SNP branded hypocrites for backing Tory call for financial autonomy

LABOUR have accused the SNP of hypocrisy after the party backed a rebel Conservative push to give Scotland controversial tax and spending powers.

Experts have warned that Full Fiscal Autonomy (FFA) would result in Scotland losing out on billions of pounds a year, although the SNP dispute that figure.

SNP sources said it was right to back more devolution for the Scottish Parliament as MPs debated the Scotland Bill.

Labour Shadow Scottish Secretary Ian Murray accused the party of hypocrisy “after agreeing to troop through the voting lobby with the extreme right wing of the Tories to impose immediate extra spending cuts of £7.6 billion on Scotland”.

“The SNP said they would lock out the Tories and vote against cuts,” he added. “(Instead) they will vote with Tories for cuts.”

The row came after SNP deputy leader Stewart Hosie told MPs his party would support the backbench Tory amendment to the Bill if it went to a vote.

He defended FFA, saying it meant “prising control over the economic and financial levers of government from the Tories, and placing it in the hands of the parliament and people of Scotland”. Mr Hosie also used the debate to tell a Tory MP: “We agree if we could have serious, justifiable tax competition that is a good thing.”

The SNP put forward their own amendment to the Bill to give Holyrood the power to introduce FFA at some point in the future.

But Mr Hosie said the party also intended to vote for an amendment by Tory grandee Sir Edward Leigh to deliver the powers immediately.

Sir Edward said he believed Scotland should receive “home rule” to stop a “toxic mixture” of circumstances breaking up the Union.

He told the Commons that even if the Smith Commission proposals, which the Bill is designed to implement, were adopted Holyrood is “constructed in a manner inherently conductive to the culture of grievance. It will raise only 50 per cent of what it spends.

“Worse, under the 30-year-old discredited Barnett Formula which even its conceiver condemned towards the end of his life, its block grant would depend not on need but on English levels of spending”.

The t wo proposals were defeated, the SNP’s by 309 votes to 60 and Sir Edward’s by 298 to 68.