Spending Review presents challenges

This Spending Review is business as usual from the UK Government, which is yet again treating Scotland as an afterthought and failing to provide us with the funding we need.

Today’s settlement for Scotland is particularly disappointing, with real terms growth of 0.8% a year for our overall Block Grant, which is lower than the average for UK Departments. Had our resource funding for day-to-day priorities grown in line with the UK Government’s overall spending, we would have £1.1 billion more to spend on our priorities over the next three years. In effect, Scotland has been short-changed by more than a billion pounds.

This all comes on top of the UK Government’s failure to fully fund their employer National Insurance increase, depriving us of hundreds of millions of pounds in funding, and their proposed cuts in support for disabled people that will push 250,000 people into poverty, including 50,000 children.

It is also disappointing that despite apparent briefing to media in advance, we are still awaiting clarity on funding for the vital Acorn project in the North East of Scotland.

We made extensive representations to the UK Government on our priorities for the Spending Review, including calls for an end to spending that bypasses devolution, but there has been limited opportunity to engage with them. It appears that the continuation of local growth funding – which fails to match the European Structural Funds it was supposed to replace – will come directly from Whitehall, yet again bypassing devolved governments.

We will now take the time to digest the detail of this statement and will set out our formal response on 25 June as part of the Medium Term Financial Strategy.

SHONA ROBISON