SNP plans to axe more than 12,000 jobs to plug near £5bn gap 'easier said than done'
Concerns have been raised over SNP ministers’ ambition to protect frontline services while shedding thousands of jobs to reverse a 15-year trend of employment growth.
The Scottish Government's independent financial forecaster has warned plans to axe thousands of jobs from the public sector without harming frontline services is “easier said than done” amid warnings a forecast £5 billion funding gap could rise to almost £6bn.
Finance Secretary Shona Robison has published her Government’s long-delayed medium-term financial strategy, which starkly warns ministers are braced for a funding gap of £2.6bn for day-to-day revenue spending and £2.1bn for capital investment plans by 2030 to cover proposed spending commitments.
More than 12,000 jobs in the devolved public sector workforce are set to be cut in the coming years to make the target. Ms Robison was unable to rule out compulsory redundancies if all other methods did not produce results at the scale required.
She confirmed the Scottish Government would cut the devolved public sector workforce by 0.5 per cent on average per annum over the next five years.
Statistics published by the Scottish Government on June 10 state that employment in the devolved public sector in Scotland was 550,000 as of March.
The Scottish Government has claimed that frontline services will not be impacted, with the savings and job cuts hoped to be made in back offices.
But Professor Graeme Roy, chairman of the Scottish Fiscal Commission, has warned the ambition to reverse a trend of employment growth in the public sector workforce would be no easy task.
Prof Roy stressed public sector employment made up “over half of the Scottish Government budget”, adding “it’s such an important part of how we deliver public” services.
He said: “They will be hoping for when they do start to pull out public sector workers, that does not have an effect on public services. That requires really careful planning and it’s where the Government has not been for 15 years.”
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Prof Roy insisted that being able to “protect job numbers in key areas like the NHS” would be ”easier said than done”.
He said: “To take 12,000 people out of the public sector in four years might seem relatively small in the overall scale of the public sector. But that goes against everything we have seen in recent years, which has seen quite substantial growth in public sector employment.
“It’s easy to say this is the plan. Actually, how you do it and ensure it does not have an impact on public services, essentially, is going to be the key challenge the Government faces over the next few years.”
Prof Roy warned it was not as straightforward for the Scottish Government to “be taking numbers back to where they were just after Covid”, warning “this is quite a different policy agenda by the Government to scale back”.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies has warned the £2.6bn gap that will need to be filled for day-to-day spending could actually become £3.5bn due to "optimistic" assumptions made that earnings will grow in Scotland faster than the rest of the UK.
The chief forecaster warned the extra £900m potentially being needed to be found alongside the £2.6bn for revenue spending was “a genuine risk”. But he said a £2.6bn gap was the Scottish Fiscal Commission’s “central projection”.
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