£125 million extra funding that John Swinney announced: FOI release

Information requested

Details of the £125 million of additional funding that the Deputy First Minister announced was available for the Scottish Budget 2023-24 during the Stage 3 debate. You requested the confirmation that was received by the Deputy First Minister relating specifically to the £125 million, when that confirmation was received and the details of where these additional Barnett consequentials arose from with regards to UK expenditure.

Response

The UK Supplementary Estimates process concluded on the 21st of February 2023 with the funding position formally confirmed at this point.

Following discussions between Scottish Government and HM Treasury officials on improving the UK Supplementary Estimates process some initial estimates of Barnett consequentials were provided to the Scottish Government in advance of the process concluding. This was on the understanding that these remained subject to change.

Details of the breakdown of all additional funding allocated to the Scottish Government as part of the Supplementary Estimates process has been published online by the Scottish Affairs Committee.

This information is detailed on the 3.4(a) Resource Changes tab of the excel file ‘Scotland Office and Office of the Advocate General, Supplementary Estimate 2022-23: Annex A Scottish Government Tables for 2022-23’ which can be found online here.

£105.527 million of additional Barnett Consequentials were received as part of the Supplementary Estimates process. In additional non-Barnett funding of £17.329 million for a Home Office comparability factor error, £2.142 million of Business Rates Repayment and £0.552 million for the Cash Management Scheme rebate were also confirmed at this time. This funding totals £125.550 million. This funding relates to, and will be received during, the 2022-23 financial year. The improvement in the 2022-23 financial year will help to support the 2023-24 financial position.

As detailed in the excel file there are a number of other non-Barnett funding amounts that were formally confirmed as part of the UK Supplementary Estimates. These amounts essentially related to funding previously anticipated by the Scottish Government - such as £375 million of funding from the Spillover agreement and the £41 million of cost of living consequentials - or relates to budget cover transfers that were passed on to relevant business areas directly.

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