Independent Scottish fiscal studies body faces closure as funds dry up

Fiscal Affairs Scotland, one of the country's only independent financial monitoring bodies, is close to folding after failing to find donors, raising anxieties about effective scrutiny of public spending

One of Scotland's few independent economic analysis groups, Fiscal Affairs Scotland, is on the brink of closure because it cannot find university or private funding.

Fiscal Affairs Scotland (FAS), which has parallels to the work of the Institute of Fiscal Affairs in London, disclosed on Thursday it was suspending operations while it made final efforts to secure lifeline funding: failure would see it fold at the end of the year.

recognise that a mature democracy like Scotland, which is getting extensive extra powers over its own fiscal and economic destiny, requires strong fiscal analysis independent of government to inform both business and the electorate. I have had many many conversations with people recognising the need for that.

Scotland has strength and depth in its higher education sector - it's the country of Adam Smith and David Hume. It's disappointing that despite that, it is struggling to build this capacity.

It is becoming increasingly important to also understand the overall position of the devolved Scottish public sector as a whole, but there is currently no single set of accounts that shows the position.

In the absence of easily accessible, aggregate information on what the devolved Scottish public sector owns and owes overall, it is difficult for the Scottish parliament, taxpayers and others to get a full picture and understanding about public spending and the longer-term implications for public finances.

One of the key systemic issues is that universities are in increasingly challenging financial circumstances [and] the core of this is that universities are operating increasingly as quasi business operations and are competing with each other, fighting for funding.

The quality of analysis available to the Scottish people is very limited. For such a strongly devolved area like Scotland to have so little capacity to produce high quality fiscal analysis is a tremendous weakness.