Farage's proposal is just the latest undermining of the Barnett system

This, according to senior criminologists and ex-police officers, is not just a failure of admin, it’s the result of austerity-era cuts that stripped police forces of capacity, dismantled the state-run Forensic Science Service in 2012, and left fragmented, underfunded systems to cope with ballooning evidence demands. Austerity didn’t just weaken institutions; it disassembled infrastructure.

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While these failings may seem like an English and Welsh concern, they tell a broader UK-wide story. Because when public services are cut in England, the Barnett formula translates those cuts into reduced budget allocations for Holyrood, too.

Scotland has long borne the dual burden of being denied full fiscal autonomy while also seeing its devolved budget squeezed by decisions made for entirely different priorities south of the Border. Cuts to police, criminal courts, housing, public health, and local government in England have systematically eroded the spending floor on which Scottish services rest. So when justice collapses in England, it affects Scotland financially – even if the governance is separate.

And now, against this backdrop of UK-wide budgetary degradation, Nigel Farage has called for the scrapping of the Barnett formula entirely.

It’s a move that’s politically convenient, historically illiterate, and economically reckless. But more than anything, it’s a distillation of what’s already happening by stealth. Successive UK governments have undermined the foundations of the Barnett system – and devolution itself – for more than a decade.

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It’s obvious to every Scot that Farage’s view relies on a mischaracterisation of Barnett as a subsidy, when in fact it simply ensures Scotland receives a proportional share of changes to spending in England for devolved services. It doesn’t calculate entitlement or need, it mirrors policy shifts at Westminster. If England increases education or health spending, Scotland sees a relative uplift. If England cuts deeply, Scotland’s budget falls, even if demand remains or rises.

This has led to an absurd and punitive dynamic where Scotland loses funding not by its own decisions, but because England spends less. And when Scotland chooses to maintain higher standards in public services, it must do so from a proportionately smaller pot.

Perversely, it doesn’t stop there, though. Since the 2016 Brexit vote, Westminster has begun bypassing devolved governments directly. Funds like the Levelling Up Fund and Shared Prosperity Fund are allocated by UK ministers to local authorities, often bypassing Holyrood entirely. Promises made in The Vow on the eve of the 2014 independence referendum to deliver near-federal powers and respect Scottish decision-making have unravelled.

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The Internal Market Act has overridden devolved laws under the banner of market “consistency”. Powers that returned from Brussels in areas like food standards, procurement, and agriculture were supposed to go to Holyrood, but in many cases they were retained by Westminster. The Sewel Convention, once a safeguard of devolved consent, has been treated as optional.

Farage’s proposal to scrap Barnett isn’t an outlier, it’s the natural conclusion of a decade-long pattern: cut services in England, shrink the Barnett allocation, bypass devolved institutions, and then blame the devolved nations for “taking more than their share”.

There’s no consideration of fairness, or implementation of a needs-based analysis, it’s a strategy of erosion; one that gouges out the Union from the centre while draping itself in the flag.

The failures of justice in England, catastrophic as they are, expose a deeper injustice: the systematic unravelling of the constitutional promises made to Scotland.

Ron Lumiere
via email