THERE has been a right old hullabaloo since Rachel Reeves presented her budget last week.

As expected, every news outlet and commentator has gone over it in some detail, trying to work out what was in it, and what it will all mean for those groups targeted by the Chancellor.

For many of us though, it was those things the Chancellor didn’t mention that gave us the biggest cause for concern. Remarkably, in a winter budget, the Chancellor made no mention whatsoever of the 900,000 Scottish pensioners who are about to lose their £300 Winter Fuel Allowance.

Similarly, there was no mention of compensation for the WASPI women, who Labour courted assiduously when in opposition, but appear to have abandoned at the first whiff of power.

Also conspicuous by their absence were any serious measures to reduce child poverty, with the Labour government actively choosing to push thousands of Scottish children into poverty by imposing damaging welfare cuts, including sticking to the two-child benefit cap and bedroom tax.

And where in the Chancellor’s budget speech was the recognition of the huge, negative impact that Brexit is having on the UK economy?

She made great play of the £40 billion “black hole” in the public finances, but chose to ignore the fact that around £30bn of that is the economic carnage caused by Brexit, and the twin burdens of increased administrative costs and the lost opportunities of being a member of the world’s largest trading bloc.

And I make no apology for repeating that we in Scotland overwhelmingly rejected Brexit, but we are now being forced to live in this union with the crippling economic reality of allowing our vitally important decisions to be taken elsewhere.

Of course, allowing major economic decisions to be made elsewhere means that someone else controls the purse strings, in this case Westminster, and it is they, by-and-large, who get to decide how much of our own money we are given to spend on Scotland’s public services.

So, while we welcome the £3.4bn increase in Scotland’s block grant from London, it is important to note that the Scottish Government now receive a lower share of UK spending than at any point in the last decade.

And while the total UK Government expenditure has decreased since 2020, Scotland’s share of that expenditure has decreased faster still.

In 2014, the adjusted block grant from Westminster amounted to eight per cent of UK Government expenditure. Today that figure stands at just 7.6 per cent.

This signifies real terms cut to the Scottish budget every year since 2020, with the Scottish block grant being now worth £6.4bn less than it was in 2021. That is a drop of 12.7 per cent.

So, between what wasn’t mentioned in the budget and the reality of a shrinking pot of money making its way from London to Edinburgh, coupled to the hike in spirit duty and the impact the employer’s National Insurance rise will have on our already hard-pressed SME sector, I think regardless of the meteorological conditions outside, this budget signals a long, hard winter ahead for many Scots.