By David Scott
25 May 2010
Scotland’s finance secretary has rejected claims that he is storing up problems for the future by deciding to delay spending cuts until next year.
John Swinney confirmed that the Scottish Government will defer its £332m share of the spending cuts announced this week by Chancellor George Osborne. He insisted that imposing reductions now would put the ‘fragile’ economic recovery at further risk.
He said: ‘The Scottish Government will prioritise economic recovery savings now. That is why we are planning to defer these further cuts until the following year, in order that we can entrench economic recovery.’
Swinney accepted Osborne’s offer to allow flexibility over the timing of cuts since the Scottish budget for 2010/11 had already been agreed.
Scottish Conservative finance spokesman Derek Brownlee claimed that savings now would not choke the economy as some had claimed.
He said: ‘Delaying the inevitable will only put more pressure on the economy and frontline services in the future.’
Professor Alan Alexander, former head of public management at Strathclyde University, said that the earlier the cuts were made the more successful and sustainable these would be.
However, another leading academic, Arthur Midwinter, who is a former adviser to the Scottish Parliament’s finance committee and is currently finance adviser to the parliamentary Labour group, said he did not believe cuts on the scale suggested were necessary to deal with the fiscal deficit.
He told Public Finance: ‘There is sense in delaying them until next year to allow the recovery, rather than undermining it, and to allow the realities of the problems of cutting budgets to get through to the new chancellor.’
Midwinter accused Scottish Government chief economist Andrew Goudie of failing to make a convincing case that Scotland faces spending cuts of up to £35bn over the next 15 years.
In a critique of Goudie’s report on Scottish expenditure, he argued that the new government would quickly learn ‘like its Conservative predecessors in 1970 and 1979 that the realities of budgetary politics will require a more measured and flexible approach to reducing the fiscal deficit than is currently on offer’.
25 May 2010
Scotland’s finance secretary has rejected claims that he is storing up problems for the future by deciding to delay spending cuts until next year.
John Swinney confirmed that the Scottish Government will defer its £332m share of the spending cuts announced this week by Chancellor George Osborne. He insisted that imposing reductions now would put the ‘fragile’ economic recovery at further risk.
He said: ‘The Scottish Government will prioritise economic recovery savings now. That is why we are planning to defer these further cuts until the following year, in order that we can entrench economic recovery.’
Swinney accepted Osborne’s offer to allow flexibility over the timing of cuts since the Scottish budget for 2010/11 had already been agreed.
Scottish Conservative finance spokesman Derek Brownlee claimed that savings now would not choke the economy as some had claimed.
He said: ‘Delaying the inevitable will only put more pressure on the economy and frontline services in the future.’
Professor Alan Alexander, former head of public management at Strathclyde University, said that the earlier the cuts were made the more successful and sustainable these would be.
However, another leading academic, Arthur Midwinter, who is a former adviser to the Scottish Parliament’s finance committee and is currently finance adviser to the parliamentary Labour group, said he did not believe cuts on the scale suggested were necessary to deal with the fiscal deficit.
He told Public Finance: ‘There is sense in delaying them until next year to allow the recovery, rather than undermining it, and to allow the realities of the problems of cutting budgets to get through to the new chancellor.’
Midwinter accused Scottish Government chief economist Andrew Goudie of failing to make a convincing case that Scotland faces spending cuts of up to £35bn over the next 15 years.
In a critique of Goudie’s report on Scottish expenditure, he argued that the new government would quickly learn ‘like its Conservative predecessors in 1970 and 1979 that the realities of budgetary politics will require a more measured and flexible approach to reducing the fiscal deficit than is currently on offer’.
