The Chancellor’s Budget – the first Labour Budget in 14 years – delivered the largest settlement for the Scottish Government in the history of devolution.
This means record investment by the UK Labour Government in Scotland, with an additional £1.5 billion this financial year and a further £3.4 billion next year.
This Budget powers forward the change that a Labour Government is making. It is only possible because Scotland turned the page on years of division and elected Labour MPs to the heart of a Labour Government. No more shouting from the sidelines, instead key players in the team.
This has allowed Rachel Reeves to turn the page on austerity. The budget marks a definitive end to fourteen years of decline; stabilising the public finances to prioritise economic growth and investment in our vital public services.
This is a significant moment in our nation’s history – an end to Tory chaos, and the beginning of rebuilding our country.
This is an opportunity for change in Scotland that cannot – that must not – be wasted.
Reform of public services is not easy. If it was then even the SNP might have managed it. But the challenge cannot excuse the reality. Repeated failure to reform our school system as performance in international comparisons continues to decline. NHS workers struggling to treat patients in a system that is yet to face up to the reality of an ageing population with equipment that is years out of date. A competent government could have made a difference instead of prioritising division and managing decline. It is clear that reform is needed. We know our public services are not working as they should.
A time of significantly increased investment in Scotland is exactly the moment to make change for the long term good of the country. It is an opportunity that cannot be squandered.
The SNP’s wasteful, woeful approach to budgeting has been widely acknowledged by independent analysts, by cross-party committees of parliament this very month, and by the Scottish Fiscal Commission. Our national fiscal forecaster has identified a gap between SNP spending promises and available funding of £1.9 billion come 2028-29. Services and businesses have endured three consecutive years now of vast emergency in-year budget cuts. There is a complete refusal from the Scottish Government to confront the long-term challenges facing Scotland’s finances.
The new £3.4 billion of additional funding from the Labour Government for next year cannot be lost into the SNP budget black hole created through their incompetence and failure to plan.
A different path is possible. Choosing investment over decline. What could this look like?
A Scottish Labour Government would be putting plans in motion immediately to upgrade health technology targeted at raising productivity in the NHS, cutting waiting times and getting people the treatment they need more quickly so they can get on with their lives. The benefits to our economy of a healthy workforce are obvious, but at present we see worrying trends in increasing numbers of people out of work due to ill health, many of them waiting too long for diagnosis and for treatment. Achieving the economic growth that our country needs, to increase revenue and fund public services, depends on having a strong, productive workforce.
Right now, Labour would be overhauling our skills system, giving renewed purpose to a college sector on its knees and, instead of plundering energy funds, investing Scotwind money in an urgent programme of supply chain partnerships for the energy transition. Skills, education, jobs and a brighter, cleaner future.
And crucially we would not turn away from the tough decisions of making efficiencies because there is money on the table. We would double down on cost cutting bureaucracy across public bodies by instituting zero based budgeting across the board. If the policy does not work, then the policy stops. An end to a culture of waste that has seen the SNP burn £5 billion of public money through gross incompetence over the past 17 years – the almost exact equivalent of the sum of money that could now transform outcomes for Scottish taxpayers. All this freeing up further funds for the frontline.
So will this now minority SNP government change course and earn the broad support of Parliament? The signs are not good. At First Minister’s Questions, when asked if he thought the country needed to be set in a new direction, John Swinney directly and loudly said “no”. The conduct of his government in the run up to the most consequential UK Budget in fifteen years was also more of the same fiscal incompetence. The SNP’s demands amounted to an entirely unfunded, and frankly unfathomable, £70 billion, all while opposing every measure to raise revenue. Everyone other than John Swinney remembers that Liz Truss crashed the UK economy on a mere £45 billion of unfunded expenditure. The SNP’s approach to public money would make Liz Truss blush.
It is time to get serious.
When spending the largest ever funding available to the devolved government the SNP must be judged on outcomes – NHS waiting times, the performance of our education system in international league tables, the number of houses built.
At present, on all those measures, the SNP is failing Scotland: 1 in 6 Scots on an NHS waiting list; Scottish pupils a full year behind their English counterparts in Mathematics; and a housing emergency declared across Scotland.
Following the Budget, this SNP Government now has the means.
We must now judge them by what they achieve.
Michael Marra is the Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Scottish Labour MSP for North East Scotland