Austerity – is it or isn’t it?published at 16:19 British Summer Time
Philip Sim
BBC Scotland political correspondent
There’s been a lot of talk of “austerity” today. It’s a
politically loaded term – but what’s the reality?
The charge is that the new Labour government aims to close a £22bn “black hole”
in its budget via austerity policies, harking back to the era of Tory
chancellors like George Osborne.
But that £22bn is an overspend in the public accounts;
Labour arrived in office to find that more money had been spent than was
expected, so ministers need to cut back in order to balance the books.
It’s not clear that this will actually result in Holyrood’s
budget being reduced in-year.
Indeed, the Scottish Secretary Ian Murray has
suggested that it might actually go up, once the impact of public sector pay
deals down south is factored in.
So Labour insist that this isn’t austerity, because the
overall level of public spending will still go up.
John Swinney’s contention, meanwhile, has been that if it
looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck.
The dictionary definition of austerity is economic policies
consisting of tax increases, spending cuts or a combination of the two, used by
governments to reduce budget deficits…and that does sound quite a lot like what
Rachel Reeves has planned.
However, it may also sum up where Shona Robison will find
herself come her own budget on 4 December.