ALMOST £2 billion in extra funding has been used to ease the impact of the pandemic in Scotland, Kate Forbes says.
The sum, which tops £1.8bn, has been targeted at businesses and services and includes all but £330 million of the latest money sent to Holyrood in the form of Barnett Formula consequentials.
That sum, it is promised, has been kept aside as “contingency” funds to be used to meet “further urgent demands” created by Covid-19 and Brexit by the end of March.
Details have emerged in a letter from the Finance Secretary to Bruce Crawford MSP, convenor of Holyrood’s Finance and Constitution Committee.
In it, she states: “From the outset, I have ensured that the money we receive is distributed as quickly as possible to where it is needed most. Our decisions have provided vital additional resources to our NHS, schools and other public services, they have kept our transport system running and provided much needed financial support for businesses impacted by the pandemic.”
She goes on: “Our limited borrowing powers mean we do not have flexibility to increase spending to meet demand and therefore must manage our expenditure – much of which is demand-led so cannot be accurately calculated in advance – within the consequentials provided.”
Around £600m of the sum has been directed to health and social care, including on the Covid vaccination programme, the £500 pay bonus for staff in these fields, and ongoing test and trace work. It has also gone into the provision of free school meals during holiday periods.
Another £570m has gone on business support, including the hardship fund for newly self-employed people.
Police Scotland, the Scottish Funding Council and others have shared a £500m pot to cover pandemic-related income shortfalls and support transport services.
The newest consequentials take the total of coronavirus-related cash diverted to Holyrood to £8.2bn.
Further information on Covid spending will come in the spring Budget revision.
Forbes said she’d been working in “an exceptional and dynamic set of circumstances”.
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