Devolution

The IFS Green Budget looks at the ongoing impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, as the Chancellor aims to secure a lasting recovery and deliver on the Government’s other objectives and priorities.

"Both government funding decisions over the past decade and the structure of council tax have worked against “levelling up”." Paul Johnson in The Times on local government funding.

While there is still much uncertainty, we now project Scotland’s budget deficit in 2020–21 to have spiked at between 22% and 25% of national income, up from 8.6% of national income in 2019–20, although less than our previous projection. It is also still higher than a forecast deficit of 16% of national income for the UK as a whole for the same year.

For the first time, and co-funded by the Scottish Policy Foundation, the Institute for Fiscal Studies published a range of Scottish Election Briefing Notes on tax, benefits and public spending, and the parties plans for the coming parliamentary term. We presented the main findings of our analysis ahead of the election at a live webinar, in partnership with the University of Glasgow.

Scottish Labour set out a vision for big expansion of the welfare state - with no sense of how much this would eventually cost or how it would be paid for

The Scottish Conservatives offer extra spending on the NHS and a range of targeted measures – but an ambition to cut income tax looks unlikely to be realised without cuts to at least some services.

The SNP’s manifesto offers big gains to a number of targeted groups in Scotland - but would involve difficult trade-offs in a tight budgetary environment.

Are there any common themes in how the current Scottish Government has used these powers? Who are the winners and losers from the reforms it has under

How is Scotland's higher spending allocated across different services? How have these allocations changed over time? And how do a range of headline in

The COVID-19 crisis has been a perfect financial storm for councils, pushing up spending and hitting local income streams. This event explained how the COVID-19 crisis has been affecting local finances and economies, how councils have been responding, and key issues for the next few years as we seek to recover.

The COVID-19 crisis is increasing councils’ spending and reducing their incomes. This report analyses councils’ forecasts of these pressures and potential policy responses.

European Structural and Investment (ESI) funds help to pay for initiatives supporting business development, research and development, investment in digital and green infrastructure, as well skills and training interventions and support for job-seekers. But with the UK having formally departed the European Union, the country will stop receiving new ESI funding at the end of 2020. Thus, for 2021 and beyond, the UK government faces choices over what to replace ESI funding with.