SNP ministers have been accused of losing control of the Scottish Government's budget by one of the country's foremost economists.
Professor Arthur Midwinter, who was until recently the leading adviser for the Scottish Parliament's finance committee and who now advises Scottish Labour, has savaged the budget.
He claimed that this year's budget has provided no link between s
pending and outcome and its efficiency savings are just "rhetoric".
The criticisms by Prof Midwinter, who has also advised the Northern Ireland and Welsh assemblies, come in a detailed submission to the finance committee as evidence towards its investigation into the budget process.
Prof Midwinter accused the Scottish Parliament of "budgeting in the dark" and signing off £11 billion of spending "without being told what it will purchase, at what price, and what impact it will have".
He said that currently the Scottish Government controls too much of the information and the best way forward was for committees in the Scottish Parliament to take control of the budget process and come up with their own priorities, savings and spending plans, rather than simple recommendations.
In his submission he attacked the deal between the Scottish Government and 32 councils which he said had broken the link between spending and results.
And he dismissed the concordat with councils by noting: "The finance secretary (John Swinney] believes this gives councils freedom to focus on outcomes. This is difficult to take seriously. Only around ten of the 45 indicators in the performance reporting framework are actually outcome measures, and half of these are health indicators."
He went on to say that this was also reflected in the so-called efficiency savings, which Mr Swinney recently claimed would be £600 million this financial year. About £400 million has to be found by the councils or other public bodies.
"There are few genuine efficiencies, and the lack of output baselines makes them impossible to scrutinise properly," Prof Midwinter said.
A Scottish Government source said: "Arthur Midwinter gets his wages paid by Wendy Alexander now, so it is rather absurd of him to continue posing as an independent commentator.
"The reality is that the arrangements for the agreement of the Budget Bill were exactly the same as during the eight years of the Labour/Liberal coalition."
But Iain Grey, Labour's shadow finance secretary, said: "This is a paper submitted by Professor Midwinter in his academic capacity.
Prof Midwinter has more experience of scrutinising this budget process than anyone else around. Predictable attempts by the SNP to spin his criticisms away would be foolish indeed."
The full article contains 432 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
