Official Report 228KB pdf
The next item of business is a members’ business debate on motion S6M-20268, in the name of Alexander Burnett, on a fair share of funding for public services. The debate will be concluded without any question being put. I invite members who wish to participate to press their request-to-speak button.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament notes calls for fairer funding to be allocated among Scotland’s 32 local authorities and 14 NHS boards; further notes reports that Aberdeenshire Council is the fourth lowest funded local authority in Scotland, receiving less government funding per capita than the Scottish average; believes that NHS Grampian is the second lowest funded NHS board per head of population, is reportedly facing a deficit of nearly £50 million, has just 1.4 beds per 1,000 people, and has one of the fastest growing elderly populations in Scotland; considers that rural and island communities cover large geographical areas, which come with unique challenges and require significant resources, particularly with regard to infrastructure maintenance, service delivery and issues that arise from extreme weather; recognises concerns that local services are under immense pressure, and notes the view that it is important to ensure that communities are properly resourced to enable them to continue to have access to local services that meet their needs, including reliable public transport, local schools and health and social care services.
12:50
I thank those who have supported the motion, which echoes a joint statement put out by 22 community councils in Aberdeenshire. For 19 years, Scotland has struggled under the Scottish National Party. Our councils are underfunded, education standards are slipping, rural nurseries and primary schools are closing, our roads are full of potholes, our bridges are crumbling and our national health service is at breaking point. However, Scotland is the highest-taxed part of the United Kingdom.
We need a Government that will focus on Scotland’s priorities. For years, there have been repeated calls for the SNP to provide more funding to support local services. Our councils are stretched thin, while the Scottish Government receives the largest settlement of £50 billion from Westminster. The SNP budget for 2026-27 falls £1 billion short of what the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities called for and fails to deliver COSLA’s demand for £750 million to fill the cracks in social care. The Institute for Fiscal Studies highlighted that the SNP’s budget for health and social care, which covers hospitals and general practitioners, will fall in real terms. Local services do not get the funding that they need and, as a result, the most vulnerable suffer.
Aberdeenshire Council is the fourth lowest funded local authority. It has the sixth highest population, yet it receives £50 million less than the Scottish average. That forces cuts across all non-statutory services. There are now no adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism assessments, and hundreds of people are on waiting lists, left in the dark without support. Despite Aberdeenshire’s fragility in the face of flooding, erosion and extreme cold, there were cuts to winter resilience at a time when communities should be getting more support. In an attempt to save money, 1,200 grit bins were cut, leaving some communities without any. However, that is robbing Peter to pay Paul, because the council also shares half a health and social care partnership deficit. That means that, when somebody slips and breaks their hips, the potential cost is much greater.
This is not a challenge to be tackled as a test for the public sector; it is an unwinnable scenario, in which the elderly, road users and council tenants have been set up to fail. Morality is not understood by this Government. The SNP might have seen the countryside on its way to a photo call, but it is incapable of making policy that gives places such as the north-east their fair share.
Population sparsity, geographic area, failing infrastructure and travel times all have a huge impact on services. Aberdeenshire has more than 3,000 miles of roads to maintain—more than double that in Glasgow. It has 1,800 bridges—more per capita than anywhere else in Scotland. Aboyne bridge has been shut for more than two years, forcing people to take a 20-mile detour. It will cost £15 million to repair it or £30 million to replace it. However, that is just one of 200 Aberdeenshire bridges that require repairs and, over the next 20 years, 317 bridges might be forced to close. Can the minister even begin to comprehend what that will look like?
Rural schools are also at risk. Last year, I campaigned with parents to save four nurseries, but they are still under threat. When services are cut, rural areas are hit hardest as resources are redirected to larger settlements. That only encourages rural depopulation. It is no wonder that the SNP Government stands accused of modern-day Highland clearances.
It is no surprise that, two years in a row, the Local Government Information Unit has found that there is no confidence in local government finances. It has called for the Government to review how local authorities are financed and the funding formula for distribution. Without that, our councils have no option but to increase council tax to make up for the Government’s failure to provide a fair share to the north-east.
On health, NHS Grampian is, per capita, the second lowest funded national health service board, yet its elderly population is among the fastest growing. NHS Grampian is £45 million over budget, and, last year, the overspend was £65 million—the highest in Scotland—with auditors warning that staffing levels might have to be slashed.
While the SNP sits back and asks NHS Grampian to make further cuts, costs are still increasing. In Grampian, we have just 1.4 beds per 1,000 people, and there are now no minor injury units on Deeside. Community hospitals have been closed, despite the promises that the SNP made at the election in 2021. Waiting lists are at record highs, ambulance stacking at Aberdeen royal infirmary has caused chaos and care homes that need to run at capacity to survive have empty beds because it is cheaper for the SNP Government to ignore bed blocking than it is to fund people to be cared for in their community. That is having tragic consequences for people’s lives.
While our NHS staff are working hard under incredible pressures, we also face recruitment challenges. That is affecting GP surgeries such as the one in Kintore, which has reduced hours, because it does not have sufficient doctors to operate full time. Other GP surgeries, such as the practice in Alford, are being taken over by mega-practices, where oversight is non-existent and GP to patient ratios have plummeted. A proper Scottish Government would have improvement initiatives such as offering golden hello payments to encourage people to move from the central belt and would invest in local training opportunities so that people could work in their communities.
If members think that the situation is bad now, they should just wait. Audit Scotland forecasts that Scottish Government funding will fall in real terms in 2028. Things are going to get worse. Will the minister take any responsibility? He will undoubtedly talk about balancing the budget, as though it is an achievement rather than a legal obligation. He will talk about Conservatives not backing the SNP’s budget or identifying savings, despite the fact that we pointed out that independence spending had rocketed by £36 million and that there was a 25 per cent spike in foreign aid. He will talk about how Aberdeenshire Council is responsible for its budget, as Swinney did last week when he refused to help the Aboyne bridge group. He will pass the buck on to COSLA and its funding formula, knowing that it does not reflect rurality.
When will the Government take responsibility and govern, rather than hiding behind organisations that it controls? Politics is about spending choices, and the SNP Government is choosing to defund and destroy our rural communities.
12:57
I am grateful to have the opportunity to debate the motion, and I thank Alexander Burnett for bringing it to the chamber. However, there is something quite ironic about the subject of the debate, and I will not shy away from calling that out.
We cannot let the Conservatives off the hook for their record or for what is happening locally. Over the past decade and a half, they had ample opportunity to do something about the situation, and they chose not to. In fact, they chose to do the opposite. Conservative politicians have a track record of voting for public spending cuts. That is on the public record. That is the ideology of Conservatism. The Conservatives cannot spend years squeezing the state and demanding tax cuts for millionaires and then call for a bigger share of a pot that, through their design, is smaller.
Let us say the quiet part out loud: public services did not get stretched by accident. They have been systematically squeezed for years by UK austerity. People at home do not need MSPs to explain what pressure looks like. They feel it in their everyday lives, and I see it reflected in my casework.
I agree that rurality, distance, harsh weather and an ageing population mean that it costs more to deliver services in Aberdeenshire, and Brexit has caused a serious labour shortage. That is why the Scottish Government has ensured that local government funding in Scotland is at record levels. Councils will receive almost £15.7 billion in the upcoming budget, and that matters. I am not saying that that will solve everything, but it cuts clean through the idea that the Scottish Government is simply not putting money into local services.
There are two issues that we need to bear in mind: first, how the pot is shared out through COSLA’s distribution process; and, secondly, what happens after that. Councils choose priorities locally, and that local accountability matters. Councillors are democratically elected to make those decisions. What the motion tries to glide past is the fact that Aberdeenshire’s budget choices are made by the Tory council administration—it is those councillors who decide what is protected and what is cut. However, time and again, we see the same trick: local cuts are made, and then the Conservatives point to Holyrood and say, “It’s not our fault.”
There were alternatives. In Aberdeenshire, for example, the SNP council group put forward a different budget proposal and priorities to reduce the damage, but those options were rejected. People deserve to know that, because it means that some of what we are seeing was a choice and was not fate.
I will make a constructive call: when Aberdeenshire councillors set their budget later this month, I ask members on the Conservative benches to speak to their colleagues, asking them to work with the SNP council group and across parties to protect the most vulnerable. They must stop the blame game and do the hard work that it takes to get consensus for the benefit of the community. When cuts hit disability day services, that is not an abstract saving line, because families are left carrying the weight on their own. If we truly care about the ageing population, we cannot ignore the people who need support now or the carers who are already at breaking point. If Conservative members genuinely want a way forward, there it is.
We were promised the broad shoulders of the UK, but people in my communities do not feel at all upheld by UK broad shoulders. Instead, they feel weighed down by decisions that have been made elsewhere. Scotland can do better than this. With full powers in our hands—the hands of an independent Scotland—we can keep more resources here and invest in our public services in a way that people deserve.
The motion for debate is spin, dressed up as concern. My constituents deserve honesty and real solutions, and that is what I am offering today.
13:01
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.
13:05
I thank Alexander Burnett for bringing the debate to the chamber. It is on a wee subject that is dear to my heart, as I have over 40 years of experience in the public sector at a senior level, and I know that, over a long period, we have had both good times in the public sector and some very hard times. That aside, since 2010, all of us as chief officers, whether in health, social care or education, or just in general bread-and-butter services such as refuse collection or fixing potholes, have been managing decline.
We used to categorise services as being: statutory services, where you must do it or face a fine or imprisonment; essential services that affect people’s lives; services that are nice to have; and, finally, the category that we still do too much of, which is the “What are we doing this for?” category—and the answer is usually, “Because we have always done it” or “I don’t really know what the answer is.”
During this period of managed decline, we who manage and provide public services have still managed to work wonders, doing the impossible while being starved of funds. However, that is mainly down to the hard-working, committed workers and staff, many of whom are on low wages but have a true sense of pride in their work and a profound respect for the people they are providing the service for.
Over the same period, the Scottish Government has habitually wasted significant pots of money. We have had the ferries fiasco; Gupta’s invisible Fort William smelter; and thousands of civil servants spending time redacting responses to freedom of information requests, to name but a few examples. The cost of those alone comes to about £1 billion. What about the blunders and cover-ups that we have not even heard about yet?
We are running more than 130 unelected quangos that are eating into public money. Some are supposed to distribute public money, but, in some cases, they are hoarding public funds while—in my experience—we had to beg to get access to those funds. If we did not do what the unelected organisations wanted, we did not get the funds. They used it as a method of control, and that is the Scottish Government’s fault. I will name and shame a couple of them: Sustrans, Zero Waste Scotland and Strathclyde Partnership for Transport. SPT has almost £200 million in reserves. We could pay for 1,000 doctors, 1,000 nurses, 1,000 street cleaners and 1,000 road workers all at the one time from that £200 million pot.
Why are we, the Scottish people, putting up with that nonsense? It is a disgrace. Many chief executive officers and directors in those organisations pay themselves inflated salaries and bonuses for delivering poor, out-of-touch services. While I acknowledge that increasing funding for something does not necessarily mean that it will get better, rebranding organisations or adding commissioners, or some other fudge mechanism, does not improve things either.
A public service should be exactly what it says on the tin—it should be fit for purpose and have the ability to do what it is designed for, as an efficient, sustainable, fully funded public service. We need a full shake-up from top to bottom, rather than the jigsaw that we have at present. We need to improve the staple methodology for funding public services in a way that the Scottish people deserve. Transition should not be pie in the sky.
To achieve that, we should be setting a challenging, achievable and clear road map to success. We need to untangle the current cash-absorbing, shambolic mess. We in this Parliament should spend less time talking about seagulls, greyhounds, independence and kicking Americans out of Prestwick airport. We should concentrate on the bread-and-butter services that affect every single person—even people in the chamber. Creating more of the same without fixing the basics, including the funding methodology, is wrong. We need to roll up our sleeves and get on with the job in hand.
13:10
I thank Alex Burnett for bringing this crucial debate to the chamber. I must admit that I am still a little bit dizzy from Karen Adam’s speech. My word—that was some amount of political spin from a former councillor. How on earth she thinks that she can say that in the chamber is beyond me.
I agree with some of the points that Davy Russell made about concentrating on key things. Seagulls are a very important subject, though, especially in my community in Moray, and we have to talk about them.
I could not believe it when, on Thursday 4 May 2017, I was elected to Moray Council. I stood in the seat of Buckie, a strong SNP area, and I thought that I was never going to win, but I was elected, and I was happy. I was serving as a football coach in the community, I worked in the church and I was on the community council. However, for the two weeks after I was elected to the council, I was plagued by the chief executive and the deputy chief executives telling me just how dire it was in the council. They said that there was no money, that we could not do anything positive and that all we could do was make cuts.
I spent the next five years learning why, and the reason is discussed in the COSLA document that I am holding up. I know that we are not meant to use props in the chamber, but I want to quote from the document, which is called “What does the 2026-27 Budget mean for Councils?” It is worth pointing out that the president of COSLA is an SNP councillor, that almost half of the councils in Scotland are run by the SNP and that the document has been agreed by all council leaders in Scotland. It says:
“COSLA Leaders have agreed this is a very poor settlement which fails to address the dire financial situation of Local Government in Scotland.”
It is dire; it has been dire every year. On another page, the document points out just how dire it is. While the SNP Government has put more and more money into benefits, it has slashed local government.
Will the member take an intervention?
I am not allowing Karen Adam an intervention. She would not take an intervention from any of us.
The 2026-27 budget is another dire one that will force all council administrations, whichever party leads them, to make cuts and put up council tax. Alex Burnett made the key point that council tax is going up because, for a long time, the SNP prevented councils from doing anything to council tax but did not make up the shortfall in funding, and because it has also not funded revenue over the years. We have seen massive increases in costs in education. Additional support needs and social, emotional and behavioural needs are through the roof, as are needs in other areas such as social care, but none of that has been funded. In addition, we are taking away services that have previously been provided. Why are swimming pools under threat? We need them. School crossing patrols are also under threat, and that is all because we are funding what this Government wants and not what we should be doing on the ground. To me, that is simply not good enough.
COSLA states:
“The budget reality is that this a cash reduction in core capital funding”.
That is not going to help with the bridges that I and Alex Burnett want to protect across rural Scotland.
A lot of councillors are trying their best and doing great work across the country, but it is very difficult. I say to the people of Scotland, “Don’t blame your councils—blame this SNP Government”. Ministers are the ones who have destroyed council funding because they are not up to the challenge of taking on the difficult things.
I will finish with a comment on NHS Grampian. A couple of days ago, it put out a press release that I found really frustrating. It says that it is an “incredible achievement” that NHS Grampian has managed to make budget cuts. I do not think that that is an incredible achievement. NHS Grampian is cutting its budget at a time when I have constituents coming to me with breast cancer or eye problems who cannot get into hospital. We should not be seeing cuts in those budgets. We should be seeing services being delivered, with more beds at Dr Gray’s and the hospital in Aberdeen. We need that so that our constituents, whom we care for and want to serve, can actually get the services that the NHS delivers. This Government has to step up to the plate and put more money into local services, particularly in rural Scotland.
13:14
I am grateful to Alexander Burnett for the opportunity to speak in this debate for the communities of the north-east, and particularly the people of Aberdeenshire, who know all too well what it means to be asked to do more with less. However, he and I have quite different solutions to the problems that his motion identifies: I support higher taxation on individuals and businesses with significant wealth. I am proud that Scotland has a fairer tax system than anywhere else in the UK, which is thanks to the Scottish Greens. At its heart, however, the debate is about how public spending is prioritised.
Karen Adam was right to highlight that it is Mr Burnett’s Conservative colleagues who are making the decisions in the shire. However, it is also true that Aberdeenshire Council is the fourth lowest funded local authority in Scotland, and that it receives less per head than the national average. It is also true that NHS Grampian is the second lowest funded health board per capita, with a deficit of nearly £50 million and only 1.4 beds per 1,000 people, despite serving one of the fastest-growing elderly populations in the country. I agree that that creates significant challenges that other health boards do not face.
I appreciate that the local authority funding allocation is devised by a formula that is agreed by COSLA, but perhaps it is time to open up discussion about that formula and the allocation. However, we cannot do that on our own in the Scottish Parliament—that is not in our gift. The numbers that we see in the motion are not abstract—they are not simply lines in a spreadsheet. They represent delayed care, overstretched staff and anxious families and communities who are worried about the future of the services that they rely on.
In Aberdeenshire, geography matters. Rural and island communities cover vast distances; roads must be maintained across huge areas; public transport must connect disparate and scattered towns and villages; and services must withstand extreme weather events that are becoming more frequent and more severe. Delivering equity in such circumstances requires more resource, not less, and I think that we agree on that. However, this is not simply a question of fairness between local authorities or health boards; it is about social justice. I was proud to stand alongside communities across Aberdeenshire in their fight to save sheltered housing, disability services and community care facilities that enable people—particularly older and disabled people—to live independently and with dignity. I pay tribute to those from Cuminestown, Portsoy and all the other northern Aberdeenshire towns and villages for their campaigns last summer. I am sorry that we did not halt all the closures and cuts.
When sheltered housing accommodation and wardens are cut, daycare services for disabled people are reduced and local facilities close—decisions that were made by Conservative councillors—the cost does not disappear. It is displaced on to families, unpaid carers and, ultimately, our NHS. If we are serious about relieving pressures on the NHS, we must invest upstream and fund preventative services properly. We must recognise that good social care, accessible local transport, warm and secure housing and strong community facilities are not optional extras but the foundations of a healthy society.
Aberdeenshire’s rapidly ageing population should be a call to action, not an afterthought. Fair funding must take into account changing demographics, rurality and deprivation, all of which can be hidden in affluent-looking areas. The real cost of delivering services across large dispersed communities must be acknowledged.
This debate is about whether we are willing to match our rhetoric on equality with meaningful financial commitment. It is about whether we accept a system that leaves one of Scotland’s largest local authority areas persistently underfunded and one of its key NHS boards struggling to meet demand.
Communities in the north-east are resilient and resourceful, but they should not be expected to compensate indefinitely for structural underfunding. A fair share of funding is not a special favour; it is a matter of equity and dignity. It is essential if we are to build a Scotland in which every community—rural, coastal, urban or island—can access the public services that it needs and deserves.
13:18
I thank my colleague Alexander Burnett for bringing this debate to the chamber.
Many of the issues that have been highlighted in Aberdeenshire are also present in other parts of rural Scotland, not least in my region of South Scotland. Communities across Ayrshire are well aware of the impact of the Scottish Government’s fiscal approach on them. Health services have been decimated, local authorities are buckling under enormous demand and everyday things that we used to be able to count on seem to be on borrowed time.
We do not need to look much further than at the plight of NHS Ayrshire and Arran for the evidence of that. The dire state of affairs there got so bad last week that the Scottish Government had to raise its emergency intervention to the second-highest level. That should not have come as a surprise to ministers. After last year’s emergency loan of more than £50 million, Scotland’s public services watchdog said that there was “no evidence” of financial sustainability in that health board. Patients can see how bad things have got. The severe situation there is not the fault of hard-working staff and medics; it is a symptom of years of underfunding from central Government, which, having failed to properly resource the organisation, is now having to shell out for expensive sticking-plaster solutions.
Life in the region’s councils is not much better. We know that many people from across Scotland choose to come to South Ayrshire to retire. Of course their presence is welcome, and their contribution to local life is considerable. However, for too long, the Scottish Government has ignored the impact on demographics. South Ayrshire has one of the country’s highest proportions of people over the age of 65; already, they account for more than a quarter of the population, and that will increase to a third within a few years. That will bring the region into competition with areas that have the oldest demographics in the world, yet there is no funding mechanism to reflect that, and it will have an extraordinary impact on demand for health and social care.
The sums do not add up, which is why councils are left with no option but to raise council tax or close facilities. Such counterproductive moves make people only poorer—financially, educationally and culturally. Councillors take the hit for that locally, but the decisions that are made by the Scottish Government in Edinburgh are to blame.
Health boards and local authorities are being asked to sweep up where the SNP Government has failed, whether in relation to delayed discharge, intolerable environments for teachers or the impact of policing cutbacks. All those things are felt locally but could have been prevented nationally. That is why I fully support Alexander Burnett’s motion to finally give councils and health boards the money that they need to do the job properly.
I call Ivan McKee to respond to the debate. Minister, you have around seven minutes.
13:21
I will come on to members’ contributions shortly, but I will first cover off some general points.
The Government recognises the essential role that local authorities and health boards play in delivering high-quality health and care services across Scotland, including in rural and island communities. That is why the draft 2026-27 budget provides a record investment of £22.5 billion in health and social care services.
Since 2007, the Government has delivered a balanced budget and has taken steps to support the long-term sustainability of Scotland’s public services, despite significant inflationary pressures and increasing demand on services. Both the NHS Scotland resource allocation committee—NRAC—formula and the local government grant-aided expenditure distribution methodology provide objective, evidence-based methods for assessing the relative needs of services across the country.
We recognise that strong and on-going partnership work is essential, and the Government remains absolutely committed to constructive engagement with local authorities, NHS boards, integration authorities, COSLA and local communities to ensure that reforms are co-designed and that funding decisions support sustainable long-term improvement and improve outcomes for the people and the communities that they serve.
As I said, the draft budget that was recently introduced in the Parliament provides £22.5 billion of investment in health and social care services. It exceeds the health consequentials from the UK Government and provides a real-terms uplift, to ensure more sustainable and resilient services. In 2026-27, NHS boards’ baseline funding will increase, bringing a total investment of more than £17.6 billion—an average real-terms uplift of 1.8 per cent. We will also be fully funding pay deals in 2026-27. We recognise, of course, that it remains the statutory responsibility of NHS boards to achieve a balanced budget.
As I mentioned, the NRAC formula is an objective measure of the need for healthcare services across Scotland. However, in addition, since 2012-13, the Scottish Government has provided more than £4 billion of additional funding to ensure that each territorial board remains within 0.6 per cent of NRAC parity.
The NRAC formula is refreshed annually to reflect changes in population and service needs, including in remote and rural communities. That supports vital work to reduce health inequality and ensures that we continue to allocate funding according to the relative need for healthcare in each board area. In particular, in 2026-27, NHS Grampian will receive nearly £1.5 billion in baseline funding, which equates to an increased investment of £130.7 million compared with 2025-26 and includes a 2 per cent baseline uplift of £28 million. NHS Grampian will also receive an additional £11.4 million to ensure that it remains within 0.6 per cent of NRAC parity.
Among all the statistics that the minister is trotting out, let us get specific. How would he suggest that NHS Grampian makes a further £40 million of cuts next year?
I was just coming on to that point. The board was escalated to stage 4 of the NHS Scotland support and intervention framework in May 2025 in order to provide it with the support that it needs. The Scottish Government has set targets to improve the board’s position over the next three years, and the board remains on course to achieve those targets.
With regard to local authorities, the Government has provided another real-terms increase in funding for the next financial year. We will continue to work with COSLA to ensure that our communities continue to receive the high-quality services that they expect and deserve. The grant-aided expenditure funding formula is agreed by COSLA leaders, and Aberdeenshire Council receives additional funding due to Aberdeenshire’s rural nature. If Alexander Burnett disagrees with any of the evidence that is used to make that calculation or if he believes that other evidence would merit inclusion in distribution considerations, I am sure that his points could be raised directly with COSLA, which makes decisions on the funding methodology.
I want to focus on that point, because it is crucial. I came down to the Parliament in 2018 to discuss it with the then Cabinet Secretary for Finance and the Constitution, Derek Mackay. The problem with the COSLA funding formula is that it requires the entire COSLA body—all the council administrations—to come together and agree. The councils that do well out of the funding formula will never agree to reset it; therefore, the Government will need to step in. Recognising that rurality is not taken into account, will the Government promise to do that in the future, to make sure that the funding formula is fair?
I have identified that Aberdeenshire Council receives additional funding due to its rural nature. It is interesting to get it on the record that the Conservative Party is calling on the Scottish Government to overrule COSLA on matters that relate to local issues.
That is not what I said.
That is exactly what he said. I think that COSLA would have something to say about that.
Under the two existing formulas, the additional cost of providing services in rural and remote areas is a key component in determining funding allocations. In the 2026-27 provisional settlement, Aberdeenshire Council will receive more than £20 million in additional allocation based on rurality indicators, making it the authority with the sixth-highest such allocation per person.
I will turn to some of the members’ speeches. There was no change in the typical approach from Alexander Burnett, Tim Eagle and other Conservative members. On the one hand, they call for £1 billion in tax cuts—Alexander Burnett opened his speech with a comment about Scottish tax rates. At the same time, they argue for increased resources to be provided to public services. It fell to Maggie Chapman to give the Tories a lesson in basic arithmetic and economics, and I am glad that she did. That shows the state that the Conservative Party is in. Given that it has no chance of being in a position to make decisions in Government, it has the luxury of being able to call for contradictory things in debates.
Karen Adam clearly laid out the reality of the situation at the national and local levels. In that regard, we were entertained by a bit of a dispute between Opposition parties on the position of seagulls—that was a piece of brief entertainment in the debate that broke up the monotony of the hypocrisy from the Tory party. [Interruption.] I already answered Liam Kerr’s question—perhaps he was not listening, or perhaps he was too excited about the speech that he made.
With regard to non-domestic rates, in Aberdeen city, the total increase in rateable value is 7 per cent compared with a total increase of 12 per cent across Scotland. The Scottish Government is putting £870 million into reliefs this year to support business with those increases. Rather than being in the situation that was indicated by Liam Kerr earlier, we are giving the hospitality sector more support in percentage terms than it is getting south of the border.
As I outlined, the Government remains committed to ensuring that funding is distributed fairly and that it supports sustainable and high-quality services across Scotland, including in remote and rural communities. We will continue to work collaboratively with local authorities and NHS boards, and we will drive the reforms that are needed to improve outcomes for all our communities.
That concludes the debate. I suspend the meeting until 2.30 pm.
13:29
Meeting suspended.
14:30
On resuming—
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