Submitted by Bill Fernie
5th September 2026
I think the public should take much more interest in government budgets, precisely because the idea that ordinary people "cannot affect them" is one of the reasons governments can make decisions with relatively little public scrutiny.
The important point is that an individual cannot normally change a budget on their own. But public opinion, elections, lobbying, consultations, local campaigns, media coverage and pressure on elected representatives can all influence what governments do.
There is also a misunderstanding about what a budget actually is. It isn't just a collection of numbers produced for accountants and politicians. It is essentially a government's statement of what it has decided is important and who is going to pay for it.
If a government increases council funding, reduces another programme, changes income-tax thresholds, increases spending on the NHS or cuts public-sector jobs, those decisions eventually affect people's lives.
And often they affect them without people realising where the change came from.
A council tax increase might be blamed on the council when part of the pressure comes from decisions made by the Scottish Government.
A reduction in a local service might be blamed on "the council being short of money" without people understanding how the money is allocated.
A change in income-tax thresholds might look like a technical adjustment, but it can put hundreds of pounds a year onto the tax bill of an ordinary household.
A decision to reduce public-sector employment might eventually affect a local town's economy, even if the original announcement was made in Edinburgh.
The really interesting question is: what happens if people don't pay attention?
Governments have enormous advantages over the public.
They have armies of civil servants producing information.
They have economists and accountants.
They have advisers.
They have research departments.
They have the ability to announce a policy in complicated language which can make quite a significant change sound almost meaningless.
"Efficiency savings" can mean fewer staff.
"Revenue raising" can mean higher taxes.
"Transformation" can mean closing or merging services.
"Demand management" can mean making it harder to access something.
"Reprioritisation" can mean somebody is losing money so somebody else can receive it.
None of those phrases is necessarily dishonest. But they can hide the practical consequences.
That is why I think there is a very good article to be written around this question.
Not "Why you should understand government budgets", which sounds rather like homework.
Instead, something more provocative:
"Why You Should Care About the Government Budget Even If You Think You Can't Change It"
The argument could be that ignoring the budget doesn't make you powerless. It simply means that somebody else makes the decisions without you paying attention.
And there is another important point for your readership.
People often say, "There's nothing I can do about it."
But they actually have several opportunities.
They can contact their MSP.
They can contact their MP.
They can contact councillors.
They can respond to consultations.
They can join local campaigns.
They can challenge assumptions in local newspapers and online.
And, ultimately, they can vote.
None of those guarantees that a government will change its mind.
But democracy was never designed around the idea that every individual gets exactly what they want.
It is about collective pressure.
If 10,000 people don't like something and all remain silent, the government has little reason to worry.
If 10,000 people understand what is happening and make their views known, it becomes politically significant.
And perhaps the biggest reason to watch budgets is that the consequences often arrive later
This is something we have been discussing with Swinney's public-sector reforms.
Suppose the Government announces that restructuring will save £200 million a year.
Most people might simply think: "Fine, they're saving money."
But someone who understands budgets will immediately ask:
How much does the restructuring cost first?
When does the saving begin?
Is the £200 million a gross or net saving?
Does it reduce spending permanently?
Does it simply move the cost somewhere else?
What happens to the service?
Those questions turn a government announcement into something that can actually be scrutinised.
And I think that is exactly the role your articles can play.
You don't need readers to become accountants.
They simply need to become interested enough to ask the second question.
The first question is:
"What is the Government doing?"
The second, much more important question is:
"What does that actually mean for me?"
That is where budgets become interesting.
Because ultimately every pound in a government budget comes from somewhere and every pound spent goes somewhere.
It comes from taxation, borrowing, charges or other government income.
And it goes to hospitals, schools, roads, councils, civil servants, benefits, infrastructure, businesses and thousands of other things.
There really isn't such a thing as government money.
There is taxpayers' money, borrowed money and money generated by the wider economy.
Once people understand that, government budgets stop being something that can safely be ignored.
They become a report on how the country is being run with money that ultimately affects all of us.
And perhaps the most powerful message for an article is this:
You may not be able to control the Government's budget. But if you don't understand it, you certainly can't challenge it.
I think that would make an excellent companion piece to the Swinney articles, because it moves from "what Government is doing" to "why ordinary people should actually be paying attention."
yesi agree so go ahead and is there a possibl cartoon to highlight the issues
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no just go ahead with the article
Why You Should Care About the Government Budget Even If You Think You Can't Change It
There is a familiar response whenever government spending, taxation or budgets are discussed.
“There's nothing I can do about it.”
It is understandable. Governments have enormous budgets, armies of civil servants, economists and advisers, while the ordinary citizen is left trying to work out what all the figures actually mean. A budget can appear to be little more than a mountain of numbers, percentages and political announcements that have very little to do with everyday life.
But that is precisely why we should be paying more attention, not less.
Because government budgets are not somebody else's money. They determine what governments can afford to do, what they cannot afford to do, what services receive priority, where investment goes, how many people are employed, what taxes and charges we pay and, ultimately, what sort of country we live in.
And if we don't understand those decisions, it becomes very difficult to complain about them intelligently.
The budget is where politics becomes real
We often talk about politics as though it is mainly about personalities, parties and arguments in Parliament.
The budget is where politics becomes real.
A politician can promise better public services, more investment, lower taxes, improved infrastructure or greater support for businesses. But sooner or later the question has to be asked: how much will it cost and who is going to pay for it?
That is the part of politics that affects every household.
It might be through income tax. It might be council tax. It might be business rates, vehicle taxation, charges for services or the prices businesses have to absorb before passing costs on to their customers.
Or it may be less obvious.
A government can decide not to increase a particular tax but reduce spending somewhere else. A council can protect one service while reducing another. A public body can be merged with another organisation in the hope that administration will become cheaper.
The money does not disappear simply because the word “efficiency” has been used.
And that brings us to an issue that Scotland is about to experience on a very large scale.
Scotland is about to conduct a huge experiment
The Scottish Government's new five-year Programme for Government, published on 1 September, promises what it describes as a major reshaping of public services.
There are more than 130 public bodies in Scotland, according to the Government, and ministers now intend to substantially reduce that number. The stated objective is to remove duplication, simplify decision-making and move resources towards frontline services.
There are proposals to bring several environmental bodies together, rationalise inspectorates, investigate consolidation of public land organisations and review the remaining public bodies for possible joint working or mergers.
Transport Scotland is to be brought into core government, while the Government is also exploring a single ferries body for the Clyde and Western Isles routes.
And perhaps most dramatically for ordinary people, the Government plans to replace Scotland's 14 territorial NHS boards with two Strategic Health Boards.
These are enormous structural changes.
They may turn out to be sensible. They may save money. They may improve services.
But the public should not simply accept the word “reform” and move on.
We should be asking questions.
How much will the restructuring cost?
How much will it save each year?
When will the savings actually appear?
How many jobs will disappear?
How many new jobs will be created?
Will the savings come from administration or from services?
Will decisions move closer to communities or further away?
And, particularly in rural Scotland, where will the jobs and decision-making end up?
Those are budget questions.
Savings are not always immediate savings
This is something the public often misses.
If two organisations are merged, it does not automatically mean that the Government saves money the following morning.
There can be redundancy or voluntary exit costs. Buildings may have to be sold or adapted. Computer systems have to be integrated. Contracts may have to be renegotiated. Staff may need retraining. New management structures have to be created.
There is also the enormous cost of the time spent by thousands of public servants implementing the change.
The Scottish Spending Review already contains significant efficiency and productivity targets. For example, the Health and Social Care portfolio identified £384 million of efficiencies and productivity savings for 2026-27, followed by £374 million and £303 million in the next two years. Other portfolios also have workforce, digital, estates and operational savings identified.
Those are substantial sums.
But the important question for the public is not simply “How much are you saving?”
It is:
“How much did it cost you to achieve that saving, and what happened to the service afterwards?”
That is a very different question.
A £10 million saving that costs £8 million to implement is not the same thing as a £10 million saving achieved for virtually nothing.
And a £10 million administrative saving that accidentally creates £15 million of additional costs somewhere else in government isn't really a saving at all.
This is why citizens need to understand budgets rather than simply react to headlines.
The phrase “taxpayers' money” needs some explanation too
There is another reason budgets can be confusing.
We often hear politicians talking about “taxpayers' money”.
That is partly true, but government finances are more complicated than that.
Governments receive taxation and other revenues, but they can also borrow money. Scotland's finances are additionally shaped by the funding arrangements with the UK Government.
Ultimately, however, the bill does not vanish.
If governments spend more than they receive, borrowing has to be serviced. If spending rises faster than available funding, governments eventually have to increase revenues, reduce spending elsewhere or borrow more.
So when somebody says, “It's government money,” we should really ask:
Where did it come from?
And then:
What other thing could that money have been spent on?
That second question is particularly important.
Every pound spent on one priority is a pound that cannot simultaneously be spent on another.
This matters enormously in Caithness
For someone living in Caithness, government restructuring can sometimes seem like something happening somewhere else.
That would be a mistake.
We have seen repeatedly how decisions about public services, government organisations and investment can have consequences hundreds of miles from Edinburgh.
A job moved from a local office to a regional centre might look like a small administrative change on a spreadsheet.
For a small town, losing 20 or 30 relatively well-paid jobs can be significant.
The same applies to decision-making.
There is a big difference between having an organisation with people who understand Caithness, its distances, infrastructure, communities and economic circumstances and having decisions made by people whose main experience is of urban Scotland.
Centralisation can make an organisation look more efficient from the centre while making it less effective at the edge.
That does not mean every local office should be protected regardless of cost.
It means the economic and social cost of removing it should be counted alongside the administrative saving.
That is precisely the sort of calculation an interested public should demand.
“I can't change anything” is only half true
It is true that an individual citizen cannot normally walk into a government department and change the budget.
But that isn't how democracy works.
People influence government collectively.
They vote.
They contact their MSPs, MPs and councillors.
They respond to consultations.
They join community organisations.
They challenge decisions locally.
They support campaigns.
They write to newspapers and websites.
They ask questions at public meetings.
And increasingly, they can examine government information for themselves.
But there is an important condition.
You have to know enough to ask the right questions.
Saying “the council is wasting money” is easy.
Finding out exactly where the money is being spent is much more useful.
Saying “the Government is cutting services” may be right.
But which services? By how much? Over what period? Is it a real-terms cut? Is demand rising? Is another service being expanded at the same time?
Saying “the NHS needs more money” may also be perfectly reasonable.
But how much more? Where would it come from? Would it pay for doctors and nurses, buildings, medicines, administration or something else?
Once you start asking those questions, politics becomes much more interesting.
Don't just listen to the announcement. Follow the money.
This may be the most important lesson of all.
Governments are very good at announcing what they are going to do.
The public needs to become much better at following what actually happens afterwards.
A minister announces a £100 million programme.
Fine.
How much was actually spent?
How many people benefited?
What did it achieve?
What did it replace?
Was it delivered on time?
Did the expected savings materialise?
If an organisation is merged, what was the cost of the merger?
What is the annual saving?
And when will the taxpayer actually be better off?
These aren't hostile questions.
They are democratic questions.
Indeed, asking them should not depend on which political party happens to be in government.
The same standards should apply to everyone.
We should stop treating budgets as boring
Perhaps the biggest problem is the way budgets are presented.
They are often written in language that seems deliberately designed for accountants, economists and civil servants.
“Resource allocation.”
“Fiscal sustainability.”
“Portfolio efficiencies.”
“Workforce productivity.”
“Transformation.”
“Service reform.”
The words may be accurate, but they can conceal the human consequences.
Behind “workforce savings” are people.
Behind “estate rationalisation” are buildings and communities.
Behind “service redesign” may be a service that becomes easier to access, or one that becomes harder.
Behind “efficiency” there may be a genuine improvement, or simply a reduction in spending.
The public needs to look beyond the language.
We don't have to become economists
Nobody is suggesting that every citizen needs to understand the intricacies of government accounting.
But we should understand the basics.
How much money is coming in?
How much is going out?
What are the biggest areas of expenditure?
What is increasing?
What is being cut?
How much is being borrowed?
What are the major long-term commitments?
What assumptions are being made?
And perhaps most importantly:
What does all this mean for me, my family, my business and my community?
That is enough to turn a government budget from an apparently meaningless collection of numbers into something that matters.
Democracy doesn't end at the ballot box
There is a rather strange contradiction in modern politics.
People often complain passionately about government decisions while simultaneously saying they have no interest in how government spends money.
But the two things are connected.
If we want better roads, better healthcare, better schools, more affordable housing, stronger rural communities or lower taxes, we have to understand the choices involved.
There is no magic pot of money sitting in Edinburgh or London waiting to be discovered.
There are competing demands and limited resources.
The job of government is to make choices.
The job of the opposition is to challenge those choices.
And the job of the public is to understand them well enough to decide whether those choices are sensible.
That does not mean agreeing with the Government.
In fact, it makes disagreement much more powerful.
Instead of simply saying, “This is rubbish,” we can say:
“You told us this would save £X million. It has cost £Y million to implement, the saving has not appeared, and the service has deteriorated. Explain why.”
That is a much harder argument for any government to dismiss.
Perhaps we should all become a little more interested
The Scottish Government says its five-year programme will bring a more efficient, simpler public sector and put resources closer to frontline services. It also says this will involve the most radical reshaping of public services since the Scottish Parliament was established.
That is not a minor administrative exercise.
It is something that every Scottish voter should be watching.
Not because everyone needs to become an expert in public finance.
But because the decisions being made today will shape the services, jobs, taxes and communities we live with tomorrow.
And there is a simple test we could all apply whenever the next budget, spending review or reform programme is announced.
Don't just ask:
“What are they giving us?”
Don't just ask:
“What are they taking away?”
Ask the more important question:
“Where is the money going, what is it costing, and what are we getting for it?”
Because you may not be able to control the Government's budget.
But if you don't understand it, you certainly can't challenge it.
Because the next UK Budget is scheduled earlier than usual on 28 October 2026, the Scottish Government will have ample time to analyse the block grant implications before the holidays. This allows the schedule to return to its traditional December slot, avoiding the delayed January timeline seen in the previous cycle.