Why John Swinney and the SNP should be quietly confident after wooing Greens and Lib Dems on Budget

“Even in opposition, Greens consistently deliver results,” was the verdict from finance spokesman Ross Greer as he announced on Tuesday his party would now be supporting the 2025/26 Scottish Budget.

But it was Mr Swinney and his stability agenda that looked firmly in control. The First Minister has managed to woo not just the disgruntled Greens, but also the Lib Dems at little immediate cost to the Government.

The support of both parties will not change the outcome of next month’s Budget vote, as Scottish Labour’s decision to abstain meant the spending package was always going to pass.

But this is really an achievement for Mr Swinney. When he became First Minister, he said he wanted to work with all parties in Holyrood to achieve consensus as he believed this would lead to better outcomes for the people of Scotland.

And what better way to prove this than the area Mr Swinney is most comfortable with - the Budget.

He can now spin a positive narrative to his inaugural Budget as First Minister, having convinced the Greens and the Lib Dems to come on board, rather than having the package scrape past on technicalities.

The decisive outcome has effectively left the Government in a stronger position than it has been in months - arguably since the fall of Mr Yousaf as first minister and the Bute House Agreement that positioned the Greens within government ranks collapsing.

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The modest nature of the extra commitments required to win the Greens and the Lib Dems looks, on paper, like a major win for Mr Swinney and his Government.

Backing from the Greens was secured with initiatives to spend an extra £3 million on expanding free school meals to S1-S3 pupils in eight council areas who receive the Scottish Child Payment from August 2025, although we do not know where this pilot will be.

There will also be a year-long trial to cap bus fares at £2 in one region, starting in January 2026.

In total this will cost £10m, including £3m in the 2025/26 Budget. Again, we do not yet know the location for the pilot, although Finance Secretary Shona Robison said she envisaged it would be an area that covers both urban and rural communities.

The nature restoration fund will be increased to £26m and the Government will look at the Greens’ desires to have parking fines devolved to councils and to get more clarity on the infrastructure levy sunset clause.

Green MSPs are still bitter about being turfed out of government, conceding they no longer enjoy the influence they had a year ago under the Bute House Agreement. But at least publicly, they have indicated they are attempting to be the bigger person.

Mr Greer said: “The job of the Scottish Greens is to lift kids out of poverty and tackle the climate emergency, not play games with other parties.

“We could have taken the opportunity to give the SNP a bloody nose here, but it wouldn’t have fed a single child, reduced emissions, protected our natural environment and it would have created no jobs whatsoever.

“Our job is to improve people’s lives and protect the planet. Playing political games is great fun for politicians, but that is not our job.”

The Lib Dems were meanwhile widely expected to support the Budget given how many policies in the original draft were clearly in the party’s favour.

Most of the small wins for the Lib Dems in the Budget negotiations focus on the specific policies they campaign on, such as £2.6m to help babies born addicted to drugs, £3.5m for colleges to run programmes in care and offshore wind, £700,000 for the Corseford College in Renfrewshire, and £1m for hospices.

The SNP will also now consider replacing the Gilbert Bain Hospital in Lerwick, Kilmaron Special School in Cupar and Newburgh Railway Station - all areas that traditionally vote Lib Dem.

Lib Dem leader Alex Cole-Hamilton said: “I think it was clear when Labour signalled they were going to abstain that an election was off the table.

“The Lib Dems believe that the change Scotland needs is a change of government. But if that’s adrift from us for the next 15 months, then I think it’s important to do the responsible thing and find a way to improve the Budget.

“The Budget is not a referendum on the performance of the SNP, which by any metric is failing the people of Scotland, but it is a means of unpicking some of the damage.”

It has not actually cost the SNP that much to get the Greens and Lib Dems on side. Together the deals will cost £16.7m. But this could have a bearing on how things play out at the polls in the 2026 Holyrood election.

Both the Greens and Lib Dems are doing well in polling and are expected to increase their existing numbers next year.

Mr Greer said he believed the Greens could work the Budget negotiations in their favour during the election campaign to dissuade voters from supporting Labour.

“There’s a massive contrast here between what we have delivered that is going to lift kids out of poverty, tackle the climate crisis, reduce the cost of public transport and Labour, who asked for nothing, got nothing, and are letting the Budget pass anyway,” he said.

In terms of where the additional funding is being taken from, the £3m extra for the nature restoration fund is coming from ScotWind. This is money generated from renting out Scotland’s seabed to offshore wind developments and is supposed to be earmarked for decarbonisation and renewable energy projects.

In the past, the Government has used ScotWind money to plug funding gaps in day-to-day spending. However, Ms Robison said spending ScotWind money on nature restoration was a “good investment”.

The remaining £13.7m is coming from a reduction in debt servicing costs.

Ms Robison said: “The assumptions that were being made around the borrowing levels [when the draft Budget was set in December] have changed and therefore debt servicing costs have reduced on the back of that.”

The finance secretary was also clear on what she thought of Labour abstaining from the Budget vote, saying: “It was a fine enough chat, but they didn’t come and say ‘we would like to secure this’ - the Lib Dems and the Greens had specific proposals.

“They [Labour] didn’t come up with anything specific. If you’re asking was that a missed opportunity for Labour, I think it was.”

The negotiations - combined with encouraging polling in recent months for the SNP - have importantly left Mr Swinney with a solid platform to build on for re-election in 2026. He may reflect on it as one of the best days of his premiership so far.