Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask His Majesty's Government what are the Barnett consequentials for devolved regions of the 6.5 per cent pay rise agreed for teachers in England.

The Government has accepted the School Teachers’ Review Body’s pay recommendations for the 2023/24 teacher pay award in England in full. We are reprioritising from within the Department for Education’s existing budget to deliver the additional funding to schools in England for the costs of the pay award over 3.5%.

The devolved administrations receive funding through the Barnett formula when UK Government departmental DEL budgets change. As there is no change to the Department for Education’s DEL budget associated with this announcement, there are no associated Barnett consequentials. Barnett consequentials would already have resulted from the Department for Educations’s initial budget settlement at Spending Review 2021.

The devolved administrations are well funded to deliver all their devolved responsibilities. Overall, the devolved administrations’ funding is at least 20% more per person than equivalent UK Government spending in other parts of the UK. Spending Review 2021 also set the largest annual block grants, in real terms, of any spending review settlement since the devolution Acts. This provided £41 billion per year for the Scottish Government, £18 billion per year for the Welsh Government and £15 billion per year for the Northern Ireland Executive.

A full breakdown of changes to devolved administrations’ block grants, including Barnett consequentials, is set out in the published Block Grant Transparency document.