Equality and Fairer Scotland Budget statement: easy read summary

About the Budget

The Scottish Budget is the plan to say how much money the Scottish Government will spend over a year.

This budget year runs from April 2024 to March 2025.

The Scottish Budget for this budget year is almost 60 billion pounds.

Most of this money is being given to public organisations that give services to people living in Scotland.

The 2 groups of public organisations that are getting most of the money are:

• health care – like hospitals
• local government – like councils

1 of the biggest problems this year is the cost of living crisis.

The cost of living crisis is the problem of many of the basic things we need to live – like food and heating – being so expensive at the same time.

The Scottish Government wants this budget to help there be less:

• poverty – this means not having enough money to buy basic things like food and clothes or to pay for heating

• inequality – this means not having the same chances and choices as other people

Last year social security got more than 5 billion pounds to pay for things like benefits.

But this year social security will get more than 6 billion pounds.

Benefits is money given to people to help them pay for the important things they or their family need for day to day life.