Spending Review: Difficult choices bring public service changepublished at 14:14 British Summer Time 1 June 2022
Douglas Fraser
Scotland business & economy editor
- Holyrood had a reality check with the latest flurry of publications - with a reminder of simple rules about spending priorities
- Ministers are piling extra money into welfare benefits, to make a political point over Westminster, but it comes at a substantial cost to many other public services
- Helping the major areas of spending that are seeing real terms cuts has brought out the file marked "reforms" - tried before, and now being applied under financial pressure. That points to particular tensions with local councils.
Image source, Getty ImagesFinance Secretary Kate Forbes delivered the Scottish government's spending review at Holyrood
It's a simple enough notion when you're handling a budget: spend a pound on one thing, and it's not there for you to spend on another.
So if you prioritise one area in a constrained budget, then other areas have to be pared back.
Simple, yes, but not always appreciated at Holyrood, where the rhetoric has sometimes made it seem there would always be money somewhere to do things better and more generously than the rest of the UK.
Kate Forbes on Tuesday offered familiar rhetoric about Westminster's alleged failures to deliver what was needed, and the lack of powers for Scots to make their own decisions.
But underlying the finance secretary's words were documents, charts and tables that should give MSPs a more honest and bracing lesson in budgeting than any I recall.
