JOHANN Lamont and Nicola Sturgeon clashed in a heated row at Holyrood, during which the Scottish Labour leader said it was unfair the Deputy First Minister should receive free prescriptions because of her high earnings.
Ms Lamont said: "Nicola Sturgeon lives in a household with an income of £200,000 a year, she gets free prescriptions. Free prescriptions cost £57 million a year – how many nurses is that?
"Like me, she will have saved more than £400 from the council tax freeze, yet my children's school and schools across the country are getting to the stage where they can't even do the basics like photocopying materials.
"If spending cuts threaten the kind of free care for the elderly we want to deliver, is it fair a woman like her on £200,000 gets free prescriptions?
"Is it fair that the Sturgeon household on £200,000 a year gets universal benefits when families on average earnings pay more for childcare than they do their mortgage?"
The attack followed a keynote speech on Tuesday in which Ms Lamont positioned Labour to ditch flagship Scottish Government policies including free prescription charges for all, free university tution for Scots and EU students and the council tax freeze.
Ms Sturgeon, standing in for Alex Salmond – who is in the US for the Ryder Cup golf tournament, retorted: "Make no mistake – I relish this debate.
"We will be proud to protect the council tax freeze, we will be proud to protect free education for working-class young people, we will be proud to protect free personal care and bus travel for our pensioners.
"If Johann Lamont wants to make that the dividing line of Scottish politics, I say bring it on."
Referring to a tweet by Tory MSP Murdo Fraser, who backed Ms Lamont's policy shift, she branded Ms Lamont a "poster girl for the Tories".
Ms Sturgeon earns £97,000 as an MSP and Cabinet minister. Her husband Peter Murrell, the SNP's top official, was awarded a 47% pay rise by the party last year taking his pay and allowances to more than £100,000.
In Tuesday's attack, Ms Lamont had urged the SNP to engage in a debate on the affordability and fairness of universal entitlements, as the Scottish Government wrestles with an 11% cut in its spending between 2010 and 2014.
Citing Government-commissioned reports by Campbell Christie, the late STUC leader, and Crawford Beveridge, the former Scottish Enterprise chief and an adviser to Mr Salmond, which both questioned a range of giveaways, she added: "I believe the debate, about how we make spending choices fair for people across Scotland, must happen before the referendum."
However, Nationalists seized on comments by Arthur Mid-winter, the economist leading a two-year Labour probe into Government spending priorities, who told yesterday's Herald there was "nothing off the table" in terms of possible cutbacks.
SNP MSP Jamie Hepburn said: "Professor Midwinter has confirmed that literally everything is under threat from Labour, including free personal care – everything which the Scottish Parliament, working across party lines, fought long and hard to introduce.
"Labour have caused untold alarm to people right across Scottish society – the pensioner who depends on free personal care, families on low incomes who would struggle to pay Labour's soaring council tax, and young people hoping to go to university who can't afford fees."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article