The SNP minority government has passed its budget and avoided triggering an early election after securing a coalition of support at Holyrood.
The tax and spending plans, which provide £21.7bn for health and social care, including £200m to reduce waiting times and tackle delayed discharge, passed the first parliamentary stage, marking a significant success for first minister, John Swinney, who promised a more consensual style of politics when he took office in May 2024.
Although the SNP has governed as a minority since its partnership with the Scottish Greens was abruptly ended by Swinney’s predecessor, Humza Yousaf, intensive negotiations between finance secretary, Shona Robison, and opposition parties after December’s draft budget secured the support of the Scottish Greens, Scottish Liberal Democrats and Alba’s only MSP Ash Regan. The clear path was cemented when Scottish Labour committed to abstain last month.
The budget also contained plans to reverse two controversial UK Labour policies – cuts to winter fuel payment and the two child benefit cap, which the Scottish government is working to scrap by April 2026 – against a background of collapsing support for the party north of the border.
With the SNP likely to have made political capital had Scottish Labour voted against those mitigations, leader Anas Sarwar was left scrambling to gain purchase, challenging Swinney to accelerate the two child cap plans in return for Labour support, which ultimately proved unnecessary.
Recent polling indicates that Scottish Labour is paying a heavy price for unpopular decisions made by the UK government, while Swinney – only in post a few weeks when the general election was called, which saw the resurgent Labour party winning swathes of seats from the SNP – has steadied his own parties fortunes.
After a succession of bruising scandals, including the ongoing investigation into SNP finances, self-styled “full-on John” has focused his government on voter priorities, starting the year with a series of set-piece events on child poverty, the economy and the NHS. This realignment also prompted former first minister Nicola Sturgeon to observe in a recent interview that the party’s founding principle was “off the radar”.
But despite a recent Joseph Rowntree Foundation report suggesting that Scotland would buck the UK trend of rising child poverty because of Holyrood’s more generous child benefits and its plans to scrap the two-child benefit limit, ailing public services continue to challenge Swinney’s administration.
YouGov polling published on Tuesday found that 58% of Scots disapproved of the record of the SNP government, although disapproval of the UK government was even higher at 66%, including half of those who voted for Labour in last year’s general election.
With the Holyrood elections in May 2026 on the horizon, Scottish politics remains fluid, with Reform also gaining support north of the border, attracting voters in central belt byelections last autumn from all political hues.
Introducing the budget bill at Holyrood on Tuesday afternoon, Robison warned that this was a time of “continued and unprecedented challenges to the public finances” and called for clarity from the UK Treasury on compensation for the increase in employer national insurance costs for the public sector, as she pledged £144m to help councils fund the hike.
During Tuesday’s budget debate, Scottish Conservatives’ shadow finance secretary, Craig Hoy, condemned that “cosy, left-wing consensus” that had emerged from the negotiations and accused opposition parties of “endorsing the SNP’s failed legacy”.
But Ross Greer, who undertook negotiations for the Scottish Greens, said there was indeed a consensus “around need to build a more compassionate society” and that his party had secured “record investment in climate action, a funding increase for local services including schools, social care and bin collections, free ferry travel for young islanders and free bus travel for asylum seekers.”
Scottish Liberal Democrat leader, Alex Cole-Hamilton, likewise commended his party’s role in securing more cash for drugs and neonatal withdrawal services, long covid sufferers, local healthcare and family carers.
Scottish Labour’s finance spokesperson Michael Marra warned that, while his party’s MSPs would not “stand in the way of [UK] Labour’s record investment improving services on the frontline”, he doubted it would do so under SNP mismanagement.
