SNP underspends by £450m... after raising your taxes
Ministers have been accused of ‘gross mismanagement’ after revealing a £450million underspend – at the same time they raised taxes.
Finance secretary Derek Mackay yesterday told MsPs the money from the 2017-18 Budget had not been spent.
scottish Labour said the figures were a ‘scandal’ and accused the snP of trying to ‘hoard’ cash ‘in a st Andrew’s House bank account’ to be spent on public services.
the scottish tories said growing the economy would help provide more money to reduce the tax burden.
in a statement on the ‘provisional outturn’ for 2017-18, Mr Mackay confirmed an overall underspend of £453million in the £31.4billion Budget.
He said some of the money will be carried forward into this year, including extra spending on social security.
He also said £66million will be added to reserves to prepare for future ‘volatility’.
scottish Labour finance spokesman James Kelly said: ‘the figures in the statement of a £453million underspend are nothing short of a scandal. this represents a gross mismanagement of the Budget by Derek Mackay.
‘Mr Mackay, it is your job to spend scotland’s Budget to support local communities, not hoard the money in the st Andrew’s House bank account.
‘it is totally unacceptable that, while yards from this parliament homeless people are sleeping in doorways, nearly £500million of available cash lies dormant in the snP Government slush fund.’
Mr Mackay said being ‘prudent with our resources’ and investing in them was ‘the right thing to do’.
He had already announced plans to carry forward £235million to 2018-9, while a further £100million comes from treasury cash given to the scottish Government a year earlier than expected to set up its social security agency.
Mr Mackay said: ‘After taking into account the social security funding, the planned carrythe forward for the 2018-19 Budget, surplus tax receipts and fees for guarantees, there is then a remaining underspend of £66million not yet committed.
‘this modest sum represents just 0.2 per cent of the overall fiscal Budget and will be available to support management of future Budget volatility.’
But the scottish tories said £66million would be ‘nowhere near’ filling the gaps in future tax revenue forecast by the scottish Fiscal Commission.
its forecasts last month anticipated overall revenue from devolved taxation will be just over £1.7billion lower for 2018-19 to 2022-23 than was forecast in February.
scots tory finance spokesman Murdo Fraser said: ‘Derek Mackay might like to fool us all into thinking £453million is an insignificant sum. it’s higher than the snP’s independence blueprint said it would cost to create a separate state.
‘He is having to put money aside to meet a projected shortfall in tax revenues due to economic underperformance.
‘if the snP could grow the scottish economy at least at the same rate as the rest of the UK, there would be hundreds of millions more to spend on public services.’
‘Nothing short of a scandal’
HAVING burdened hard-working Scots with the UK’s highest tax rates, how galling for Finance Secretary Derek Mackay to declare that a £453million underspend is ‘modest’.
It is nothing of the sort and again calls into question the basic competence of an SNP Government happy to bleat about ‘Tory austerity’ when it is hoarding a fortune.
Mr Mackay was touted as a rising star and a safe pair of hands. Neither description seems to fit the man behind this latest embarrassing insult to this country’s workers.