COVID-19 pandemic funding allocated to the Scottish Government: FOI release

Information requested

You asked for the amount of total money that the UK government has given Scotland during the Coronavirus pandemic including but not limited to furlough payments business grants etc and also the amount of money given by UK government from the above question that has not been used and Scottish Government has but not distributed.

Response

To date, the UK Government has indicated that it will allocate £8.6 billion of additional funding to the Scottish Government in respect of the Covid pandemic for 2020-21 with a further £1.3 billion for 2021-22 (NB: this does not include those elements of support which are administered on a UK wide basis such as furlough payments, business loan schemes and the self-employment support scheme. Information on the total funds applied on these is not held by the Scottish Government. You may wish to request this information from HM Treasury).

The Scottish Government has, so far, revised its budget at 2 points during the year. Firstly, the Summer Budget RevisionSummer Budget Revision 2020 to 2021 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot). This budget revision was exceptionally introduced this year, on 27 May, to provide the Scottish Parliament with the opportunity to scrutinise the spending decisions made to that point in time. It included the allocation of just over £4 billion in funding for the Covid response:-

• This total included a comprehensive £2.3 billion package of support for business, a £620 million boost for health services and £350 million funds for communities

• The spending was largely funded by a consequential rise in the block grant of more than £3.5 billion resulting from extra UK Government COVID-19 spending, and £112 million of consequentials received following the last UK Budget.

• A further £255 million was reprioritised from within existing departmental budgets, including where Covid-19 has had an unavoidable impact on planned spending.

A further Autumn Budget Revision was published on 24 September Autumn budget revision 2020 to 2021 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot). This revision, allocated a further £2.5 billion to Covid related measures:-

• An additional £1.8 billion in funding was allocated to Health and Social Care. This is on top of the £620 million additional Health funding which was allocated at Summer Budget Revision, meaning over £2.4 billion of financial support has been provided to the NHS to support its ongoing Covid-19 support.

• £222 million of additional resource funding was allocated to support our bus, rail and local transport operators.

• £190 million in additional support was provided for business and the arts.

• £119 million was added to the Education and Skills budget as part of the Education Recovery package and also ensured free school meals were continued over the course of the Summer Holidays.

• The budget revision also allocated capital expenditure for the economic recovery stimulus package announced by the Cabinet Secretary of Finance in June.

• This is being funded through £2.4 billion of Barnett consequentials, £142 million of reprioritisation of existing expenditure, and £30m of Scotland Reserve drawdowns.

Both of these budget revisions have been approved by the Scottish Parliament following a full scrutiny process by the Finance and Constitution Committee.

As you will appreciate Budget Revisions are necessarily a snapshot of the position at that time and this is a continually evolving picture. Additional details on the ongoing allocation of the remaining funding for the response to the Covid-19 emergency (circa £2,700 million) will be set out in the Spring Budget Revision later this month. The Cabinet Secretary wrote to the Finance Committee on 8 December Minister for Public Health.dot (parliament.scot) and again on 28 January providing interim updates on how the remaining consequentials are being allocated.

The planned allocations for 2021-22 are detailed in the recently published Scottish Budget 2021-22 Scottish Budget 2021-22 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

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