Letter from the Convener to the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and the Economy of 16 September 2021
Dear Cabinet Secretary
Thank you for your letter of 13 September in relation to the proposed timetable for the 2022-23 Scottish Budget.
The Committee appreciates your ongoing dialogue on this important matter, along with your support for our aim to deliver effective and meaningful scrutiny of the Scottish Budget. As you are aware, the Committee’s strong preference, as set out in its letter of 7 September, was for an early December publication date for the Scottish Budget. Furthermore, our acceptance of the proposal to publish the Medium-Term Financial Strategy (MTFS) on the same day as the Scottish Budget was predicated on both documents being published in early December. We also committed to considering how we could schedule specific time in our forward work programme to examine the MTFS to ensure scrutiny was not compromised by the timing of publication.
As you know, the Written Agreement anticipates that the Budget Bill will normally be introduced no more than three weeks after publication of the UK Autumn Budget. We understand that this year’s budget process presents particular challenges and that it would be unrealistic for the Scottish Government to be held to this timetable. However, the date proposed (16 December) would leave only five working days, before Parliament goes into recess on 24 December, for committees to familiarise themselves with extensive budget and MTFS documentation and to agree their approaches to scrutiny. In our view, this would present practical difficulties to individual committees and be detrimental to our collective efforts to achieve an effective and constructive budget process this year. We therefore ask that you bring forward the proposed publication of both the Scottish Budget and MTFS to 9 December, which we consider would better allow committees to plan and undertake proper detailed scrutiny of the Scottish Government’s spending plans.
The Committee notes that the Scottish Government also plans to publish, for public consultation, a framework for the resource spending review in December, alongside the 2022-23 Scottish Budget and MTFS. We would be grateful if you could provide further details of this consultation, including a proposed timetable for both this framework and the spending review, to enable the Committee to plan future scrutiny within its forthcoming work programme.
I look forward to hearing from you regarding these important matters.
Yours sincerely
Kenneth Gibson MSP
Convener
Finance and Public Administration Committee