Spending Review verdict

The Scotsman's Westminster Correspondent goes through the Spending Review, and what it means for Scotland

Transcript

00:00Hello, my name is Alexander Brown. I am the Scotsman's Westminster Equipment

00:04and I'm just outside Parliament coming out of a briefing following the spending review

00:08delivered by Rachel Reeves. On the surface it looks like fantastic news to Scotland with £52

00:13billion in devolution settlement, an increase of £2 billion and finally at long last funding for

00:19the Aiken project, the carbon capture storage centre based in Aberdeenshire. However, as ever,

00:25the devil is in the detail. That's what the SMP is saying and also it's worth looking at things

00:29like after inflation that devolution settlement boost might not really be an increase and on

00:34the Aiken project documents published after the statement said a final investment decision will

00:39be taken later this Parliament subject to project readiness and affordability. Now I spoke to a

00:44Minister who said that's still going to go ahead, that's just the nature of these things,

00:47need to work with commercial partners. Sources say this is down to the readiness of those commercial

00:52parties but it does still keep things vague. There's also a series of cuts, departments facing

00:57real-time cuts include the Home Office, Foreign Office, Housing, Culture, Environment, HMRC,

01:03Work and Pensions and even the Treasury. That's a lot of cuts from the Chancellor who said that

01:08austerity had ripped apart the social fabric and damaged the economy at the opening of her statement.

01:13So it remains to be seen what this means for the party on the surface. It looks quite promising,

01:17they have these big numbers, they can say there's big investment and they can point to things such as

01:20housing or increasing defence as real boosts but unfortunately it looks like the money is heavy

01:26at the beginning of this Parliament, heavy at the end and they're kind of counting on the growth and

01:30all to pay off in the middle. It's not quite clear if that will, we'll need to see more forecasters to

01:34understand but you can read more about that at thescotsman.com. Thank you so much for watching.