Year-to-year comparisons of the budget can be complicated.
Budgets often change throughout the year and what is actually spent can differ from what was originally proposed. Throughout the year, the Scottish Government proposes two revisions to the budget originally passed by Parliament – the Autumn Budget Revision (ABR) and the Spring Budget Revision (SBR).
Our blog on Comparing the Scottish Government budget year-to-year explains why it sometimes makes sense to use a the budget-to-budget comparison, and other times, a ABR-to-budget comparison, and why the Scottish Government chose an ABR-to-budget comparison in their main budget outputs.
The SBR was published in February 2026 and is now the latest version of the 2025-26 budget. The 2026-27 budget in the tool includes Stage 2 amendments.
This tool allows you to explore the difference a baseline makes.
Data source: The Scottish Government’s ‘Additional Budget Disclosure with Prior Year Comparative Information – FY25 updated for SBR and Stage 2 amendments’ document shared with SPICe. We excluded two budget lines, Police Loan Charges, and Animal Licence Fees, which were categorised as ‘Other non-budget – resource’.
Spending categories
The total budget can be split into four categories, Capital, Resource, Annually Managed Expenditure (AME), and Non-cash. Total managed expenditure (TME) is the total of these four categories.
Capital spending is discretionary spending within the Scottish Budget which can only be spent on long-term investments; including physical infrastructure such as roads, hospitals and schools, and other investments such as research and developments. This includes central government capital spending and central government support for local authorities‘ capital spending.
Resource funding is discretionary funding to pay for day to day running costs, and accounts for the majority of funding in the Scottish Budget. Staff pay is a major component of resource funding, but this also includes grants to other public bodies such as local government and social security payments.
Resource and capital expenditure limits (Departmental Expenditure Limits, or DELs) are established during Spending Reviews and cover spending that departments can control. Annually Managed Expenditure (AME) is spending included in the budget that does not fall within DELs. Spending in AME is generally less predictable and controllable than spending in DEL and therefore needs to be annually managed rather than determined on a longer-term basis, like NHS and teachers‘ pensions.
Non-cash funding is a non-discretionary part of the budget which is only used for accounting adjustments – such as the depreciation of assets, or to implement changes to accounting standards.
Inflation adjustment
The tool shows the 2026-27 budget in cash prices and in (inflation-adjusted) 2025-26 prices. The cash change column shows the change between cash budgets, whereas the real change column adjusts for inflation. The inflation adjustment enables comparisons of spending across years without the distortion caused by price changes. The tool uses the HM Treasury GDP deflator as available on 13 January 2026.
Other budget-related briefings and tools are available from Financial Scrutiny | Scottish Parliament Website.
Maike Waldmann, SPICe statistician