LIE AFTER LIE FROM THE SNP: NO, SWINNEY, SCOTLAND DOESN’T ‘SUBSIDISE THE REST OF THE UK’, AS THE FOLLOWING DATA PROVES
Written by Stephen Bailey.
The annual ‘Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland’ Reports (GERS) 2023-24 and 2024-25 are available for analysis and are extremely revealing for several reasons. According to the Scottish Executive’s (Holyrood) own website (see (1) or (2) in ‘the ‘Sources’ section below), 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 and published under the authority of the Scottish Government’s Chief Statistician (’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 2023-24 and latest 2024-25 GERS Reports (see (1) and (2) in the ‘Sources’ section below) reveal the following salient hard, objective, verifiable facts:
For the 2023-24 period:
Being in the UK meant £22.7 billion extra per year for Scotland’s public services.
— Public spending in Scotland was £2,417 higher per person than the UK average, helping to protect the NHS, schools, and communities. £20,418 was spent on average for every single person in Scotland.
— Scotland made 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 was therefore £22.684 billion.
— Including North Sea oil and gas revenues, Scotland had 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 had increased from 8.4% to 10.4%, whereas the UK deficit as a whole fell during the same period.
For the 2024-25 period:
-Scotland’s total public sector expenditure in 2024-25 was estimated at £117.6 billion. Scotland’s total public sector revenue in 2024-25 was £91.4 billion, leaving a total deficit of £26.5 BILLION Pounds.
– Scotland’s deficit has now increased by almost £10 billion in just two years, putting the final nail in the coffin of John Swinney’s Scottish ‘independence’ dream.
– Scotland’s net fiscal deficit was 11.7% of GDP, with this growing larger every year and ‘underlining the collective economic strength of the United Kingdom and how Scotland benefits from the redistribution of wealth inside the UK.’
– Including North Sea oil and gas revenues, the current net fiscal deficit of £26.5bn compared to £22.68bn in 2023/24 and just over £18bn in the year before that.
– While the deficit as a percentage of Scotland’s GDP increased from 10.4% to 11.7%, the UK deficit also increased slightly but is still less than half, at 5.1%. Total Scottish executive revenue increased from £88.5bn to £91.4bn but is still not enough for Scotland to survive without the UK Government.
– SNP expenditure per person in Scotland is also £2,669 higher than the rest of the UK, with this known as the ‘union dividend’. It is an increase of £358 on the previous year [£2,311 in 2023-24]. Scotland accounts for around 8.2% of the UK population, yet 9.1% of UK public spending is in Scotland.
— Since 2014, when Scotland voted to stay in the UK, Scotland benefited from £195.5 billion of extra spending for her public services.
The GERS figures can be used to explain Scotland’s past economic performance (as an integral part of the UK) to inform understanding of the future choices a possible independent Scotland would face.
They describe the starting point (the ‘run-rate’) from where Scotland can start to consider the possible impact and fiscal implications of independence. The GERS figures provide the foundations on top of which any credible economic case for independence must be built.
To suggest that how Scotland’s fiscal balance would look based on the taxes she’s used to raising and the public spending she’s used to receiving says ‘nothing’, ‘almost nothing’ or only ‘relatively little’ about an independent Scotland’s potential finances is frankly insulting to the intelligence of Scots.
In 2023 (the last full-year figures are available for both Scotland and England), Scotland had an estimated nominal gross domestic product (GDP) of £218 billion, including oil and gas extraction (which represents only a tiny fraction of that total, £4.9 billion according to the 2023-24 GERS Report). GERS 2023-24 also reports that Scotland’s total revenue was £88.546 billion (See (1) in ‘Sources’ for full details).
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. (3) and (4)
The London metropolitan area produced around £1 TRILLION in 2023, so the GDP of the entire London area was 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. (3) and (4)
It generates more revenue per head than any other part of the UK. In fact, every county in England has a higher GDP than Scotland’s total, as even the smallest English counties exceed Scotland’s total GDP. As a whole, the UK‘s GDP (total wealth produced) is JUST OVER EIGHT TIMES BIGGER THAN SCOTLAND’S TOTAL GDP.
The myth of the oil argument
The oil argument is yet another SNP-sponsored myth, like their often-repeated ‘Scotland subsidises England’ assertion.
The McCrone Report on the oil fields around the UK was written in 1974, more than 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 seabed 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 60%, worth £55.4 billion, of Scotland’s exports went to the rest of the UK in 2023, 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 (£37.7 billion).
Scotland pays her share into the collective UK pot, as England, Wales and Ulster does and that significantly increases the UK’s overall economic standing in the world by several places. Scotland certainly DOESN’T subsidise 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 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.
Scotland gets an excellent deal out of the Union. Scotland’s current (2024-25) deficit (the difference between what she raises and what she spends) is equivalent to 11.7% of Scotland’s economy (measured by Gross Domestic Product).
By comparison, the UK as a whole has a current (2024-25) deficit of only 5.2% of GDP. That means, by sharing economic risks with the rest of the UK, Scotland has a smaller deficit. Added to this, with just over 8.2% of the population, Scotland pays 8.6% of tax but receives 9.2% of spending.
Being part of the UK means £106.6 billion was spent on Scotland’s public services in 2022-23, the highest ever recorded expenditure in Scotland.
The myth of Scotland copying other small countries after ‘independence’ – SNP are CONFUSED ON A ‘SOVEREIGN FUND’
The SNP’s 2018 Growth Commission Report was yet another complete dud.
Its conclusions that allegedly drew on the experiences of other small countries like New Zealand and Norway, and which asserted that a Scotland separated from the rest of the UK could build up a similar-sized sovereign fund, were flatly contradicted by these countries themselves.
It was pointed out to the SNP that it took these countries 30 years to build up a sizeable fund and their economies were of a different kind. Therefore, the SNP were comparing apples and oranges. Once again, the SNP was wrong on the assumptions behind their plans for ‘independence’.
For example, see https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/new-zealand-model-may-not-be-right-for-scotland-warns-kiwi-mp-1428851
In fact, Norway has repeatedly rejected comparisons between its economy and an independent Scotland, emphasising significant structural and historical differences:
* Norway’s government, including former Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store, stated that ‘comparisons between Norway and Scotland have some clear limitations’, noting that Norway has been independent for over a century and took decades to build its oil wealth and sovereign fund.
* Norway’s oil revenues are largely channelled into a sovereign wealth fund (worth ~$1.3 trillion), not directly into the national budget, unlike Scotland’s current fiscal model.
* The Norwegian government did not bail out its banks during financial crises, contradicting SNP claims that an independent Scotland could emulate this model.
* Norway’s high public ownership of key industries (energy, banking, telecom) and progressive taxation are not mirrored in Scotland’s current economic setup.
* Recent reports highlight that Scotland lags behind Norway and Denmark in devolved policies, such as outdoor education, despite SNP leaders citing them as economic models.
While Scotland and Norway share cultural and geographical ties, and both are involved in North Sea energy cooperation, Norway’s unique history, fiscal discipline, and state ownership model make direct comparison unrealistic.
In summary:
With the above facts in mind, the assertion that ‘Scotland subsidises or props up the UK’ and that ‘North Sea oil subsidises the UK’ is simply not backed up by the hard, objective, verifiable, empirical facts.
The above data underlines the collective economic strength of being in the United Kingdom. The pooling and sharing of resources across the UK means that Scots currently benefit by £2,669 more per head in public spending than the UK average (the same is true for Ulster and Wales, which 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 possibly for decades in order to finance the risible services that would exist (financed by vastly increased taxes), if they hadn’t been axed for being unaffordable.
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:
(1) 2023-24 Government Expenditure and Revenue Report Scotland (GERS): https://www.gov.scot/publications/government-expenditure-revenue-scotland-gers-2023-24/
(2) 2024-25 Government Expenditure and Revenue Report Scotland (GERS): https://www.gov.scot/publications/government-expenditure-revenue-scotland-2024-25/documents/
(3) Office for National Statistics (ONS) GDP data for all UK regions (I.e. Scotland, England (all counties), Wales and Ulster (‘Northern Ireland’): https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/grossdomesticproductgdp/bulletins/regionaleconomicactivitybygrossdomesticproductuk/1998to2023
(4) House of Commons Library: London’s contribution to the National [UK] economy: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cdp-2025-0153/
© 2017-2026 Stephen Bailey
