By David Scott
20 May 2010
Scottish Finance Secretary John Swinney is to postpone the ‘pain’ of immediate spending cuts in line with a flexibility deal offered by Chancellor George Osborne.
He told the Scottish Parliament finance committee on May 18 that he believed it would be best not to implement Scotland’s share of the £6bn cuts planned by the UK government until next year.
Following a pre-election pledge by David Cameron, Osborne has given the Scottish Government the flexibility to decide whether it wants to impose the cuts in the current year or in 2011/12.
Swinney told the MSPs that the coalition agreement referred to a £6bn cut through the emergency Budget, details of which are due next week. He estimated that Scotland’s share of the reduction could be anywhere between £350m and £600m.
Swinney said: ‘We will need to consider carefully the implication of any cuts imposed upon us but in the light of the flexibility on timing that has been confirmed by the coalition government, the preference of the Scottish Government would be to delay the application of any reduction for 2010/11 into 2011/12’.
Asked by former Labour finance minister Tom McCabe why he would want to delay the ‘pain’ of cuts for a year, Swinney said the majority view in the Scottish Parliament was that public expenditure had been ‘absolutely fundamental’ to navigating its way through the economic recession.
20 May 2010
Scottish Finance Secretary John Swinney is to postpone the ‘pain’ of immediate spending cuts in line with a flexibility deal offered by Chancellor George Osborne.
He told the Scottish Parliament finance committee on May 18 that he believed it would be best not to implement Scotland’s share of the £6bn cuts planned by the UK government until next year.
Following a pre-election pledge by David Cameron, Osborne has given the Scottish Government the flexibility to decide whether it wants to impose the cuts in the current year or in 2011/12.
Swinney told the MSPs that the coalition agreement referred to a £6bn cut through the emergency Budget, details of which are due next week. He estimated that Scotland’s share of the reduction could be anywhere between £350m and £600m.
Swinney said: ‘We will need to consider carefully the implication of any cuts imposed upon us but in the light of the flexibility on timing that has been confirmed by the coalition government, the preference of the Scottish Government would be to delay the application of any reduction for 2010/11 into 2011/12’.
Asked by former Labour finance minister Tom McCabe why he would want to delay the ‘pain’ of cuts for a year, Swinney said the majority view in the Scottish Parliament was that public expenditure had been ‘absolutely fundamental’ to navigating its way through the economic recession.
