Budget Bingo: the committees strike back – key themes in pre-budget scrutiny for 2025-26 

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This blog is the first in a series of publications supporting scrutiny of the Scottish Budget 2025-26 in advance of the publication of the Scottish Budget 2025-26 on 4 December 2024.

Over the past two Scottish Budget cycles we’ve published an analysis of the cross-cutting themes in the pre-budget scrutiny carried out by committees.

This blog continues that series by exploring how last years’ analysis was used, the common themes in pre-budget scrutiny 2025-26, what has changed, and what the implications are. 

Contents show

Using the cross-committee analysis 

Using the analysis underpinning this blog series we’re starting to understand not only what the overarching themes in pre-budget scrutiny over recent years have been, but also how themes and scrutiny approaches have evolved. This knowledge is used within committee support, providing members with a clear understanding of cross-cutting issues and overlaps. The work, and key themes across portfolios, is also used and highlighted by the Finance and Public Administration Committee’s guidance to subject committees on pre-budget scrutiny.

Following the publication of the Scottish Budget 2024-25, we explored in a separate blog whether committee recommendations appeared to have influenced the Scottish Government’s decision-making process. The conclusions were that, although there were some ‘wins’ for committees, calls for clarity and transparency had gone unanswered, and it remained difficult for committees to see where they had an impact. As readers will see, this situation has led to a growing sense of frustration through this years’ pre-budget scrutiny.

Each year, a committee budget debate is held before the Stage 1 debate for the Budget Bill. One aim of our analysis work is to support that debate, which can often be a disconnected series of accounts from committees. Last years’ debate was noticeably more connected, and we hope that these blogs continue to provide useful context to committees and members as post-budget scrutiny progresses.

What lies beneath key themes?

Our analysis is based only on the conclusions and recommendations highlighted in the letters and reports of subject committees. These are mostly aimed at the Scottish Government, but some conclusions are aimed at public bodies. As we noted last year, the format and style of committee outputs varies, and our findings should be seen as illustrative qualitative data.

There were disruptions to the Scottish Government publication timetable through 2024, with no Medium-Term Financial Strategy and an expected Programme for Government delayed from June until September because of the UK election. Despite this, some committees began pre-budget scrutiny earlier than usual. The impacts were mixed – the Education, Children and Young People Committee was able to publish its findings in September. Other committees faced uncertainty around timetabling and could not publish until mid-late November.  

For the second year running, the volume of output from committees was higher than the previous year, even though the number of committees carrying out pre-Budget scrutiny fell from 12 to 11. This is likely due to an increase in the amount of evidence gathered. The number of committees using a call for views this year was the same as the past two years, but there were 55% more written submissions than there were last year.

Over the past few years, a pattern has begun to emerge of one committee holding a call for views which gains more traction than others. This can heavily drive where the evidence comes from. The evidence base this year was strongly diversified by the Social Justice and Social Security Committee’s call for views on third-sector funding principles, which generated 195 submissions.

As was the case last year, the amount of oral evidence panels based solely on budget evidence reduced, but many committees carried out engagement, incorporated evidence from their other scrutiny work, and/or built on previous budget scrutiny.

Across all committees and evidence types, more than two thirds of organisations giving evidence were from the third sector. There was a similar number of organisations compared to last year which gave evidence to multiple committees, or had given evidence in the past, but these made up a much smaller proportion of the evidence base – over two thirds of written submissions and witnesses were contributing to only one committee.

Regarding submissions to multiple committees, it should be noted that all calls for views are hosted on the Scottish Parliament’s consultation page, and committees tend to choose the same time to run them (a June launch to run into summer recess). This means that people going to respond to one call may well see the others and choose to respond to more than one committee.

Common themes in 2025-26 pre-budget scrutiny 

As in past blogs, we’ve structured our analysis based on the three principles of human rights budgeting. This is a qualitative approach, and recommendations will often reflect more than one principle. This illustrates how the principles of human rights budgeting connect – transparency supports participation and both transparency and participation support accountability, for instance. The number of recommendations and conclusions fell this year, so the balance between these principles has been considered and compared to last year as a proportion of all recommendations.

For the past two years, transparency has been the most prominent focus of committee recommendations, with accountability not far behind. This year, that balance has shifted heavily towards a focus on accountability.

Accountability 

The increased focus on accountability this year stems in large part from an increased focus on multi-year and preventative spend, policy reform, and mainstreaming. But overall, there was more emphasis on the Scottish Government taking responsibility and taking charge. Tellingly, whilst there were no clear topical trends this year, there were several committees highlighting a lack of action over past recommendations or emphasising that their requests for information or action are not new.

A continuing theme from previous years is the lack of strategic cohesiveness, but the tone has shifted from one of calling for better alignment between the Budget and other strategic documents, to one of concern that there is a lack of clarity over wider strategic direction and leadership. In several instances, committees suggested that the time had come for wholly new approaches. These ranged from rationalisation of strategic documents and sharing of systems, to more radical transformational change and public service reform.

The mechanisms for accountability remain under tight focus, particularly the challenges in understanding the Scottish Government’s decision-making process and a sense that accountability is slipping. The late publication of Equality Impact Assessments alongside the pre-Budget update in September (and lack of detail within them) and a need for longer term financial planning and a shift towards preventative spend were themes spanning multiple committees. The lack of the anticipated Medium-Term Financial Strategy in May, and delays to plans such as public service reform and a fiscal framework for local government are other examples adding to a lack of accountability.

Committees may be becoming harder to placate, with language becoming stronger. The Finance and Public Administration Committee said, in its report:

The Committee is deeply concerned about the Scottish Government’s lack of strategic approach to managing Scotland’s public finances. There is little evidence that medium- and long-term financial planning is taking place, and year-on-year budgeting has also become challenging, with significant emergency controls being required in each of the last three years. While we recognise that devolved administrations have fewer flexibilities to deal with ‘shocks’, many of the issues impacting the 2024-25 Budget – such as higher than anticipated pay settlements, the council tax freeze, and increasing social security payments – could have been foreseen and mitigated when the Budget for 2024-25 was set last December.

Next year, the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee will focus its scrutiny on accountability, but in this year’s letter it forewarns that:

at this point, we are of the view that the Scottish Government does not show comprehensively how evidence is considered in decision making and that this information is not released at a point to allow meaningful participation and scrutiny before decisions are made.

Transparency 

The proportion of recommendations relating to transparency, specifically fiscal transparency, and data, fell slightly this year, and there remained a steady focus on clarity of policy. As we have noted, issues of clarity could be seen as much about accountability as they are about transparency.  

Over time, calls for more detail on fiscal transparency have shifted away from improvements to budget documentation and towards the data underpinning decision-making. Exceptions include the Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee’s ask that future budgets include quantified data on how spending in each portfolio is contributing to emissions reduction or adaptation, the suggestion coming from the Finance and Public Administration and Health and Sport Committees that the Scottish Government consider making ‘preventative spending’ a third category of spending alongside revenue and capital. On the theme of looking at how budgets are constructed, the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee took a slightly alternative but similarly themed position, saying:

We note the continuing pressures on capital budget allocations and emphasise the necessity of investment in infrastructure to facilitate the effective delivery of services in the most efficient way possible. We are therefore clear that capital budgets cannot be looked at in isolation and must be considered as part of the overall budget settlement.

There were instances where committees questioned whether funding could be considered ‘new’ and where funding would be drawn from, particularly in the context of pay settlements. There were also concerns that the evidence that the Scottish Government is carrying out medium-term planning simply isn’t there (again, linking to accountability).

There were fewer calls for updates on wider policies, and in general committees honed their focus more tightly on the budget, which may explain the reduction in recommendations. What recommendations there are focus heavily on the need for the Scottish Government to be more prompt in providing detail on the impact of spending, funding forecasts and longer-term projections to both support scrutiny and provide more certainty to sectors.

Participation 

On the face of it, participation was less considered this year, which was also the case last year. There was, however, a trend of committees referring to the need to consult and keep stakeholders and citizens informed. In some cases, committees did reference specific instances where communities should be involved in decision-making, and the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee sought to understand more about where lived experience has been used to build policy from the ground up.

Perhaps in recognition of recent years’ narrative on participation, and a lack of clarity on where the Government may expand its approach, Committees seem to have embraced their own role in this area more. Last year, the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee used a public survey and lived experience deliberative panel, and the Finance and Public Administration Committee held an engagement event. This year, four committees used engagement or approaches outside of the traditional format:

These approaches may be at the lighter touch end of involving citizens in budget scrutiny (compared to a deliberative role), but they widen access to and awareness of budget scrutiny. It should be notes as well, that although not badged as budget scrutiny, the Net-Zero, Energy and Transport Committee used findings from the People’s Panel it convened to support post-legislative scrutiny of the public engagement provisions in the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 within the pre-budget scrutiny process.

Mainstreamed and topical issues 

Over the last two years, we’ve looked at topical issues which emerged, such as COVID-19 recovery, the cost crisis, public sector pay, and inflation. This year, no clear topical issues emerged beyond the themes mentioned above.

The Finance and Public Administration Committee’s guidance highlighted climate change and equalities as mainstreamed issues to focus on. Both were a less significant feature this year than last, and climate change was not a focus which was reflected in recommendations outside of the Net Zero, Energy and Transport (NZET) Committee. However, reflecting its role as the lead Committee in delivering the Conveners Group Session 6 strategic priority on climate change and net zero, the NZET Committee proactively wrote to every Cabinet Secretary to ascertain how they are ensuring they meet the Scottish Government’s overriding net zero goals.

We also look at recommendations around funding levels and calls for additional spend to demonstrate that committee scrutiny rarely focuses on requests for more money. There were indeed fewer such recommendations, both in numbers and proportionately.

In planning for cross-committee pre-Budget scrutiny this year, SPICe identified capital spending as a growing area of concern following publication of the Scottish Budget 2024-25. Subsequently, the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee ran a public survey on the topic, and portfolio-specific findings were shared with subject committees. The Finance and Public Administration Committee highlighted, in its guidance, that capital was one area which committees may wish to focus on. In practice, this was not a prominent theme, and the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee were unable to carry out planned work in this area because changes to the legislative timetable led to significant uncertainties about its work programme capacity. The lack of published infrastructure and strategic plans from the Scottish Government also hindered planning.

Another common theme which committees may have included in more detail in budget scrutiny was the Scottish Government’s proposals for revised National Outcomes. Many committees did cross-reference the evidence they took on pre-budget scrutiny and National Outcomes, but for the most part recommendations did not differ from those in the past around strategic cohesiveness. The exception is the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee, which combined scrutiny on both topics, and used evidence gathered by the Finance and Public Administration Committee.

The Finance and Public Administration Committee published its findings on National Outcomes scrutiny on 15 November, and cross-cutting scrutiny of the National Outcomes was explored by SPICe in a recent blog.

Conclusions

One of the aims of this work is to identify overlaps between committees. In some cases, this might be duplicated work, and in others, it may be that the same issue is prominent across several portfolios or is persistently unaddressed.

Last year, the overarching themes in pre-budget scrutiny focused on the need for multi-year and preventative spend and a more strategic, long-term outlook which clearly links spending decisions to priorities, as well as clearly evidenced decision-making. These overarching themes clearly still dominate the narrative in committee scrutiny.

None of the themes this year are new, but the strength of focus and feeling of impetus behind them coming from committees has grown. Committees are showing frustration and clearly looking to the Scottish Government to take a more proactive approach to meet current and predictable future challenges, and to take a clear strategic lead in delivering transformation.

It’s early days to conclude a trend, but so far, from a baseline two years ago, committees are diversifying their evidence base, making more effective use of engagement practices, and seeing less overlap across committees in who they gather evidence from. Committees have built up multiple years of experience and evidence over this session, especially those taking a session-long thematic focus.

The Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee tracks progress against its areas of interest across its remit in its annual tracker reports, and increasingly budget scrutiny is becoming an area where all committees are building a similar picture of longer-term progress against their recommendations, albeit more focused and less explicitly tracked. For instance, the Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee draws the Scottish Government’s attention to the substantial body of evidence it has gathered on funding for culture, pre-empting the Government’s forthcoming review.

This growing strength of committee scrutiny has not been overlooked, with an LGiU representative saying, in a recent subscriber newsletter, that the pre-Budget letter from the Convener of the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee to the Scottish Government “ranks as one of the most comprehensive, evidence-informed submissions I have seen, it really is essential reading”.

In the past, committee recommendations have often focused on gathering more information from the Scottish Government or effectively going for the low hanging fruit in what changes might be achieved, be that presentational changes to the budget, or working on understanding the data the Government uses. This year, with fewer but more targeted recommendations, committees have stopped picking at the edges and gone straight to the meat of the issue – is the Scottish Government acting where needed?

As the Finance and Public Administration Committee puts it:

repeated publication delays until after the next fiscal event have unfortunately led to a perception of the Government being in a state of inertia.

Shining a light on the collective issues committees face may be supporting this more forceful approach from committees, but it could also reflect where we are in the Parliamentary session, changes in political leadership within Scotland, and recent shifts in political balance elsewhere in the UK. Regardless, with only one budget round to go in Session 6 of the Scottish Parliament after this one, the clock is ticking for the Scottish Government to act on the repeated, perennial requests of committees, or to make it very clear why it has not done so.

Ailsa Burn-Murdoch, Financial Scrutiny Unit, SPICe