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Meeting of the Parliament 26 January 2011

26 Jan 2011 · S3 · Meeting of the Parliament

Item of business

Budget (Scotland) (No 5) Bill: Stage 1

Welsh, Andrew SNP Angus Watch on SPTV

Before I turn to the detail of our report and recommendations, I will briefly outline some of the changes to this year’s budget process.

The fact that the UK spending review was published only in October and that the Scottish Government’s budget was published in November meant that the time for parliamentary scrutiny was constrained. Rather than have a separate debate on the Finance Committee’s report in December, we agreed with the cabinet secretary to include our debate within the stage 1 debate on the Budget (Scotland) (No 5) Bill.

As part of our scrutiny this year, the committee held two evidence sessions with the right hon Danny Alexander MP, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, on the June budget and the spending review. The committee also took evidence on the review from members of the independent budget review panel and the cabinet secretary, and on the draft budget from public finance experts and the cabinet secretary.

Unfortunately, our planned external meeting in Carnoustie in December had to be cancelled because of adverse weather conditions, much to my regret. Although the planned workshops and school seminars could not go ahead, I put on record my thanks to everyone who agreed to give up their time to take part, and I echo what the committee said in its report, that we hope that our successor committee will be able to visit Angus at a future date.

I thank our committee clerks, our Scottish Parliament information centre researchers and our budget adviser, Professor David Bell, for their work, and I thank the members of all the other committees who contributed to scrutiny of the budget. The subject committees made a wide range of detailed recommendations in their portfolio areas. As it was not possible to cover them all in our report, I encourage all subject committees to seek their own formal responses from the relevant ministers.

On our report, it is important to say at the outset that the committee recognised that the budget settlement for 2011-12 is the most difficult since devolution. Mindful of that fact, the committee held a budget strategy phase of the process during the spring of 2010 to help to prepare the parliamentary committees and Parliament for the challenges that lay ahead.

In the time available, I cannot possibly cover in depth all the issues that were raised in our report, but I will pick out the main thrust of our recommendations and the key conclusions that we made. I am sure that committee colleagues will pick up any issues that I do not have time to cover.

This year, the committee framed its scrutiny around testing the strategic, cross-cutting aspects of the budget and some key portfolio issues against the Government’s stated core purpose and its three strategic priorities. During evidence from Scottish public finance experts, a strong view emerged that, from their critical examination of the choices that were made in the budget, the budget in fact prioritised the protection of services, rather than the Government’s stated purpose of increasing sustainable economic growth. In their view, cutting budgets that typically relate to the generation of economic growth—such as those for higher and further education, water, housing and the enterprise agencies—while protecting health spending by passing on the health Barnett consequentials from the UK spending review and protecting universal services makes it difficult to protect economic growth. We have, therefore, asked the Government to publish, prior to the stage 3 debate on the bill, an overview of the assessment that it has carried out to satisfy itself that the measures in the budget will in fact support economic growth.

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Meeting of the Parliament 26 January 2011

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