KEITH Howell (Letters, July 28) attacks the SNP for demonstrating about a food bank being opened by the Tory Secretary of State for Scotland and betrays a woeful lack of knowledge as to how devolution works.

He castigates the SNP for not spending money to relieve poverty. First, the Scottish Government does not have control of welfare. Secondly, the block grant from the Treasury is a finite amount, and it has been cut every year since the SNP took office, and this year sees the Chancellor taking away £170 million from the money already allocated. Mr Howell also grudges the SNP giving things for “free” – much like Johann Lamont’s “something for nothing” society. Obviously one of the Better Together gang.

Thirdly, by the careful spending of John Swinney, people in Scotland do not have to pay the bedroom tax; there is also the Scottish Welfare Fund which last year paid out £3.5m to North Lanarkshire alone ( I don’t have the figures for other regions as yet). If the Treasury were as conscientious as the SNP Finance Secretary, Westminster’s affairs would not be such an unholy mess.

What is shocking and disgusting is the fact that the financiers, aided and abetted by successive Westminster governments, bankrupted the UK; they ran up the bills, the poor are left to pay them.

Could it be that the shortage of cash is anything to do with the billions oil money they wasted not being there any more? Oh wait, that was the SNP’s problem was it not?

Jim Lynch,

42 Corstorphine Hill Crescent, Edinburgh.