Scottish Government 'short-changed by £1bn' by Rachel Reeves, Finance Secretary says

RACHEL Reeves’s Spending Review has “short-changed Scotland by more than a billion pounds”, the SNP Government has claimed.

Speaking in the Commons on Wednesday, the Chancellor pledged the “largest settlements in real terms since devolution was introduced” promising “£52 billion for Scotland, £20bn for Northern Ireland and £23bn for Wales” by the end of the spending review period (2028/29).

In May, the UK Government said the 2025/2026 block grant was worth £50bn, meaning the £52bn pledge would represent an increase of around 4% over four years. Using a baseline of 2023/2024, the Labour have said the Scottish Government will receive “an average extra £2.9 billion across the duration of this Spending Review”.

Reeves also announced funding for projects including £750 million for a supercomputer in Edinburgh and £250m for Faslane nuclear base. However, the Poverty Alliance warned that the investment figures “mask cuts to day-to-day spending”.

Responding to the announcements, Scotland’s Finance Secretary Shona Robison said the SNP Government had been “short-changed”.

She explained: “This Spending Review is business as usual from the UK Government, which is yet again treating Scotland as an afterthought and failing to provide us with the funding we need.

“Today’s settlement for Scotland is particularly disappointing, with real terms growth of 0.8% a year for our overall block grant, which is lower than the average for UK departments. 

Finance Secretary Shona Robison (Image: PA) “Had our resource funding for day-to-day priorities grown in line with the UK Government’s overall spending, we would have £1.1bn more to spend on our priorities over the next three years. In effect, Scotland has been short-changed by more than a billion pounds.

“This all comes on top of the UK Government’s failure to fully fund their employer National Insurance increase, depriving us of hundreds of millions of pounds in funding, and their proposed cuts in support for disabled people that will push 250,000 people into poverty, including 50,000 children.”

Robison further questioned why there have been no specific numbers attached to the announcement of support for the Acorn carbon capture project in the north east. Labour have only said that they will be “allocating £9.4bn to UK carbon capture and storage over the Spending Review period”.

The Finance Secretary said it was “disappointing that despite apparent briefing to media in advance, we are still awaiting clarity on funding for the vital Acorn project in the north east of Scotland”.

She went on: “We made extensive representations to the UK Government on our priorities for the Spending Review, including calls for an end to spending that bypasses devolution, but there has been limited opportunity to engage with them. 

“It appears that the continuation of local growth funding – which fails to match the European Structural Funds it was supposed to replace – will come directly from Whitehall, yet again bypassing devolved governments.

“We will now take the time to digest the detail of this statement and will set out our formal response on 25 June as part of the Medium Term Financial Strategy.”