JOHN Swinney has not delivered a budget of giveaways.

That would be hard when the Scottish Government's spending power is being cut by one per cent next year.

But his ninth spending plan as Finance Secretary was not a budget of take-aways either.

Despite much pre-budget talk of hard choices, he refused to raise extra revenue by using Holyrood's new power over income tax and he maintained the council tax freeze for another year.

Popular, but costly universal entitlements, including free university tuition, free personal care for the elderly, free prescriptions, free bus passes for older people and free school meals for the youngest primary school pupils were also left untouched.

Mr Swinney said his spending plans would "help family budgets".

For Labour it was a pre-election budget to keep voters happy, and a missed to combat Chancellor George Osborne's austerity programme.

The same point was made, in very different terms, by the Scottish Conservatives, who welcomed Mr Swinney's refusal to increase the size of the Scottish budget by a significant amount.

Where Mr Swinney did increase tax, the sums were modest in the context of his total £30.3billion spending.

That will come as little consolation to larger businesses that were stung for an extra £130million through the rates.

Those looking to purchase a second home will also have to pay more tax as a result of changes to LBTT, the stamp duty replacement introduced earlier this year.

The increased rates, mirroring changes made in England, will generate between £17million and £29million extra.

The biggest winner was the NHS, which will receive an extra £500million next year, a 6.5 per cent rise taking total spending to nearly £13billion.

There was extra cash, too, for affordable housing and the SNP's flagship plan to expand free childcare.

Budgets for schools and colleges were protected.

The biggest loser was local government, where total spending was cut from £10.8billion to 10.2billion, a reduction of 5.6 per cent.