Barnett Formula

My Lords, the Barnett formula matters because something like half of all public expenditure in Scotland is funded by it. It is distributed on a population basis. However, as the noble Lords, Lord Forsyth and Lord Barnett, have said, if Scotland can distribute its own public finance downwards on a needs basis, as it does and as it should do, it can receive it on a needs basis, as it should but does not. The House of Lords committee, this House and the other place in its January debate this year all said so, apart from HMT, whose coalition Minister said that the Government, "““do not plan to change the Barnett formula””.—[Official Report, Commons, 18/1/11; col. 206WH.]" Yet since our report was published two years ago, public finances have deteriorated and services have been cut while, as the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said, £4.5 billion of unmerited, inherited and unearned money is going to Scotland, allowing the SNP to provide additional services courtesy of the British and English taxpayer. On the formula, if you assume that England represents £100 per head, Wales gets about £112 per head on population, and should get about £115 per head on needs; it is marginally underfunded. Northern Ireland is about right. Scotland should get about £105 per head but instead gets subsidised to the extent of £120 per head—or a subsidy worth about £1,600 a Scottish citizen or, as the noble Lord said, an overexpenditure of about £4.5 billion. No other public moneys are distributed solely by population in this reckless way. Local government, health and social security are all based on need, as they should be. This is not rocket science. It is not complicated. It is done in all other areas of local government policy. For example, in local government you look at needs, which may be the number of elderly receiving attendance allowance, children with special needs or whatever, and you relate that to resources and the capacity to meet those needs—the revenue support grant is often the difference between those two—so that, rightly, Winchester will get less than Wigan, even if their populations are broadly similar, as their needs and resources are different. That is fair. I do not have much time in which to attempt further financial forensics, although that needs to be done. However, my second point is a moral point. Consider every teenager in Birmingham who is going to lose their education maintenance allowance; every young person in Cornwall who is discouraged from applying to university by virtue of the increased tuition fees; every large family in inner London who will face cuts in housing benefit and may lose their home; every frail pensioner in Norfolk struggling to meet increased care costs. That teenager, that would-be university student, that large family losing their home, that frail pensioner; they are all subsidising—effectively paying for—Scotland’s handouts of free tuition, free personal care and frozen council tax. I object. This House faces welfare reform bills with many of us pleading with the Government for £75 million here and £100 million there for some of the most vulnerable people in our community, yet £4.5 billion is going to Scotland on no other basis than that it always has done. Where is the Treasury’s much vaunted financial prudence? Where, indeed, is our collective moral compass? It is not fair. It is not right. It is not decent and it should end—gradually, slowly; I accept all that, but it should end.