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Jan 24, 2025 | 
fraserofallander.org | Mairi Spowage |Emma Congreve |Ben Cooper
Yesterday the Scottish government confirmed that plans for a National Care Service (NCS) in Scotland have been scrapped in favour of an advisory board and smaller, more targeted reforms. The decision came after months of declining support from key organizations and stakeholders including COSLA, key trade unions and representative bodies for social care providers in Scotland.
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Dec 6, 2024 | 
fraserofallander.org | Mairi Spowage |Hannah Randolph |David Jack |Allison A. Catalano
The Scottish Government published a number of documents alongside the budget yesterday, including a distributional analysis which considers the impact of announcements on different types of households.
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Dec 4, 2024 | 
fraserofallander.org | Mairi Spowage |Emma Congreve |Brodie Gillan |Hannah Randolph
It was a Scottish Budget where what was left unsaid was just as consequential as what Shona Robison mentioned in her 30-minute statement to the Scottish Parliament. The Scottish Government will be hoping for many of the headlines to focus on the mitigation of the effect of the two-child limit from 2026-27. The Finance Secretary left this until last in the order to ensure maximum impact.
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Nov 28, 2024 | 
fraserofallander.org | Mairi Spowage
Despite increases in funding for Scotland from the UK Government’s October Budget, Scottish Government Finance Minister Shona Robison has little room for manoeuvre when she presents her Budget for 2025-26 next week. This is the headline message of the Scotland’s Budget Report 2024, published today by the Fraser of Allander Institute at the University of Strathclyde.
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Nov 27, 2024 | 
fraserofallander.org | Mairi Spowage
2024-25 has been a financial year of tribulations in terms of the Scottish Government’s ability to adhere to its legally binding requirement to balance its resource budget. When we presented our 2023 Budget Report, we highlighted the challenges that were likely to come in the year ahead. As a result of these challenges, the 2024-25 Budget included some increases in tax, as well as cuts to a number of programmes.
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Nov 25, 2024 | 
fraserofallander.org | Mairi Spowage
Ever since Budget day, there has been an ongoing conversation about the largest tax rise announced by the Chancellor on 30th October. Many sectors of the economy have been calculating the cost of this employer national insurance increase, in many cases warning about the impact this may have on the sustainability of their organisations and perhaps limiting their ability to create new jobs or offer pay increases.
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Sep 3, 2024 | 
scotsman.com | Mairi Spowage
Scotland’s Finance Secretary will be hoping for better news than anticipated in the upcoming UK BudgetThe Finance Secretary presented a pre-Budget fiscal update to parliament this afternoon, to formally set out the challenges the Scottish Government faces in balancing their budget for 2024-25. This formal statement will be welcomed, given the information that dribbled out in a slightly messy way over the summer.
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Aug 16, 2024 | 
holyrood.com | Mairi Spowage
Mid-August is normally quite quiet for political news, and instead is dominated by the kids going back to school… and, of course (for us at the Institute anyway) the Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland (Gers) report.
This annual statistical publication estimates the money raised in taxes and other revenues, and compares it to the amount spent on services, which gives us Scotland’s net fiscal balance, or notional “deficit”.
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Aug 15, 2024 | 
sceptical.scot | Mairi Spowage |João Sousa
The latest Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland 2023-24 statistics – that normally provoke a bitter and unrewarding spat over their significance for Scottish independence and/or the Union – came out on August 14 with little or no trace of late summer madness.
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Aug 13, 2024 | 
fraserofallander.org | Mairi Spowage
Tomorrow sees the release of Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland (GERS) 2023-24, the annual National Statistics publication which sets out:Revenues raised in Scotland, both from devolved and reserved taxation;Public spending for and on behalf of Scotland, again both for devolved and reserved powers; andThe difference between the two figures, called the “net fiscal balance” and often referred to as the “deficit”.
