Meeting of the Parliament 19 February 2026 [Draft]
The motion poses a simple question about whether the way in which the SNP Government chooses to distribute its record funding among our local authorities, NHS boards and infrastructure investment projects is a fair distribution. Those are all devolved services, as Karen Adam would know if she bothered to learn how devolution and funding work.
Presiding Officer, the north-east has such a consistent and sustained imbalance of distribution that the dogs on Union Street would tell you that we do not get a fair distribution. For example, for more than a decade, NHS Grampian has received less than the level of funding that is required by the Government’s own allocation model. Since 2010, the disparity between needed and actual funding is around £250 million. That funding shortfall has resulted in reports just this week that NHS Grampian is projecting a deficit of £76 million, having made £62 million-worth of savings this year and needing a further £40 million of savings next year. That translates to the fewest beds per head in Scotland. It means delayed projects, stacked ambulances and enormous waiting lists for people in the north-east.
The funding shortfall embeds pressure across the system, because NHS Grampian funds a significant share of Aberdeen city and Aberdeenshire health and social care partnerships. Due to NHS Grampian starting from a low financial position, with its below-target allocation, the HSCPs, too, are under strain. Care provision tightens, recruitment becomes challenging and local urgent care services operate with limited flexibility. Those are entirely predictable consequences of sustained unfair underallocation by this Government.
Our north-east local councils face the same unfairness. Aberdeenshire Council is the fourth lowest-funded local authority per head in Scotland, receiving less than the national average. Aberdeen City Council also ranks among the lower-funded councils. Both have been consistently almost the worst-funded—if not the worst-funded—councils in Scotland for years. Starting from a lower funding baseline immediately limits what local services can be delivered effectively. Karen Adam desperately tries to say that it is nothing to do with the Scottish Parliament, but that is not standing up for her constituents; that is abandoning them, yet again.
As the motion highlights, the unfairness extends to infrastructure investment in the north-east, or lack thereof. To the south of Aberdeen, the growing communities of Cove and Newtonhill, which sit directly on the east coast main line, need new stations. People have been demanding them for years, and several thousands have signed my campaign petition to deliver them. However, the Government refuses to deliver, just as it will not address our poor local and regional bus services or deliver the vital upgrades that are so desperately needed on the A90 and the Laurencekirk, Toll of Birness and Cortes junctions.
When communities lack proper transport infrastructure, the result is congestion, pressure on local roads and reduced economic activity. Earlier today, when I asked the minister whether, in response to the tsunami of pub and hospitality closures in Aberdeen and the north-east, he would support Scottish Conservative plans to exempt most from business rates, he blithely ignored the issue, failed to provide any solutions and completely ignored the question about whether he would support that.
North East Scotland is a region that contributes significantly to Scotland’s economy, its energy, its food production and its advanced manufacturing and research. We in the north-east have an expectation—actually, a right to expect—that our essential services and infrastructure are funded in line with assessed requirements.
The fact is that fairness to the whole of Scotland should be baked into decisions that the Scottish Government makes. The sustained gap in the north-east demonstrates that it is not—that is not what is being delivered. We need a commitment to fairness for communities across the north-east and a Government that finally delivers a fair share for the north-east.