Robison confirms up to £500m of cuts as Holyrood returns after recess

Scotland’s Finance Secretary Shona Robison has announced up to £500 million of spending cuts as she insisted “urgent action” was needed to ensure the Government can balance its budget for this year.

Ms Robison said as well as the “direct savings” she was making, she would also “reluctantly” be using up to £460 million of cash raised via the ScotWind scheme – where parts of the Scottish seabed are leased out for offshore wind farms.

But she told MSPs at Holyrood: “As we look ahead, it is clear that further significant action will be needed to reset the public finances onto a sustainable path.”

Government departments will be asked to make a further £188 million of additional savings, with these coming from across all portfolios, Ms Robison said.

This includes £115.8 million of savings from the health and social care budget – though, in a letter to MSPs on Holyrood’s Finance Committee, Ms Robison offered “assurances that the health portfolio will seek to protect key frontline emergency services”.

Elsewhere, spending on transport is down by £23.7 million; net zero and energy is reduced by £23.4 million; with social justice down £15.7 million.

The cuts were revealed as Ms Robison gave a statement updating the Parliament on the Scottish public finances on the first day that MSPs returned from their summer recess.

Ministers had already announced a scheme which cut rail fares at the busiest times of the day will not be continued, which together with other measures will save a further £65 million.

Meanwhile, the Scottish Government will make up to £60 million of further savings as part of “emergency spend controls”, focused on recruitment, overtime, travel and marketing spending.

The Scottish Finance Secretary stressed this “further and more urgent action” was needed to “ensure we can balance the Scottish budget in 2024-25”.

She told MSPs that factors such as funding public sector pay rises were a “significant driver” for the growing financial pressures the Scottish Government is dealing with.

Her comments came after workers in Unison, the largest local government trade union, voted against the latest pay offer made to council staff in Scotland, raising the prospect of strike action.

And she went on to warn that the public sector workforce “will need to evolve to ensure the delivery of high quality public services” despite “continued Westminster austerity”, – with Ms Robison saying she would set out more detail on this in the Scottish budget this December.

But she told how the Scottish Government already has a recruitment freeze in place “for all but the most essential roles”, adding that, “where appropriate”, she was looking to extend that, although she said steps would be taken to ensure bodies such as the NHS, police and fire can “recruit the staff they need”.

With Scotland facing a rising funding gap, Ms Robison insisted that “significant action will be needed to reset the public finances onto a sustainable path”.

That comes as the gap between revenue and spending is already forecast to grow from £1 billion in 2024-25 to £1.9 billion by 2027-28.

But Ms Robison also sought to lay the blame with UK governments and the “continued Westminster austerity”  – stressing that the Scottish Government has a “largely fixed budget”,  much of which is determined by the block grant received from the UK.

Ms Robison said: “Were Scotland an independent country, we would not be paying the price for bad decisions taken at Westminster – whether that be years of austerity cuts, Brexit, or reckless mini budgets – all of which have taken money out of the economy and funding for public services”.

However, Scottish Conservative spokeswoman Liz Smith said the independent Scottish Fiscal Commission had made “abundantly clear” that much of the financial pressure came from the Scottish Government’s own decisions.

She said Scotland was losing out on £624 million in revenue because its economy is growing at a slower rate than the UK as whole – adding that this “just happens to be close to the swingeing expenditure cuts that the Finance Secretary is announcing today”.

Scottish Labour’s finance spokesman, Michael Marra, said Ms Robison’s statement was a “threadbare attempt to pass the buck”.

He added: “Almost half of the total adjustments today are pulled from a one-off raid on ScotWind money, lost now into the black hole rather than investing for our future.

“It almost guarantees this short-term sticking plaster politics will run and run.”

Scottish Green finance spokesperson, Ross Greer, claimed the proposals were a “disaster for our climate”.

He hit out at the Government and said: “The SNP have chosen to slash spending on climate action and increase costs for commuters.

“Other options were available, but they’ve decided to cut the budgets for nature restoration and walking, wheeling and cycling, bring back peak rail fares and raid ScotWind funds originally intended for investment in our country’s future, especially in the green economy.”

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton meanwhile hit out at the Scottish Government for announcing health cuts – including a £19 million reduction in mental health funding – in a letter to MSPs on the Finance Committee.

Speaking about the Finance Secretary, Mr Cole-Hamilton said: “Rather than stand up and be honest that she was taking an axe to NHS services, the Finance Secretary has chosen to sneak these cuts out in a letter.”

He added: “The Finance Secretary should crawl over broken glass to protect essential NHS services, people are already waiting far too long for mental health care and to see their GP.

“This is a fiscal firestorm of the SNP Government’s own creation.”