SCOTLAND faces “tough choices” ahead, John Swinney has warned, as he prepares to set out his annual Budget this week in the wake of the UK Government's spending review.
But in his economic plans for 2016/17, the Finance Secretary will pledge, in the face of Chancellor George Osborne’s continued austerity drive, to protect the “critical pillars of Scottish life”; hospitals, schools and the police, the three key areas, where the Scottish Government has come under the strongest attack from its opponents.
Scottish Labour urged Mr Swinney to follow through on mere anti-austerity "posturing" with a long-term economic plan for Scotland when he details the Scottish Government's proposals for the next financial year on Wednesday; a Budget, which it said, would be the most significant since devolution began.
The SNP administration has said the combination of Westminster-imposed cuts since 2010 and last month's spending review meant that by 2019/20 its discretionary budget would be 12.5 per cent lower in real terms than it was in 2010/11.
Mr Swinney explained that some 4.2 per cent of that reduction would come between now and 2019/20.
"The Chancellor has imposed real terms cuts on Scotland every year from now until 2020 and more than a billion pounds of those cuts are still to come between now and the end of the decade,” declared the Deputy First Minister.
He insisted the Scottish Government had demonstrated the Treasury did not have to take this approach; debt and the deficit could have been reduced without such a scale of cuts.
"We face tough choices in the coming days. Against this backdrop, the Scottish Government is determined that we will defend and protect the key priorities that the people of Scotland expect us to deliver on."
The Finance Secretary said schools, hospitals and the police service would “not be sacrificed to the Chancellor's austerity obsession".
Jackie Baillie, Labour's public services spokeswoman, insisted that telling people about pre-election giveaways now and cuts later was not good enough. “This needs to be a long-term Budget,” she declared.
"Scotland needs a government that spends less time congratulating itself on its spin and more time explaining its record.”
Murdo Fraser for the Conservatives branded the SNP a “high tax party” and urged Mr Swinney not to raise the new Scottish rate of income tax above the UK rate.
Meantime, Willie Rennie, the Liberal Democrat leader, called on the Finance Secretary to ensure all the additional Barnett consequentials received as a result of increased mental health expenditure in England would go on improving such services in Scotland.
A Scotland Office spokesman pointed out how the Edinburgh Government would have £390 million more spending next year, which rose to £750m if its own underspend was included.
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