This is one of the more sensitive subjects this project will cover, and we want to get it right rather than get it out quickly. The Barnett formula is argued about from several genuinely different directions at once: some argue it gives Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland more public spending per person than England receives; others argue the devolved nations have real fiscal need the formula only partly reflects, and limited genuine tax-raising power of their own within it; others point out that England itself has no equivalent devolved settlement, and ask why English regions get neither the Barnett grant nor the autonomy that comes with it. Every one of those arguments has evidence behind at least part of it. None of them is the whole picture on its own. This pillar will only go live once it has done the same work every other pillar on this site has done — steel-manning each position honestly, citing every figure, and reaching a conclusion built on the evidence rather than starting from one.