EU Exit preparation - receipt and allocation of funding: FOI release

Information requested

You requested detail regarding the receipt and allocation of funding associated with EU Exit preparation.

Response

Much of the information you have requested is now available from https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-government-overview-no-deal-preparations/pages/3/ including the consequentials received, where these have been allocated to and the rationale for requesting further funding.

The £98.7 million of consequentials derived from UK Government spend on EU Exit preparation were received as follows:

• 2017-18 - £6.6 million as part of the UK Government Spring Supplementary Estimates. This arose from £250 million of additional UK Departmental spending allocations for EU Exit preparation.
• 2018-19 - £37.3 million from a UK Government allocation of £1.5 billion on EU Exit preparation, transferred in Spring Supplementary Estimates.
• 2019-20 - £54.7 million from a UK Government allocation of £2 billion of EU Exit preparation funding transferred via the budget.

When the Scottish Government receives funding from the UK Government, it is for Scottish Ministers to determine how to prioritise the spend. As the Scottish Government received these consequentials
as a result of UK Government allocations, no Scottish Government officials or ministers were involved in meetings about the UK Government allocations.

Of the money allocated by the Scottish Government to EU Exit preparation, all funds sent out with the Scottish Government and its public bodies will have been handled by the policy team responsible for
that particular area. The policy team would have either used budget already allocated to their portfolio as part of the Scottish Budget, or will have the funds transferred to their portfolio budget as part of the
corresponding Spring Budget Revision.

All decisions to allocate 2019-20 resource towards specific EU Exit mitigation activity have been taken by the Deputy First Minister in his capacity as Head of Resilience, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Economy and Fair Work and the Cabinet Secretary for Government Business and Constitutional Relations on a case by case basis.

Scottish Government Ministers have written to their UK Government counterparts on several occasions to confirm the Scottish Government position that Scotland must not be worse off financially as a result of EU Exit. For example the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and the Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Economy and Fair Work wrote jointly to the Chancellor of the Exchequer on 6 February 2019 on police funding, and the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs has written to the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food & Rural Affairs in relation to EU Exit costs and European funding on several occasions.

No information has been exempt from this response and the response has not been sent to Special Advisors or the Minister for Finance, Economy and Fair Work prior to sending. 

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