{"id":519662,"date":"2026-04-08T14:22:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T14:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/519662\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T14:22:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T14:22:09","slug":"scottish-parliament-election-2026-ferries-in-the-spotlight-on-campaign-trail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/519662\/","title":{"rendered":"Scottish Parliament election 2026: Ferries in the spotlight on campaign trail"},"content":{"rendered":"

IFS warns Tory manifesto may not ‘survive contact with reality’published at 10:24 BST<\/p>\n

10:24 BST<\/p>\n

\"\"Phil Sim
Scotland political correspondent<\/p>\n

For a party with the word “conservative” in its name,
\nthe Tory proposals are really quite radical.<\/p>\n

By 2031-32 they envisage spending an extra \u00a36bn a year on tax cuts
\nfor people and businesses, extra school staff and NHS capacity.<\/p>\n

That’s to be paid for with \u00a36bn worth of cuts from things like
\ndisability payments, the civil service and the cost of running government.<\/p>\n

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has pointed out that meeting
\nthese savings targets will be challenging, and that while the plan may be
\ncosted on paper, “whether it would survive contact with reality is far
\nfrom clear”.<\/p>\n

They said “giveaways on the scale proposed by the Scottish
\nConservatives cannot credibly be funded largely through back-office and
\nadministrative savings”, saying there would likely also need to be
\n“substantial cutbacks” to public services too.<\/p>\n

There’s also the point that the manifesto complains about a
\nlooming \u00a35bn gap between spending and available funding by the end of next
\nterm, saying the nation’s finances are not sustainable.<\/p>\n

But almost every penny of savings the party proposes making is
\nthen committed to new spending, rather than filling this gap.<\/p>\n

This is not austerity politics or small government by any means –
\nit’s a plan which would entail massive changes, which would be challenging to
\ndeliver.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"IFS warns Tory manifesto may not ‘survive contact with reality’published at 10:24 BST 10:24 BST Phil SimScotland political…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":519663,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-519662","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=519662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519662\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/519663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}