Public Audit Committee 17 December 2025
I will give you a response, but I will turn to Carole Grant in a moment, as she may want to set out some of the detail behind the underspend. The consolidated accounts quite reasonably go into detail of underspend by department within the Scottish Government. They tend to record variances to budget of around £5 million or more.
The first point that it is important to stress is that the Scottish Government is required to break even. That means that it cannot go into deficit and, to meet its financial requirements for expenditure to be regular, it has to report a surplus each year. I may pass over to Carole to set out the historical trends, but there has to be an underspend.
The underspend is split between revenue and capital balances, so, for completeness, before I give Carole an opportunity to set out the detail, I note that the underspend is split between £875 million of revenue expenditure and a further £134 million of capital.
Overall, I would say that it is reasonable to have an underspend. The rationale for it will vary from one year to another, by department. Most important, perhaps, is that not all the money is lost to the Scottish Government. Where there are cash underspends, that money is transferred into the Scotland reserve. Carole may have the detail on the precise figure, but it may become clear in due course.
I will pause and turn to Carole to set some of that out in more detail.