Budget beginning
Cabinet Secretary for
Finance and Sustainable Growth John Swinney MSP
introduced his draft budget to Parliament today.
Not for John any of the daft theatrical tricks we
see in London with the budgets down there being
conducted by Chancellors who seem to have half an
eye on being stage prestidigitators rather than
good, sober politicians – “from this evening there
will be an additional two pence on a packet of polos
and an additional relief on elephant bedding”.
John’s performance was, as always, a marvellously
balanced prosecution of the case. Year after year
he brings to Parliament a well thought out budget
and a reasoned case for it, and year after year he
impresses us with his command of his brief. The
last two years, of course, Labour made a mess of
their presentation on the budget – I wait with bated
breath to see how they do this year. Well, I say
baited breath, but our budget process takes quite a
while.
John Swinney
This year, of course, is
an extremely tough year for Scottish spending given
the mess that’s been made down south and the cuts
that Labour is introducing to the Scottish budget to
try to help them plug the gaping holes in the UK’s
finances, and it comes on top of the resource
allocation that the SNP Government has been given
being the most restrictive ever, so you’d have to be
some kind of miracle worker to rescue something from
it. Just as well we’ve got John Swinney, isn’t it?
I walked into the chamber ready to hear some really
bad news and instead heard some pretty good news.
Every department’s spending was reduced from what
John had predicted last year – London’s cuts biting
deep – but there was still a lot to cheer.
Frontline NHS spending
is going up by £173 million – a total of £8.5
billion will go to health boards next year, that’s
quite a lot of money; Lanarkshire gets an extra £21
million, every board except Ayrshire and Arran got
an increase. Education spending is going up by
£53.3 million overall, funding for universities up
by £35 million, funding for colleges up by £45
million, and the Student Awards Agency gets an extra
£56 million for supporting students. There’s an
extra £6.3 million in central funding for the police
and another £30 million for prisons; there’s £136.8
million to rebuild our prisons; £7.4 million for
communications equipment for our Fire and Rescue
service. Support for the food industry is up; and
Scottish Natural Heritage is getting more money.
There’s an extra £122 million going to local
authorities for their general responsibilities and
an extra £17.6 million for police through local
authorities.
Even with less money to
spend the Scottish Government is producing the
goods. There are cuts, of course, and they will be
sore ones to cope with. The budget for running the
Government, the money for running Ministerial
offices and that kind of thing, has been cut by 36%;
the Government’s advertising budget has been slashed
by nearly 54%; there’s more money for roads but a
wee cut in the support for ferry services and air
journeys and there’s a bit of a cut in support for
the freight industry. Some areas look like they’re
taking a severe his – like housing and regeneration
losing £260 million but there was an awful lot of
spending brought forward to help protect Scotland
from the recession, and that came out of the money
that would have been in this budget, so it’s more a
kind of repayment than a cut.
Actually, that
“accelerated capital spend” – bringing forward money
to spend it early – brought about an interesting
exchange. The London Government did something
similar (it’s a fairly usual tool to use to address
recession) and when John announced it in December
last year it was welcomed by Labour, with Wendy
Alexander saying she was delighted by the
acceleration of the £260 million spend. At the
beginning of this month Iain Gray, Labour’s Scottish
leader, said in Parliament that “Accelerating
capital investment this year was a good thing” but
today he called it “dodgy accounting” – when did
that change come?
John’s had to scrap some
capital spending plans as a result of the cuts, a
painful decision but a necessary one. One of the
projects that got scrapped was the Glasgow Airport
Rail Link – a decision which I thought would cause
some disquiet but it turns out that the chair of
Paisley North Community Council backs the scrapping
of the link, as does Renfrewshire Chamber of
Commerce. A wee lesson never to try to second-guess
the people of Scotland there! Now we prepare for
the long grind towards the budget votes and even
more excitement.
Last night’s events were
tamer but still enjoyable – I was at the launch of
Gordon Wilson’s book
SNP: The Turbulent
Years 1960-1990 (I hope he doesn’t think
the turbulent years have ended) before heading off
to celebrate Catalonia’s national day with some
dignitaries who were over especially for the
occasion. I’ll let you know what the book’s like
when I’ve read it, but I must tell you about Bruce
Crawford’s terrible joke in his speech at the
Catalan do. He was musing about what the Catalans
have given the world from Gaudi to Miralles and how
much of their influence has improved Scotland
(including the building of our Parliament) and then
said that we were evens, though, because we’d given
them Steve Archibald to play for Barcelona and
Espanol. He got a laugh, right enough, but it did
make me think that I wouldn’t give Scotland much
chance of beating Barcelona in a straight match.
Committee this week was
a lot less stressful than the last runout we had as
well. We took evidence on the Public Services
Reform Bill from Children and Early Years Minister
Adam Ingram MSP. He was very measured and quite
assured and answered all of the questions easily
enough. The committee was well-behaved this time
and acted with good humour, and I think that the
passage of this legislation will be smoother than
the previous legislation – the regulations on legal
aid in Children’s Hearings. I certainly hope so,
that nonsense did no-one any favours.
I’m off to an adoption
night in Stirling tomorrow – our candidate is Alison
Lindsay – it’s promising to be a fine campaign for
Alison here – and the Holyrood seat belongs to Bruce
Crawford, so expect more bad jokes!
Bruce Crawford
