THE Scottish Government is due to publish its latest Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland (GERS) report on Wednesday morning.
It comes around every year and is often at the centre of the debate on Scottish independence.
But what is GERS and how is it all calculated?
What is GERS?
The GERS figures were published for the first time in 1992 under then-prime minister John Major.
At the time, Tory ministers in the Scotland Office believed it would help inform the debate on devolution.
Essentially, the report estimates the difference between what Scotland raises in taxation and what is spent on its public services.
The most recent GERS report suggested that, for the period of 21/22, Scotland had a government deficit of £23.7 billion.
How is Gers calculated?
GERS is produced by independent civil servant statisticians.
The Scottish Government has previously said that GERS is a National Statistics publication, which means it is “produced independently of Scottish ministers and has been assessed by the UK Statistics Authority as being produced in line with the Code of Practice for Official Statistics”.
It added: “This means the statistics have been found to meet user needs, to be methodologically sound, explained well and produced free of political interference.”
The total spend is made up of Scottish and local government services as well as UK welfare spending and pension in Scotland.
It also includes UK Government spending in non-devolved areas such as defence and allocates a proportion of the UK’s debt interest payments to Scotland.
When it comes to revenue, there have previously been complaints that the data used is not collected for Scotland has to be estimated using UK figures.
However, in recent years, Scottish income tax, council tax, business rates, profits made by Scottish Water, landfill tax, land and building transactions tax and local authority user charges and fees are included.
The Fraser of Allander institute has said that estimates are not unusual when it comes to economic statistics.
Does it represent the whole economy?
On the Scottish Government’s website, it’s made clear that the GERS is only a report on public sector revenue and expenditure.
It therefore “does not directly report on Scotland’s wider economy”. Anybody interested in this should refer to other economic statistics products.
This includes the quarterly Gross Domestic Product figures or Quarterly National Accounts Scotland.
