How SNP's Budget reveals their shameful moral cowardice over two-child benefit cap

The SNP are providing false hope to people in poverty for political reasons

When a politician of the governing party steps up to deliver a financial statement on how the revenues and spending for the year ahead will be managed, we call it “the Budget”. It is almost always controversial, in that it reflects a certain political view and will therefore be popular with some, and less so with others.

When that politician makes the central pitch about what the Budget will do but, as the detail reveals, the proposed action will not take place until a couple of years hence and even then is not costed or does not have any funds secured to deliver the intended action, then it reveals a chicanery that condemns that politician and any who choose to support it.

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When, on closer inspection, it is realised that the only realistic route to fund the policy requires another government to agree; that that government is not even of the same party but one that regularly opposes it and has on a number of occasions publicly repudiated that specific policy as unaffordable and therefore not a priority; then we should surely draw only one conclusion – the Budget presented is little more than performative and the central offering is a fraud.

The SNP will struggle to persuade Labour to fund the abolition of the two-children benefit cap in Scotland (Picture: Andy Buchanan/WPA pool)The SNP will struggle to persuade Labour to fund the abolition of the two-children benefit cap in Scotland (Picture: Andy Buchanan/WPA pool)
The SNP will struggle to persuade Labour to fund the abolition of the two-children benefit cap in Scotland (Picture: Andy Buchanan/WPA pool) | Getty Images

Lack of leadership

There can be no lower morality in a politician than one who offers to provide a welfare benefit in the name of saving children from poverty, when he or she knows the proposed action needs approval from another party in another place which will not support it – and requires taxpayers from another jurisdiction to fund the vast majority of said benefit.

I would hope readers might agree with me that such an approach to presenting a Budget should be comprehensively condemned as dishonest and cowardly. Dishonest because the person and government making the offer have no means to deliver the pledge and cowardly because the minister and government know they do not have the funds to make the idea become reality and are unwilling to show true leadership by making spending cuts or raising taxes so the funds can be produced.

All of the foregoing has been described in neutral and objective terms, without party names, titles or personalities so the basics of my argument are not tainted by any bias. Let me now join the dots and colour in the picture of what actually happened last week.

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Labour won’t give SNP the funds

Last Thursday, the Scottish Government’s Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Shona Robison, gave the annual Budget statement at Holyrood where the top line – the main claim to its achievement – was it would end the two-child cap on welfare benefits by a commitment to do so within the Scottish Budget.

When due diligence is applied to the policy announcement the abolition of the benefit cap has no funds available to make it a reality, just funds to explore the policy; to actually deliver the policy, the UK’s Labour Government (which has already told its own backbenchers that it will not be abolishing the cap) will have to find the funds when it already admits it faces raising taxes and borrowing next year just to preserve the status quo (which includes financing a £2.5 trillion debt).

There is no prospect of the UK Labour Government providing funds for such a policy that would solely be delivered in Scotland.

For Shona Robison to offer such an unfunded policy that might give some of the poorest Scots people hope, when she knows in her heart it needs others to sanction it, is surely morally reprehensible. For John Swinney, his Cabinet and MSPs to cheer it on as if it is an honest and well-intentioned offering is no better. It is pure party sectarianism, seeking to exploit those in poverty, by those who enjoy a higher rate salary with expenses and a parliamentary pension.

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Spending cuts or taxes

The Finance Secretary could have avoided any accusations of political fraudulence and moral exploitation by showing true leadership and bravery, but she is no Joan of Arc, no Jenny Lee, and took the coward’s route. Instead of relying on funding that will not appear, leaving her able to blame her opponents, Robison could have said she would cut government fat or raise taxes as part of making the moral arguments in its favour.

She could have argued such a bold choice demonstrated how Scotland could take decisions for itself and finance the policies from its own means, rather than relying on generous subsidies from outside Scotland. A strong, confident believer in Scottish independence, speaking as the Finance Secretary of the Scottish Government no less, could have made a nationalist case for a Scottish-funded, Scottish-delivered policy.

The sad fact for Scottish nationalists is the current SNP is not, at its core, a nationalist party seeking to deliver independence – it is now reduced to a self-serving rump of politicians bereft of ideas, absent of competence and without any vigour that comes from having a spleen – but merely enjoying their power and privilege at others’ expense. Such a parcel o’ rogues are clearly willing to try any low-ball, any deceptive trick, to provide as much worthless false hope as it takes to squeeze out a majority in the 2026 Holyrood elections.

Labour’s honesty

In comparison – and readers will know I am no fan of Keir Starmer or Rachel Reeves – the Labour party and its leadership has, by its willingness to take some decisions that will mean hardship for some, been willing to enter into a genuine debate that they can be held accountable for. Many, nay most, of Labour’s decisions I consider wrong, but some have at least been honestly put. Not so the SNP.

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On the basis of this sham Budget, the likes of John Swinney, Shona Robison and those who support such spineless politics deserve to be shown the door when the opportunity comes in 2026.

Brian Monteith is a former member of the Scottish and European parliaments

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