Barnett formula

Mm-hmm.

So he's not acknowledged the fact that people are saying you're, you know, th- you will get this money back in the Barnett formula.

The way that devolution works, if something is spent on a devolved area down south, they will get money back, a population adjusted share will come back in the Barnett formula, and the Scottish government can spend that on pensioners should they wish.

That is the part that he's just not touching.

Uh-

Yes, I mean, they won't be happy if there is some sort of investigation.

But I'd say I think in terms of the, the, the actual phrasing, he has moved to kind of cover himself i- in terms of what he's said to Parliament.

Um, you know, there's a wider sort of philosophical argument about w- well, actually the Barnett formula would show that you're going to get all this money back.

... come out with.

With this, my favorite thing, I've mentioned before, is the Barnett formula.

Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes.

So again, they're all looking at this ways of, in the words of Blair again, Westminster train is coming to an end.

But the thing that, as I said, 12 years ago we didn't tackle, and we haven't tackled 12 years later, is the finances and economics of it.

And the thing here that ...

Well, we talk about the Barnett formula.

So for all the taxes that go into Westminster from Northern Ireland, from Wales, from England, and from Scotland, we get a percentage of that back.

Not like this, Will.

He was asked about the Barnett formula and the fact that the Barnett formula is much, much better for Scotland.

And we've talked about it before, but it's because Scotland's population has grown much slower than Wales and especially compared to England.

And he was asked, are you going to help Wales with getting a better deal on the Barnett formula? Because if the Barnett formula was to be reformed, that could result in Scotland being worse off.

Now, he's always said that he doesn't believe that Wales getting more money should mean Scotland gets worse.

less but i think what's interesting is he really said it's important that we promote and assert the interests of our communities so basically said yeah you're on your own with regarding that

Even if it was bad, I'd still accept it

... it's traditional for me at this point as a, as an interlocutor with someone making the points that you're making to mention the Barnett Formula, isn't it? I, I mean, that's-

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, it's a, it's a 10% difference.

It's a hard lesson for people like me who've always been in favour of devolution that Scotland and Wales haven't been able to move ahead to improve public services in education and health at the sort of pace that people like me would have liked.

The other thing, of course, is that both Scotland, well, all three, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, get more in terms of support from the UK government than comparable regions uh in england so this relative um this this this failure to improve more rapidly uh comes in spite of certainly in the case of scotland rather higher levels of public expenditure on the barnett formula through the Barnett formula, which was meant to reduce that differential between England and Scotland, and it's not done that.

These are quite hard questions for the politicians in the devolved parts of the UK.

We have essentially a real-time experiment going on, similar populations, different policies, and there should be a lot of learning in that for England as well as for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

I don't think that's what Wales want.

But reunification for Ireland.

The Barnett formula would then therefore disappear for those countries.

Would England financially be better off?