The Scottish Government's Spring
Budget Revision for the 2024–25 fiscal year, published yesterday,
provides the final official budgets for its spending this
year.
The figures show £1.1 billion of
additional funding for day-to-day spending on top of what was
planned as of October's Autumn Budget Revision. But around £350
million of this is being held back as part of the central finance
budget in case financial pressures emerge between now and the end
of the year. In all likelihood, the Scottish Government will
carry forward most, if not all, of this contingency into future
years, to help address the financial pressures it will face in
2025–26 and beyond. Any that is rolled over would be on top of
the money the Scottish Government has already said it expects to
carry forward by no longer drawing down any offshore windfarm
license income this year.
Focusing on the funding that was
actually allocated to specific services, unsurprisingly by far
the biggest amount went to Health and Social Care services – an
additional £0.6 billion to help support the day-to-day running
costs of the NHS. £85 million has also been provided to councils,
mostly to cover the cost of pay deals. But several areas have
seen their budgets cut back, including net zero and energy, as
well as transport
services.
Bee Boileau, a research
economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies and an author of
the briefing said:
“The biggest winner by far from the
Scottish Government's Spring Budget Revision is the Scottish NHS.
An additional £0.6 billion of funding for day-to-day spending on
health and social care services takes the overall total top-up
for this area of spending since the initial 2024–25 Budget was
set to £1.5 billion, after some technical adjustments. This means
that rather than fall by 2.7% in real-terms compared to what was
spent in 2023–24, as implied by initial Budget plans that were
set out in December 2023, day-to-day health and social care
spending is now set to increase by 5.2% in real-terms this year.
This is a big change in direction. The top-up to spending this
year does mean, though, that the allocations for next year
announced in the 2025–26 Budget last December now look relatively
less generous by comparison.
Other areas seeing in-year top-ups to
their budgets include local government, justice and home affairs,
and education and skills. However, other areas have seen cutbacks
to free up funding for priority areas or as underspends have
emerged during the course of the year – this includes the
Scottish Government's net zero and energy portfolio of services,
as well as transport services.”
ENDS
Notes to Editor
Scottish Government boosts NHS
spending – and holds £350 million in reserve is an
IFS briefing by Bee Boileau and David Phillips.
The authors gratefully acknowledge ESRC Centre for the
Microeconomic Analysis of Public Policy (ES/T014334/1) and
ESRC Impact Acceleration Fund
(ES/X005283/1) for funding this work.
You can read the briefing on the IFS website here.
You can find all of our analysis prior to the Budget on
the IFS website.
