Craig Hoy: Economic case for the break-up of Britain is a fantasy... the sums just don't add up

By CRAIG HOY MSP AND SCOTTISH CONSERVATIVE PARTY CHAIRMAN Published: 19:41, 12 August 2026 | Updated: 19:41, 12 August 2026 The annual bunfight around the SNP government’s Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland (GERS) figures is always something those in politics can mark their calendar for. The responses are predictable, especially those from a nationalist persuasion. The SNP seem determined to try to dismiss the statistics and pretend that they have nothing to do with them, even though they are responsible for producing and publishing the figures. That is because John Swinney and everyone who supports independence do not want to accept financial reality. Every year around this time, they don’t like what the GERS figures serve up. And the 2025-26 report delivers a devastating blow to the First Minister and his lifelong dream of breaking Scotland away from the United Kingdom. The so-called Union dividend is now worth over £2,700 to every single person living in Scotland. It has increased by over £200 since last year. This year’s figure of £2,722 is a record high and demonstrates again the benefits we get by being part of a strong United Kingdom. Craig Hoy says the tax gap between Scotland and England means some people in his Dumfriesshire constituency are crossing the Border to live or work  Yet Swinney and the SNP government he leads are hell-bent on removing that dividend for Scots with their independence obsession. He might not like it but his own annual GERS figures present the best benchmark for analysing what an independent Scotland would look like on day one. And the outlook is far from pretty. Scotland’s economy is already suffering after two decades of SNP economic incompetence. Our economic growth lags behind the rest of the United Kingdom because Swinney and his Cabinet think we can keep taxing our way to growth. Any basic grasp of economics should tell him that strategy has never worked and never will. The growing tax gap between ourselves and the rest of the UK means we are losing out on highly skilled workers who we desperately need for our struggling public services. I see it in my own constituency of Dumfriesshire. People cross the Border all the time to work, shop and meet up with friends, but ultimately, many now choose to live a few miles south in England, where they know they will be paying less tax. We know from revelations from renowned tax expert Dan Neidle – who was one of the SNP’s own economic advisers – that the SNP’s decision to impose a new high tax rate on whom they deemed to be top earners has cost the public finances over £20million in revenue. A closer look at the GERS figures shows where the SNP continue to squander your money. Social security spending soared by over £670million in just one year alone. After getting powers over welfare, the SNP promised to do things differently from the policies they railed against at Westminster. But their light-touch agenda on benefits is forcing hard-pressed Scots to pay the highest taxes in the UK. This in turn pays for a benefits bill which independent experts say is completely unsustainable. What the SNP entitle ‘social protection’ accounted for almost a third of all the spending in Scotland last year. Those figures are scarcely believable and lay bare SNP’s skewed priorities. Nobody denies the need for a welfare safety net and our country has a proud record of supporting the most vulnerable. But an 11 per cent rise in welfare spending in a 12-month period raises very serious questions for SNP ministers. And that’s before we look at the difference in the GERS figures between what we spend on public services and raise in tax. This year, the net fiscal balance stands at £25.3billion which is the third worst figure ever recorded. The notional deficit is almost three times that of the rest of United Kingdom. An independent Scotland would be calamitous for the nation’s finances, no matter how much John Swinney and the SNP spin machine try to deny it. Hard-pressed Scots would face the prospect of eye-watering tax hikes and swingeing cuts to public services if the SNP ever achieved what they couldn’t in the 2014 referendum. Scots are already sick of paying more but getting less in return and that would only escalate massively if we were to deviate from the successful UK funding model. John Swinney does not want to accept financial reality, argues Craig Hoy There is also a huge sense of irony in the GERS figures. The SNP’s high command has, for decades, banged on about how ‘It’s Scotland’s oil’. Yet the North Sea revenue statistics show the amount raised from this source fell by almost 12 per cent in the last year. The amount raised was £3.15billion in 2025-26, compared to £3.57billion in 2024-25. These figures are both outrageous and extraordinary in equal measure. They come against a backdrop of soaring oil prices as a result of the conflicts in the Middle East, which would make you think revenue streams would equally be on an upward trajectory. What the data confirms instead is the madness of the SNP and Labour’s ban on drilling in the North Sea and their hostile attitude towards the oil and gas sector. Voters in the Aberdeen South by-election sent the loudest possible message to both Swinney and Andy Burnham that they must get Britain drilling again. Arrogant nationalists refuse to accept that their economic case for independence is nothing more than a total fantasy. Their sums don’t add up, and their own figures prove it. Now is the time for John Swinney to ditch independence, accept his economic approach is failing and finally give Scots a much-needed tax break. That is the least hard-working Scots deserve after two decades of nationalist mismanagement.