David Cameron today drops his biggest hint that a future Conservative government would scrap the 30-year-old Barnett Formula.
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Asked if it was time to get rid of the formula, Mr Cameron says: "This cannot last forever, the time is approaching ... If we replace the Barnett Formula with a needs-based formula, Scotland has very great needs and Scotland will get very great resources."
Sounds simple, doesn't it? This magical needs-based formula will easily replace tired old Barnett. Well, it's not simple; an acceptable needs-based formula will be damn difficult.
For example, how do we assess Scotland's need for spending on health care? We know that in general the health of the Scottish population is poorer than elsewhere in the UK: on average we die earlier than those south of the border; the prevalence of various conditions of ill-health is greater in Scotland; and we probably drink and smoke more while our children are fatter. So how much extra health spending per head do we 'need'? There are no automatic answers, especially if you consider that some of this extra need may in a sense be our fault.
So who could be trusted to draw up this needs-based formula? I don't see either HM Treasury or the Scottish Government as disinterested parties in preparing what would be a highly political calculation.
Which of course is why the Barnett formula was drawn up in the 1970s on the back of a fag packet, thus avoiding what would have been a lengthy, complex and disputatious process to assess relative needs. And has it served the UK so badly for the past 30 years that the formula must now be regarded as broken?
2 comments:
I think the Barnett formula has served us so well that one can only conclude that the fag packet used for its calculation was 'Lucky Strike'.
If it's not broke, don't fix it.
The British government,under Scottish pressure,only got away with this in the late '70's because the English were not paying attention and were still gulled by the sirene call of Britishness. Even so Westminster took great care to keep the whole thing quiet and not draw England's attention to it, all with the ongoing cooperation of the British media and political parties of course.
The English still don't have any governmental body to represent them and still rely on the devious disdainful mercies of the British/Scottish government to give us anything at all .
But they sure as hell are listening now. Any replacement for the Barnett Rules will need an assessment of England's needs, just like Scotland has had for years. The replacement process will be disputatious, it will be ongoing but it will not be essentially complex. The issue is essentially very simple. Scotland has been getting away with highly preferential funding for 40 years on a very a flimsy evidential basis while there is very little to none at all for England problems.
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