SNP’s Budget muddles key facts, says their own adviser
ONE of Nicola Sturgeon’s economic advisers has launched a scathing attack on SNP ministers’ ‘impenetrable’ Budget.
Richard Marsh reported the Scottish Governmen t to the UK’s statistics watchdog, saying that it presented confusing data which buried key facts.
He said that strict ‘clarity’ guidelines had been breached for political reasons and claimed the figures were misleading.
The Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) is now investigating the way financial information is published by the Scottish Government.
The row comes after SNP ministers were criticised by the OSR last year for misleading the public by claiming that a scheme to cut hospital deaths had saved almost 10,000 lives. Last
‘Prioritises spin over the facts’
night, Scottish Tory finance spokesman Murdo Fraser said: ‘This is what happens when the SNP Government prioritises spin over facts.
‘It’s no wonder the serious people around Nicola Sturgeon are fed up at this behaviour. Delivering the Budget is the single most important thing the Scottish Government does – yet the SNP can’t even do that properly.’
Mr Marsh is an economist, elected fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and a member of a Scottish Government expert group advising on economic modelling and statistics.
He was also a researcher for the SNP’s high-profile ‘sustainable growth commission’, which drew up plans for independence and reported back last year.
The SNP’s draft Budget received preliminary approval at Holyrood after Green MSPs backed the SNP minority Government, paving the way for a new levy on workplace parking and a council tax hike.
Mr Marsh complained to the OSR because he said the figures in the Scottish Budget report were ‘arranged in a way to persuade the reader of the merits of the Scottish Government’s narrative around the Budget’.
He said: ‘The data tables are set out to make it more difficult to consider other interpretations of the information by incorrectly labelling tables, omitting data and providing little or no explanation for key technical terms. This limits the ability of readers to draw their own conclusions.’
Mr Marsh said the ‘lengthy preface, before setting out Budget information, limits accessibility and emphasises narrative ahead of the clear tables and charts needed’.
Giving an example of the confusing layout, Mr Marsh said ‘the reader needs to find their way to page 214 of the report before a complete picture of changes in real-term spending by area (health, education, local government) are shown’.
Mr Marsh said the Budget documents were ‘nearly impenetrable to anyone apart from a very small group of people with a detailed knowledge of the Budget, including some within the Scottish Government’.
The OSR said it could not take any further formal action, as the complaint was technically outside its official remit.
A Scottish Government spokesman said: ‘The OSR has confirmed that after considering the content of a complaint about the format of the 2019-20 Budget document they will not be taking any further action.
‘The Budget document is scrutinised annually as part of the Scottish parliament’s budget scrutiny process and was revised to improve transparency following recommendations from the parliament’s Budget process review group.’