Scottish Government’s £750m capital boost unravels again

The Scottish Government's troubled spending review has taken another hit as it has been revealed that their grand plan to boost the economy involved plundering the resource budgets of the Enterprise Agencies.

They claimed a few weeks ago that they were transferring over £750m from resource to capital but were unable to explain how they were doing this. Figures now detail that £280m of the funding will be raided from the Enterprise Agencies.

Scottish Conservative Finance Spokesman, Gavin Brown MSP said:

"This is yet further evidence that the SNP budget is truly all over the place. Their much vaunted £750m of capital to boost the economy is going to be taken in large measure from the agencies charged with helping businesses and growing the economy.

"Under SNP plans, the Enterprise Agencies could lose almost a third of their resource budget. What they give to the economy with one hand, they are removing with the other. I am calling on them to publish what they believe the economic impact would be from such a move.

"This was a smoke and mirrors budget from the SNP from the very start - each time you examine it just gets worse."

The Scottish Government has confirmed that up to £280m of the £750m transfer is expected to take place within the Enterprise Agencies' budget, after giving them "the flexibility to use resource budget to support capital programmes."

The Enterprise Agencies' spending review budget amounts to a combined £978m. A transfer of £280m pounds would mean a cut of 29%.

Enterprise Agencies will either have to suffer a near-fatal blow to their operation or won't be able to go ahead with the resource capital transfer – exposing the £750m figure as bogus.

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