Scottish Spring budget revision

The Spring Budget Revision, which updates the 2011-12 budget, was presented to the Scottish Parliament yesterday (1st February).

The announcement by Finance Secretary, John Swinney, of the remaining £33.4 million ‘Barnett consequentials’ funding allocation for Scotland  for 2011-12, shows that Ministers have allocated the funds as follows:

• £10 million for affordable housing supply
• £2 million for housing adaptations
• £0.9 million for housing and regeneration programmes
• £ 5 million for employability programmes
• £4.5 million for road transport
• 2.5 million for local government claims for damage from recent severe weather
• £1.1 million support for cultural projects
• £2 million for finance portfolio to support capital projects
• £0.4 million for Marine Scotland and National Parks
• £5 million to accelerate a number of NHS capital projects

The allocations are weighted towards the social support end of economic stability via building projects, with a nod to the sort of employabilty programmes all governments throw money at and are doomed to produce very little.

The only genuine impact that can be made on employability, the will to work and the will and ability to innovate and create can only come, in any country, from radical social and political revision – and, to be successful, that takes more tine than any government can count on in the elected terms of office we have.

This means that we continually waste money on short term gestures and fail to address the sort of redirections we need, carefully and gradually, to devise, agree and implement.

In our view, the party system and the block adversarial ethos  – tied to terms of office – are long beyond the need of interrogation for their usefulness in current times.

Real change and focused growth will not come until we do that – and it won’t be anytime soon. The UK and its constituent cultures tend to ‘hold on to nurse for fear of something worse’ – and that will be the challenge for the independence movement. No one can be sure, even the individual voters themselves, that in the privacy of the voting booth with the pencil hovering, the thought of nurse’s warm and familiar pocket may not be irresistible.

As a whole, these allocations can do little for growth. Post-2008, £33 million is starter pocket money. The best we can do is get into a secure holding pattern, which is effectively what this revision contributes to trying to do.

Political responses

First in – and we’ll add them as we get them – is Highlands and Islands SNP MSP, Mike Mackenzie.

‘This funding announcement is one that very clearly confirms that economic recovery and job creation are right at the top of the SNP government’s priorities.

‘The allocation of this funding is designed to ensure that every pound spent gets the maximum result when it comes to tackling unemployment in Scotland and investing in economic growth.

‘Individually, these allocations bring a great deal to welcome. I am particularly pleased to see the very significant additional investment in employability programmes, which will be of enormous importance in ensuring that people who have lost their jobs in the recession get the skills and support they need to get back to work as quickly as possible.

‘Taken as a whole, these allocations add up to a significant investment in Scotland’s economic recovery and jobs for the Scottish people. If the Scottish Government had the full range of financial and economic levers at its disposal it could do even more to support these priorities.’