It’ll be a brave Yes voter who buys a newspaper (other than The National) or switches on their TV or radio today, because Scotland is already enduring an outpouring of concentrated spin and outright deception that perhaps even exceeds that seen in the last few weeks before the independence referendum.

Blood pressures will be soaring across the land as people are told things about the final report of the Smith Commission that are flatly at odds with the reality, by journalists and broadcasters who either know perfectly well that what they’re saying is false or haven’t bothered to try to find out.

Below, you’ll find the facts.

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1. Firstly, the Commission’s recommendations are just that – recommendations. They are not law, and are not binding on any government or party.

The Commission, for example, recommends the devolution of Air Passenger Duty and the Aggregates Levy. But devolution of Air Passenger Duty and the Aggregates Levy were also recommended by the Calman Commission in 2009 (paragraph 27), yet NOT devolved by the subsequent Scotland Act.

As happened in 2010, it’s perfectly possible than the incoming UK government could simply reject the recommendations once elected. Scottish Labour decided against the devolution of Air Passenger Duty in its devolution proposals earlier this year and has made no subsequent statement revising that view.

[EDIT 6pm: Indeed, the party has now released a statement demanding that the UK government take measures to prevent English airports being disadvantaged, which in practice means abandoning the whole plan.]

By way of example of the Smith report’s non-binding nature, it also states that “MPs representing constituencies across the whole of the UK will continue to decide the UK’s Budget, including Income Tax” – a sop to Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling’s complaints that Scottish MPs would become “second-class” if income tax was fully devolved (which it hasn’t been in any event).

Yet within minutes David Cameron had announced his intention to press ahead with legislation for “English votes for English laws” in the next few weeks, saying the case for EVEL was now “unanswerable”.

Labour even helpfully insisted on the Smith Commission saying its recommendations would “not be conditional on the conclusion of other political negotiations elsewhere in the UK” (page 9). Cameron can therefore legitimately claim that EVEL is a completely separate issue to Smith, and does not breach it.

Labour’s only comfort in terms of their Scottish MPs becoming inferior representatives unable to help a Labour government get UK budgets through Parliament must be that on current polling, they’re not going to have any anyway.

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2. Despite the hysterical front page of today’s Daily Record, the “Scottish Government budget” will NOT be “almost doubled” by the recommendations, even if they were implemented in full. The Smith Commission report is extremely clear on the subject:

(All emphases in this post are ours.)

It’s hard to see how that statement could be any less ambiguous: no more cash.

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3. The Record also claims, breathless with excitement, that “Scotland will be allocated £5 billion of VAT receipts, 50 per cent of the VAT take in the country”. But the Smith report makes abundantly plain that this too will NOT result in any extra money for the Scottish Government’s budget:

“The receipts raised in Scotland by the first 10 percentage points of the standard rate of Value Added Tax (VAT) will be assigned to the Scottish Government’s budget. These receipts should be calculated on a verified basis, to be agreed between the UK and Scottish Governments, with a corresponding adjustment to the block grant received from the UK Government in line with the principles set out in paragraph 95.”

Paragraph 95 is the section we’ve quoted in point (2) above, which explicitly says that any changes should not result in an increase or decrease to the Scottish Government budget, directly at odds with the Record’s spin.

What that means is that any “extra” money assigned in VAT will be immediately clawed back from the block grant – in other words, the amount of money in Holyrood’s budget will be exactly the same, but some of it will be labelled differently.

Westminster, to all practical intents and purposes, will hand Scotland a tenner with one hand and take back two fivers with the other hand.

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4. Almost all welfare powers will remain reserved to Westminster:

Housing benefit will NOT be extricated from Universal Credit, as Labour’s devolution proposals had claimed would be possible (without ever explaining how). Holyrood’s power over it will extend only in being able to choose to pay housing benefits weekly or fortnightly instead of monthly. Fetch the bunting and cancel police leave.

Paragraph 45 merely reiterates what is the current position – Holyrood can mitigate the effects of the bedroom tax by paying it out of its own budget. It will NOT be able to “abolish” the tax. The only change recommended by Smith is that Holyrood will now be able to do so for other benefits without requiring Westminster’s permission first.

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5. As we’ve previously discussed, the changes to control of income tax are in any practical effect non-existent, and were almost all provided for already by the Scotland Act 2012 and due to be implemented by 2015/16 anyway.

But even the limited new proposals in Smith are all but meaningless. As noted by the BBC’s Douglas Fraser today, it is in practice close to impossible to effectively vary income tax rates inside the borders of a unitary state:

Smith also does NOT propose devolution of revenue from income tax on savings and dividends – something else which WAS recommended by the Calman Commission report (paragraph 32) but not implemented. This further reduces any possible powers of wealth redistribution, as does Westminster’s retention of personal allowances.

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It would be churlish to claim that the Smith Commission report doesn’t recommend ANY new powers at all. For example, there’s this:

Sarcasm aside, allowing the public sector to bid for rail franchises, the devolution of some limited powers relating to the Crown Estates and fracking, some incapacity benefits, and the ability to give 16/17-year-olds the vote in Holyrood elections, are to be welcomed (if actually implemented). It wasn’t plausible for the Commission not to throw Scotland SOME crumbs, and crumbs are better than nothing.

Nevertheless, the Smith report represents the absolute bare minimum the Unionist parties thought they could possibly manage to get away with. In terms of devolving to Holyrood the ability to create jobs, grow the economy or improve social justice, it offers nothing whatsoever. It won’t rescue a single family from a single foodbank.

(Although at least it’ll be possible to put up road signs showing them where it is.)

The partial “devolution” of VAT receipts is simply the relabelling of one part of the money that Holyrood already gets. Expressly and explicitly, as a fundamental guiding principle of its work, the Commission’s recommendations will NOT add a single penny to the Scottish Government’s budget.

The “new” tax powers, meanwhile, are cosmetic and almost entirely unusable – Tax Research UK this morning called them “the worst possible solution for everyone”. The best that Scotland can hope for is that if the Scottish Parliament doesn’t exercise them they will do no damage.

The Scottish and UK media, for its own varying and sometimes contradictory reasons, will spend today and much of the next few months attempting to massively exaggerate the actuality and the ramifications of Lord Smith’s conclusions. Readers should trust them even less than usual, if such a thing is possible.