‘£170m Tory cut proposals do not respect election result in Scotland’ - Swinney

A savings plan announced yesterday by the UK Chancellor will see Scotland face a £176.8 million cut in public spending this year, a move that Scotland’s Finance Secretary John Swinney said was an “unexpected and unwarranted” imposition of further austerity that was “completely and utterly unacceptable”.

The Deputy First Minister today said the announcement of further cuts to Scotland’s budget this year come despite Scotland’s budget having already been set by the Scottish Parliament.

George Osborne said departmental budgets would fall by £3bn in 2015/16 as he made the announcement ahead of his emergency budget which will take place on 8 July.

He added that it was vital to tackle UK debt “as quickly as possible”.

But Mr Swinney said there had been no prior discussion with the Scottish Government over the cuts, which he said were a product of the Tory’s “ideological obsession with austerity”.

He added: “The Scottish Parliament has already agreed our budget for this year and that should be respected, not slashed as part of George Osborne and David Cameron’s ideological obsession with austerity.”

“Scotland has already seen our overall budget cut by 9 per cent and our capital budget cut by 25 per cent since 2010.

“Further cuts risk more damage to public services and will hold back economic growth, as underlined in the latest report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).”

Speaking after the Chancellor’s announcement, Finance Secretary John Swinney said: “The people of Scotland made perfectly clear in the recent UK election that they rejected the Tories’ plans for more and harsher cuts, yet the UK Government is planning to inflict £170 million of even deeper austerity on Scotland this year.

“The First Minister made it clear to the Prime Minister when they met in Edinburgh recently that the general election result means it cannot – and must not – be ‘business as usual’ as far as Scotland is concerned.”

He added:“The Chancellor’s actions today would appear to show that that message has not been heeded. The First Minister will be writing to all parties in the Scottish Parliament, urging them to stand firm against these cuts and I will be meeting the Chancellor on Monday to put forward an alternative to austerity.”

During a debate in the House of Commons the Chancellor also confirmed that the government’s remaining stake in Royal Mail - currently valued at £1.5bn - would be sold when ministers could be sure they would get value for money.