Labour should commit to a 2026 review of SNP spending

So there was some wry amusement to be drawn from the response of Ms Reeves’ Scottish Nationalist detractors. Their eagerness to believe the alternative Tory narrative - that all this was known before the election - was straight out “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” playbook. There is no doubt who the enemy is for Stephen Flynn and his diminished cohort. If that makes Jeremy Hunt their font of truth, then so be it.

As months and years of tedious opposition roll on, Mr Flynn and his colleagues will doubtless find much to be aggrieved about. But they might sensibly have waited - and, like the Liberal Democrats, attacked the Tories for what they left behind rather than dismissing the indictment which Ms Reeves prosecuted, because it does not fit their own essential narrative.

It fell to Seumas Logan, who out-flagged Douglas Ross to win West Aberdeenshire, to summarise that position. “During the recent election campaign”, said Mr Logan, “we in the SNP repeatedly warned about an £18 billion hole in the Labour Party’s spending plans. Now that the Chancellor has confirmed that today, will she apologise to voters in Scotland…?”.

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Well no, actually. Ms Reeves explained patiently: “I am not sure if he was paying attention. The £22 billion black hole is this year. The Institute for Fiscal Studies was warning about a black hole of £18 billion over the lifetime of the Parliament. Those are two very different things and both of them can be true”. Unfortunately for Jeremy and his new Tartan Army, Ms Reeves’ version of events was underpinned by the Office for Budget Responsibility and the Institute for Fiscal Studies, both of which agreed the scale of unfunded commitments took them by surprise. The chairman of the OBR wrote a scathing letter which, loosely translated, said: “We were conned and we’re not happy”.

The SNP’s ire should surely then have been directed towards those who created the legacy with at least some acknowledgment of the challenges this presents. But not a word! I suppose even electorally chastened old dogs find it difficult to learn new tricks.

The reliability indignant Peter Wishart was on cue to accuse Ms Reeves of “Tory austerity” to which she replied: “The Honorary Gentleman claims that what I have announced today is austerity, when we have just given a pay rise to more than two million public sector workers. He does not know what he is talking about.” To which many heads nodded assent.

That aspect of the Chancellor’s statement reflects Labour’s immediate challenge to demonstrate real change against a dire economic backdrop while more radical ambitions depend on economic growth. In that context, it was absolutely right to accept the Pay Review Bodies’ recommendations to give public sector workers decent increases, without messing about and inviting costly industrial action.

By the time of the Budget, all the political creativity that Ms Reeves and her colleagues can muster will be required to ensure further signals of change that draw clear dividing lines between future and past. Voters understand the constraints and government understands the expectations. Common sense suggests that, unless it was genuinely forced upon her, Ms Reeves had no wish at this early stage in the government’s life to limit the Winter Fuel Payment to those on Pension Credit. It is the kind of decision which tends not to be taken in order to avoid political flak - but that does not stop it being sensible and defensible.

Universalism is a blunt instrument which can be counter-productive in achieving a progressive government’s wider objectives. Interestingly, that view, which I have long argued, is shared by the Scottish Government’s Poverty and Inequality Commission which concluded earlier this year that the universal winter payment is “extraordinarily poorly targeted as regards to addressing poverty”.

SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn (Image: PA)

Before Ms Reeves entered the scene, they commission had advised the Scottish Government - which inherits responsibility for the payment this winter - that replicating the status quo would be a “missed opportunity to address fuel poverty” and “poverty more widely”. In other words, there is nothing progressive about giving money to those who don’t need it while the poor starve.

The Scottish Government should have followed that advice, regardless of what Ms Reeves announced, but probably wouldn’t have. It’s still up to them to decide, of course, but the Scottish electorate seems to have cottoned on to the reality that “free” things aren’t really free at all but are paid for by a decline in public services and infrastructure which affect the least well-off far more than the affluent.

I think Scottish Labour also has lessons to learn from this week’s events. They should commit now to a comprehensive spending review if it wins in 2026 because there are silos of Scottish Government expenditure which are never challenged or set against other potential uses. To the best of my knowledge, there has never been a full-scale spending review since the SNP took over at Holyrood, and perhaps even longer.

Labour should also check out every policy announcement of recent years then find out how much of the promised money was actually committed or has been spent. The Tories are not the only ones who thought it clever to grab headlines, then quietly forget about how they were to be paid for. Maybe our own wee Office of Budget Responsibility wouldn’t be a bad idea.

Brian Wilson is a former Labour Party politician. He was MP for Cunninghame North from 1987 until 2005 and served as a Minister of State from 1997 to 2003.