Published 13th Dec 2023, 04:55 BST

Emergency Cabinet meetings ought to come when there is an unexpected emergency. Yet last week the SNP-Green coalition found itself holding an ‘emergency’ meeting, ahead of next Tuesday’s announcement of the draft Budget for the financial year 2024-25, when the rest of us have seen the bus that threatens to hit the country’s finances coming for years.

Despite having a record block grant from Westminster, which is topped up by an additional £545 million in Barnett consequentials from the Chancellor’s announcements in the autumn statement, Finance Secretary Shona Robison cannot make the books balance. This is not the result of the cost-of-living crisis – it’s a cost-of-stupidity crisis.

The starting point for next year’s Budget is a £1 billion spending gap. More than £600 million of that comes from lower than anticipated tax revenues despite the SNP making Scotland the highest taxed part of the UK. Then there is the £400 million required to fund a one-year council tax freeze Humza Yousaf splashed in his SNP conference speech to get him through the moment, without telling anyone in advance. In a Budget of around £60 billion in total, that represents a significant chunk of money to find before anything else can be put in place.

Finance Secretary Shona Robison needs to come up with something better than blaming Westminster for the Scottish Government's budget problems (Picture: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

In relation to the weaker tax revenues, we could shed a tear for Shona Robison. Like the child at the Christmas party finding herself holding the parcel when the music stops, and unwrapping it to find a lump of coal rather than the hoped-for bag of chocolates, she is living with the consequences of decisions made by her predecessors in office.

But as a member of the current Scottish Government’s Cabinet, she has to take responsibility for some of the other decisions which have caused this crisis: the council tax freeze, the pay settlements to public sector workers, and crucially the failure to put economic growth at the heart of government policy.

We can predict already what will be said on Tuesday about the Budget position. The tiresome inevitability that Robison will blame years of “Tory austerity” despite the fact she has more money to spend than any other Scottish Finance Secretary in history. With the Westminster block grant rising in real terms, it simply won’t wash, but like hearing Wham’s “Last Christmas” on repeat, it has become a wearily familiar seasonal favourite. She might even blame the Welsh.

What then can we expect in terms of the Finance Secretary’s announcements? There will be unpalatable cuts to be made, and local government will likely bear the brunt. Cosla has already warned that one or more councils in Scotland could go bankrupt in the coming year due to inadequate funding. Even if that is not the case, libraries, leisure centres, swimming pools and after-school clubs will undoubtedly face the axe.

Then we will likely see hikes in personal taxation, widening the tax differential still further between Scotland and the rest of the UK, making us even less competitive. A serious deterrent on attracting talent to Scotland, counter-productive in terms of growing tax revenues. There is an alternative set of answers here which the SNP should be following, and which have been put forward by the Scottish Conservatives. Three broad measures which would help balance the Budget and perhaps even start delivering a surplus in future years.

Firstly, this government needs to start making different choices when it comes to its spending priorities. Even within the last week, we have seen the loss of two high-profile court cases, one on freedom of information and the second against the UK Government in relation to the Gender Recognition Reform Bill. It looks like one of the few growth areas in the Scottish economy today is in fees paid to the Faculty of Advocates from the taxpayer, and it is hard to recall the Scottish Government ever actually winning a court case.

Add to that the millions spent on the External Affairs Secretary Angus Robertson’s travels around the world, the salary of independence minister Jamie Hepburn, and all the time and money expended on papers promoting independence that no one reads, and there is a whole pile of cash that could be saved right there where no one will notice the difference.

Elsewhere in the Budget, the £1.3 billion committed to the creation of a National Care Service over the next five years – an initiative which no one, it seems, is clear what exactly its purpose is – could be redirected to frontline services.

Secondly, the government needs to stop wasting money on vanity projects. Whether it has been BiFab, Prestwick Airport, or the appalling waste of funds at Ferguson Marine on the Clyde, hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ cash have been spent with nothing to show for it. Nicola Sturgeon always defended the failure to build two ferries as a triumph because of the jobs she claimed to have saved at Ferguson’s. So far each one has come out at about £1 million a pop.

Thirdly, and most significantly, we need to see a greater focus on growing the economy. If the Scottish economy grew at even the average UK growth rate over a ten-year period, that would generate an additional £7 billion in tax revenues, without a single tax rate having to be increased. If economic growth was put first, and measures taken to stimulate growth, that would do more than anything else to ensure that there were the funds to provide support for the public services we all value.

But Shona Robison and her colleagues won’t take any of this advice. Instead, like the replay of 30-year-old Christmas number ones, it will the same old tune – it’s Westminster’s fault. Only this time, no one will be listening.

Murdo Fraser is a Scottish Conservative MSP for Mid-Scotland and Fife

Scottish Budget: SNP are making Scotland pay for cost of their stupidity – Murdo Fraser

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