Written by Stephen Bailey.

It’s that time of year again! The annual Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland Report (GERS) has just been published. According to the Scottish Executive’s (Holyrood) own website (see ‘sources’ below for a link to this site), GERS is described thus:

‘Q: Who produces GERS?’
A: GERS is produced by Scottish Government statisticians. It is designated as a National Statistics product, which means that it is produced independently of Scottish Ministers and has been assessed by the UK Statistics Authority as being produced in line with the Code of Practice for Statistics. This means the statistics have been found to meet user needs, to be methodologically sound, explained well and produced free of political interference.’

So, GERS is produced by the Scottish Executive’s own economists and statisticians (‘produced by Scottish Government’), is ‘methodologically sound’ (provides an accurate picture of the state of Scotland’s public expenditure and revenue finances) and is impartial in its analysis (‘produced free of political interference’) BY THE SNP’s OWN ADMISSION (please remember this for future reference).

The latest GERS Report reveals the following salient hard, objective facts:

– Being in the UK means £22.7 billion extra per year for Scotland’s public services.
– Public spending in Scotland is £2,417 higher per person than the UK average, helping to protect the NHS, schools, and communities. £20,418 is spent on average for every single person north of the border.
– Scotland makes up around 8.2% of the total UK population, but 9.1% of UK public spending was in Scotland.
– Revenue generated: £88.546 billion. Public purse requirement: £111.230 billion-Scotland’s deficit is therefore £22.684 billion.
– Including North Sea oil and gas revenues, Scotland has a net fiscal deficit of £22.68 billion in 2023-24, compared with just over £18 billion the previous year. As a percentage of Scotland’s GDP, the deficit has increased from 8.4% to 10.4%, whereas the UK deficit as a whole fell during the same period.
– Since 2014, when Scotland voted to remain in the UK, Scotland benefitted from £195.5 billion of extra spending for her public services.

With these facts in mind, the assertion that ‘Scotland props up the UK’ and that ‘North Sea oil subsidizes the UK’ is simply not backed up by the facts.

In 2023 (the last full year figures are available), Scotland had an estimated nominal gross domestic product (GDP) of £218.0 billion, including oil and gas extraction (which represents only a tiny fraction of that total, £4 billion according to the 2023-24 GERS Report). GERS 2023-24 also reports that Scotland’s total revenue was £88.546 billion.

By comparison, Greater London ALONE (i.e. excluding the London metropolitan area) produced just over £500 BILLION (half a TRILLION) pounds, around 1/4 of the UK’s annual GDP of £2.274 TRILLION for that year.

The London metropolitan area produces around £1 TRILLION, so the GDP of the entirety of London is slightly more than £1.5 TRILLION. Greater London’s economy alone therefore is more than THREE times the size of the ENTIRE Scottish economy, and London’s as a whole is over NINE TIMES BIGGER THAN SCOTLAND’S TOTAL GDP.

It generates more revenue per head than any other part of the UK. In fact, much of the South of England does, and many areas in the rest of England have a higher GDP than Scotland. As a whole, the UK ‘s GDP (total wealth produced) is JUST OVER EIGHT TIMES BIGGER THAN SCOTLAND’S TOTAL GDP.

Again, with these facts in mind, it is impossible to assert that ‘Scotland subsidizes the UK’ as the hard, objective, verifiable, empirical data clearly shows this is just NOT the case.

The myth of the oil argument

The oil argument is yet another SNP-sponsored myth, like their often repeated ‘Scotland subsidizes England’ assertion.

The McCrone Report on the oil fields around the UK was written in 1974, 50 years ago. Profitable oil reserves have largely dried up in the following years. Top petrochemical experts have stated that there are around ten years of profitable oil left to extract in the oil fields situated around the seas of the UK. See https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scottish-independence/11046740/Sir-Ian-Wood-15-years-of-oil-left-before-independent-Scotland-spending-cuts.html
What’s more, the new oil fields found to the West of Scotland are situated too deep in the sea bed to be easily profitably extracted. The cost of extraction would be greater than the revenue gained from selling the oil, so no sensible company would be prepared to participate in such an unprofitable, unpredictable venture.

Considering the objective facts above, it’s clear that England, or the UK, doesn’t steal Scotland’s money.

In fact, the rUK (England, Wales and Ulster) is Scotland’s biggest single customer by a very substantial margin, as 59.7% of Scotland’s exports go to the rest of the UK, nearly FOUR TIMES her trade with Europe and very substantially more than her combined trade with both the EU and the rest of the world combined.

Scotland pays her share into the collective UK pot, like England, Wales and Northern Ireland do, and that significantly increases the UK’s overall economic standing in the world by several places. Scotland certainly DOESN’T subsidize or prop up the rest of the UK, but we’d all be worse off without her in the Union. Economically, the constituent parts of the UK are undeniably substantially better off together.

So, the Union is mutually financially beneficial to the entire UK (without even mentioning the other many other areas of mutual benefit, such as politically, socially, culturally, militarily et al.) That money is then distributed around the parts of the UK, dependent on need, and Scotland gets MORE public spending per head thanks to fiscal transfers than England, Wales or Ulster.

The Scottish Executive’s (Holyrood) own annual economic report, GERS, demonstrates how much the UK Government helps to support the country’s finances and is a serious setback for the SNP’s attempts to break up the UK as it highlights the complete lack of credibility of their economic plans for separating Scotland from the rest of the UK.

In summary

These figures underline the collective economic strength of being in the United Kingdom. The pooling and sharing of resources across the UK means that Scots benefit by £2,417 more per head in public spending than the UK average (the same is true for Wales and Ulster, who receive a similar sized fiscal benefit from being in the UK), which equates to substantially more money for schools, hospitals and other public services. Separating Scotland from the rest of the UK would mean the end of such fiscal transfers and so vastly less money for Scotland’s public services, coupled with ultra-austerity in order to finance the risible services that would exist.

The SNP needs to inform the public what separation would actually cost and what a new Scottish currency would be, its value, how much it would cost to fund and its impact on mortgages, wages, interest rates, among other questions, but it won”t. Why? Because the separatists know that they have no answers to offer, no viable plan for financing a separate Scotland and the objective, verifiable, empirical facts, as laid out conclusively in the GERS Report, which the SNP THEMSELVES produce and accept as entirely accurate, prove it

Sources for the data in this article:

House of Commons Library: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn04033/

The Office for National Statistics: https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/governmentpublicsectorandtaxes/publicsectorfinance/articles/countryandregionalpublicsectorfinances/financialyearending2023

Scottish Executive (Holyrood) website: https://www.gov.scot/publications/government-expenditure-revenue-scotland-gers-2023-24/

NB: The article does not represent the views of Scotland Matters.

Want to see Scotland under the SNP?