Mitigating UK Austerity

Protecting Scots from the Worst of Westminster

While it should not have to, and while the money could be put to better use with independence, the SNP Scottish Government has spent well over £1.2 billion mitigating the impacts in Scotland of successive UK Governments’ austerity policies.

It has sought to ensure that struggling households here in Angus and across Scotland are shielded from the most callous cuts of Westminster.

In 2024/25, the Scottish Government was forced to spend £90.5 million mitigating harmful welfare policies, including the widely hated Bedroom Tax and Benefit Cap which were continued at the UK level under Keir Starmer’s Labour.

His government has refused to scrap the Bedroom Tax, a Tory era measure which cuts housing support for those with a ‘spare’ bedroom, and only eventually changed course on the Benefit Cap, which penalises larger families and vulnerable people, after years of pressure from the SNP.

The Scottish Government had already committed to effectively scrap the impact of the two-child limit in Scotland, in order to ensure 20,000 fewer children would be living in relative poverty in 2026-27. With the Labour Government at Westminster shamed into following suit, the SNP is reinvesting the £10m pledged for this purpose to further fund emergency anti-poverty support including through the Scottish Welfare Fund.

We are also investing over £97 million in Discretionary Housing Payments – an increase of nearly £7m from the previous year – to provide vital support to households struggling to meet their costs.

41,985 Discretionary Housing Payment awards were made across Scotland in 2024/25, helping households avoid rent arrears, eviction, and homelessness – all caused or exacerbated by Labour’s policies.

But austerity decisions taken by the UK Government continue to hold back Scotland’s progress. Think how much better this money could be invested in root cause preventative measures with the full powers of independence.