Scottish Government

Scottish Spending Review 2011 and Draft Budget 2012-13 sets out the Scottish Government's spending plans.

Key proposals outlined in the document include:

• focusing on accelerating economic recovery to create jobs, by switching over three-quarters of a billion pounds from resource spending to support capital projects up to 2014-15
• investing in the low-carbon economy to cut emissions and create new jobs
• implementing a shift to preventative spending, with specific funding of £500 million over the next three years to encourage joint working across the public sector in adult social care, early years and tackling re-offending
• passing on in full to the NHS in Scotland the Barnett consequentials from increases in UK health spending
• freezing basic pay for 2012-13, to protect employment and continue the policy of no compulsory redundancies for those areas under direct Ministerial control, while paying the uprated Scottish Living Wage of £7.20 an hour and ensuring that any employee earning less than £21,000 continues to receive at least a £250 rise. Ministers will also be freezing their own pay in 2012-13 for the fourth year running
• delivering 125,000 modern apprenticeships and use public procurement as a lever for job creation, by ensuring that major public contracts deliver new training and apprenticeship opportunities
• introducing a new public health levy to tackle the cost of problems associated with alcohol and tobacco, through a business rates supplement paid by large retailers of both tobacco and alcohol from April 2012
• increasing, reluctantly, employee pension contributions for NHS, teacher, police and fire schemes in Scotland, with in-built protection for the low-paid