Question reference: S6W-05902
- Asked by: Evelyn Tweed, MSP for Stirling, Scottish National Party
- Date lodged: 3 February 2022
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Current status: Answered by Kate Forbes on 23 February 2022
Question
To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of whether there has been a real-terms cut to Scottish Government funding from the UK Government in the last five years, and what effect any change in the level of funding has had on Scottish Government funding for local authorities.
Answer
Due to the changes in responsibilities, it is difficult to provide an exact like-for-like comparison of Scottish Government funding from the UK Government over the last five years. However, excluding Social Security and EU Replacement funding (neither of which featured in the Scottish Budget limit 5 years ago), the amount of funding has increased from £30.662 billion in 2017-18 to £39.257 billion in 2022-23. This is a real terms increase of 14.3 per cent over the period.
As the Scottish Government remains committed to passing on every penny of additional health funding from the UK Government much of this increase has been allocated to Health which has a direct impact on all other areas of the Scottish Budget, including local government.
If Health funding is excluded, the Scottish Budget real terms increase over the period is 8.5 per cent, and local government have therefore been treated very fairly with council’s revenue funding having increased by 9.9 per cent in real terms.