Joel Barnett was born, lived, and died in Manchester and, in his half century as a Parliamentarian, first as Member of Parliament and then as a life peer, spent much of his time in London. There is no indication that much time was spent in Scotland.

And, yet, Lord Barnett today remains one of Scottish politics’ most influential people, owing to his creation in 1978, while Labour’s Chief Secretary to the Treasury, of the eponymous method for calculating the fiscal transfer which should be allocated to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland when public spending changes in England.

The Barnett Formula, designed to be a short-term measure in advance of the 1979 devolution referenda in Scotland and Wales, lives on nearly 50 years later, despite Lord Barnett himself having decided it was a “terrible mistake”.

The Barnett Formula comes into sharp focus in Scotland at least once per year, after the release of the annual Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland (GERS) statistical publication. The publication does what it says on the tin - detailing the revenue raised in Scotland and the cost of public services, but has become an annual fixture in the calendars of the main nationalist and unionist political parties, whose press releases tend to turn the figures in GERS into an unrecognisable advert for their cause.

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The rather infantile arguments deployed on GERS do demand a pause for reflection about the increasingly pervasive impact the Barnett Formula has both on Scotland’s political discourse and our economic prospects more generally.

There are some facts amongst the selective spin. One is that........

© Herald Scotland