CHANCELLOR Rachel Reeves has claimed the SNP government “is as guilty as the Conservative government” when it comes to issues with the public finances.
Speaking during a visit north of the Border, the Labour MP hit out at the SNP – just one day after Prime Minister Keir Starmer warned his government’s first Budget would be “painful”.
Starmer paved the way for tax rises and spending cuts in a speech from Downing Street on Tuesday, leading to warnings that a new era of austerity was set to be ushered in, including from First Minister John Swinney.
But speaking during a visit to the National Manufacturing Institute Scotland near Renfrew on Wednesday, Reeves said the SNP were to blame for the difficult financial situation in Scotland.
“The SNP Government is as guilty as the Conservative government of spending more than they were bringing in, and now the Scottish Government are having to make difficult decisions,” she said.
“Anas Sarwar and the Labour opposition in Scotland were warning the SNP about the unsustainable position they were in.
“The SNP refused to listen, they made decisions that were not sustainable and now it is Scottish people who are paying the price for the decisions of the Scottish Government.”
Recently, the Scottish Government followed its UK counterpart in cutting back the Winter Fuel Payment after Reeves took the decision to end it for millions of pensioners and make it means-tested, leaving the SNP government without an expected £140-£160 million in funding.
Experts at the Scottish Fiscal Commission (SFC) said on Tuesday that Scottish ministers may struggle to balance the country’s budget due to uncertainty about the level of funding coming from Westminster, as well as above-expectation public sector pay deals, the council tax freeze, and benefit reforms.
Reacting to the SFC report, Scottish Finance Secretary Shona Robison said the country faces the “most challenging financial situation since devolution” following Reeves’s Commons statement last month in which she said there was a £22 billion black hole in the UK’s finances.
Robison went on to say decisions made by the UK Government will “fundamentally damage our ability to deliver public services in Scotland”.
As Reeves visited Scotland, Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) director Paul Johnson told the BBC that her fiscal rules were “daft”, and that despite their rhetoric Labour had known about the issues in the UK finances before the election.
Johnson said: “[Reeves] herself has said very clearly – I mean she has absolutely doubled down on this – that she's going to follow essentially the same fiscal rules as the last government, which means that debt needs to be falling at the end of the five-year period. It’s a pretty daft fiscal rule.”
