Steven Purcell’s outburst came after he was told of plans by the SNP administration to hand £3m to Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire councils in what he believes is being referred to as a North Sea oil capital allocation fund.
It follows concessions worth £3m won by Lothians MSP Margo MacDonald for Edinburgh last year as a Capital City Supplement in exchange for her vote backing Finance Secretary John Swinney’s budget.
With John Swinney, the Finance Secretary, today due to reveal the draft Scottish budget for next year, Mr Purcell said of the alleged allocations: “I’m astonished this would be the case and that there is no similar deal for Scotland’s largest city.”
He said it was another example of how Glasgow had been “ripped off” by successive governments.
A spokesman for Mr Swinney last night said there would be no comment about the contents of the budget ahead of today’s announcement.
The Finance Secretary will tell MSPs that the draft Scottish budget will be about £250m lower than this year’s -- the first real-terms cut for 17 years since the recession of the early 1990s.
The Scottish Government accepts that its annual budget of around £30bn is due to increase in “nominal terms” next year but says that when inflation is taken into account, together with the “clawback” of £500m in efficiency savings demanded by the Treasury, the budget will fall in real terms.
Last night, however, the figures sparked another political row as the UK Government made clear it did not accept Mr Swinney’s interpretation of them. It insisted public spending in Scotland next year would be at record levels with an increase, after taking into account “capital re-profiling and efficiency savings”, of £270m.
The pressures on the Holyrood budget formed the central part of “extremely useful” talks between Alex Salmond and Gordon Brown yesterday when the First Minister and Prime Minister, together with colleagues from Wales and Northern Ireland, met at Westminster to discuss the recession and its economic impact. It was the first time Mr Salmond and Mr Brown had met face-to-face since April.
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