In her first UK Budget, on 30 October, the Chancellor Rachel Reeves significantly topped up spending plans for both day-to-day (resource) spending and capital investment, in the current financial year (2024–25) as well as in future years. Combined with in-year increases previously announced by the Scottish Finance Minister Shona Robison, funded in part by underspends last year, this has transformed the financial picture this year for the Scottish Government. However, Ms Reeves pencilled in much smaller year-on-year increases in funding in future years which, if stuck to, would likely mean much trickier trade-offs for the Scottish Government – potentially as soon as next year.
The funding position for 2024–25 has been transformed
In December 2023, when the Scottish Budget for 2024–25 was set, total resource funding in 2024–25 was expected to be £47.6 billion. Of this, £6.3 billion was expected to be spent on social security and £265 million used on debt service, leaving £41.1 billion available for public service spending. Table 1 breaks down the sources of resource funding in more detail.
Table 1. Scottish Government resource funding, 2024–25 (£ million)
Plans as of … Component | Original Budget (December 2023) | Autumn Budget Revision (October 2024) | UK Autumn Budget (October 2024) |
Block grant | 37,449 | 38,179 | 39,647 |
Net tax revenues | 1,592 | Not updated | Not updated |
Net social security | –1,092 | Not fully updated | Not updated |
Of which: |
|
|
|
BGA for welfare | 5,191 | 5,046a | Not updated |
Social security spending | –6,283 | –6,137b | Not updated |
Reconciliations | –338 | Not updated | Not updated |
Borrowing and reserves | 338 | 500 | Not updated |
Other | 3,402 | 3,733 | Not updated |
Debt service | –265 | –266 | Not updated |
Available for public services | 41,086 | 42,308 | 43,776 |
Memo: estimated SCAPE adjustments | 0 | –354 | –426 |
aThis is only updated for the UK government policy change (restricting winter fuel payment, WFP) and does not reflect other changes that have taken place. We assume that the net social security contribution remains constant, as the Scottish Government will replicate the restriction of WFP for pension age winter heating payments.
bWe adjust this by the amount by which the welfare BGA has fallen, keeping the net contribution of social security the same.
Note: ‘Other’ includes the non-domestic rates distributable amount. Forecasts of block grant adjustments (BGA) for devolved taxes and social security have not been updated since the Scottish Budget in December 2023. We subtract UK government estimates of IFRS16 adjustments and other non-Barnett adjustments from assumed block grant funding in Scottish Government figures, for consistency (£226 million in 2024–25). SCAPE adjustments at the Autumn Budget Revision are from Main Estimates 2024. We assume that the same proportion of SCAPE costs was allocated to Scotland as was allocated UK-wide by Mains, so assume an additional £72 million was allocated between Mains and the Autumn Budget.
Source: Authors’ calculations using: Scottish Fiscal Commission, Scotland’s Economic and Fiscal Forecasts (December 2023); Scottish Government, Autumn Budget Revision (October 2024); and Office for Budget Responsibility, Economic and Fiscal Outlook (October 2024).
Since the Scottish Budget was set, the funding available to the Scottish Government for this year has increased.
Changes in funding up to the Autumn Budget Revision (ABR), published on 2 October (before the UK Government’s Autumn Budget) increased the amount available for day-to-day (resource) spending on public services by £1.2 billion. As we will discuss below, this was used to help address pay and other pressures facing the Scottish Government.
Some of the increase in funding was due to changes in UK government funding. At the UK Spring Budget in March 2024, additional spending on some devolved areas (predominantly health and local government) generated Barnett consequentials for day-to-day spending of £293 million. At Main Estimates in July 2024, an additional £437 million of resource Barnett consequentials were allocated. This additional funding largely represented the higher assessed costs of unfunded public sector pensions.1 These costs will also need to be met by public sector employers in Scotland, so this funding does not increase the real spending power of the Scottish Government.
The new UK government’s July 2024 decision to restrict winter fuel payment to only pension credit recipients from this winter led to a reduction in funding for the Scottish Government of around £140 million. The Scottish Government has said it will replicate this policy, meaning that the amount of funding available for public service spending will ultimately be little changed. However, if it wanted to, the Scottish Government could choose to defer the reduction in funding (given the UK government’s policy decision was made after the 2024–25 Scottish Budget was finalised), which would allow it to spend that money elsewhere in the short term, but it would need to be paid back later on. We understand a final decision on this has yet to be made, but the funding figures published at the ABR assume the funding adjustment will be applied in-year rather than deferred. Forecasts for other social security block grant adjustments (BGAs) and spending, and tax BGAs and revenues, were not updated at the ABR.
Scottish Government decisions also increased the funding available for day-to-day spending this year. These decisions included: an increase in planned drawdown of ScotWind – one-off income from leasing the Scottish seabed for windfarms – from £200 million to £424 million; the planned drawdown of £162 million in reserves, following underspends in 2023–24; and the cancellation of a planned £89 million transfer from its resource to capital budget.
Figure 1 summarises these changes, with the resulting amount of funding available for public services in 2024–25 increased to around £42.3 billion by the time of the ABR.
Figure 1. Changes in projections of 2024–25 resource funding: comparing December 2023 and October 2024 (post UK Budget)
Note: Y-axis is truncated at 40,000 to show changes more clearly. The only social security BGA taken into account at this point is the restriction of winter fuel payment. ‘Other’ is primarily an £89 million capital to resource switch. SCAPE costs are an estimate based on adjusting the SCAPE costs confirmed at Mains by the proportion of UK-wide funding confirmed at that point.
Source: Authors’ calculations using: Scottish Fiscal Commission, Scotland’s Economic and Fiscal Forecasts (December 2023); Office for Budget Responsibility, Economic and Fiscal Outlook (March 2024 and October 2024); and Scottish Government, Autumn Budget Revision (October 2024).
The announcements made by Rachel Reeves in the UK Budget on 30 October led to a further big increase in funding for the Scottish Government this year: just under £1.5 billion in total. Of this, around £1.4 billion reflected Scotland’s population share of increases in spending announced for England via the Barnett formula. There was also £35 million of additional non-Barnett funding.
The combined effects of changes made in Scotland’s ABR and the UK’s Autumn Budget have improved the Scottish Government’s resource funding position this year.
Based on the latest inflation forecasts, the amount available for day-to-day spending on public services as of the original Scottish Budget plans would have been 0.6% lower in real terms than was spent last year. The top-ups announced in the ABR changed this to a 2.3% increase, while the further top-ups as a result of the UK Budget, if spent in full, would mean an increase of 5.9%. Some of the top-ups reflect SCAPE funding for higher assumed pension costs – and so not a genuine increase in spending power – but even stripping this out the increase would be around 4.9%.
The Scottish Government could choose not to spend all the resources now available to it – which the more difficult financial outlook for future years means may be wise. If it chose to use around a third of the extra funding confirmed in the UK Budget to cancel planned drawdowns of ScotWind proceeds, the increase in the amount available to spend (after stripping out SCAPE funding) would be 3.8% in real terms. If instead, half of the extra UK government funding were effectively banked (allowing the cancellation of ScotWind drawdowns and a small payment into rather than drawdown from reserves), the spending increase this year would still be 3.1% in real terms.
Spending changes have been made to address pay and other pressures
As with funding, the initial plans for public service spending set out in December in the 2024–25 Budget implied a real-terms cut in spending compared with the final budget and out-turn for 2023–24. The changes made in the ABR mean this is no longer the case, although different services have fared differently, as shown in Figure 2. Further changes (including the use of funding confirmed in the UK Autumn Budget) will be officially confirmed in the Scottish Government’s Spring Budget Revision (SBR) – although an update may be given alongside the Budget for 2025–26 next month.
Figure 2. Planned real-terms changes in resource spending, 2023–24 to 2024–25, by portfolio
Note: SCAPE is stripped out using figures from the ABR. Finance and Local Government portfolio includes non-domestic rates, and Social Justice portfolio strips out social security spending. X-axis is truncated to show changes in more detail – the real increase to the Net Zero and Energy portfolio was 54.2% at the time of the Budget 2024 plans and 31.8% at the time of the ABR. NHS Recovery, Health and Social Care portfolio figures adjusted to include an additional £235 million in 2024–25 to reflect the reclassification of some research and development funding as capital spending.
Source: Authors’ calculations using Scottish Budget 2024–25 (February 2024) and Autumn Budget Revision (October 2024).
The changes in planned spending reflect the Scottish Government’s efforts to address significant in-year spending pressures – most notably related to public sector pay deals. Such pressures were highlighted by the UK Chancellor in her ‘Spending Audit’ published in July, and a particular challenge in Scotland given relatively higher public sector employment and pay. As part of these efforts, the Scottish Government published a fiscal update in September, setting out plans to reallocate around £250 million from existing budgets, specifying in detail where around £188 million of this would be found. Some of these changes were accounted for in the ABR, but some will not be reflected until the SBR.
All told, the ABR increased spending on public services by £1.2 billion (mirroring the increase in funding), and reduced spending on social security benefits by £148 million following the decision to follow the UK government’s decision to restrict eligibility for winter fuel payment to those receiving pension credit.
The Health and Social Care portfolio saw by far the biggest boost to spending in the ABR, with its resource budget increased by £1.1 billion. Of this, around £0.2 billion represented funding for increased SCAPE costs, meaning the ‘real’ increase available for other pressures, including higher pay costs, was £0.9 billion. As we highlighted at the time of the Scottish Budget, a significant top-up to health spending was always likely as the original plans implied a cut in spending. Rather than falling by 1.4% in real terms compared with what was spent in 2023–24, the updated plans imply a 3.2% real-terms increase.
The Finance and Local Government portfolio also saw a top-up, of £155 million. After stripping out the £86 million that is for additional SCAPE costs, its spending is still set to fall slightly (by 0.6%) in real terms compared with 2023–24, although it is worth noting that councils also receive funding from other portfolios and council tax, and so their overall funding is set to grow in real terms. Top-ups were also made to the Justice and Home Affairs portfolio leaving its budget 1.2% higher in real terms than spending in 2023–24, after stripping out additional SCAPE costs.
Other areas mostly saw little change or cuts to their budgets in the ABR. There were cuts to the Net Zero and Energy (£20 million), Rural Affairs (£10 million) and Education (£7 million) portfolios, reflecting savings announced in September. However, spending on all these portfolios is still planned to be higher in real terms than the amounts spent in 2023–24. The Social Justice portfolio saw the biggest reduction in total funding at the ABR (£160 million), mostly due to the restriction of pension age winter heating payment to those receiving pension credit. The Social Justice portfolio stripping out social security spending is set to fall compared with 2023–24.
Further substantial top-ups are likely in the SBR, with initial information on the likely scale and nature of these potentially provided alongside the Budget for 2025–26. It seems likely that the Health and Social Care portfolio will see a further top-up, with each £190 million generating a further 1 percentage point increase. Another key decision will be whether to ‘undo’ some of the cuts announced in the September fiscal update.
Capital funding this year is similar in real terms to Scottish Budget plans
Our focus so far has been on day-to-day (resource) funding and spending. There have also been increases in the capital funding available to the Scottish Government this year since the initial Budget was set, but these are much more modest in scale. As a result, an increase in forecast whole-economy inflation since the Budget (from 1.7% to 2.4%) means that capital funding this year is little changed in real terms compared with what was expected at the time of the Scottish Budget – in stark contrast to the situation for resource funding.
The UK Budget substantially topped up funding next year and beyond …
Turning to the future, the UK’s Autumn Budget set the Scottish Government’s block grant funding for 2025–26 for the first time. However, at the time of its 2024–25 Budget, the Scottish Government made projections of block grant funding, which informed the Scottish Fiscal Commission’s (SFC’s) overall projections for Scottish Government funding. These assumed that the block grant for day-to-day (resource) spending would grow in line with UK-wide resource spending limits – which at that time meant growth of 2.3% in cash terms between 2024–25 and 2025–26 – and implied a block grant of around £38.3 billion in 2025–26. The capital block grant was instead set to stay flat in cash terms, implying real-terms falls in each year.
The UK Autumn Budget confirmed substantially larger block grants for both day-to-day (resource) and capital spending next year: £41.1 billion and £6.5 billion, increases of £2.8 billion (7%) and £0.9 billion (17%), respectively, compared with the expectations set out in the 2024–25 Scottish Budget last December. However, as with funding in 2024–25, part of the increase in resource funding (around £0.3–0.4 billion) reflects extra SCAPE costs rather than an increase in spending power. And these figures exclude compensation for Scottish public sector employers for the big increase in employer National Insurance contributions announced for April 2025. It is currently unclear whether the Scottish Government’s share of compensation will be based on the Barnett formula, or its higher-than-population share of the public sector wage bill. If it is the former, some of the general increase in block grant funding would have to be used to part-fund higher employer National Insurance bills.
Updated figures for the Scottish Government’s other sources of funding – such as net income from devolved taxes, and the use of borrowing and reserves powers – are not yet available. But some assumptions allow us to project scenarios for overall funding, in order to provide a sense of the potential budgetary trade-offs that will be faced by the Scottish Government in its forthcoming and future Budgets.
The first element of our projections is devolved income tax. While forecasts of the net proceeds of income tax (revenues minus the BGA) will not be updated until the upcoming Scottish Budget, some new information has become available. In particular, out-turn figures for revenues in 2022–23 mean that the Scottish Government will receive a £447 million reconciliation payment in 2025–26 as a result of initially pessimistic forecasts of the net income tax position in 2022–23. This is good news but less good news than the SFC was forecasting last December, when it expected a reconciliation payment of £732 million.
Most of this difference reflects two errors with the HMRC statistics the SFC had previously been using to forecast reconciliation payments. It is currently unclear how far we should expect these issues to affect the net income tax position in subsequent years, and other factors – such as updates to employment and earnings forecasts in both Scotland and the rest of the UK – will also have a bearing on new forecasts of the net income tax position. But a plausible assumption is that the net tax position will similarly be £285 million less positive in subsequent years than forecast by the SFC last December. Taken together, this means total revenue from income tax would be £570 million lower in 2025–26 than last forecast – with half of this due to a lower reconciliation payment and the other half due to lower in-year revenue forecasts.
We then assume all other elements of funding for day-to-day (resource) spending will be unchanged on a net basis (so, for example, any changes in other tax and social security BGAs are offset by changes in associated revenues and spending). These other elements are likely to change somewhat but, given they could be higher or lower than previously projected, assuming they are unchanged seems like a reasonable baseline assumption.
On this basis and as shown in Figure 3, overall funding for day-to-day (resource) spending on public services would be £45.0 billion in 2025–26, up from the £42.7 billion projected last December (again noting that £0.3–0.4 billion of this increase reflects SCAPE costs). This would be a cash-terms increase of 2.8% and a real-terms increase of 0.4% compared with the current financial year if the Scottish Government chose to utilise immediately all of the additional funding provided in the Budget for 2024–25, rather than carry forward some for future years.
Figure 3. Resource funding available for public services, as expected in December 2023 and as estimated after the UK Autumn Budget
Note: Y-axis is truncated at 40,000 to show changes more clearly.
Source: Authors’ calculations using OBR Economic and Fiscal Outlook (November 2023 and October 2024) and SFC Scotland’s Economic and Fiscal Forecasts (December 2023).
The UK Autumn Budget did not provide figures for the Scottish block grant (or indeed any individual department) for years after 2025–26. These are due to come in a Spending Review in late spring 2025. But it did set out overall resource and capital spending envelopes and, with assumptions about how these will be allocated, it is possible to project forward the block grant. In particular, let us make the same assumptions used in the IFS’s post-Budget analysis of the trade-offs facing the Chancellor in the upcoming multi-year Spending Review: that English NHS spending is increased by 3.6% a year in real terms, an expansion of childcare provision in England continues as planned, and commitments on defence and overseas aid spending are just met. On this basis, the block grant would increase by an average of 2.8% a year in cash terms or 0.9% a year in real terms between 2025–26 and 2028–29. This is a little slower than the overall growth in resource funding across the UK during these years (1.3% a year in real terms), reflecting the so-called ‘Barnett squeeze’ (because Scotland’s funding per person is higher than England’s, a population-based share of the funding increase in England translates into a smaller percentage increase), as well as the extent to which the protected areas of spending are ‘Barnettable’.
Based on these block grant projections, together with projections for other elements of funding made on the same basis as for 2025–26, Figure 3 shows projections for the Scottish Government’s total funding for day-to-day (resource) spending on public services. Funding would increase to £48.6 billion by 2028–29. This compares with an SFC projection made last December at the time of the 2024–25 Scottish Budget of £45.8 billion (although note again that £0.3–0.4 billion of this increase relates to SCAPE costs).
The projections also imply increases in funding between 2025–26 and 2028–29 that average 2.6% a year in cash terms and 0.7% a year in real terms. This compares with increases of 0.4% a year in real terms implied by the SFC’s forecasts as of last December. Top-ups to overall UK government capital spending plans mean that capital funding for the Scottish Government may grow a little in real terms between 2025–26 and 2028–29, rather than fall. But growth will be much slower than the bumper increase now planned for next year.
… but very tough choices still loom
These projections are subject to significant uncertainty, with future funding levels potentially billions of pounds higher or lower because of revisions to forecasts and new policy decisions by the UK and Scottish Government. But the projections do demonstrate two key points: first, that funding in future years is now likely to be higher than expected this time last year, driven by increases in UK government funding confirmed in the Autumn Budget; and second, that despite this, tough choices on tax and spending in future years still loom for the Scottish Government.
These tough choices are illustrated in Figure 4, which shows the implications for other areas of day-to-day (resource) spending of different choices for spending on the Health and Social Care portfolio – the largest single area of Scottish Government spending. The top panel illustrates trade-offs in 2025–26, while the bottom panel illustrates trade-offs in the three years to 2028–29.
Figure 4. Health and other day-to-day spending growth projections: (i) for 2025–26 and (ii) for 2026–27 to 2028–29
Real-terms growth between 2024–25 and 2025–26
Real-terms average annual growth between 2025–26 and 2028–29
Note: ‘Baseline’ scenario assumes the £1.5 billion of additional funding confirmed in the UK Budget for 2024–25 is entirely used for public service spending in 2024–25. ‘Variant’ scenario assumes half of this funding is used in 2024–25, another quarter is used in 2025–26, and the remaining quarter is spread evenly between 2026–27, 2027–28 and 2028–29. Other assumptions are as stated in text.
Source: Authors’ calculations using Scottish Budget 2024–25 (February 2024) and Autumn Budget Revision (October 2024).
The first two sets of columns in each panel show scenarios based on our baseline projections for resource funding set out in Figures 1 and 3 and an assumption that all funding for 2024–25 confirmed in the UK Budget is ultimately spent this year. Increasing the Health and Social Care budget by 3.6% a year (in line with our previous assumption for England) would require a real-terms cut to other areas of spending of 2.3% in 2025–26 and an average of 2.2% a year in the following three years. However, as discussed in IFS research earlier this year, the last plans for the NHS workforce in Scotland were much less ambitious than those planned in England, and health spending has grown by less in Scotland than in England over the last two decades. If the Health and Social Care budget was increased by 2.0% a year in real terms, the cut to other areas would be 0.9% next year and an average of 0.5% a year in the following three years.
The last two sets of columns in each panel show the implications of the same scenarios for health spending based on alternative projections for resource funding that assume that the Scottish Government utilises only half of the increase in resource funding announced in the UK Budget this year, with a quarter used in 2025–26 and the remaining quarter split equally across the following three years. With 3.6% increases in Health and Social Care spending, spending on other areas could increase by 2.4% in real terms in 2025–26, but would need to be cut by an average of 2.4% a year in the following three years. With 2.0% increases in Health and Social Care spending, other areas could increase by even more in 2025–26, but still need to be cut back somewhat in subsequent years.
These figures are of course illustrative, but they show that the Scottish Government looks set to continue to face tough trade-offs in future years. Carrying forward funding would ease trade-offs between services next year. But such funding can only be used once: it will only help the budgetary pressures facing the Scottish Government in later years if it is successfully utilised to help boost productivity, address the drivers of service demand, or boost economic performance and hence tax revenue. Even if successful, such efforts may take several years to bear fruit, meaning without further top-ups to UK spending plans and/or increases in Scottish taxes, some services will likely face cuts in future years.
What can the Scottish Government do?
In this context, the Scottish Government should plan realistically – recent years have seen something of a habit of over-promising and then delaying or scaling back some initiatives in order to free up funding for pay and NHS pressures. Plans for next year will be set in the upcoming Scottish Budget, and plans for later years should be set in a Spending Review in the summer, aligned with the time frames set out in the UK-wide Spending Review planned for late spring. It may be tempting to use these to offer some pre-Scottish election ‘goodies’, but the difficult medium-term funding outlook means continuing with them post-election could mean higher taxes or cuts elsewhere.
If it feels able to, it may be wise for the Scottish Government to ‘bank’ some of the increase in funding this year (by drawing down less from reserves and ScotWind proceeds, for example), to invest in skills, technology and other ways to boost public sector productivity or more generally to grow the economy. And on the capital side of its budget, it could use its borrowing and reserves powers to smooth out the profile of capital spending over the next few years – money will likely be better spent with a bit more time to plan.
The Scottish Government should also evaluate key policies that increasingly differentiate it from the rest of the UK – including its higher public sector pay and income tax policies and wider tax strategy. Alongside the new decisions announced by the Scottish Government in its Budget, these are issues we will return to in our main post-Budget report.