‘The business rates reliefs look distinctly modest’

Budget to provide incentives for business to invest today when they are already putting projects on hold.

As a stand-alone consequence of Budget measures, £350 million of additional spending in Scotland is of course welcome – but most will cautiously wait for the fall-out from the Barnett Formula windfall before judging whether this will make a real difference to people, jobs and the economy of Scotland, and indeed what the Scottish Government’s next move will be.

As for further measures to discourage tax avoidance, we have heard similar before and they haven’t worked – who is to say that these latest announcements will have an impact, particularly since the HMRC workforce has been significantly cut?

Once again, these measures completely miss the point. Penalising others for exploiting gaps in an overly complex tax system that creates loopholes is a poor substitute for real, properly thoughtout simplification.

In the context of a cumulative storm of higher inflation, the coming Apprenticeship Levy and increases in the national minimum wage, the coming year will be one in which business is expected to grit its teeth and tough it out – not for the first time, or the last, and as a resilient bunch, we are perfectly capable of doing so.

But as Brexit looms, something for businesses to cheer about would have been most welcome. l David Watt is executive director of the Institute of Directors in Scotland