RUSSELL Findlay has been slammed after getting the living wage wrong in a BBC interview.
The new Scottish Tory leader was speaking on the Sunday Show when he made the blunder.
“Let me just very briefly in 10 seconds, see how much you understand about the way people live,” said presenter Martin Geissler before then asking: “What's the current living wage?”
Findlay responded, incorrectly: “The current living wage is about 13 pounds or so an hour.”
Geissler interrupted to tell him that it is, in fact £11.44 an hour. The journalist then asked: “Is that enough?”
“I'm not going to be bounced into coming up with a number right now,” Findlay said.
“The other week in the Scottish Parliament, Asda were in, and made a basket of groceries and they asked MSPs to guess the value of it.
“And it came to about 29 pounds and I guessed in the mid twenties, so I think I do have a pretty good handle on things.”
He then claimed: “Curiously, one of the SNP MSPs valued this basket of groceries at 110 pounds.
“I think that shows how out of touch they are.”
The SNP, meanwhile, hit out at Findlay’s failure to name the living wage.
A spokesperson said: "As if backing Liz Truss' mini budget and promising it would help improve family budgets wasn't enough, Russell Findlay has out done himself by failing to accurately tell the BBC how much the living wage is - demonstrating once again his unique understanding of economic policy."
Findlay’s blunder came just 48 hours after being elected to succeed Douglas Ross, who quit midway through the general election campaign amid a row over his decision to step in and take the place of a candidate who the Tories removed on health grounds.
The new Scottish Tory leader, who was elected to Holyrood in 2021, comfortably saw off competition from veteran MSP Murdo Fraser and former Scottish Conservative deputy leader Meghan Gallagher to win the leadership.
He said it is a “huge privilege” to be the party’s Scottish leader, and added: “I believe our politics need to change, our party needs to change, we need to do things differently, we need to do things better.
“There is an absolute mountain to climb, but I am determined to do what I can to make those changes.”
He said in his previous job as a journalist, he had “watched with growing disdain at the way in which the SNP were trashing Scotland, trashing the economy, trashing the NHS, trashing our education system”, adding that “motivated” him to “step-up and become involved in politics”.
