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Number soup on Spending Review day from all sides

15th June 2025

Photograph of Number soup on Spending Review day from all sides

The Fraser of Allender Institute weekly review tackles the Spending Review from Rachel Reeves.

One of the roles we play on a day with big fiscal announcements is to explain all the numbers flying about from different politicians - to set out which numbers are illuminating, and which are misleading. Often the biggest culprit is large numbers which represent spending over several years.

Wednesday was sadly no exception to this, and no political side covered themselves in glory - transparency was public understanding were the real losers of the numbers thrown about. And as usual, we lost count of the number of times we said "two things can be true at once".

So just, to be clear, here are the real numbers of interest for the Block Grant.

How can we summarise these changes?
There are many sensible ways to describe these numbers. Broadly, all the following are true and accurately represent the size and profile of the Block Grant:

The Scottish Block Grant is increasing by £4 billion over the three years of the spending review period, reaching to £52 billion by the end;
This is an 8.3% increase in cash terms, and around 2.7% in real terms over three years;
This is the equivalent to 0.8% annual average real terms growth in the Block Grant;
Resource spending is increasing by over £1 billion in each year of the SR period;
Capital spending increases by £0.6 billion in 2026-27 but is roughly flat in cash in the subsequent two years, which means a real terms cut in the latter half of the spending review period in capital spending.

Readthe full article HERE

Authors
João Sousa
João is Deputy Director and Senior Knowledge Exchange Fellow at the Fraser of Allander Institute. Previously, he was a Senior Fiscal Analyst at the Office for Budget Responsibility, where he led on analysis of long-term sustainability of the UK's public finances and on the effect of economic developments and fiscal policy on the UK's medium-term outlook.

Mairi Spowage
Mairi is the Director of the Fraser of Allander Institute. Previously, she was the Deputy Chief Executive of the Scottish Fiscal Commission and the Head of National Accounts at the Scottish Government and has over a decade of experience working in different areas of statistics and analysis.