Scotland’s anti-business bias is damaging growth and public services

SCOTLAND – or the SNP’s version of Scotland – likes to celebrate itself as the most progressive part of the UK, if not indeed the world. It isn’t just that the Scottish people are supposedly kinder, more accepting of immigrants, more left-wing, more “right-on” – even though survey after survey proves there is little difference in the social attitudes of Scots compared to people in the rest of the UK.

The main part of this myth is that the Scottish state is correspondingly the most progressive in the UK – the unspoken assumption behind this is that it is also the most successful. One of the ways this assumption manifests itself is in the proof offered up by politicians: it almost always consists of money spent on public services – or to use their favourite word “invested” – in excess of what is spent by the Westminster government in equivalent areas. The Scottish government spent around £1.3 billion above the UK funding baseline on devolved social security benefits in 2025-26. A pre-eminent example is the Scottish Child Payment, a weekly payment of £27.15 for each child under 16 in families already on benefits – a payment that does not exist in the rest of the UK.

The go-to argument for nationalist politicians is rarely outputs – as opposed to inputs – in other words, what all this extra money achieves. When outputs are mentioned by the Scottish government, they are cherry-picked statistics which are subject to many caveats. Despite Scotland historically spending more per person on healthcare than England, the NHS in Scotland has lagged behind England in recovery after the pandemic, with longer waiting lists for elective care and outpatient and inpatient treatment. Similarly spend per pupil is higher in Scotland than in England, yet Scottish pupils perform worse in international assessments than their English counterparts.

The commentator Stephen Daisley recently observed that the Scottish government “has become a vehicle for pursuing the ideological pet projects of graduate activist progressives within the civil service, the spad racket, the government-funded ‘non-governmental’ organisations, and those expensive hubs of miseducation, the universities.”

The demonisation of the private sector in Scotland is aided and abetted by the trade unions and NGOs

What is the common denominator here? All these groups have an unshakable faith in the state to provide solutions. The flip side of this coin is an overwhelming animus against non-state, non-centralised solutions – against in other words the private sector (including, very often, the voluntary sector). Business is seen as inherently hostile to progressive ideals, always out for itself, intent on turning a profit for cartoon capitalists at the expense of everyone else.

This deep, instinctive suspicion of private sector organisations and actors underlies two overriding assumptions about what the state’s job is with respect to the private sector: regulation and taxation. Business must be endlessly regulated, because everything it wants to do is assumed to be bad for ordinary people; and it must be heavily taxed, because it supposedly makes vast profits off their backs.

Despite rhetoric from all sides about economic growth, creating the conditions for business to thrive features very low down – if at all – on progressive agendas, unless, of course, you happen to be in the renewables or net zero industry.

The demonisation of the private sector in Scotland is aided and abetted by the trade unions and NGOs, which years of SNP government have largely turned into client bodies. This faith in the state and prejudice against the private sector have also been shared by Scottish Labour, and have been all too evident during Starmer’s premiership.

One of the things this means in practice is that the government – its politicians and civil servants – rarely turns to business for advice on how to improve performance, often disregards any suggestions that come from the private sector as inherently tainted, and is instinctively hostile to working with business to deliver solutions.

It goes without saying that there are very few SNP or Labour (let alone Green) politicians at Holyrood or local authority level who have any experience of running their own business or even working in the private sector (as opposed to the public or third sectors). The same, obviously, applies to advisors and civil servants, especially senior ones. They thus form a closed loop, a cosy echo chamber of ignorance and prejudice, perpetuating itself by creating ever more public sector jobs. They are not just out of touch with business and the economy but with the concerns and experiences of ordinary people who live and work in that economy.

As of March 2025 there were about 382,000 SMEs operating in Scotland, accounting for 99.4 % of all private sector businesses in Scotland and providing around 1.2 million jobs, and 41.9 % of private-sector turnover (with the bulk of revenue concentrated in a relatively small number of large firms).

I say all of this as a relatively recent small business owner, having spent the bulk of my life hitherto in education, campaigning and community work as well as an elected councillor. It wasn’t until I was on the other side, as it were, that I realised how vast the gulf was between business and the state.

In 1959 the scientist and novelist C.P. Snow’s articulated the “two cultures” of the sciences and the humanities as two mutually uncomprehending cultures; his distinction can now more properly be applied to the divide between public and private sector cultures, reflected in oppositions between producers and administrators, market actors and policy elites, and commercial pragmatism and bureaucratic process. (Of course big corporates and multinationals do not map so neatly on to this distinction as they have deep pockets for lawyering and lobbying.)

Quite apart from the ever-growing burdens of regulation and taxation, my SME is involved with the state in tendering for council contracts. The process of getting on the Scottish Government tendering framework is labyrinthine. It is stuffed to the gills with good intentions – from complying with public procurement legislation to supplying a Health & Safety Policy, Equality & Diversity Policy including an armed Forces Covenant, Environmental / Sustainability Policy, GDPR Policy, Modern Slavery Statement, Anti-Bribery & Corruption Policy and Whistleblowing Policy. These requirements can apply even to a one-person business.

The net effect is to exclude very many small suppliers from tendering at all, and thereby limiting competition and increasing procurement costs. Invoicing is similarly convoluted, not uniform across Council departments even for the same service, and subject to multiple processes of checking as if each fault or abuse has resulted in yet another tier of bureaucracy and personnel. No private business could afford to operate in this way.

Health, education, infrastructure, transport, housing, drugs, the care sector: so many Scottish public services seem to be suffering an inexorable decline, or managed decline as the phrase goes. The state – at least under the SNP and Labour – has no radical solutions beyond spending more money, which means in the absence of a growing economy, demanding more money from Westminster and taxpayers.

New thinking is sorely needed, and in all these areas, a rich and neglected source is, I submit, the private sector, including the voluntary sector, in terms of advice about new ways of working and collaborations. The introduction of free schools and academy schools in England has been a major factor in driving up educational standards, for example. Ultimately, bridging the two cultures between the public and private sectors, between government and business will only come about when more people with business experience are elected to government at all levels and employed in senior positions in the civil service. To that extent, the advent of Reform in Scotland with a leader with a solid business background is, arguably, a much-needed breath of fresh air.