Ministers had £350m... but didn't spend it despite high taxes and public services crying out for funds

By MICHAEL BLACKLEY, SCOTTISH DAILY MAIL POLITICAL EDITOR Published: 20:37, 18 June 2026 | Updated: 20:41, 18 June 2026 SNP ministers failed to spend more than £350million of their budget for last year despite the pressure on public sector funds. The Scottish Government faced criticism for continuing to force families to pay the highest taxes in the UK and starving some public services of cash while sitting on the eye-watering £358million underspend in 2025/26. But ministers said the money will be carried forward into future years and there would not be a loss of government spending power.  Scottish Conservative finance spokesman Craig Hoy grilled the SNP over the underspend The underspend includes £312million from resource funding, which is used for day-to-day spending, and £42million for capital funding, which is used for new projects, as well as £4million of financial transactions.  Details were contained within the provisional outturn for the 2025/26 Scottish Budget. Scottish Conservative finance spokesman Craig Hoy said: ‘The SNP’s spin doesn’t disguise the fact that they have once again failed to spend a staggering amount of money available to them, particularly on tackling the housing emergency. ‘This £350 million-plus underspend could have been spent on struggling frontline services or giving Scots a much-needed tax cut.  'Despite record levels of funding at their disposal, the SNP continue to force Scots to pay the highest taxes in the UK, yet their economic incompetence means growth is stagnant, employment is down and inactivity continues to soar.’ In a statement to MSPs about the government’s financial position, new Public Finance Minister Hannah Mary Goodlad said the provisional fiscal outturn for 2025/26 was £55.9billion, against a total budget of £56.3billion, and she said this represents an underspend of £358million, or 0.6 per cent of the total budget. She said the government must generate an underspend ‘to guard against any late movements in devolved pacts, social security spend, demand-led programmes, as well as providing contingency against post-year end adjustments’. No comments have so far been submitted. Why not be the first to send us your thoughts, or debate this issue live on our message boards. By posting your comment you agree to our house rules. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual We will automatically post your comment and a link to the news story to your Facebook timeline at the same time it is posted on MailOnline. To do this we will link your MailOnline account with your Facebook account. We’ll ask you to confirm this for your first post to Facebook. You can choose on each post whether you would like it to be posted to Facebook. Your details from Facebook will be used to provide you with tailored content, marketing and ads in line with our Privacy Policy.