Shocking population figures show why Scotland must beware wrong kind of 'Reform'

The commission’s view of “Scotland’s Fiscal Sustainability” is no mere exercise in dry economic hypothesising since, very soon, its implications are coming to a household near you; too few people and not enough money to provide services we rely on.

Basically, the prognosis is that Scotland’s population is too small, too old and too ill. Over the next 25 years, the proportion of the Scottish Government’s budget spent on health and social care will soar at the expense of other services “because the population in Scotland will age earlier than in the rest of the UK”.

There will, on current trajectories, be “a 26 per cent increase in the number of people aged 75 to 84 and a 95 per cent increase in the number of people aged 85 and over”. At the same time, our Barnett Formula share will fall due to lower population growth than the rest of the UK.

A warning from the Western Isles

Meanwhile, more than a quarter of people in Scotland between 16 and 64 are economically inactive, with no sign of that changing. When it is suggested that getting some of them off benefits and into work or training might be good for them, as well as the economy, outrage ensues.

We need not look a quarter century ahead to foresee the implications. In some parts of Scotland, they are already all too visible. I tend to view things through the prism of the Western Isles where there are, for example, too few care workers to allow people to leave hospital, so the islands have the highest bed-blocking rate in Scotland.

Council funding has suffered the highest cut of any local authority in Scotland – 18 per cent over a decade – due to a cruel and perverse formula which punishes depopulation and falling school rolls. So the cycle continues. This is Scotland of the future in miniature, without radical change.

Unless there is economic growth and a substantially increased workforce, these trajectories cannot be escaped. The jigsaw of contributory factors represents by far the biggest challenge facing any Scottish Government, regardless of who is in power, yet is never addressed as a coherent whole – only cherry-picked for political advantage.

College funding cuts

This week, for example, we heard that most of Scotland’s further education colleges face another real terms cut, after losing 17 per cent since 2022. This should be beyond belief but isn’t. Not only is it an issue in its own right but part of that jigsaw.

When economic growth depends on expanding and skilling the workforce, why is this not the centrepiece of educational priorities, rather than a perennial poor relation?

But then we come to the thorny question of migration with the threat of Reform UK hanging over the political discourse. Maybe not as much as in some other parts of the UK but sufficient to make it necessary for the positive case for in-migration to be argued rather than assumed.

Scotland needs migrants

We can’t do much about the birth rate and getting more of the existing population into work will not happen overnight, if at all. In the short term, the most obvious way of expanding the workforce and active population is through migration, as the Scottish Fiscal Commission confirms.

Net migration to Scotland, it says, is projected to be 30,000 people per year on average, including 20,000 from abroad and 10,000 from within the UK. It needs to be more.

In making that argument, it is essential that migration is presented as part of the jigsaw rather than a solution in itself, as the Scottish Government has long pretended in order to pick a fight with Westminster. These postures have to be abandoned and the positive case made, not least by pointing to the commission’s warnings about the alternative scenario. That is a test for both governments.

Self-inflicted skills shortages

There is no doubt Labour ministers are trying to work constructively with the Scottish Government and migration is one area in which a civilised relationship could produce sensible outcomes. Not only Scotland but other parts of the UK have labour shortages in specific sectors. Some pilots in regionalising migration policy should be possible, without downplaying legitimate concerns about practicality.

As I have previously pointed out, significant numbers of foreign workers are already being deployed in major sectors of the Scottish economy because of our self-inflicted skills shortages. Would longer-term residents bringing families as well as skills not be a better investment, accompanied by a crash course in producing our own future labour force?

Another area in which policy could be flexible involves students and their dependants. Scotland has a particular interest because our universities are suffering acute fiscal pain from the foolish over-dependence on fee-paying foreign students that was forced on them. Whatever the history, in current circumstances, we need to make it easier for people to come – not more difficult.

Hard facts versus Reform’s sentiments

Reform is tapping into a sentiment, rather than worrying about such detail or implications. It would be a mistake to assume that this sentiment does not have enough resonance to make a significant impact on Scottish politics, particularly if others are dragged along with it.

Instead of trying to freeze them out of political debate on the basis of assumed moral superiority, it would make more sense to take the arguments on, which cannot just rely on liberal sentiment – it has to be backed up by hard facts.

In this as in other respects, the Scottish Fiscal Commission’s report – however uncomfortable the implications for those running the show – should be promoted as a platform for necessary debate, rather than gather dust in the interests of political convenience.