IPPR Scotland – new analysis reveals UK Budget leaves £1bn of cuts still to come

8 Mar 2017

Press Story

Following the UK Government's Spring Budget 2017, IPPR Scotland has analysed the scale of public spending cuts still to come to Scotland.

Looking at day to day resource spending (and so not including capital spending) the Scottish Parliament's budget is due to fall between now and 2019/20.

In particular:

  • Non-protected departments in Scotland (those excluding health and police) could see £1bn of cuts by 2019/20 (per year, real-terms, compared to 2016/17).
  • Cuts to non-protected departments could amount to 8.4% in real terms by 2019/20 (per year, real-terms, compared to 2016/17).
  • Cuts would be higher but for the Scottish Government's tax plans with devolved taxes revenues currently forecast to be around £550m higher by 2019/20 than the block grant deduction (per year, in real terms).

Russell Gunson, Director of IPPR Scotland, said:

"Even including the Scottish Government's tax plans, non-protected departments in Scotland could see cuts of around £1bn per year by 2019/20. The scale of these cuts is very large and will continue to put huge pressure on spending outside of health and police in Scotland. In particular this could be bad news for local authority budgets in Scotland for the next few years.

"Our analysis shows that the Scottish Government's tax plans will reduce the scale of the cuts coming from the decisions of the UK Government, however, even so, non-protected departments will see cuts of around 8.4% by 2019/20 compared to now.

"Today's budget will see additional revenue come to Scotland compared to what was planned by the UK Chancellor in November. However, this revenue will not make a significant difference to the scale of cuts coming to non-protected departments in Scotland in the future. At the same time, the majority of benefits cuts are still to come, which will be a double whammy for people in Scotland over the coming years."


Notes:

Non-protected departments in Scotland are those outside of Health spending and Police spending. In our analysis we also protected college spending in cash terms in line with previous commitments.