Deficits, Deficit Gaps and Fiscal Transfers

To understand what is going on when we talk about implied fiscal transfers between different parts of the UK (as discussed here), it's perhaps easiest to think of what happens when we split the bill in a restaurant.

To know whether or not we benefit from splitting the bill, we only need to know two things:

1. How much of the bill are we responsible for creating?
2. How much of the bill do we actually have to pay?

If the first figure is greater than the second, we benefit from splitting the bill (we receive an implied transfer from the others we're splitting the bill with).

In the context of the debate around Scottish independence, the first of these questions is answered by the Scottish Government's own GERS report. This tells us, based on a series of explicit assumptions, how much of the UK's deficit (the bill) Scotland is responsbile for.

The second question is more contentious, as there are no "official figures" as to how responsibility for the national debt (the cumulation of annual deficits) is shared¹  - so how much of the bill does Scotland have to pay?

Fortunately there is broad consensus around the view that the UK's debt should (or at the very least reasonably could) be shared on a population basis.

1. The GERS figures include a population share of the interest charge generated by the UK's debt - given that debt is merely the accumulaton of the UK's deficits over time, that is effectively a population share of the UK's (cumulative) deficit
2. The Independence White Paper in 2014 stated "Scotland and the rest of the UK will agree a share of the national debt. This could be by reference to the historical contribution made to the UK’s public finances by Scotland. An alternative approach would be to use our population share."
3. The SNP's own Sustainable Growth Commission danced around this question, but eventually assumed a population share of UK debt interest within their proposed "solidarity payment"

So it's really pretty simple: the difference between the share of the UK's deficit Scotland is responsible for creating (see GERS) and the share of the UK's deficit Scotland pays for (assume population share) is the implied fiscal transfer.

As we'll come on to see, you can make different assumptions about the share of the UK's deficit Scotland will ultimately have to pay, and conclude a different figure for the implied fiscal transfer.

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At the risk of labouring the restaurant analogy, let's run through an example with some illustrative figures to help us explain the differences between three terms that often get confused: the deficit, the deficit gap and the effective fiscal transfer:

• Group A: 18 people go for a meal, the bill comes to £1,800 so they have spent £100/head
• Group B: 2 different people go for a meal, their bill is £300 so they have spent £150/head

If Group A and Group B decide to get together and split the bill (to "pool & share the deficit"), what happens? The total bill would be £2,100 which split equally between 20 people would be £105/head. Here's a simple summary:

The spending gap between the groups is £50/head (Group B spent £50/head more than Group A), but the benefit of pooling and sharing - the effective transfer Group B receives - is £45/head².

The total transfer from Group A to Group B is £45x2 = £90

Now let's replace the figures in our analogy with the fiscal reality (per GERS 2018-19) - the "bill" is the deficit, Group B is Scotland and Group A is the rest of the UK.

So Scotland's GERS deficit is £12.6bn, the deficit gap is £11.6bn and the effective fiscal transfer to Scotland is £10.7bn. 

A huge amount of confusion is caused by people failing to understand the conceptual the differences between these figures - if you've followed what's going on up to here, give yourself a pat on the back.

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So armed with this understanding, let's take a look at the most common mistake made when people debate the "£10bn fiscal transfer". To illustrate, let me use the following screen-capture which (incredibly) is taken from Stuart Campbell's own "Wings Over Scotland" blog:

If you've been following this blog post so far, you will realise who the twit is in the exchange above (hint: it's not Paul). To walk through this carefully, per the figures above:

• Scotland's deficit is £12.6bn
• We assume Scotland bears a population share of the UK's deficit - so in this year Scotland takes on an additional "loan" of just £1.9bn
• The difference of £10.7bn is the effective fiscal transfer Scotland receives - it's the amount over and above the "loan" Scotland takes on

Fun Fact: this means that those who argue Scotland should assume less than our population share of the UK's debt are - whether they realise it or not - arguing that the effective fiscal transfer in Scotland's favour is in fact larger than £10.7bn.

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A common reaction to these figures is "how can Scotland's 8% of the UK population possibly be responsible for a third of the UK's deficit - that seems unbelievable". This is what is technically known as an "argument from incredulity" and is perhaps best summarised by this quote from Professor Richard Murphy:

"I have been continually bemused by the fact that GERS says that Scotland runs a deficit so  much larger in proportionate terms than that for the UK as a whole."

Here our restaurant bill analogy falls short, because what we're dealing with when we're sharing the deficit is not how much we've spent but the net effect of how much revenue we've generated less the amount we've spent. I've explained the dynamics involved here in this brief video (with apologies for my exasperated tone and the figures being a year out-of-date)




Another way to help understand this point is to look at fiscal transfers across the UK (including the English regions) as this blog has recently done here. There is nothing surprising or hard to fathom going on here - it's just simple fiscal arithemetic.

As I've pointed out before: it's not hard to imagine a situation where Scotland runs a small deficit while the the UK overall is in fiscal balance - in that scenario Scotland would be responsible for an infinite (or more accurately: a "divide by zero error") share of the UK's deficit. It's just maths.

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When we use the GERS figures to scale the effective fiscal transfer, we have to recognise that these are only pro-forma figures, they represent what Scotland's stand-alone defict would be if we kept generating revenues and incurring spending as shown in GERS.

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In case it's not already dead, let me flog the restaurant analogy one more time: "if we weren't sharing the bill, maybe we wouldn't have tipped the waiter 15% and perhaps we wouldn't have ordered the bottled water for the table."

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This is a fair point. Even before we consider the likely economic shock impacts on revenue or spending that separation from the UK would cause (see Brexit), the scale of deficit that the GERS figures reveal means that current levels of spending would be unsustainable for a newly independent Scotland, particularly if trying to launch a new currency.

It's true that some of that spending in GERS is costs allocated from the rest of the UK on a simple population basis (defence, debt interest and international aid being the vast majority of these), so any case for independence needs to start by working out what an independent Scotland would replace these costs with. For reference: relative to that £10.7bn fiscal transfer, the notoriously optimistic White Paper on independence assumed a net saving of £0.6bn.

What typically happens at this point is that some of the more blindly-committed supporters of independence start suggesting that the GERS figures are all made up anyway as part of some vast conspiracy by which Westminster has managed to get the Scottish Government's own economists to pull the wool over the eyes of the SNP (and their Sustainable Growth Commission, their Fiscal Commission Working Group, the IFS, Fraser of Allandar, NIESR, UK Statistics Authority, etc. etc.).

This is of course a ridiculous position to adopt (which, to be fair, is why only those flakier members of the independence movement attempt to adopt it). Alex Salmond was certainly very clear about what the GERS figures told us when he thought he could spin them in his favour:



Salmond is the man who once proudly boasted of his ability to put “a gloss on statistics or any economic figure” to build a political case, and he certainly did his best to do that with the 2010-11 GERS figures. He made the highly dubious claim that they showed an independent Scotland could have been spending £2.7bn more and therefore should have been running an even higher deficit than that shown in GERS!




Still: desite the fact that he used a different method for "splitting the bill" (based on a GDP share not a population share), he was recognising the principle of the fiscal transfer³.

Unfortunately for independence supporters, taking the logic Salmond applied to the 2011-12 figures and applying them to the 2018-19 figures produces a massive fiscal transfer now in Scotland's favour - so by his own logic, an independent Scotland should now be spending £10bn less⁴.

At this point, most of those arguing for independence ignore how wedded they used to be to the figures and return to straight-froward "GERS denial" - fortunately this blog has already comprehensively dealt with those denials here > GERS Deniers.

Ah but wait: what about "this is just a snapshot"?

OK, well we can do this analysis over time and plot the size of the deficit gap⁵ for the last 21 years:

You can see why Alex Salmond was so excited about the 2008/09 to 2010/11 figures⁶.

The reason for the dramatic reversal and growth in that gap will be familiar to regular readers of Chokkablog - they are most easily summarised by this graph:

• The gap closed when North Sea revenues boomed, but has grown massively as North Sea revenues have plummeted
• Scotland has not only continued to spend more per head than the rest of the UK, that spending gap itself has actually grown (thanks to the Barnett Formula and low levels of absolute spending growth⁷) 
• Scotland's onshore revenue performance has declined relative to rUK⁸

For completeness, we can plot the onshore deficit gap over time (i.e. to see what happens if we strip out North Sea revenue effects from these figures):

Without oil revenues, there would never have been a prime facie economic case for Scottish independence - and the vagaries of the Barnett Formula (plus perhaps the impact of the SNP's tax rises) have led to the scale of the fiscal transfer that Scotland benefits from within the UK actually increasing in recent years.

/Ends/

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Notes

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1. This very carefully worded FoI response is sometimes in debates around the fiscal transfer:

"Official figures for any fiscal transfer are not available.

The reason this information is not available is that such a figure requires a number of assumptions to be made. For example, as the UK as a whole spends more than is raised in revenue, an assumption would need to be made about which parts of the UK borrowing is undertaken for, or which types of public spending are financed by borrowing as opposed to taxation. This information is not available as, for example, some taxes are ringfenced to fund particular services; for example, some national insurance contributions are ring-fenced to fund the NHS. As such, any figure for a fiscal transfer from the rest of the UK to Scotland would rely on a number of assumptions."

this is entirely consistent with what this blog (and others) have always said - to calculate the implied fiscal transfer, we have to make some assumptions. In fact, argue we can calculate and implied fiscal transfer by only making one assumption: that the burden of the UK's deficit (and associated debt) is borne on a population share basis

2. People used to dealing with numbers will have spotted that the transfer = [(1-population share) x the gap] - something easily proved if you care for such things

This matters only insofar as we need to understand that, in the case of Scotland in the UK, the fiscal transfer is 92% of the deficit gap

3. The IFS implicitly use that same assumption when referring to the fiscal tranfer here

The most recent figures (2016–17) imply a budget deficit for Scotland of 8.3% of GDP. Managing this is the UK Government’s responsibility as it is part of the UK’s deficit, which was 2.3% of UK-wide GDP in the same year. Therefore there was a fiscal transfer from the rest of the UK to Scotland of about 6% of Scotland’s GDP (equivalent to around £1,750 per person in Scotland).

Because GDP/Capita is now about the same for Scotland and rUK, allocating the deficit on a per capita basis or per GDP basis makes no material difference - but I would still argue that per capta is the right way to do the analysis as long as GERS uses per capita allocations for all shared UK-wide costs

4. To be completely accurate: if we used his GDP share rather than population share method then the figure would be £9.8bn (rather than the £10.7bn we get using population share) - but the broader point stands

5. Remember: the implied fiscal transfer = [(1-population share) x the gap] = 92% of this figure

6. These are the latest available restated historical figures - when first released the figures showed a significantly more favourable position for Scotland, but later revisions lowered Scotland's apparent fiscal advantage vs rUK - covered in some here: The SNP: Living in the Past

7. A dynamic most easily understood if you imagine a scenario where UK spend (and therefore Scotland's spend) doesn't change, but Scotland's population grows more slowly than rUK's - under that scenario it is inevitable that the gap between Scotland's spend/head and rUK's must increase

8. Due to some combination of historically over-estimating the number of top-rate tax payers in Scotland and/or the increase in the Scotttish Rate of Income Tax causing some of those tax payers to redomicile

GERS: An Inconvenient Truth

With the Scottish Government GERS figures published on Wednesday, the pro-independence spin-machine has been in over-drive trying to prevent people understanding what they show us.

The SNP’s own Independence White Paper clearly stated that GERS “provides a useful indication of the relative strength of Scotland’s public finances as part of the UK and a starting point for discussions of Scotland’s fiscal position following independence”. So let’s cut through the spin and discuss what this starting point now tells us.

The latest GERS figures show Scotland’s deficit is £1,900/person higher than the rest of the UK. This is the Deficit Gap - the amount effectively transferred to Scotland through UK-wide pooling & sharing – and it’s worth over £10 billion a year.

The graph on this page explains how that Deficit Gap arises.

The green line shows that Scotland’s onshore economy consistently generates about £350 per person less tax income than the rest of the UK. The black line shows what happens when you add on to that Scotland’s North Sea oil revenues. When the black line has been above the axis, Scotland has generated relatively higher tax that the rest of the UK - that has only ever been because of North Sea oil. With oil revenues now close to zero, Scotland would be reliant on its lower than UK average onshore revenues to fund its public spending.

The rest of the deficit gap – the large majority of it – is explained by Scotland’s now over £1,500/person higher spending, shown by the red line on the graph. The fiscal framework (underpinned by the Barnett Formula) ensures that Scotland can maintain these higher spending levels despite the loss of oil revenues. That’s what pooling & sharing means, that’s the safety net we would have lost had we voted Yes in 2014.

When the black line is higher than the red line, GERS figures demonstrate Scotland having stronger public sector finances than the rest of the UK. That’s only been materially true once in the last 17 years, when oil peaked in 2008-09¹.

That’s why the SNP’s independence White Paper assumed North Sea revenues of £6.8 - £7.9 billion a year – it was the only way they could make their economic case add up. Many of us observed at the time that those forecasts were recklessly optimistic. Now the actual figure turns out to be close to zero, we’ve been proven right.

So how do the SNP deal with this inconvenient truth?

They hint that we can’t trust the data because estimates are involved – neglecting to mention that these qualify as National Statistics and that the main differences they highlight relate to spending, where actual figures not estimates are used.

They talk in non-quantified terms about “different spending choices”, nearly always using Trident as their example - neglecting to mention that our share of Trident costs account for maybe £0.2bn of our allocated defence spending. In fact the SNP’s notoriously optimistic independence White Paper could only find net savings of £0.6bn through “different spending choices”.

No amount of SNP obfuscation can hide the fact that their economic case relied on nearly £8bn of oil revenues and they’ve yet to offer a credible answer as to how an independent Scotland would manage now those oil revenues have gone (and the fiscal gap is in fact now over £10bn).

So in what looks like a frankly desperate move, last week-end’s pro-independence press ran headlines blaming “Westminster mismanagement” for the decline in our oil tax revenues.

The support offered for this was a report from the unashamedly pro-SNP and notoriously flaky “Business for Scotland”. The report itself did little more than observe that Norway has generated lots of tax revenue from oil in the last few years and suggest that it would therefore “not be unreasonable to add Norway’s £11bn revenues” to Scotland’s fiscal balance².

I mean seriously? They might just as well argue that it wouldn’t be unreasonable to add the taxes generated by Norway’s forest and timber industry to Scotland’s fiscal balance, seeing as how we both grow trees.

To be clear: North Sea revenues are generated by taxing production profits. While it’s true that both the Norwegian and UK industries are exposed to the same oil market prices, our costs of production are much higher, our production volumes are lower and with more mature reserves we’re incurring greater decommissioning costs. This means the UK offshore industry simply doesn't produce production profits like Norway’s does – and without profit there is no tax.

The Business for Scotland report even argues – incredibly - that Westminster has failed to tax the North Sea oil industry heavily enough since the oil price crash in 2015. Do they think voters have memories like goldfish?

In 2015 the SNP’s then Finance Minister John Swinney called for tax cuts for the North Sea industry³. The SNP’s 2017 election manifesto then proclaimed “only after pressure from SNP MPs did the Tory Chancellor abolish the petroleum revenue tax and halve the supplementary charge to 10 per cent.”

Quite how protecting Scottish jobs by reducing the tax burden on the North Sea oil industry – as called for and celebrated by the SNP – is “mismanagement” is anybody’s guess. In fact the decline in profitability of our oil industry has been so dramatic that even if tax rates hadn’t been cut, the revenue generated would have dwindled to close to zero anyway, but that’s by the by.

To put the cherry on the cake, SNP MP Joanna Cherry QC took to Twitter to promote the Business for Scotland report, saying “Serious questions raised by this excellent research”⁴.

When their cheer-leaders in the press and one of their high-profile MP’s promote a misleading think tank making transparently ludicrous arguments, you know the SNP’s economic strategy is in tatters.

This Article Appeared in the Daily Record on August 25th 2017

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Notes

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1. In fact as explained within the GERS report itself and the GERS consultation document, past oil revenue assumptions used have been very significantly down-graded

The impact is material: the graph below shows the figure pre-revisions as dotted lines (note there have been some cost & onshore revenue revisions too, as is normally the case)

Because of the revisions to prior years that have since been made (most notably, but not only, the change to oil revenue assumptions) I thought it would be interesting to correct what the White Paper stated at the time:

Since 2007/08, Scotland has run an average net fiscal deficit of £8.3 billion £10.0 billion (5.9 per cent 6.8 percent of GDP). [..] In 2011/12, the latest year for which data is available, Scotland is estimated have run a net fiscal deficit equivalent to 5.0 per cent 7.0 percent of GDP. In the same year the UK is estimated to have had a deficit of 7.9 per cent  7.1 percent of GDP. 

2. For a full evisceration of that report, read The Big Oil Lie

3. Swinney calls for further North Sea tax relief

[Swinney] called for tax cuts for the North Sea, and additional moves to encourage exploration in the basin. Swinney also wants the government to make it easier for companies to access tax relief for decommissioning projects, and consider non-fiscal support such as government loan guarantees.

4. Joanna Cherry MP QC on Twitter

The Tax Burden

Austerity spending cuts are driven more by the current government's ideological commitment to reducing the tax burden than their desire to reduce the deficit.

This graph uses Eurostat data to show how the tax burden/GDP has changed (and is forecast to change) for a range of countries.

The UK is the only one of these countries to have materially reduced its tax burden over this austerity period.

Now let's look at indexed real total government spending over the same period

The relative severity of the UK's spending cuts is clear - only the extreme cases of Ireland and Greece (and to a lesser extent Spain) have suffered more.

I've kept the index scales the same so we can visually appreciate the difference between these two trend lines. If there was no GDP growth the sum of these two lines would roughly¹ show us the trend in deficit. Of course in reality GDP growth acts as a multiplier to dampen (or potentially reverse) the trends we see in the first graph, so a key judgement call is whether the reduction in tax burden drives GDP growth more than the associated reduction in expenditure slows it.

So let's look at the net outcome of all of this in terms of deficit/GDP;

I would tentatively suggest that those countries which have been willing to use taxation to fuel spending (or at least haven't reduced spending to enable tax cuts) are currently seeing a better net outcome in terms of deficit reduction.

The core "anti-austerity" argument is that government spending is a key driver of economic growth, so to cut spending during an economic slow-down (and particularly when interest rates are close to zero) is damaging to the economy. It strikes me that if you look at the data it shows that the main driver of reduced spending in the UK is the obsession with reducing the tax burden. I wish more politicians had the courage to address that issue head-on.

Now of course if you're ideologically committed to reducing taxes you might argue that this is all well and good. Nobody wants to pay more tax in the same way that nobody wants austerity - and there are plenty who believe we should live in a lower tax / lower spend economy. I don't share that view, but I can understand it.

But even those who believe that a government's primary objective should be to reduce the tax burden (as opposed to, say, caring for the least well-off in society) must surely question the timing. Should we be reducing taxes and therefore reducing spending at a time when most would agree that the economy would benefit from increased government spending "if we could afford it"?

I've commented before that CEOs - who should be focused on long-term shareholder value - are actually incentivised to maximise "CEO lifetime remuneration value". I suspect most chancellors are in a similar situation; they are incentivised to make policy decisions which improve their chances of short-term political success rather than serving the long-term interests of the economy. Cutting taxes is awfully popular - as long as voters don't draw the connection between this and the hardship caused by "austerity".

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A confession: the more astute among you may be asking why these graphs start in 2008 and why I've used indexed data in two cases. The answer is simple - it serves my argument best to present the data that way. It's all true, but unlike my previous post (> Who's Really Against Austerity) I have presented the data here in a way to help me make a (valid) point. I recommend you read that previous post if you want to see a less agenda driven presentation of the figures (and see some very interesting and informative comments posted in response )

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1. Tax burden represents c.90% of the UK's total revenues and the only cost excluded from the expenditure graph is debt interest

Let's Talk About Growth

Watching the latest round of SNP politicians' media interviews (and hearing the echoes on social media) it's clear they're working off a crib-sheet that reads something like this;

If Scotland was able to run its own affairs - if we had control over the levers of growth - then we would grow our way out of the £8bn black-hole that we keep being told about. It might be true that Full Fiscal Autonomy now would be "tantamount to economic suicide" (SNP MP George Kerevan) - would be "a disaster" (SNP MP Tommy Sheppard) - but it's still a sensible medium term aim.

Saying we'd have an £8bn deficit as if that's something we'd have to get rid of overnight when all countries (including the UK) run deficits is simply scaremongering. Anyway these figures are all hugely uncertain and based on assumptions that the SNP don't necessarily agree with ... and who would argue that Scots wouldn't be better at running our own affairs than Westminster Tories?

If I could be bothered I could find plenty of direct quotes (from the likes of Stewart Hosie and Pete Wishart) to back me up on this - but I think most will agree this fairly paraphrases the SNP line at the moment.

So let's unpick it.


"We would grow our way out of the £8bn black-hole if we had full powers"

Putting aside the obvious point that the SNP have yet to make any concrete policy proposals that would lead us to believe that they would somehow achieve this superior growth, let's just concentrate on the magnitude of the challenge.

The numbers are easy: Scotland generates £50bn of onshore tax revenue, so to increase that by £8bn means growing it by 16%.  If we're to make this additional tax revenue through economic growth (as opposed to through increasing tax rates) then we'd need to grow GDP by 16%.  [For those who care about such things, Scottish onshore tax generation consistently runs at about 37% of GDP].

It's important to understand that this growth needs to be growth relative to the rest of the UK because that £8bn figure is the deficit gap (on which more later). It's what we need to generate to be paying our way within the UK, for us to be making Full Fiscal Autonomy work. See my post Full Fiscal Autonomy for Dummies if you need convincing.

To get an indication of the scale of this challenge we need look no further than the Scottish Government's own White Paper: Scotland's Future: Your Guide to an Independent Scotland. As you might expect they had a go at scaling how much faster an independent Scotland might grow when no longer shackled to the UK. In fact they were so pleased with their analysis that they quoted it five times (pp 23, 43, 88, 375, 619). Here's the wording from page 23;

"Similar countries to Scotland have seen higher levels of economic growth over the past generation. That is because they have the bonus of being independent and are able to make the right choices for their nation and economy. If Scotland had matched the levels of growth of these other independent nations between 1977 and 2007, GDP per head in Scotland would now be 3.8 per cent higher"

I think we can safely assume that the countries and timescale used were selected to make the strongest possible case - after all, why stop at 2007 when more recent data was available? - and just in case you doubt if that is a cumulative 30 year figure, it's clarified on page 619:

"The average rate among small European countries was 2.61%, a gap of 0.12% each year. Over a 30 year period the compounded effect of this gap totals 3.8% of GDP"

So the Scottish Government's own attempt at scaling the economic growth benefits that "the bonus of being independent" might bring was 3.8% over 30 years. We're looking for 16.0% to grow our way out of the deficit gap. As one of my erstwhile American colleagues used to say: you do the math.

Frankly I could stop here. The assumptions required for the SNP's "levers of growth" argument to work are exposed as ludicrous by their own analysis.  But I'll carry on because this SNP Hydra has many heads ...


"The IFS say we'd have an £8bn deficit"

The £8bn (or £7.6bn) is consistently referred to by the SNP as the IFS forecast of Scotland's deficit. This is simply untrue.

I've blogged about this before and this simple table summarises the key figures

Scotland's deficit in 2013-14 per Scottish Government's own GERS analysis is £12.4bn and is forecast by the IFS to be £14.2bn in 2015-16. This is the net result of (largely know) oil revenue declines offsetting expected deficit reductions (as a result of UK-wide policies).

It shouldn't be beyond the wit of any half-decent politician to understand and remember these figures. If they're going to engage in this debate they really should know what Scotland's deficit is. If they're going to write a press release about it surely it would unforgivable to get this basic fact wrong?

Well here's the SNP's official press release (posted on Thursday 11/06 at 07:44) which includes these words:

"The IFS figures they cite suggest that Scotland would have a deficit of £7.6 billion in 2015-16. But over the five years to 2013-14, the UK’s cumulative deficit has been worth over £600 billion."

I (and many others I'm sure) jumped on this howler within minutes - the BBC picked up on it and contacted the SNP for a statement (see at 22:30 in this broadcast of BBC R4's More or Less) and yet still (13:50 on Saturday as I'm writing) the Press Release sits there uncorrected.

There are only two possible explanations for the SNP and their spokespeople making and repeating this error: either they don’t even know what our deficit is or they know full well but think they can get away with simply lying about it. I don’t know if they’re insulting our intelligence and actively trying to deceive the electorate or they’re just spectacularly incompetent. These are the people negotiating Scotland's economic future - god help us.

To compare this (wrong) annual figure with the cumulative 5 year UK figure really is so obviously ridiculous that I'll treat it as an aside.

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For fun let's work out the scale of this misrepresentation of data

1. Using the £7.6bn increase instead of the £14.2bn total is a 1.9-fold misrepresentation
2. Comparing a single year with a five year total figure is obviously a 5-fold misrepresentation
3. Comparing an absolute number spread across the whole of the UK with an absolute number shared across just 8.3% of the UK’s population is a 12-fold misrepresentation
4. Comparing UK figures from the past (when the deficit was worse) with a Scottish figure for the future (when the onshore deficit is forecast to decrease) is – as it happens -  a 1.6-fold misrepresentation

So that’s 1.9 x 5 x 12 x 1.6 = a 185-fold misrepresentation. Bravo!

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Of course the right comparison to make is that Scotland's deficit is forecast to be 8.6% of GDP compared to 4.0% for the UK: so more than twice as bad.


"Suggesting we'd have to get rid of the deficit overnight when all countries (including the UK) run deficits is simply scaremongering"

Under FFA we would still be sharing a currency and a national debt with the rest of the UK, so to be be paying our way we would simply need to be (over a sensible period of time) running a deficit at a similar rate to the rest of the UK. That's what the £8bn defines - the amount we'd need to find from more taxes or less spending to be holding our own within the UK.  If you like: it's the amount we'd need to find to get back to the position we're in now by pooling and sharing within the UK.

Nobody's saying that under FFA Scotland would have to eliminate its deficit.

As for "all countries run a deficit" - no they don't. To put it simply: those running deficits borrow their money from those running surpluses.   It's been pointed out this is an over-simplification which I'm happy to accept - suffice to say there are plenty of countries who run surpluses from time to time


As for "we'd have a deficit but so do lots of European countries" - it's rather silly to talk about having a deficit as if it's a binary thing (you either have one or you don't). Clearly the scale of the deficit matters, so let's put that forecast deficit of 8.6% in context.

The graph below shows European Commission data on net lending / (borrowing) by country as a percentage of GDP in 2015;

Stop drooling over Norway; it's unseemly.

I confess I'm not sure how Norway's sovereign wealth fund plays in these figures (although it's clear in 2014 Norway was running a considerable surplus) - but for other countries this is basically the same as surplus/(deficit).

Let's repeat the graph without Norway (just so it's easier to read) and add a line at -3% (which the European Commission's Stability & Growth Pact defines as the threshold for "excessive" deficits).

I don't think anybody can seriously argue that Scotland running a deficit of 8.6% of GDP would be "just like other European countries running deficits".  Our deficit would be considerably worse than any other European country, worse than Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro.

This would need to be addressed and it could only be addressed by yet more borrowing (if Scotland's borrowing capacity would allow it), higher taxes or lower spending.  To imagine how this would be playing out had we voted Yes and been renegotiating our position within the EU - while grappling with currency issues, transition costs and business flight - is quite terrifying.


"These figures are all hugely uncertain"

Actually they're not really. All the IFS assumptions do is extend the consistent long-term relative onshore tax and spend generation levels and factor in the known impact of oil revenue declines.

Of course these figures don't reflect what actions a Scottish Government would take if given FFA. That's precisely the point: maintaining the tax and spend status quo would be unsustainable under FFA. What we need to hear is how the SNP propose to close this gap. These analyses present the problem with FFA and - given they're the ones asking for it - it's right that the SNP should be asked to explain what their solution would be.

I think we've shown that just saying "we'll grow the economy" is not a good enough answer - so it becomes a question of which taxes will go up and which costs will be cut?  The SNP are very reluctant to answer this question.


"It's based on assumptions that the SNP don't necessarily agree with"

As we've seen the assumptions are hardly controversial and it is - as ever - really just all about oil. The latest OBR Fiscal Sustainability Report is very thorough on the topic. We can argue about future oil prices but two points are undeniable;

1. The profitability of North Sea production is in long term decline due to rising costs, not just falling oil prices.
2. The decline of North Sea production is not a surprise - it's been forecast for years, the only question has ever been one of timing

Unfortunately during the independence referendum it appears summit fever led the SNP to present hopelessly optimistic forecasts; they've not been too keen on producing forecasts since. But if they don't like the OBR and IFS forecasts, they really need to show us some of their own.


"Who would argue that Scots wouldn't be better at running our own affairs than Westminster Tories?"

This is always the payoff. When all else fails (and it does) accuse those who argue against FFA of talking down Scotland, of suggesting Scot's aren't capable.

It's true that the SNP seem hell-bent on demonstrating that they don't understand Scotland's economy, but let's not make the mistake of conflating the SNP's leaders with the Scots people.

The question is not one of competence or who happens to be in power in Westminster right now. It's about understanding and valuing the benefits of UK wide pooling and sharing. FFA means sacrificing that and for some of us that seems like a wildly reckless and self-destructive act.

Full Fiscal Autonomy for Dummies

Full Fiscal Autonomy (FFA) means Scotland keeping everything we raise from taxes and using that money for our own spending (including paying the UK government for defence and foreign affairs and certain shared administrative services).

If we spend more than we raise we run a deficit. That is not in itself necessarily a problem; FFA doesn't mean we can't run a deficit.

Under FFA we would still be sharing a currency and a national debt with the rest of the UK, so to be paying our way we would simply need to be running a deficit at a similar rate¹ to the rest of the UK.

If Scotland's deficit rate¹ was higher there would be a funding gap  (i.e. our fair share¹ of UK debt would not be enough to balance the books). It's expected this would be handled by Scotland having its own limited borrowing powers.  A limit would need to be agreed because we'd be sharing a currency meaning Scotland's borrowing could affect the UK's international credit rating and cost of debt.

Of course if Scotland's deficit rate was lower than the UK's we would be running a relative surplus. Under FFA any such funds would be kept for Scotland to pay for future tax cuts and/or public spending increases or - whisper it - to build a wealth fund.

In summary: for Scotland to be truly fully fiscally autonomous we would cease exceptional transfers to or from the rest of the UK.

Now let's remind ourselves of some of the rhetoric used by the Yes campaign and think what it would means in the context of FFA;

• If the fact that Scots have "paid more tax per head of population every year for the past 34 years." means we're hard done by within the UK then FFA will fix that because we'll get to keep it all.
• If we really do "send more to Westminster than we get back" then FFA would put a stop to that immediately because we wouldn't be sending any of our taxes to Westminster.
• If the statement "Independence would have made Scotland £8.3bn better off over the last 5 years" has any meaning then FFA would allow us to keep our hands on that excess wealth in the future
• If "Scotland's GDP per head is £2,300 higher than UK as whole" meaning "Scotland is the 14th richest country in the world" translates into practical economic advantage then FFA will allow the people of Scotland to enjoy those riches without them be leached away by Westminster
• If "Oil is just a bonus" then the oil price decline shouldn't really matter

If these economic claims made by the SNP during the Independence Referendum can be taken at face-value then FFA would be a highly attractive proposition for Scotland.

The Numbers

We can see what FFA would have meant historically for Scotland’s finances by simply looking at the Scottish Government's own GERS report.  We need to be absolutely clear about this: these are not Westminster's figures - the Scottish Government's Chief Statistician takes responsibility for them.

If you don't think the GERS figures are meaningful then please read footnote 2. If you still doubt them please read this > How Scotland's Economy Contributes to the UK. If you still doubt them after that please stop reading this blog.

Public Spending

The GERS figures shows how Scotland's public spending is consistently higher per person than the rest of the UK³.  Over the last 15 years (adjusted for inflation) the average higher spend is £1,456⁴ per person or £7.8bn per year.

If we break this spend difference down by category it shows we spend more per capita in every major cost area^5,6

These higher per capita spend levels should not be interpreted as evidence of some wild profligacy by the Scottish Government or excessive generosity on the part of the UK towards Scotland. Our population density is 80% lower than the rest of the UK and we have extensive island communities to serve - this obviously makes it more expensive to provide the same level of public services in areas such as education, health, and transport.  There are of course other reasons for higher per capita costs in Scotland related to our demographics and health needs - but let's not get distracted by that topic here⁷.

The point is that today - based on the principle that where possible the same public service levels should be provided nationally - these higher costs are spread across the whole UK population. Of course under FFA (as with Independence) the burden of our higher "costs-to-serve" would have to be borne exclusively by Scottish tax payers.

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As an aside: you might spot in the graph above that these figures expose the fact that under the SNP government education spending has been cut in relative terms. Widespread access to good quality education is surely crucial both to address "social justice" concerns and to ensure we have well-educated talent entering our working population to help grow the economy. This prioritisation of education spending is something we'll surely here more of come the Holyrood elections in 2016.

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Tax Revenues excluding Oil

The GERS figures show that - before oil is included - we generate slightly less tax per person then the UK average. This is a remarkably consistent trend; over the last 15 years (adjusted for inflation) the average difference is £250 per person or £1.3bn per year

As with the costs it's interesting to break this figure down into its component parts⁸

What's striking is the extent to which Scotland's income and wealth tax generation lags the rest of the UK.  Given that the same tax rates apply UK wide this is of course primarily a function of average employment and pay levels.  Since 2006 the unemployment rate in Scotland has generally been near or below the UK rate (see UK regional employment stats over time) so we can infer that the difference is due to lower average wage levels.  There does at least appear to be an encouraging trend in this respect.

As a slightly depressing aside it's worth noting that we generate just over £100 per capita (or £0.5bn) more than the rest of the UK through "sin taxes" on alcohol, betting and tobacco.


Relative Deficit Excluding Oil

During the referendum the SNP told us "Oil revenues will be a "bonus" but not the basis of the economy in an independent Scotland" [ Alex Salmond, July 2013].

So before including the "bonus" of oil let's look at the last 15 years actual difference in deficit per capita between Scotland and the rest of the UK;

Of course this will come as no surprise if you're following the logic here; we spend about £1,450 more and raise about £250 less per person so we'd expect an average deficit difference of about £1,700 per person and that's exactly what we see.

Gross that up by Scotland's 5.3m population and you get to an underlying (before oil) deficit gap of £9.1bn.  This is not just a snapshot - this has been true (give or take⁹) for every one of the 15 years for which data is available.

At this stage somebody normally argues that this observation is evidence that the UK has failed Scotland - it must be Westminster's fault that our underlying deficit is so much worse. Let's just think about that for a moment. Of that £9.1bn gap only £1.3bn is due to lower tax generation (i.e. less successful economic activity); the balance of £7.8bn is due to higher public expenditure. It seems a little harsh to cry foul against the rest of the UK for making us suffer higher levels of public funding.


The Impact of Oil

So now let's move on to the "bonus" that is oil.  The following graph shows the higher spend per capita (the red line) and the lower ex-oil revenue per capita (blue line) that we've just been looking at. The new black line is the total revenue per capita difference if we include Scotland's full geographic share¹⁰ of North Sea oil

Clearly when the black line is above the red line Scotland's deficit per capita is less than the rest of the UK's.  That's happened three times in the last 15 years as the graph below perhaps more clearly shows (we're just plotting the difference between the red and black lines).

Surely by now its clear. Oil is not a bonus; in fact it's all about the oil.

Three times in the last 15 years the oil tide has risen high enough to submerge the underlying £1,700 per capita deficit difference and give Scotland a lower deficit than the rest of the UK. When the oil tide flows out we can see more of that underlying £1,700/person deficit difference, we see more of the £9.1bn.

So let's take a closer look at the oil figures.

For Scotland to cover the underlying £9.1bn deficit gap we' need total North Sea oil revenues of £10.1bn (because c.90% of North Sea oil revenues are attributable to Scotland¹¹).

Let's look at that in the context of historical actual figures (grey bars) and the OBR's latest forecasts (sludgy bars). The solid green line is the approximate actual North Sea revenues we would have needed in each year to off-set our deficit difference to the rest of the UK; the dotted green line is the 15 year average requirement.

Roughly speaking: the gap between the bars and the green line is the size of the deficit gap that Scotland would have faced (or would be expected to face) under FFA.

This is where the IFS £7.6bn "black-hole" figure comes from; they're simply recognising that when Scotland's share of North Sea oil revenues slumps as low as £600m (as the OBR forecast for 2015-16) then more of the underlying deficit gap will be exposed. Note that the OBR forecast a further slight deterioration of North Sea oil revenues in 2016-17; the black-hole is not expected to be getting any smaller.

Note also that £7.6bn is not the size of Scotland's forecast deficit as some seem to think - the forecast deficit is £14.2bn or 8.6% of GDP.

The sharper of you will have noticed that our figure of £9.1bn - £0.6bn from oil = £8.5bn compared to the IFS headline "black-hole" figure of £7.6bn.  There are good methodological reasons¹² for the difference but frankly these are not worth arguing about in the big scheme of things.

Let's stick with the easy round number of a forecast £8bn deficit gap - this is the FFA "Black-hole".

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Addendum: You might be thinking that a recovery in the oil price changes everything.  It doesn't as I explain in detail here > Oil Price and Scottish Tax Generation.  The problem - simply - is that it's profit that gets taxed and the profitability of North Sea oil production is in long-term decline because of increasing production costs. The tax that an oil price of $100 generated 2 years ago is a lot more than the tax a $100 price would generate in 2 years' time

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So What?

Clearly for the SNP the undeniable reality of the FFA figures is a huge problem, particularly given the boldness of their referendum rhetoric. Remember:

• "We paid more tax per head of population every year for the past 34 years."
• "We send more to Westminster than we get back"
• "Independence would have made Scotland £8.3bn better off over the last 5 years"
• "Scotland is the 14th richest country in the world"
• "Oil is just a bonus"

It must be pretty difficult for Yes voters who were won over by these oft repeated sound-bites to understand how we can now see that a Fully Fiscally Autonomous Scotland would be c.£8bn a year worse off.  You'll forgive me if I suggest that those who read Chokkablog will not find that so difficult to grasp; well done you.

So what of the Independence case now?  Well there appear to be two approaches being taken to deal with the inconvenient economic truth;

1. The "No Detriment" Defence

This is the line taken by Alex salmond in what Kenny Farquharson (Deputy Editor of the Scotsman and Scotland on Sunday) described as "perhaps the most ludicrous political intervention of his career"

Just catching up with Salmond's piece in The National. Perhaps the most ludicrous political intervention of his career.
— Kenny Farquharson (@KennyFarq) April 13, 2015

Salmond's argument goes something like this (forgive me but it's hard to paraphrase logical nonsense);

The Smith Commission decided against full fiscal autonomy but instead recommended a far more nuanced solution that allowed a number of principles to be maintained, one of which was "no detriment".  I want to throw away everything the Smith Commission recommended except "no detriment" and use that to suggest we couldn't be worse off under FFA because it would be a betrayal of the Smith Commission commitment  

Is it necessary to spell out the insanity of this position?  The Smith Commission had a number of principles (Frances Coppola covers the detail in her excellent Pieria piece on this topic) - you can't just cherry-pick one and throw away the rest.  The "no detriment" principle is clearly intended to cover the fact that the transfer of any specific tax to Scotland would be off-set on day one by a commensurate reduction in the Barnett Formula so that no immediate gain or loss resulted for either party.  Smith did not recommend devolving oil revenues to Scotland presumably at least in part because it is so volatile -  the day chosen as "day one" for the transfer would make a huge difference to the long-run implications for both parties.

More fundamentally; arguing that Barnett needs to be maintained to avoid Scotland losing out financially as a result of FFA gives a lie to all of Salmon's pre-Indyref rhetoric about Scotland being better off, being "the 14th richest country in the world".  Remember: those statements were not made about what Scotland could become, they were assertions about where Scotland already is.

2. The "Kick It Into The Long Grass" Defence

This seems to be the approach favoured by Sturgeon.  The argument goes something like this

Look it won't happen soon anyway so don't bother looking at the numbers now because they'll all have changed before we could negotiate this. Ooh Look over there - see that foodbank?  Torys are nasty bastards aren't they? Labour are just as bad but if you vote for us we'll make them better etc.

Despite her best attempts to distract from the economic facts it's clear that the only ways the figures will get better for an FFA Scotland are

• If oil recovers dramatically. Which it might. But surely now every Scottish voter "gets" how volatile oil revenue is, understands that a decision to leap for fiscal freedom in a good oil year is likely to bite us in the arse come the next oil slump
• If we dramatically reduce public spending in Scotland beyond the levels of UK wide cuts (remember: its the deficit difference to the rest of the UK that counts here). Frankly that clearly won't happen unless it's forced on us through Barnett cuts.
• If we increase tax rates dramatically such that we raise an additional £8bn or so from onshore taxes.  The current onshore tax take in Scotland is £50bn so that would be a 16% increase.
• If we manage to buck the trend of the last 15 years (at least) and start generating economic growth over and above that of the rest of the UK so that our tax take increases without having to increase tax rates.  The sum is the same as the one above; this would require 16% growth over and above that achieved by the rest of the UK to close the FFA gap 

Even assuming a following wind and some combination of all of the above happening it's hard to see how things could particularly rosy for the Independence case even by 2020.

The possible exception I suppose is the possibility that the Barnett Formula could end up being scrapped. Given her antagonistic approach to the Tories maybe that's what Sturgeon is secretly hoping for? Sure Scots would suffer directly as a result - but if all you care about is achieving Independence, I guess you consider that a price worth paying.


Implications for Independence

Of course all of the above is about FFA, so some would argue that it merely proves that a compromise won't work and only full Independence can give the Scots what they want.  Fair enough.  All I've ever argued is that voters should be aware of the economic realities of what they're voting for and not be misled by the Yes campaign's rhetoric.

The possible upside differences between FFA and Independence are reasonably easy to describe in summary;

• We'd get control of the defence expenditure that would remain devolved to Westminster under FFA.  Given the SNP's commitment to NATO and their target of spending 2% of GDP on defence this is unlikely to be a significant cost saving: the GERS figure allocated for defence is £3.0bn or almost exactly 2% of GDP already¹³
• Similarly "International Services", but these are only £0.8bn and Scotland would need to create its own  international diplomatic and trade networks
• We'd no longer have to pay our share of UK wide administrative costs - although these would likely be more than offset by the requirement to create our own administrative infrastructures¹⁴.
• If oil booms again as it did in the 1980's we'd get to keep the surplus riches for ourselves
• We'd get to pursue our own economic policies and not be forced to follow the Westminster led austerity plans.

Unless you're in favour of impotently waiting for the global oil market to recover and hoping our oil reserves have long-term economic viability ... the last of these is the big question.

I've yet to hear a compelling argument as to why an independent Scotland would achieve superior economic growth compared to being in the UK.  If Westminster parties believed relaxing spending cuts would be self-funding through improved economic growth they'd be all over it - but they could of course be completely wrong and it may be that simply "not pursuing austerity" could make the difference.

I don't mean to understate the alternative choices that we would have under independence. One of the major frustrations of the indyref campaign was that so much bollocks was talked about what our economic starting position really was that we never managed to have a substantive debate about what we might actually do with the power that independence would give us.

Remember that what we've shown here is that our underlying (excluding oil) economic under-performance versus the rest of the UK is mainly down to higher spending not lower revenue generation - it's predominantly a structural cost-side issue which is not going to be easily overcome.

Of course it goes without saying that there are additional downsides of independence that we don't need to revisit in full here. Suffice to say that currency, hindrance to UK trading, risk of job losses as companies serving the wider UK market head south to avoid exposure to export risk, EU membership conditions etc. are all major uncertainties introduced by independence that would appear to offer us more downside than upside.

But let's run some simple numbers to think about what growing out of the deficit gap would actually require.  We need to grow our tax revenue base by 16% over and above the UK's growth to off-set the underlying deficit gap.

The Independence White Paper itself provided an illustration of what might be a realistic superior growth rate to assume as the "bonus of being independent". I cover the detail in a separate blog post (> Let's Talk About Growth), but the summary is this;

The Scottish Government's own attempt at scaling the economic growth benefits that "the bonus of being independent" might bring a cumulative benefit of 3.8% over 30 years. We're looking for 16.0% to grow our way out of the deficit gap. As one of my erstwhile American colleagues used to say: you do the math.

But let's be incredibly optimistic and say we were able to consistently grow 1% faster than the rest of the UK - in that case it would take us 15 years (compound growth) to get there.

What would the average deficit gap be over that period - how much would it cost us to get there?

Well given the strategy seems to involve spending more to make it happen (avoiding austerity cuts) the starting deficit gap would in fact be more than £8bn and - if we'd continue to spend more - it would take us more than 15 years to close the gap.  But let's be highly optimistic and assume the average deficit gap would be £4bn over a 15 year period. 15 x £4bn = £60bn.  Let's assume we fund that with debt - that's over £12,000 of debt for every man, woman and child in Scotland.

Now there are many who would still argue that independence is a worthwhile cause even if it incredibly optimistically would cost us £12k per head. If they are willing to recognise the reality of the economic challenges we face and still argue for Independence despite them, then I think we will have some very interesting debates ahead of us.

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Notes

1. I've intentionally referred to "deficit rate" and "fair share" of borrowing to avoid getting bogged down in definitions that make little material difference.  Basically these can be defined as being on a per head basis or percent of GDP basis. There is an inconsistency in most figures used at the moment because debt costs tend to be allocated on a per capita basis but deficits compared on a % GDP basis. To make it easier for readers to relate figures to those widely quoted I'm going to follow this inconsistent method. If we defined deficit rate on a per capita basis instead of % GDP it would make the case look slightly worse for Scotland.

2. Although you won't hear the accuracy of GERS figures questioned by serious politicians, some disreputable commentators have been responsible for spreading ridiculous misconceptions about them. The likes of Business for Scotland and Wings Over Scotland have made startlingly misinformed statements about VAT and Alcohol Duty not being fully included in Scotland's numbers. If they were right it would be a terrifying indictment of the Scottish Government's incompetence.  They are wrong of course: references to VAT being "paid at companies' headquarters" and Scotland not getting attributed "Alcohol Duty at point of export" demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding of how these taxes work and how they are attributed in GERS. These are consumption taxes and GERS estimates Scotland's share of these based on consumption data. There is no such thing as "Export Duty" on whisky.

3. I compare Scotland to "rest of UK"  (rUK) because otherwise we are comparing to a UK figure which includes us. I don't understand why so few others do this - maybe because it's a little more analytical work.

4. This figure is commonly quoted as £1,200. That figure is the non-inflation adjusted average from 07-08 to 11-12 (the period available when the White Paper was produced) based on comparing Scotland to total UK rather than "rest of UK".  I f we update to the most recent available 5 years GERS (09-10 - 13-14) the figure would be £1,245; adjust to be vs rUK instead of vs UK and it becomes £1,360; adjust for inflation and it becomes £1,415; take a 15 year average it becomes £1,465.  I'd say £1,400 is a good figure to use.

5. Note that defence, foreign affairs and debt interest costs are not included on this graph because in GERS figures they are allocated on a simple per capita basis so the per capita difference is of course zero. This is consistent with the principles of FFA.

6. The "Accounting Adjustment/Other" line is worth explaining.  It's primarily the difference between capital expenditure and depreciation (and of course we are looking at the relative difference in this difference).  In layman's terms it means Scotland is (very slightly and only in the latest year) at a point where it's rate of investment in capital programmes (compared to its historical average) is lower than rUK's.

7 A technical point is worth highlighting as mentioned in GERS - "water and sewerage services are a public sector responsibility in Scotland, and are therefore included in Scottish public expenditure, whilst in England they are operated by the private sector". This is of course balanced on the "tax generated" side by the operating surplus that Scottish Water contributes to our revenues

8. The Gross Operating Surplus (GOS) is mainly due to publicly owned Scottish Water; to some extent this surplus will offset associated higher spending compared to the UK where this utility is privatised

9. Th e actual range over the 15 year period is £1,405 to £2,003

10.  Geographic share means we get to keep our oil - I'm stunned how often I still have to explain this

11. The percentage of North Sea Oil revenues attributable to Scotland varies because there are North Sea oil fields that lie in "rest of UK" waters and it depends on their relative production output levels.  Using the Scottish Government's preferred geographic share methodology the average Scottish share of North Sea oil over the last 15 years has been about 90%

12. I've recreated the £7.6bn using the IFS assumptions here (> Explaining the £7.6bn "black-hole") and there are two factors that explain the difference. Firstly the figures above assume that the equivalent deficit rate we'd be required to achieve would be defined on a per capita basis.  Given this is how debt costs are currently allocated in GERS I think that is a better assumption than the IFS's which requires the deficit to match as a percentage of GDP basis. Secondly the IFS analysis compares Scotland to UK total (where UK obviously includes Scotland).  I have stripped Scotland out of the UK figures to compare Scotland and rUK which again I think is a better analysis

13. Defence spending allocated to in GERS is £3.0bn in 2013-14 which is exactly 2.0% of GDP

14. The House of Lords costs £87m to run - Scotland's share of that cost is therefore <£10m