SNP still peddling myth of easy money before and after independence - John McLellan

First Minister John Swinney reacts as Finance Secretary Shona Robison gives a Scottish Government pre-budget fiscal update in the Scottish Parliament on Tuesday. Picture: Andrew Milligan/PA Wire

On top of savings already disclosed, like the return of peak-time rail fares, snip went £6.7 million from education, rip went £15.7m from social justice, tear went £23.4m from energy and net zero, and crunch went £23.7m from transport. Most shocking was £115.8m slashed from health and social care, including £18.8m from mental health services and £2.4m from community eyecare.

Some individual savings were justifiable, with the axe falling on bureaucratic initiatives of marginal value, so having Ms Robison’s attention focussed by tighter spending controls in Westminster was not all bad. But that would accept her explanation, blaming Westminster austerity, Brexit, the 2022 UK budget and any straw she could grasp except the SNP’s own choices.

Notable then, that her letter to finance committee chair Kenny Gibson MSP listed the savings but not the excuses, instead only pointing out that “pressures on public finances have further grown”.

But she conceded government pay deals were “a significant driver of in-year pressures, with potential costs of up to £0.8 billion beyond our budget”. And she accepted Scotland’s bigger public sector – 20 per cent of the workforce against 18 in England – meant pay deals above its budget assumptions “place considerable strain on our finances”.

Both the cost of these deals and maintaining the size of Scotland’s public payroll are political choices over which the SNP has had control since 2007, decisions which cannot be explained away by other factors, real or exaggerated. Her letter also praised the “valuable information” provided by the Scottish Fiscal Commission (SFC) in their update last week, which should therefore include the independent forecaster’s warning that “past choices of the Scottish Government narrow its room for manoeuvre now and in the future”.

It was a view echoed by David Phillips of the Institute of Fiscal Studies. “The Scottish Government could have held back funding to help meet additional pay and other cost pressures, rather than be forced to make in-year cuts to other spending,” he said. “A decision to freeze council tax also cost almost double the amount raised from increases in income tax rates on higher earners. Tax policy decisions therefore reduced rather than raised revenues, increasing the pressure on Scotland’s public finances.”

SFC Chair Professor Graeme Roy also said additional social security payments increased “in-year pressures that must be accommodated as it continues to negotiate pay with the public sector unions”. He also called for “more transparency and planning around pay awards at Budget time” to avoid shock mid-term cuts like this week.

After an SNP conference in which Westminster leader Stephen Flynn called for “brutal honesty” it appears Ms Robison has yet to heed his advice, but is that a surprise? The answer goes back to 2018 when Nicola Sturgeon’s Sustainable Growth Commission, established to produce an honest plan for independence, laid bare the unpalatable truth that there would be hard choices. The report was quietly buried.

The myth of easy money before and after independence has been peddled ever since, and Ms Robison is just another pedlar. And no-one in the SNP has the brutal honesty to admit it.