Westminster has 'short-changed Scotland by £10bn', SNP say

The largest part of the sum claimed by the party is made up of the estimated £3.04bn share of the Brexit divorce bill which Scotland will pay despite having voted overwhelmingly to remain in the EU.

The UK Government had rejected the EU’s claim that this bill will total around £40.8bn, instead saying it will be somewhere between £35bn and £39bn.

Also linked to Brexit, the Tories pledged in their 2019 manifesto to “at a minimum match the size” of the EU structural funds which would be lost after the UK left the bloc.

Pre-Brexit, the EU funds were worth a total of around £1.5bn a year.

READ MORE: Tories break pledge to 'at least match' EU funds for devolved nations post-Brexit

However, the replacement Shared Prosperity Fund will only be worth £400 million in 2022. This will rise to £700m in 2023-2024, and to £1.5bn in 2024-25. The shortfall totals around £1.9bn.

SNP MSP Gillian Martin said that despite these figures, the truth was even worse.

“Boris Johnson and Michael Gove led a Brexit campaign that promised £1.5bn a year for Scottish devolved services when the UK left the EU. Instead all we have heard announced is £172m. To put that in context, for every £1 they promised they’ve given 11 pence – Scotland has been short-changed by 89%,” Martin said.

The SNP also claim that Scots will lose out on almost £2.6bn due to the Tories suspending the triple lock on pensions, despite specifically pledging in their manifesto to keep it in place.

Pensions would have risen by 8.3% had the UK Government not reneged on its promise, instead only handing pensioners an increase of 3.1%.

The SNP said that with around 993,000 people over 66 in Scotland, that equals the loss of £2.58bn to local economies over five years.

READ MORE: Scotland's older people 'shafted' as Tories break key pensions pledge

The party also claimed the Scottish Government had been made to pay £1.4bn to mitigate for benefit cuts at Westminster.

Elsewhere, the SNP pointed to the money taken in VAT by the UK Government from the Scottish police and the Scottish fire service.

While the Tory government's U-turn on the policy came into effect in 2018, then justice secretary Humza Yousaf said that the VAT already paid had totalled around £125m for the police, and £50m for the fire service.

The SNP further claimed the UK Government had short-changed Scotland on its City Deals.

The Aberdeen City Region deal is set to benefit from £379m of investment from the Scottish Government, while the UK Government has only committed to £125m.

In the Borderlands region the Scottish Government invested £85m whilst the UK government allocated £20m less, according to reports in the Daily Record.

Martin said: “Six City Deals across Scotland still remain short-changed by the Westminster government to the tune of £421m. That’s £439 per household in those areas.”

The party also pointed to Barnett consequentials which were due to flow to the devolved administrations after the UK Government decided to issue a £150 council tax rebate to ease the cost-of-living crisis.

The rebate should have led to an extra £290m for Scotland and £175m for Wales, but a revising down of spending estimates elsewhere meant that the devolved governments received no extra money overall.

The SNP finally pointed to around £100m in health funding shortfalls in 2019, approximately £48m of which was a failure of the UK Government to honour its promise to completely fund increases in pension costs for NHS employers. The rest was money which had been expected from Barnett consequentials but was later revised down.

In total, these shortfalls claimed by the SNP total around £9.9bn.

SNP MSP Gillian Martin (above) said: “Whether it’s Brexit present, Brexit future, City Deals, welfare, police, fire services, pensions or the NHS, there is one constant – the Tories will short change Scotland. It’s the same lesson again and again: Westminster control means cuts not cash.

“It’s a history of behaviour that goes back decades as secret 30-year papers revealed in 2016 that the then Tory government has cut state aid funding in Scotland to help their seats in the south of England.

“To top that all of Scotland is expected to pay for the ‘privilege’ of leaving the EU when it voted against leaving and was promised in 2014 that a ‘No’ vote would guarantee Scotland remained in. If that isn’t being short-changed what is?

“With the Tory made cost of living crisis these figures make it increasingly clear that people in Scotland simply cannot afford Westminster control.”

A UK Government spokesperson said: “These figures are wilfully misleading – the Scottish Government’s own official figures show that being part of the UK is worth more than £2200 every year for each person in Scotland.

“The recent Spending Review provided the Scottish Government with a record £41 billion per year for the next three years, the highest spending review settlement since devolution.”