Current status: Answered by Ivan McKee on 30 September 2025
To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of any impact on its capital funding budget of the funding decisions taken by (a) the current and (b) any previous UK administration.
The funding decisions taken by the UK Government flow into UK Spending Reviews and budgets, which also set out the Scottish Government’s overall capital funding. The capital budget as laid out in the UK spending review on 11 June 2025 delivers a real terms cut to the SG CDEL budget by the end of period covered. In financial year 2029-30 the SG CDEL budget is 1.1% lower in 2025-26 terms. While the front-loaded nature of the capital budgets as well as the sizable increase in financial transactions are welcomed they do not offset the loss of spending power from this real terms reduction. It is widely accepted that the recent inflationary environment has had a greater effect on capital budgets particularly construction related projects. Therefore, the loss of spending power on infrastructure could be even greater than the numbers show. This has been compounded by historic real terms cuts to our Capital settlement by previous governments leading to a backlog in maintenance.