The latest annual ‘Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland’ Report (GERS) (2024-25) is available for analysis and is extremely revealing for several reasons. 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:

– 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 increased to a huge £26.5 billion, or 11.7% of GDP, with this growing larger every year and ‘underline 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 GERS figures, which are produced by the SNP-controlled Holyrood devolved executive’s Chief Economist, showed a 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 makes up around 8.2% of the UK population, but 9.1% of UK public spending was in Scotland.

These figures clearly demonstrate the collective economic strength of the United Kingdom and how Scotland benefits from the redistribution of wealth inside the UK. By pooling and sharing resources with each other across the UK, Scots benefit by £2,669 more per head in public spending than the UK average. It also means that devolved administrations have the financial strength of the wider UK behind them when making decisions.

That means more money for schools, hospitals, policing and other public services if the devolved executive chooses to invest in those areas. People in Scotland will rightly expect to see better outcomes.

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

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 2022, the last year that data is available for.

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 (e.g. counties) 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 subsidises 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 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

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 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 Ulster do 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 e.t.c.) 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.

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 £2,669 more per head in public spending than the UK average (the same is true for Ulster and Wales, who receive a similarly substantial fiscal benefit from being in the UK), which equates to substantially more money for schools, hospitals, and other public services. Scotland makes up around 8.2% of the UK population, but 9.1% of UK public spending was in Scotland. 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.

The SNP needs to inform the public what separation would 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:

Government Expenditure and Revenue Report, 2024-25: https://www.gov.scot/publications/government-expenditure-revenue-scotland-2024-25/

GDP data for London, 2022: