Op- Ed: Scotland cannot prevent harm while its economy continues to create it

There is much to welcome in the Scottish Government’s new Programme for Government.

Its commitment to put prevention and early intervention at the heart of public ser

vices is both necessary and overdue. A new Prevention Unit, proposals for a Scottish Prevention Investment Framework and greater investment in areas such as homelessness prevention all point in the right direction.

The ambitions to eradicate child poverty, tackle the climate and nature emergencies and improve public services are also ones we share.

But the Programme for Government contains two competing visions for Scotland, while omitting the framework that should bring them together.

In one vision, the Government recognises that constantly responding to crises is financially unsustainable and damaging to people’s lives. It wants to intervene earlier, prevent harm and focus public spending on the outcomes that matter. Success is measured in the outcomes of reduced poverty, a healthy environment and the wellbeing of people.  

In the other, economic success remains centred on pursuing  growth, attracting mobile private investment, accelerating major developments and reducing regulation. The Government says that growth is not an end in itself, yet it provides no clear framework for distinguishing between the economic activity that improves our collective wellbeing and that which from activity that deepens inequality, extracts wealth from communities or damages the environment.

These two visions do not comfortably coexist. We cannot prevent harm through our public services while continuing to tolerate an economic system that generates that harm in the first place.

Prevention cannot be confined to hospitals, schools, social care services or homelessness teams. It must begin with the design of the economy itself. Attempts at public sector reform and systemic prevention are doomed to fail if they remain disconnected from economic strategy.

Poverty, insecure work, unaffordable housing, pollution and climate breakdown are not simply social problems for public services to manage after the event. They are shaped by economic choices: what we produce, who owns our resources, how wealth is distributed and whose interests are prioritised when decisions are made.

When the economy creates insecurity and ill health, public services are left to pick up the pieces. We spend growing amounts responding to problems that could have been avoided. This is known as “failure demand”: pressure placed on services because the systems around them have failed to meet people’s needs.

A genuinely preventative government would therefore ask a different question of every economic decision: will this improve people’s wellbeing, reduce inequality and protect the natural systems on which we all depend? 

This is the basis of a Wellbeing Economy approach, an ambition the Scottish Government once championed, at least rhetorically. This is the basis of a Wellbeing Economy approach, an ambition the Scottish Government once championed, at least rhetorically. Yet since 2024, no Cabinet Secretary has had the Wellbeing Economy explicitly included in their portfolio and the pursuit of economic growth has returned as the unquestioned priority of economic policy.

Attracting investment is not the same as building shared prosperity. New infrastructure or technology does not automatically create secure, well-paid jobs or retain wealth within Scotland, it can also destroy jobs and facilitate the extraction of wealth into tax havens. Cutting bureaucracy” can remove unnecessary obstacles, but weakening regulation can also erode  workers’, communities’ and nature’s protections against the actions of uncaring businesses. 

The contradiction is clearest in the Government’s approach to the climate emergency.

The Programme promises to tackle the climate and nature crises while maximising the economic opportunities created by the transition. But this sits alongside calls from the First Minister for lower taxes on oil and gas companies and an approach to development that risks placing  speed and investor confidence ahead of clear social and environmental conditions.

After a summer of extreme weather, Scotland needs a transition that is both faster and fairer, not further incentives for an industry making enormous profits from the activities driving the crisis. As Friends of the Earth Scotland has highlighted, the Programme also fails to provide the transformative climate action or the level of investment in workers and communities that a just transition requires.

Rather than focusing economic policy on the goal of economic growth, the National Performance Framework (NPF) should provide the compass for making economic policy decisions. The Scottish Government has described the NPF as the framework that establishes the vision for the kind of Scotland we all want to live in. It is  a shared vision intended to guide policy, spending, public service reform and accountability. Yet it is notably absent from a five-year Programme that promises more joined-up, preventative and citizen-centred government. 

There are positive economic commitments in the programme that can help align Scottish economic policy with the vision in the National Performance Framework. These include community wealth building, a new social economy strategy, a commitment to fair work and a stronger role for the Scottish National Investment Bank. New Council Tax bands for high-value properties are also a welcome, if limited, step towards making Scotland’s tax system fairer.

But these policies currently sit at the margins of an economic agenda still dominated by private investment, competitiveness and aggregate growth. They should instead form the foundations of an economy designed around shared wellbeing.

Without the NPF as a clear organising framework, these ambitions risk becoming a series of disconnected commitments rather than a coherent plan to improve people’s wellbeing. Its omission reinforces the impression of two different Scotlands within the Programme: one focused on long-term wellbeing and prevention, and another still measuring economic success through growth without clearly defining its purpose or who benefits.

A preventative state requires a preventative economy, one deliberately designed to deliver good lives for everyone within the limits of our planet. Until the Scottish Government puts economic policy in service of building such an economy, it will remain trapped in the costly cycle of treating symptoms while leaving their causes untouched.