Scottish Conservatives launch election manifesto

Ahead of the Scottish Tory manifesto launch, the Institute
for Fiscal Studies published its overview of the Britain-wide manifestos.

Its director, Paul Johnston, sounds ever more frustrated at
the lack of candour across the parties on the “trilemma” – either more tax,
lower spend or more borrowing. And he doubts their ability to boost growth as a
solution.

By constraining themselves on borrowing and tax, while
protecting some priority services (mainly the NHS), party plans imply deep cuts
of “between £10 and £20bn” in unprotected services.

“Low growth, high debt and high interest payments mean
we need to do something quite rare just to stop debt spiralling ever upwards:
we need to run primary surpluses,” says Johnston. “That means the
government collecting more in tax and other revenues than it spends on
everything apart from debt interest. Not necessarily a recipe for a happy electorate.”

And still the promises keep coming; more NHS staff, more
hospitals, mental health: “You can’t pledge to end all waits of more than
18 weeks, allocate no money to that pledge, and then claim to have a fully
costed manifesto,” says the IFS director.

“How would either party deal with backlogs in the court
system, overflowing prisons, crises in funding of higher and further education,
social care, local government? We have not a clue.”

These are questions about public services in England, but
through the funding mechanism for Holyrood, all the same issues apply in
Scotland.