Scottish Budget 2026-27, Spending Review and Infrastructure Delivery Pipeline: strategic integrated impact assessment

5. Evidence Used

5.1 What Evidence was Used

To understand the impacts of the 2026-27 Budget, SSR and IDP, we drew upon a wide range of evidence, including:

• Portfolios’ own evidence. Portfolios were asked to carry out a strategic integrated assessment across all five statutory duties: the PSED (and the related Scottish specific duties); the Fairer Scotland Duty; the CRWIA; the Consumer Duty; and the ICIA.
• Distributional analysis of tax, welfare and selected areas of resource spending.^[73]
• Impact database pilot, where portfolios scored the impact of a subset of Level 4 lines across all duties to provide a cross-government view of impacts, see Annex B.
• Child poverty tagging pilot study, which attempted to identify spending most likely to influence child poverty outcomes, see Annex B.
• Intersectional analysis pilot study, identifying where impacts may fall disproportionately on people facing multiple, overlapping inequalities.
• Review of wider evidence, including evaluation findings, previous impact assessments conducted by the Scottish Government, strategic integrated impact assessments produced outwith Scotland, and other relevant external research.^[74]
• Ministerial workshop held in November 2025 and subsequent Ministerial discussions.
• Engagement with the OECD, NACWG, and EHRBAG, which helped shape the integrated approach.

5.2 How Evidence was Used in the Process

The evidence gathered was actively used throughout the process to inform assessment and decision-making for all three fiscal events.

• August – September 2025 (Phase 1): Evidence returned from the portfolio commissions was considered alongside the development of initial portfolio allocations.
• October – November 2025 (Phase 2): Portfolios identified top unfunded or reduced resource and capital spending priorities with the most substantive impacts across the statutory duties. This information was used to inform the Ministerial workshop.
• December 2025 – January 2026 (Phase 3): Evidence was consolidated into portfolio assessments, focusing on a small set of strategic decisions aligned with the First Minister’s priorities, supported by assurance statements for each statutory duty.

5.3 Future Developments

This year, we invested in new analytical tools to strengthen the evidence base underpinning our overall assessment, including the pilot study activity set out in the annexes and further development of the distributional analysis to look at changes over the SSR period. In line with our commitment to continuous improvement, we are taking forward a structured evaluation in 2026, informed by internal learning, feedback from external stakeholders and evidence gathered from portfolios via survey and focus groups. This will help us understand what worked well and what did not, and ultimately inform our next steps which we will discuss with stakeholders, including EHRBAG.