2. To ask the Scottish Government how it plans to spend the £295 million in Barnett consequential funding arising from the United Kingdom Government’s 2024 spring budget. (S6O-03241)

Of the consequentials confirmed as part of the UK Government’s spring budget, £237 million was derived from health spending. That will be passed on in full for use in health spending in Scotland. That figure is £235 million less than the in-year consequentials from health in 2023-24, which were not baselined, even though they largely related to pay.

Those consequentials also include £48 million arising from local authority spending in England, announced in January, which will be passed on in full to local government as part of a package of additional funding worth up to £62.7 million.

I will provide a further update on the 2024-25 Scottish budget next month, and formal allocation of any new funding will be included in the 2024-25 autumn budget revision.

The Scottish National Party Government consistently misleads the public about the amount of funding that it receives from the UK Government, but the facts speak for themselves. In 2024-25, the Scottish Government will get £43 billion in a block grant and will receive more than £2,000 per person for public services, but that advantage has been completely squandered by the SNP Government, which, due to its wasteful spending, has had to raise taxes on hard-working Scots.

Does the cabinet secretary really think that spending money on independence papers while cutting national health service funding in real terms is the correct priority for the Government?

Let us return to the facts. The first is that the health spending that we have from consequentials leaves our health service with a shortfall, given that the figure is almost half of what health consequentials were in 2023-24. The second fact is that the lack of capital funding in the spring statement means a forecast £1.3 billion real-terms cut in our capital funding over five years.

That means that, whether in relation to housing, health infrastructure or transport, any Tory MSP who comes here demanding any funding for any infrastructure projects should be looking at the UK Government’s decision to cut our capital budget by that £1.3 billion over the next five years. I hope that those are enough facts for Alexander Stewart.

Does the Deputy First Minister agree that it is also a fact that, whether we have a Labour Government or a Conservative Government, we will have at least five more years of austerity? The Institute for Fiscal Studies has outlined that the UK Government’s spending plans amount to a real-terms cut to net public sector investment of £18 billion between 2024-25 and 2028-29. Will the Deputy First Minister outline what assessment has been made of how much that equates to per person? Will she outline how an SNP Government would prioritise investment if it had the fiscal levers of other, independent nations?

It is, indeed, a shocking fact that the UK Government is planning a real-terms spending cut that, in 2028-29, would amount to a cut of around £250 for every person in the UK. In Scotland, we are taking a different approach. We are demonstrating our priorities through a record £6.3 billion investment in social security and over £19.5 billion for health and social care in 2024-25, which represents a real-terms uplift of £316 million in the face of UK Government austerity. We could go much further if we had the full range of fiscal powers that other, independent European nations have.