, including the assessed impact on different groups.

In terms of the projected overspend, Shona Robison said that pay pressure (ie, higher than budgeted public sector pay) is roughly £800 million. Other in-year spending pressures were also alluded to. However, there was not an actual breakdown of the funding gap. 

The changes made to fund the gap amount to almost £1 billion, according to the statement. The accompanying details seem to document a classic case of salami slicing, with small amounts being found from a number of different budgets. These are not presented in the context of what was originally set out at Budget, and some of the descriptions of the spending lines are vague.

Kicking can down road?

On the additional revenue side, the Cabinet Secretary also set out that she is currently planning to use £460m of ScotWind revenue to plug almost half the gap. ScotWind is the funding generated from the Crown Estate Scotland through the leasing of offshore wind sites. Whether the use of one-off windfalls like this to fund day-to-day spending is actually sensible in the long-term, and not just kicking the can down the road, remains to be seen. 

It also looks like no additional analysis was published alongside the statement that helps everyone understand the evidence used in the decision-making process. Furthermore, changes to underlying budgets will be formally set out to Parliament as part of the autumn and spring Budget revision processes; anyone who has tried to get their head around the information usually published as part of the Budget revision process will take little comfort that this will provide any sort of clarity. 

More information will be available when the UK Government presents its budget on October 30. The Finance Secretary will be hoping that the news is better than she is currently planning for. 

Professor Mairi Spowage is director of the Fraser of Allander Institute