Theresa on the warpath!

In this no-holds-barred interview, Mrs May attacks the failings of the SNP, their soaring levels of taxation and a shameless betrayal of a generation of schoolchildren

THERESA May has launched an excoriating attack on Nicola Sturgeon, accusing her of failing Scotland’s children. In an exclusive interview, the Prime Minister claims that falling education standards mean Scottish youngsters no longer have the same life chances as those in the rest of the UK.

Mrs May – who will speak at next weekend’s Scottish Conservative Conference in Aberdeen – also attacked SNP tax hikes.

As a result of the Nationalists’ Budget, approved last week, more than a million workers earning £26,000 or more will pay more income tax than those on the same salary elsewhere in the UK.

The Prime Minister also said Scottish parents have a right to question why they are paying more tax while their children receive a poorer standard of education.

She said: ‘People in Scotland will rightly say, “Why are we paying more than the rest of the UK?”.

‘It’s not just about the economy, because if they look around and they look at what’s happened on Scottish education, for example, they’ve got a right to say, “Why are we paying more when we see that our education standards are slipping? That means our children aren’t getting the same sort of opportunities and prospects that children across the rest of the UK have”.

‘That’s what I fear as we see Scotland slipping back down the league tables.’

Damning figures from the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) – a worldwide survey of pupils – showed Scots pupils are lagging behind peers in South Korea, Vietnam and former Soviet Bloc countries Estonia and Slovenia.

Scotland was once ranked the best country in the UK for reading and maths but is now trailing behind England and Northern Ireland in both subjects.

The Scottish Government has ended its involvement in other international surveys which had shown the nation was underperforming in education.

Meanwhile, official reports show that proportionately fewer Scots from deprived backgrounds reach university than those from any other UK nation.

Mrs May said: ‘The Scottish Government has now taken Scotland out of the international league tables.

‘In England we have worked hard to get English schools going up the league tables. In Scotland they are ignoring the problem and just trying to pretend it’s not there.’

Mrs May also made a direct plea to the SNP to scrap its plans for a second referendum on independence and focus instead on delivering for pupils.

She said: ‘What I say to the SNP is, it’s time for them to take this [push for separation] off the table and just get on with the day job and the issues that matter to people in Scotland.

‘Are their kids getting a good quality of education? Will their children have an opportunity to get to university?

‘Sadly, whereas in England we have seen more disadvantaged students going to university, in Scotland we are seeing fewer.

‘This is not good. This is affecting people’s life chances.

‘As I say, the SNP needs to take independence off the table and just get on with the day job, and focus on the things that matter to people.’

The SNP has sought to defend its income tax increases by pointing out that the majority of Scots – those earning less than £33,000 – will see their bills fall.

However, this is largely due to Mrs May’s UK Government increasing the tax-free personal allowance.

The Prime Minister said: ‘We have tried to help people by giving people an income tax cut, through what we have done on personal allowances.

‘But here’s the SNP in Scotland actually raising the income tax bill for people.’

The Scottish economy has consistently trailed that of the UK, with growth only a fraction of the rate of Britain as a whole.

And it emerged last week that Scottish unemployment had risen by 14,000 in the final three months of last year.

The increase took the jobless rate to 4.5 per cent – above the UK rate of 4.4 per cent. Business leaders have warned that the last thing Scotland’s fragile economy needed was a tax hike.

Mrs May admitted that she was ‘concerned’ about the nation’s economic prospects under the Nationalists.

She said: ‘I am concerned when we look at the Scottish economy and what we see there with the lower prospects for growth.

‘But what I think will be really of worry to Scottish people is that they thought, at the last Scottish parliamentary elections, that what the SNP were saying to them was that they weren’t going to see any taxes increase.

‘Yet they now see that if they are earning £26,000 or more, they are going to be paying more tax than people across the rest of the UK.

‘Now, not only does that hit people in their pockets, it also does nothing to make Scotland more competitive. Indeed, it does the opposite.’

Last year, 34,830 Scottish students won a place at university – an increase of 3 per cent.

However, the SNP’s own Minister for Higher Education, Shirley-Anne Somerville, admitted that some universities were still accepting ‘very few’ students from deprived areas.

Scotland has seen proportionately fewer students from deprived backgrounds secure university places, according to the Universities and Colleges Administration Service (UCAS), although Scottish Ministers insist that the figures are improving.

Last night, the Scottish Government furiously hit back at the Prime Minister, accusing her of being ‘desperate’ and denying her claims about education.

A spokesman for Education Secretary John Swinney said: ‘Not only are there record numbers of Scots going to university, there are record numbers from the poorest background getting a place.

‘That’s our record on university education.

‘In contrast, last week she had to junk her Government’s fees policy after years of refusing to admit it is fundamentally flawed.

‘Her lack of command of the basic facts about Scotland is only matched by her lack of command of her own policy.’