We need to look at where our money goes and why we get so little back

The National

9 hours ago

Lately, I've found myself coming back to that question again and again. It's the title of a book published last month in France – Où sont passés nos milliards – by Lucie Castets, a high-ranking civil servant and co-founder of the public sector collective Nos Services Publics (Our Public Services). Castets is one of the sharpest voices on the French left today. She's not an activist or a party leader. The 38-year-old is a technocrat who has worked inside the system and who believes that public money must serve the public good – not just in theory, but in practice.
She came to prominence in the summer of 2024, during France's snap parliamentary elections. As the left regrouped under the banner of the Nouveau Front Populaire – a broad coalition uniting Greens, Socialists, Communists and La France Insoumise – Castets was floated as a possible compromise candidate for prime minister. Her name stood out precisely because she wasn't from a party machine. She embodied a kind of pragmatic radicalism rooted in public service – and she brought credibility to a growing movement demanding that state budgets be treated not as fixed constraints, but as tools for justice, solidarity and long-term planning.
Reading her work from Scotland, it's hard not to draw parallels.
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Alexander Dennis, a Scottish bus manufacturer headquartered in Falkirk, has received millions in public support over the past few years – through schemes like ScotZEB, aimed at greening public transport and supporting domestic industry. And yet, just days ago, the company announced it plans to shut down its Scottish manufacturing operations and relocate to Scarborough in England. Four hundred direct jobs are at risk. Up to 1600 more are tied to the wider supply chain.
The Scottish Government says it will 'do everything it can' to support the workers. But what did it do before this announcement? First Minister John Swinney has admitted he was made aware of the plans 'weeks ago'. And yet, there's been no clear explanation of whether public funding continued to flow to the company during that time – and if so, under what conditions. This is not just about subsidies or contracts. It's about accountability. It's about whether governments are acting as stewards of the common good – or as passive bystanders to corporate decision-making.
Alexander Dennis is not an isolated case. It is part of a larger pattern in Scotland and across Europe: public money flows freely, often with the right intentions, but without strategic conditions. We talk about fair work, local benefit and the green transition – but we don't enforce it.
As Paul Davies, the firm's managing director, bluntly put it: 'The stark reality is that current UK policy does not allow for the incentivisation or reward of local content, job retention and creation, nor does it encourage any domestic economic benefit.'
This is precisely what Castets calls out. Her book is a powerful takedown of the idea that 'the coffers are empty'. In fact, as she shows, public budgets in France have remained stable in volume. What has changed is how the money is spent. The share of GDP allocated to public services like health, education and justice has stagnated or declined. Meanwhile, public support to businesses – via tax credits, subsidies and exemptions – has ballooned, doubling from 3.1% of GDP in 1979 to 6.2% today. That's roughly €185 billion a year.
She shows that many of these schemes – such as the CICE (a tax credit for competitiveness and employment) and R&D tax credits – are not only ineffective but regressive. They disproportionately benefit large firms and deliver poor returns in terms of job creation. As Castets notes, it would have been far more efficient, in terms of both cost and outcomes, to use that same money to hire well-paid civil servants.
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Beneath the technocratic language of 'modernisation' and 'efficiency' lies a clear ideological tilt: prioritising the needs of the private market over collective investment. Castets calls this a form of 'ideological unravelling' – a steady hollowing out of the state's ability to act, framed as fiscal necessity.
In an interview, she said: 'We need to rethink society in terms of interests – economic and social interests – if we are to rebuild a fairer system that people can actually identify with. And that's clearly not the case today.'
She doesn't oppose all support to business. What she demands is transparency and democratic scrutiny. She argues that the debate on public spending is rigged: we are told constantly that there is no money for services, while few challenge the enormous – and often ineffective – flow of public money into private hands.
As she puts it: 'Today, the state acts as a crutch for a capitalism that has failed to organise either the fair distribution of wealth or the ecological transition. The world of tomorrow must be one in which the state plays a strategic role. We need to give the state back the means to think long term.'
Scotland urgently needs this conversation.
Because here, too, we are presented with a false dichotomy: either we nationalise everything, or we let the market sort it out. In practice, we end up doing neither – or worse, we let public money prop up failing market logic without any of the promised social returns. We try to make the market work better, rather than asking whether certain needs should even be left to the market in the first place.
The result is what we're seeing now: a public that's being asked to foot the bill for a 'green transition' that too often looks like corporate welfare. A political class that wants credit for good intentions, but avoids hard questions about power, ownership and control. And workers – from Falkirk to Grangemouth – who are once again being told their jobs are collateral damage in someone else's strategy.
But there is another way.
Lucie Castets and others have laid the groundwork for a renewed economic vision in which public investment is not just reactive, but purposeful. In which the state acts not as a backstop for broken markets, but as a co-creator of public value. This vision is already being articulated on parts of the French left – by figures like united left MP Clémentine Autain and Socialist MP Boris Vallaud – and it resonates far beyond France.
It should resonate here, too.
A genuinely progressive government in Scotland – whether devolved or independent – cannot be content with managing decline. It must be willing to ask: Who controls investment? Who benefits from public money? And what do we demand in return?
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Alexander Dennis should be a wake-up call. Not just about industrial policy, but about democracy.
If public money is always on the table, then the public must be on the board. We need mechanisms that link funding to long-term commitments: not just on jobs, but on supply chains, training and ownership. We need procurement and subsidy rules with teeth – rules that reward domestic value creation, not just technical compliance. And above all, we need the political courage to say that good intentions are not enough.
Scotland deserves an industrial policy that matches its ambitions. That means moving beyond the comfort zone of managing market failure and towards a strategic, democratic economy.
And maybe the best place to start is with Castets's question: where have our billions gone?
Because if we can't answer that, how can we know what to build next?