This blog is part of our series focused on scrutiny of the Scottish Budget 2026-27. A full list of out Budget publications can be found on the Financial Scrutiny Unit webpage.
Earlier this month, we published an overview of common themes found across Scottish Parliament committees’ pre-Budget scrutiny letters for the 2026-27 Scottish Budget.
Following last week’s publication of the Scottish Budget 2026-27,the Scottish Government has now published responses to committees’ pre-budget scrutiny. These responses, and the Budget itself, will be scrutinised over the coming weeks by Committees, and the Committee Budget debate will take place on Wednesday 21 January. Repeating our approach in recent years, this blog complements our analysis of cross-cutting themes in committee scrutiny by taking an overview of the Scottish Government’s responses.
Note that where possible we have linked to Scottish Government correspondence, but at the time of publication not all letters had been published on committee websites, and one letter, to the Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee, was not published in time to be included in our analysis.
Last year, we characterised the post-budget picture as “all smiles, no substance”. This year’s responses suggest a more mixed picture. There are some clear points of progress and convergence across portfolios, but also familiar patters around delayed delivery, emphasis on process over outcome and unresolved accountability.
Themes from pre-budget scrutiny
The themes raised by committees during pre-budget scrutiny this year were unsurprisingly familiar. As explored in the SPICe blog Budget Bingo: a full house? – key themes in pre-budget scrutiny for 2026-27 a number of long-standing issues continue to feature across committees, reinforcing a sense that scrutiny is often revisiting well-established concerns rather than breaking new ground.
A consistent theme was the challenging fiscal context, committees highlighted ongoing pressure on both resource and capital budgets. They questioned how sustainable current funding trajectories were over the medium and longer term. Linked to this were repeated calls for greater clarity on prioritisation. Committees asked how spending choices reflected stated government objectives in practice and where trade-offs are being made when resources are constrained.
Committees also returned to the need for stronger transparency, accountability, and evidence. This included requests for clearer baselines, better explanations of funding movements within and between portfolios, and better evidence on whether spending decisions were delivering intended outcomes. Several committees also emphasised that while there is a growing focus on data, evaluation, and performance frameworks, this needs to translate into clearer lines of accountability, including evidence of how evaluation findings influence future policy choices and budget decisions, rather than simply describing past activity of progress to date.
Good news for committees
As in the past, there have been instances where the Scottish Government’s responses to committees indicate that it is acting in line with what committees want to see.
There are several areas where committees called for additional and sustained funding, and that has been forthcoming. This is particularly clear in the Criminal Justice portfolio, and in areas like funding for colleges and universities, mental health support and the Invest to Save programme. Many committees also asked for areas of funding to be baselined into general revenue funding for portfolio areas to increase transparency by making it easier to understand where additional funding had been allocated. This has been done within the health, equalities, local government and criminal justice portfolios, with more detail on the wider approach within the response to the Finance and Public Administration Committee. On long-standing issues, there is clear movement towards the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee’s ask that ringfencing of funds be reduced over time, and the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice (EHRCJ) Committee’s session-long focus on better evidence of the mainstreaming of equalities and human rights across portfolio decisions.
There is, again, a lot of agreement with what committees have expressed as priorities, such as fiscal sustainability, and attempts by the Scottish Government to set a clear tone on strategic approaches and give clear examples of action. There are also instances where the Government has clearly answered requests, such as the clear response to the Social Justice and Social Security (SJSS) Committee’s request for the Scottish Government to confirm that it was on track to publish findings of its review into what is driving demand for the Adult Disability Payment.
It’s worth highlighting that action against committees’ pre-budget recommendations isn’t always constrained to actions within the Budget. For example, following the Education, Children and Young People (ECYP) Committee’s pre-budget scrutiny, an amendment to the Tertiary Education and Training (Funding and Governance) (Scotland) Bill was agreed to, introducing a requirement for Ministers to carry out a review of the credit-based funding model used by the Scottish Fiscal Commission.
However, as is often the case, it is very difficult to attribute action to many of the recommendations of committees, and whilst the direction of travel is positive, there are few big shifts in the Government’s approach.
Lots of action, few outcomes
Although the Government has made a clear attempt to demonstrate accountability in its decision-making processes, this still falls short of what many committees were looking for. Last year, we observed positive rhetoric with little underlying action. This year, we are seeing a narrative of action that focuses on the future but has very little of the detail on outcomes that committees want to see.
In specific examples, we can see the Scottish Government’s commitments towards improved data gathering and monitoring and reviews of programmes and services and development of revised strategic approaches in the local government, health, equalities, net zero, energy and transport (NZET), finance, social justice and economy remits, but the Government remains unable to answer clear questions on outcomes. For instance, the response to the EHRCJ Committee’s disappointment in a lack of progress against the recommendations made by the Equality and Human Rights Budget Advisory Group in 2021, rather than presenting clear outcomes and commitment, the Government explains that reporting on action has been paused while the Group’s terms of reference and priority actions are reviewed and revised.
There are areas where spending decisions go against the committees’ findings and recommendations. For instance, the Marine Directorate’s allocation remains £79.3 million in cash terms, but this represents a £1.7 million real‑terms decrease—the third consecutive year of real‑terms reductions despite the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee previously raising significant concerns about the deteriorating condition of the Directorate’s storm‑damaged Aberdeen laboratories.
There are also some areas where figures presented are unclear. Examples are set out below:
- The Rural Affairs, Land Reform and Islands budget commits to starting the replacement of two marine protection and research vessels and to progressing fisheries modernisation. However, it’s unclear whether these commitments will be funded from the Marine Directorate’s capital budget, which has been reduced by £0.9 million in real terms (2025-26 prices).
- On Budget Day the Cabinet Secretary for Finance announced a 10% increase in funding for colleges equivalent to an extra £70 million in 2026-27. However, this is a figure that cannot be replicated from the published budget figures. Additional information provided by the Scottish Government to SPICe set out that the 10% increase is based on excluding capital funding for the Dunfermline Learning Campus – £30.3m in 2025-26, falling to £1.1m in 2026-27. Although this reflects a positive response to the Committee’s concerns, it is unhelpful when headline figures cannot be replicated from published data.
- The Social Justice and Social Security Committee asked for detail on how, following the UK Government’s abolishment of the two-child benefit cap, the funding previously earmarked for the two-child limit mitigation payment would be reinvested. The response set out examples, but there was not enough detail to clearly demonstrate whether the amount reinvested matched the forecasted funds available.
Finally, some funding announcements related to measures which would come into play after the 2026-27 financial year, such as the decision to raise the Scottish Child Payment in 2027-28.
Mainstreamed issues
In our committee scrutiny themes blog, we noted that key themes included climate change, and this, along with equalities, represent two areas of longer-term mainstreaming focus across committees.
The EHRCJ Committee has, for several budget rounds, sought to encourage greater use of participation and engagement in the budget process, with minimal evidence to support the Government’s assertion that this was something it valued. This year, there is clear and tangible progress on involving the public, delivery workforce and target sectors in the decision-making process, and this goes beyond the equalities portfolio with examples in responses to the Local Government, Social Justice, Health and Finance committees.
The response to the EHRCJ Committee was delayed by a few days this year as the Government finalised its new Strategic Integrated Impact Assessment (SIIA) approach, published a few days after the Budget, on 19 January. This document replaces the Equality and Fairer Scotland Budget Statement. The Scottish Government explains:
This approach integrates multiple statutory duties together, to better understand the equality, fairness and other impacts of tax and spending decisions in the Budget, Spending Review and Infrastructure Delivery Pipeline (IDP). Our goal is to enhance both the efficiency and the effectiveness of these assessments.
SPICe will publish a separate analysis of this new approach in a blog in the near future, but the intent, to streamline the impact assessment process and reporting, represents a positive step in achieving long-term asks of stakeholders and committees.
There is less progress in other areas of mainstreaming. On climate change, the Net-Zero, Energy and Transport Committee asked the Scottish Government to explore if it could link spending decisions to emissions reductions. Rather than give a substantive response, the Government’s response indicates what it is already doing in broad terms and at times points to things being done in the future, without additional detail in most cases. For example, in response to a question on how the Government will use new sources of quantitative data to set out how spending in each portfolio is contributing to emissions reduction or other climate action goals – the Government states what the climate change taxonomy does and then explains:
Outside of the budget process, we continue to refine the Scottish Government’s approach to identifying the costs associated with adapting to climate change and increasing the resilience of our public services, economy, natural environment and communities. This will be an ongoing task over the longer term.
Within the response to the Criminal Justice Committee, when pressed on climate change mainstreaming (as well as cyber security), the response lays the onus for addressing this solidly on public sector bodies and organisations. Climate change is not mentioned at all in several responses, including against the larger budget portfolios covered by the HSCS, LGHP and ECYP Committees, and only gets a passing reference as a priority in the FPAC letter.
Telling the story – tone and structure of responses
We noted last year the placatory nature of the language in responses to committees. This year, the tone and style of letters vary significantly. In some cases, we see a forceful tone of insistence that the Scottish Government is already doing what the committee has asked, set against a context of “significant pressure” and a “challenging environment” (Health, Social Care and Sport), and in others, we see a far more forward-looking and collaborative tone (Local Government, Housing and Planning, “LGHP”). Consistently, though, the tone suggests that its priorities lie in using economic growth, productivity and public service reform as a route to fiscal sustainability.
As much as there is a variety in committees’ approach to drafting letters and reports, there is a corresponding variety of approaches in the way the Scottish Government has responded. Some letters reply to each recommendation clearly, such as in the Criminal Justice letter where its response to each recommendation is clearly addressed and explained. In other cases, such as the responses to the EHRCJ and LGHP committees, the Government has used its own structure and grouped responses to recommendations together against a response referencing wider programmes of work. This makes it particularly challenging for committees to see clearly where its recommendations have been responded to and allows the Scottish Government to control the narrative of its response. In the case of the EHRCJ response, it is unsurprising that the Government is keen to emphasise its new Strategic Integrated Impact Assessment approach, however this has effectively allowed it to leave several clear recommendations about the presentation of its predecessor, the Equalities and Fairer Scotland Budget Statement, unaddressed.
Accountability and strategic intent
Accountability often comes up in the Scottish Government’s responses to pre-budget scrutiny, and this year was no exception, so we have delved further. One of the clearest developments is the provision of more detail than has been set out to date on plans to change the National Performance Framework (NPF). In her response to the Equality, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee, the Minister for Equalities explains that the Scottish Government wants the NPF to plan a stronger role in guiding decisions across government:
Overall, we are proposing to position, and rebrand, NPF as a long-term strategic tool, at the apex of all decision making, and accountability and performance frameworks, to ensure a strong and visible link between strategy, delivery and national outcomes, whatever the government of the day. This includes:
- The reformed NPF will support better linking of budgetary and policy decisions to the National Outcomes. We are currently piloting budget tagging which could be applied to the National Outcomes, pending evaluation of this approach.
- We are, as is good practice, developing proposed machinery of government improvements for the next government and parliamentary session. The reformed NPF will be an important element to ensure the National Outcomes are guiding decision making”
The aim is for the NPF going forward is to better link long-term priorities, budget decisions, and National Outcomes.
Combined with recent correspondence with the Social Justice and Social Security Committee on the Wellbeing and Sustainable Development (Scotland) Bill 2025, it is now possible to piece together the Scottish Government’s progress towards and aspirations for the revised NPF, albeit spread across different sources.
However, a common feature of these responses is that much of the work has not yet been delivered. Responses include reference to pilots, review, and updated frameworks and evaluations which are planned for 2026 or later, and in some cases are linked to preparation for the next parliamentary session. For example, the Finance and Public Administration Committee (FPAC) and the Health, Social Care, and Sport Committee (HSCS) responses both describe work underway to identify and track preventative spend, with pilots planned across portfolios and first results expected 2026. Where committees asked for evidence of changes already making a difference, the responses often state that this evidence will be available in the future once new approaches are in place, such as in the Social Justice and Social Security response on meeting statutory child poverty action targets. It is hard to reconcile the usefulness of the three-year Spending Review published alongside the Budget when there are so many action plans yet to be developed or reviewed.
There are some omissions on long-standing accountability issues, like the continued lack of response to the Scottish Fiscal Commission’s fiscal sustainability report, or any progress on a review of the sustainability of social security spending, which may be frustrating to committees.
The big picture
Overall, the responses suggest that the Scottish Government is putting effort into setting up new frameworks and processes for accountability. At the same time, it keeps significant control over when results are assessed and when responsibility for outcomes is taken. This raises ongoing questions about how quickly plans and frameworks lead to visible change, and when ownership of results is most clearly shown.
The prevailing picture is one of an ongoing cycle of reviews and strategy revisions with little opportunity for committees to understand outcomes. The Government does in places set out a series of achievements, as it has done in its response to the HSCS committee, but without the structure of an outcomes-based review framework these read more like positive headlines than a clear indication of where the Government is, and is not, meeting the needs of the population.
As always, ongoing committee scrutiny will show to what extent committees are satisfied with this approach.
Ailsa Burn-Murdoch and Kelly Eagle, both Senior Researchers, SPICe