Scots’ £1.4k more state cash than rest of UK
SCOTS are each benefiting from a record £1,400 more in public spending than people living in the rest of Britain.
Official figures yesterday showed that spending per person in Scotland was £13,175, which is £1,437 higher than the UK average.
And tax revenue per person north of the border was £10,722, which is £312 lower than the UK average.
Murdo Fraser, finance spokesman for the Scottish Conservatives, said: ‘All of us last year received a Union dividend of £1,750 per head.
‘Today’s figures confirm the facts – Scotland is better off as part of the United Kingdom. The truth is that when times are tough – as they have been in Scotland over the last few years – we can rely on the weight of the whole UK to ensure schools, hospitals and public services remain decently funded.’
Figures also show that, if the SNP had succeeded in its bid to break up Britain at the 2014 referendum, an independent Scotland would have been up to £10.5billion worse off in its first full year than predicted by the SNP’s Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon.
Mr Fraser said: ‘These figures confirm just how wrong the SNP got it during the referendum campaign. In 2014, Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon looked Scottish families in the eye and insisted we’d be better off. In fact, in the first year of independence, Scotland would have been staring at the biggest deficit in Europe.’
Yesterday’s figures, published by the Scottish Government, are another blow to the SNP’s hopes of taking Scotland out of the UK – and reveal that many of its key current spending commitments are reliant on being part of the Union.
Miss Sturgeon, Scotland’s First Minister, said she wants to reduce Scotland’s deficit to ‘sustainable’ levels – but it emerged that it would take £9.5billion of cuts to public services or tax increases to bring it into line with the UK’s deficit.
The Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland report showed that Scotland’s net deficit was £13.3billion in 2016/17 – 8.3 per cent of gross domestic product. Although the spending gap was slightly lower than £14.5billion a year earlier, the UK cut its borrowing by much more.
If there had been a Yes vote in the 2014 referendum, Scotland would have formally become independent in March 2016 – meaning 2016/17 would have been the first full year of a separate Scotland.
In a white paper before the referendum, the Scottish government’s ‘central projection’ was that the total deficit in 2016/17 would be between £4.3billion and £5.5billion. But it also referred to a best case scenario where it would be only £2.7billion.
Yesterday’s figures show that the true figure was £13.3billion – which is £10.6billion higher than the optimistic scenario put to voters.
‘Better off in the United Kingdom’
HEAVEN help parents and pupils this morning as they try to make sense of the new GCSE grades, introduced to differentiate between good students and the truly exceptional.
With English and maths graded from 9 at the top to 1 at the bottom – and other subjects from A* to G – many will struggle to make head or tail of the jumble of numbers and letters on certificates.
Is it too much to hope for a consistent marking scheme that doesn’t require a GCSE to understand it? THEY pay an average £312 less in tax than the English. Yet Scots now receive a record £1,400 a head more in public money, with perks such as free university tuition and NHS prescriptions. Meanwhile at 8.3 per cent of national output, Scotland’s deficit is almost four times higher than England’s. No wonder Nicola Sturgeon has gone so quiet about a second independence referendum!