Bus companies urged to apply to run new Cumbrian routes
"The long-term success of these services hinges on two things: strong operator engagement to deliver reliable routes, and active public use to keep them running," she said."To local residents, the message is simple - if you want buses, use them. Your travel choices today will help shape the services available tomorrow."The council said it was funding a number of routes, which had recently been restored or reintroduced, such as the Number 60 from Silloth to Maryport.
The council previously said a number of new services were being considered but whether they were launched would depend on whether operators applied to run them.Potential new routes included a service from Carlisle to Hadrian's Wall, Cockermouth to West Cumbria Hospital, Bootle to Millom, and a Whitehaven Town Loop.Rollo has said not all of the new routes may attract tenders due to "market constraints, such as vehicle and driver availability".
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The Guardian
24 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Boosting productivity will be main priority of autumn budget, Reeves says
Rachel Reeves has promised to use her autumn budget to prioritise fixing Britain's dismal record on productivity as she sought to downplay mounting tax speculation with a focus on economic growth. Setting out her priorities for the budget for the first time, the chancellor said tackling the efficiency of the economy through higher investment and a fresh assault on planning rules would form the backbone of her tax and spending plans. Writing exclusively for the Guardian, she said: 'If Labour's first year in power was about fixing the foundations, then the second year is about building a stronger economy for a renewed Britain.' However, Reeves pushed back against what she called 'speculation' over tax increases being explored by the Treasury to close a yawning gap in the public finances that is estimated to reach more than £40bn. 'The months and weeks before any budget are filled with people speculating about – or claiming to know – what tax and spend decisions I will take or what the Office for Budget Responsibility [OBR] will conclude,' she said. 'This budget is no different – I get that. I will set out the decisions I take in the responsible manner.' The chancellor's comments come as the government braces for gloomy official figures that are expected to show the economy narrowly avoided flatlining in the second quarter. With Labour under mounting pressure over its management of the economy, City forecasters predict that Thursday morning's update from the Office for National Statistics will find that GDP rose by 0.1% in the three months to June. The UK outpaced its G7 peers in the first quarter with growth of 0.7%. However, experts have blamed tax increases announced by Reeves in her first budget, last October, and Donald Trump's trade war for a marked hit to activity. The chancellor, aiming to shrug off the anaemic performance, argued the government was taking steps to break a 'cycle of low growth' in which Britain had become trapped under Conservative governments. Laying out one of the central themes of her budget, which could be held in November, Reeves said the government would aim to boost the productive capacity of the economy by allocating investment for infrastructure projects and ripping up planning rules. 'If renewal is our mission and productivity is our challenge, then investment and reform are our tools,' she said. Sign up to Business Today Get set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning after newsletter promotion Earlier on Wednesday, the Guardian revealed that Keir Starmer was preparing to revive plans for the Northern Powerhouse Rail project, which would improve transport connections between the main cities of northern England. Reeves has ordered Treasury officials to draw up proposals for slashing additional red tape in the UK's planning system to speed up large infrastructure projects. 'We are providing that investment and unblocking the barriers to it too,' she said. Successive chancellors have pushed to solve what economists refer to as a 'productivity puzzle' that has contributed to the UK's sluggish growth since the 2008 financial crisis. Productivity growth is considered one of the key determinants for raising living standards and wages over the long term. However, progress to drive up the measure of output per hour of work has stalled in recent years. The chancellor's renewed focus comes as the Treasury braces for a potentially devastating downgrade in productivity forecasts from the OBR, which could blow a £20bn hole in the chancellor's tax and spending plans. With the shortfall made worse by a weak growth outlook, higher debt interest payments, and a series of U-turns on welfare cuts, Reeves and the prime minister are laying the groundwork for tax rises and changes from September, before the autumn budget. The Guardian revealed on Tuesday that the Treasury was looking at ways to raise more money from inheritance tax to reduce the deficit. Labour MPs have been pushing the idea of a wealth tax, but changes to inheritance tax thresholds could be similarly controversial. Sarah Coles, the head of personal finance at Hargreaves Lansdown, said it was 'hardly surprising' that inheritance tax was 'back in the frame'. It is among a limited suite of taxes that can be changed, despite the government's commitment to not increase the basic, higher or additional rates of income tax, employee national insurance or VAT. 'The system is so fiendishly complex that there are an enormous number of rules, and therefore tweaks, that the government could consider,' Coles added.
Times
37 minutes ago
- Times
Whining about Scottish ‘austerity' is baseless, absurd and idiotic
Like Christmas and birthdays, the annual GERS festival seems to arrive sooner than you think. Has a year really passed since the last edition of the Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland figures was published? Why, yes it has. This year's numbers are remarkable, best accompanied by an indecently large dram of cask-strength liquor. For public spending in and for Scotland amounted to 52 per cent of Scottish GDP last year. That is lower than in France, Finland, Belgium and Austria but higher than in every other European country. Public spending in Sweden and Denmark, for instance, equals 48 per cent of GDP. In Norway, the figure is 46 per cent. Further afield, other countries with which the Scottish government sometimes likes to compare Scotland contrive to thrive with a much smaller public sector. Public spending in New Zealand is 42 per cent of GDP. This is the context in which to understand the claims made by Scottish government ministers that Scotland is once again enduring some form of 'austerity'. And the thing to understand about this whining is that it is baseless, absurd and idiotic. This is a country of Big Government. If government departments and other agencies struggle to meet their obligations despite this obvious largesse it is because they are inefficiently or incompetently run and because ministers lack the courage to say 'No' to demands for more and more spending. Mercifully, Scottish taxpayers are not required to pay for all of this. In 2024-25, £91.4 billion was raised in taxes in Scotland but government spending amounted to £117.6 billion. This is a notional deficit — notional because Scotland is part of the United Kingdom — of some £26.5 billion. That is equivalent to 11.7 per cent of GDP. John Swinney should pray to the ghost of the late Joel Barnett every night for it is his eponymous formula that grants Scotland its privileged place within the United Kingdom: a relatively wealthy part of the realm funded as though it were a poor one. By way of illustrating the scale of Scotland's deficit, it may be worthing noting that last year Zimbabwe ran a deficit equal to 10.4 per cent of GDP. Indeed, according to data compiled by the International Monetary Fund, the only independent countries running real deficits greater than Scotland's notional one are East Timor, Kiribati, the Maldives and Ukraine. At this point nationalists will customarily enter the chat to say that, look, GERS only tells us about Scotland's current fiscal position and of course an independent Scotland would do things differently. This is true. GERS offers a snapshot of the position from which an independent Scotland would begin life and GERS also makes it very clear that many things would have to be done very differently in an independent Scotland. To start with you would begin with something like £10 billion in tax increases and around another £10 billion in spending cuts. That would still leave Scotland running a deficit like most countries but it would be a manageable one of around 3 per cent of GDP. That, you will also recall, is the price of admission to the European Union. Every existing tax would doubtless be increased and new taxes created (on this front, if few others, Scotland's political class is endlessly resourceful). But to give an indication of the scale of tax hikes required, £10 billion is about half of total income tax receipts in Scotland last year. Swingeing tax increases of this sort would almost certainly encourage capital flight of a sort this country can ill afford. Just 5 per cent of Britain's top-rate tax-payers live in Scotland which is one reason why although Scotland has 8 per cent of the UK population it contributes just 6.8 per cent of income tax revenue. Tax increases of this sort, however, would only get the job half done. You would still need to cut £10 billion of public spending. That is roughly equivalent to 50 per cent of the NHS budget. Good luck winning an independence referendum on that manifesto. • The facts of life are demanding chiels. It is too often and too easily forgotten that in the years after the 2008 financial crisis Scotland's notional deficit was broadly the same as the UK's real one and, in some years and thanks to buoyant oil revenues, Scotland's relative fiscal position was marginally healthier than the UK's. This was unusual and atypical but it allowed Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon to sell independence as a financial opportunity, not, as it obviously is now, a giant leap into an enormous fiscal black hole. Even then, all lilies had to be gilded. As Sturgeon relates in her new memoir, oil prices were then high but Salmond 'spent a lot of time persuading the government economists to push their projections higher, raking them to the outer edges of credibility'. In other words, the Yes campaign suborned officials to present a fantastical vision of the riches an independent Scotland would enjoy. This is something worth remembering. The SNP are doubtless happy to win without lying but why take that risk when untruths may buttress the liberation cause? Economic self-interest does not always prevail and voters may cheerfully vote for their own impoverishment but, even so, this year's GERS festival is a reminder that the appeal of independence is for the time being strictly notional and hypothetical. That imaginary Scotland is a comfortable place to dwell but the nature of today's fiscal realities is such that even SNP politicians might be wary of asking the national question again. This is why, in the end, they are comfortable not asking it, for no amount of creative accountancy can make these sums add up.
Times
37 minutes ago
- Times
Public spending rise leaves economy with £26 billion black hole
Rising health and benefits spending as well as a decline in North Sea oil taxes have meant a widening of Scotland's fiscal deficit to more than £26 billion, official data has shown. The annual Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland (GERS) report noted there had been a 'weakening' of public finances as spending grew more quickly than revenue. Shona Robison, the finance secretary, suggested the nation's finances are 'sustainable' although business groups described the update as 'disappointing'. The net fiscal deficit for the 12 months to March this year was £26.5 billion, equivalent to 11.7 per cent of GDP, compared to £21.4 billion, or 9.7 per cent of GDP, in the previous financial year. The UK deficit for 2024-25 was 5.1 per cent of GDP. Revenue from the public sector in Scotland increased by 1.5 per cent to £91.4 billion while spending grew 5.6 per cent to £117.6 billion. The report noted the spending rise reflected the larger amounts going to 'devolved social security programmes' while the weaker growth in revenue will have been affected by the SNP's council tax freeze under Humza Yousaf. Scotland's more generous welfare provisions, such as the Scottish child payment, are attempting to tackle poverty but many economists, including those from the Scottish Fiscal Commission which helps to inform Holyrood's budget setting, have raised concerns about the growing burden on the state at a time when public sector finances are strained. The burgeoning public sector pay bill in Scotland is another area about which economists have worries. The GERS document covers devolved and UK government revenue and spending as well as assigning Scotland portions of industries such as oil and gas and defence. The publication is produced by public sector statisticians without political interference. It shows spending per person in Scotland was equivalent to £21,192, up from £20,251. The UK figures were £18,523 for 2024-25 and £17,940 for the previous year. Ian Murray, the Scottish secretary, argued that shows the benefit of being in the UK as Scots get £2,669 more spent on them per person than the UK average. Murray acknowledged people will 'rightly expect to see better outcomes' given higher spending levels and said giving Holyrood ministers full fiscal autonomy would lead to 'turbo-charged austerity and economic chaos for Scotland'. He said: 'These figures underline the collective economic strength of the United Kingdom and how Scotland benefits from the redistribution of wealth inside the UK.' Craig Hoy, from the Scottish Conservatives, said GERS showed the 'huge, and rising, union dividend' which Scots got from being part of the UK. He said: 'If we lost that, as we would if the SNP achieved their goal of Scottish independence, it would have a catastrophic impact on the nation's finances.' Robison pointed out GERS is calculated by assuming existing constitutional arrangements are in place so was not a measure of how the country might fare as an independent nation. She highlighted the recent success of Ireland as evidence of how small countries can thrive and stated GERS showed devolved revenue had grown 9.7 per cent in 2024-25 while spending was up 6.8 per cent. Robison said: 'The decisions we have taken here in Scotland are helping support sustainable public finances. 'Scotland's public finances are better than many other parts of the UK, with the third-highest revenue per person in the UK, behind only London and the South East. • 'Falling oil prices and a decrease in extraction present challenges going forward, but we are clear in our support for a just transition for Scotland's valued oil and gas sector, which recognises the maturity of the North Sea basin and is in line with our climate change commitments and energy security.' The Fraser of Allander Institute at Strathclyde University said the reduction in North Sea oil and gas tax receipts assigned to Scotland, which went from £4.9 billion to £4.1 billion as energy prices and production dropped, had played a part in the deficit widening. Michelle Ferguson, the director of CBI Scotland, said: 'The fact that Scotland's fiscal deficit has widened again in the latest GERS figures will be disappointing news for firms and households alike. 'Healthy public finances are essential to delivering high-quality public services, which in turn support business confidence, investment, and the skills base Scotland needs to grow its economy. 'With economic growth now forecast to be weaker over the coming months and firms still facing a heavy cost burden from stubborn inflation, it is vital that both the Scottish and UK governments continue to back business through this difficult period.'
