The SNP budget is a stark illustration of the problems besetting Scotland and the Scottish economy, a programme of public spending bereft of genuine ambition and imagination, except their ambition to cling to power in 2026.
With money pouring north after UK Labour’s massive tax assault, we were supposed to be grateful to the SNP’s finance secretary Shona Robison for throwing the £3.4 billion proceeds from Rachel Reeves’ raid at the NHS and social security, in what was a naked election bribe in the battlegrounds the SNP lost to Labour in this year’s general election.
On the NHS, any welcome for the extra £2 billion for health boards must be tempered by the lack of any significant commitment to reform and the sheer lack of ambition in setting a 12-month target for new outpatient appointments, a low bar which will doubtless be missed as the money is soaked up by a system resistant to change.
A 12-month target has also been set for starting inpatient treatment which, when combined with the wait for an out-patient appointment, means it could easily be over two years from seeking assistance at the GP to actual treatment.
With misplaced aplomb, Ms Robison said the replacement for the Princess Alexandra Eye Pavilion would now go ahead, but this is a commitment which goes back years and which the SNP has repeatedly delayed. And we are supposed to doff our hats to all this?
SNP MSPs banged their desks as she splashed out taxpayers’ money in a budget which only paid lip service to boosting the economy. While rates relief for hospitality businesses was welcome, this only put the sector in line with their counterparts in England, and for which the Scottish Government has had the cash since the pandemic. For hard-hit retailers there wasn’t a penny.
Yet £30 million is being blown on an ‘invest to save’ fund to reform public services, at the same time as rewarding public sector workers with an inflation-busting nine per cent pay increase over the next three years.
Another sting is yet to come when local authorities set council tax rates, with only vague advice that “there is no reason for big increases” next year. Ms Robison didn’t explain what constitutes a “big increase”, but I can just hear finance conveners arguing that five per cent isn’t big but necessary.
It cannot be forgotten the £800 million extra splurged on social security payments is funded by the higher taxes paid by Scottish workers, aspirational people being bled dry by Labour in Westminster and the SNP in Holyrood, while nothing is done to incentivise those on benefits to find gainful employment and a better quality of life.
In some parts of Scotland, 30 per cent of the working age population is on benefits, and by the next election the cost is expected to rise to £4.5 billion. The SNP’s answer is not just to increase the benefits budget but to make it easier to claim and expect the rest of us who earn that money to be grateful they are tackling poverty.
Shona Robison made much of her priority to tackle poverty, and no-one argues it does not need addressing. But like so much of this budget, just parking people on benefits only exposes the SNP’s poverty of the mind.