In your briefing today:

📣 Finance Secretary Shona Robison unveiled the Scottish Budget yesterday, with limited drama but a number of big choices about taxation and spending.

Grabbing the headlines were reductions to income tax and business rates, an increase to the Scottish Child Payment, and new levies on big houses and private jet flights.

But those eye-catching measures only partially masked big cuts to day-to-day spending over the next few years, and the lack of funds for some major infrastructure projects. It’s inevitable that more detail will emerge only in the coming days.

Later in today’s briefing, there’s deeper analysis of the budget’s content and reaction to it. Here, some links to news coverage this morning.

📣 Police Scotland failed to persuade the Scottish Government to cough up an additional £33.7 million for more police officers and a modernisation programme.

The force did get record funding of £1.7 billion - but that falls below what Chief Constable Jo Farrell said the force needed to “stand still”.

It’s a blow for Scotland’s top police officer, who has been embroiled in a number of money-related controversies since taking the job, including rows about relocation payments for her, and her deputy. (BBC)

📣 The death toll from a government crackdown on protests in Iran has leapt to at least 2,571, according to activists. The toll dwarfs that of any previous protest since the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. (AP)

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📣 The tanker dramatically captured in the North Atlantic last week has entered the Moray Firth for supplies. (Scotsman)

📣 The V&A in Dundee is getting a facelift ahead of its 10th anniversary in 2028. (BBC)

📣 Outlander star Sam Heughan will lead New York’s Tartan Day parade. (Express)

📣 Doubts have been cast on the discovery of microplastics in the human body, Damian Carrington reveals - in one of the more extraordinary stories you’ll read today. The discoveries are “probably the result of contamination and false positives”, with one chemist calling the concerns “a bombshell”.

It’s news that will, undoubtedly, be leapt upon by those who claim environmental science is riddled with more mistakes and uncertainty than generally admitted. (The Guardian has the exclusive)

📣 UK ministers have dropped plans for mandatory digital ID in the UK. (BBC)

📣 US luxury retail giant Saks, owner of the famed department store on New York’s fifth avenue, has filed for bankruptcy, only a year after investors handed the company billions of dollars. (🎁 WSJ - gift link)

📣 K-pop giants BTS vacated the global stage for four years while they completed mandatory national service. But now they’ve announced a return with a new studio album and world tour (although it won’t come to Scotland). (STV)

⚽️ Martin O’Neill has plenty on his plate this month: with nobody in charge of transfers at Celtic since recruitment chief Paul Tisdale was sacked, the Irishman is making the calls on - and in some cases to - the club’s transfer targets. He admits he’s playing catchup, not least because he spent Christmas at home, “not expecting this”. (Daily Record)

⚽️ A terrific piece by Graeme McGarry today on the need to eradicate the shameful - and apparently increasingly fashionable - mockery of the Ibrox disaster, alongside other “tragedy chanting”. (Herald £)

⚽️ Talented young Scottish footballers are heading south to big English clubs at the very start of their careers, before they even get a game in Scotland. Why? Brexit, which makes cheap deals for Scottish talent very attractive to England’s elite. (Mail)

🗣️I did warn there would be a lack of drama around the Scottish budget, delivered yesterday at Holyrood. But drama wasn’t the point.

As Paul Hutcheon points out in his analysis, “John Swinney’s objective with the Budget was to avoid messing up his party’s Holyrood election campaign.

“The signs are that the Scottish Government has not dropped the Ming vase four months before polling day.”

An eye-catching measure to hit “mansions” worth more than £1 million with a new band of council tax may impact on one or two Early Line readers, but if you’re a fan of flying in a private jet it’s unlikely more tax on your journey will put you off.

But there were other, more serious, movements in the budget, and it’s worth noting that there is a certain opacity to the plans announced yesterday. Even some of the experts are struggling to see what the government is up to, or how it will achieve its aims.

🗣️The Fraser of Allander Institute notes in its excellent analysis the budget contains a “significant cut in spending”.

Day-to-day spending is down by £480 million, they say, largely due to much weaker tax forecasts. They also note exceptional items and non-recurring revenues - stuff that can’t be expected to be available every year - added up to revenue of £300 million, which stopped the cuts being even bigger.

There are also, for sure, cuts to capital expenditure, with their initial read suggesting the A96 programme, including the Nairn Bypass - doesn’t have any money allocated to it. It turns out Fergus Ewing MSP was correct in his warnings of a few days ago. It looks like there’s also bad news for the Highland Main Line and Ardrossan Harbour redevelopment projects.

The headline-grabbing changes to income tax thresholds were “the flagship policy of this budget”, notes the Institute, but it also notes how little it changes the shape of tax in Scotland. The maximum benefit to any taxpayer in Scotland is 62p a week - but it’ll cost the public purse £50 million.

What it does do is make sure the SNP can say, come election time, that most people in Scotland pay slightly less tax than most people in England.

A final bit of good news, this time for parents of the future: the Scottish Child Payment will increase to £40 a week for children aged under one - in 18 months’ time. “There is a good rationale,” notes the Institute. “Families with children under 1 face an elevated poverty rate and are one of the six child poverty priority groups.”

🗣️ That said, over on Reddit, interesting reaction from one would-be parent: AgreeableEm writes: “The SNP get the funding to copy the 30hrs childcare from 9 months policy that England has, but chooses to increase the welfare budget by another £650m instead…

“Working parents who hope to have a kid still need to find £1800 per month (after tax) for nursery with zero support.

“You have to pay that from 9 months till the term after their third birthday, so around 2.5 years, depending on birthdays. That’s £54,000 to find (after tax, so in reality you need to earn even more to pay the bill).

“I’m glad that the two child cap for those on benefits has been dealt with, but they seem to be completely blind to the fact that for working people paying their own way there is an effective zero child cap.”

🗣️Kenny Farquharson’s response to it all is pretty weary. “Tuesday afternoon’s fiscal event at Holyrood contained some perfectly sensible measures,” he writes in The Times (£). “But it was remarkable how many of them were tweaks designed to catch up with innovations south of the border or ensure Scots continue to enjoy political bragging rights over the English.”

He also wasn’t happy with the person delivering it: Shona Robison retires from politics in May, “the definition of a lame duck,” he writes. “The complacency of letting yesterday’s woman set the scene for tomorrow’s Scotland tells its own story. This is not a government driven by a compelling narrative for the nation’s future.”

But she didn’t drop the Ming vase in her last act, it seems, for which John Swinney at least will be grateful.

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